How to be successful with Google App Campaigns in 2023

With approximately 50% of the world population using a smartphone, the mobile app industry is booming, and it is set to scale higher growth in the future.

App marketing is an integral part of app development for app owners worldwide. App developers always seek to promote their apps across the targeted audience and potential customers. While there are multiple ways you can optimize your app organically, advertisers these days use paid channels to push their apps to a broader audience.

Paid advertising allows advertisers to optimize the app according to Google's app promotion compliances and improve their app listing positions. On the flip side, the organic app marketing approach has limitations regarding extensive growth hacking.

Let's understand an outcome-driven paid app promotion tactic; the Google app campaign. Check our guide that helps you comprehend various app promotion aspects with Google app campaigns. We've covered everything you need to know, from the definition to step-by-step instructions on creating app campaigns.

• Overview of Google app campaign
• What are the different types of Google app campaigns?
• Getting started with Google app campaigns
• Recommended app campaigns, ad formats, and assets
• How to create an app campaign-step-by-step instructions
• Best practices to improve Google app campaign performance
• Conclusion

Overview of Google app campaign

Google app campaigns are designed to maximize app revenue, accelerate user acquisition, in-app conversions, and app installs. App advertising campaigns on Google use machine learning techniques to analyze 300+ million signal combinations and show your ads to those interested in your app's offerings or any similar app. Formerly known as the Universal app campaign, the Google app campaign is an automated Google ad tool for app marketers/developers/owners. It allows them to promote their Android or iOS apps on the Google search engine, contributing directly to the Playstore listing ranking of the app.

Once your app campaign is approved and live, Google will run your app ads across various Google-owned platforms such as Google search ads, YouTube, Google Play, Google display networks (Gdns), Google news, and more. With that, your app gets a chance to appear across millions of audiences likely to be interested in your offering (only when the ads are relevant to your app campaign).

How do Google app campaigns work?

The Google app campaign’s mechanism differs from most ad campaigns as it does not ask app marketers to design campaign-specific ads. Google creates ads of different formats using the text ideas, videos, still images, and assets advertisers provide in their app’s store listing. Created ads are distributed across Google’s authorized channels, encouraging your target audience to perform the desired actions and grow your business with more app installs, quality traffic, and user acquisition. This way, Google promotes your app throughout its ecosystem from a single app campaign.

To start your app campaign, you must provide Google with essential information related to your ads, such as text, initial bid, budget, language in which you want your ads to appear, and targeted geo locations for the ads. Google strongly recommends app campaign owners share landscape images, portrait videos, and landscape videos along with HTML assets wherever required.

The information you share is stored and processed in Google’s system, where it tests different ad formats and displays high-performing ads before the audience without requiring you to put extra effort into running the app campaign or managing the ads.

What are the different types of Google app campaigns?

Once you choose “App promotion” as your campaign’s goal, Google will provide you with three different app campaign subtypes; “App installs,” “App engagement,” and “App pre-registration (forAndroid apps)” for them. Each campaign subtype has a specific objective to achieve. Advertisers can choose the right sub-campaign type based on the campaign’s end objective: app installs, engagement, or registration.

App engagement

App engagement campaigns are focused on ads encouraging existing app users to engage with the app, For example, by organizing a giveaway or contest.

App Installs

App install campaigns encourage targeted users to install the app. To make such campaigns a success, You must perform specific actions such as in-app conversions and app store optimization while targeting valuable users who are more likely to be interested in your app and its offerings.

App pre-registration (only for android apps)

Achieving success on pre-registration app campaigns is challenging. Run ads that are capable of driving excitement among the targeted users. Create ad titles based on a hypothetical search query analysis. For example, if your targeted users are GenZ gamers and you are launching a gaming app, the title should go like this: “Earn while you play- Enter a new world of gaming.”

Getting started with Google app campaigns

Create your app ads

Your app campaign on Google allows you to create your ads using the app information you provide. Furthermore, you can modify the ads and make them more relevant to your audience by adding images and videos.

Determine your budget

Every business has a budget allocated to determine how much their capital is and how more they need to regulate their business operations. Regarding your Google app campaign, you need to set a target for a total cost per install and maximum daily ad budget. However, you are free to adjust your budget anytime.

Choose your goals

Google displays objective-specific ads in front of your app’s targeted audience. For example, you can Depend on what action you want the audience to take; the app campaign will create ads and show them to people interested in your app.

Recommended app campaigns, ad formats, and assets

We already discussed that Google creates your ads using the assets you share in the form of videos, text, and images. Hence, let’s look at the most significant aspects regarding Ad formats and help to guide you in setting up Google ad campaigns.

How to create a Google app campaign: step-by-step instructions

App campaigns facilitate an effective and seamless promotion of your app across various Google platforms such as Google search, YouTube, Google Play, and display networks. Follow the steps below to setup your Google app campaign:

1. Create your account or sign in for a Google ad account.
2. Navigate through the page menu and click "Campaigns."
3. Click on the "+" button and select "App promotion" as your campaign objective.
4. As the campaign subtype, choose either "app installs" or "app engagement."
5. Select a platform for your app.
6. Add your app name, package name, or publisher's details in the search field. Immediately a list containing the app name will appear. Select your app from this list. Google advertising campaigns will count every installation as a conversion. However, you first need to set up mobile app conversion tracking to track all the conversions.
7. Click "Continue."
8. Under the "campaign name," add a name relevant to your brand. Also, you may need to indicate in the app that this campaign is associated with a mobile app.
9. Google app campaigns allow you to update language and location settings. Remember that Google does not support automatic ad translation. Hence, choose the right language and audience for your campaign.
10. Set an average daily budget for your ad campaign.
11. Go to "campaign optimization" and optimize your campaign by choosing the precise actions you want your users to take.
12. Set target bids on your campaign.
13. Choose the start and end date of your app campaign.
14. Proceed with "save and continue."
15. Add the ad group name for your campaign.
16. Go to "Ad assets" and add headline ideas (at least two) and a description idea.

17. Moving towards the final step, you can add up to 20 of each ad asset as mentioned below:1. Image2. Video3. HTML5
18. Finish your app campaign creation by clicking at "save and continue."

How to improve your app campaign performance?

Knowing the best practices to improve the performance of your app campaign is an integral step for optimizing your app campaign. Following are a few "best practices" that work for most app campaigns.

Track conversions

Conversion tracking is the most vital step for checking your app campaign-related actionable insights and making changes in the existing strategies as required. Conversion tracking lets you see how well your ads perform and help you attain your campaign goals, such as app installs and in-app activities.

Optimize your app campaign assets

Your marketing assets are what your prospectus will see at first to get an idea about your brand, product, or services that you offer to them. Hence, to impact your targeted audience significantly, it's highly advisable to set up campaigns with various assets. Based on how your prospectus engages with the ads, you can determine which assets you should prioritize to drive high engagement to your app campaign.

Measure your app campaign performance

You can examine various aspects of the campaign by measuring app performance at regular intervals. Using Google Analytics, you get enough data to find out what's working and what areas your campaign needs improvement. For example, you can track the location where the download for your app is high and push more ads across that location.

Modify your app campaign whenever needed

Google app campaigns are dynamic, thanks to Google's core focus on providing top-notch campaigning experience to brands and businesses worldwide. You can modify your app campaigns anytime, such as switching to a different campaign objective, modifying the name, campaign description, etc.

Partner with app campaign experts

Regardless of your objective on the campaign, you must create outcome-driven growth strategies, which is unfortunately not an overnight task. Programmatic advertising experts at GreedyGame help app owners to create a winning app campaign besides skyrocketing their app growth and overall revenue. From setting up the drive to ensuring high revenue generation, such companies undertake the whole growth responsibility, allowing app developers to focus on building great apps.

Manage biddings effectively

Having the right bidding strategy in place is very important for the success of your app campaign. App campaigns on Google provide various options to customize your bidding goals. For example, if your campaign aims to increase app installs, set a campaign on "target cost per install (Target CPI)." Likewise, if your campaign targets pre-app registration, you should select a bidding campaign called "target cost per install."

Conclusion

Setting up an app campaign is an excellent way to accelerate your app's growth without fail. Also, you can start your campaign with any user acquisition platform since they have proven advantageous for numerous advertisers. You can create an app campaign in no time, manage it effectively and begin growing the next minute with user acquisition platform-based app campaigns.

If you are looking to boost your app campaign and skyrocket your app growth, we are here to help you. Connect with our app marketing experts to discuss your requirements.