The Ultimate Guide To Mobile App Marketing Research

When a new client comes to us with the task of producing creatives for their product, the first thing we do is conduct research. The goal of this process is to immerse ourselves in the context of their product as much as possible.

It's important to understand that if you spend enough time on research at the start, all future processes will be that much more productive — from coming up with ideas for creatives to adding small details to the video. If you ignore some points of the analysis, in the best case, you will lose several times more time in the production process, in the worst case, you can end up with videos that won't generate revenue.

The research consists of five stages:

1. Study of the target audience.
2. Analysis of the product and competitors.
3. Analysis of product advertisements and competitors' advertisements.
4. ASO analysis and study of the latest product changes.
5. Formation of hypotheses.

To research the target audience, we turn to the analytics that the client already has, or we look at which audience competitors are addressing, or, if this is a new product, we find the most similar cases and build our hypotheses about the target audience based on those.

We need to answer the following questions:

1. Who is the target audience of the product?
2. What emotions does the target audience experience while using the product?
3. What needs of the target audience are covered when using the product?

Next, we dive into the product itself. Most of the time we work with games. A team starts working on the project, and all participants download the application and play for an hour or two to understand the game as best as possible, both technically and emotionally.

We introduce ourselves to the target audience and analyze every step of using the application. We ask ourselves the questions: "How do I feel when I enter the application?", "Which button do I like the most in this window? What color is it? "," Which feature of this application do I like the most?"

At this stage, you need to understand what is the uniqueness of the product and why the target audience should choose it among its competitors. This item (like everything else) helps us in the future to choose ideas for creating content.

The analysis of the product flows smoothly into the analysis of advertising for this product and its competitors.

We use several analytics services. First of all, these are Ab Library and Apptica. We look for competitors' creatives that work best, as well as study benchmarks of the product under study (if, of course, they already exist).

When studying advertising videos, it is important for us to find general patterns, and to find approaches that are currently relevant on the market. Pay attention to the details — what colors are used in the video, what characters, what UI elements, etc.

We look for patterns, draw conclusions, and draw up everything in a single report.

Next is an important touch. We keep an eye on ASO. We study the positioning of the product in the App Store. We are watching for the latest changes to the product.

The creatives we produce must match the mood and design of what the player sees in the Store. If we are talking about a "fake ad", in which there will be nothing to do with what is in the store after the transition, the user will feel that they were deceived and will ignore the product.

The second point that Stores show is the attitude of users to the product. Testimonials help to understand what is important to users. We see what they mark as the benefits of the product, and what needs improvement, and we see what complaints users have. This gives an even deeper understanding of the target audience and helps us filter out unproductive ideas for creatives.

By the end of the study, we already have a general picture, on the basis of which we will formulate hypotheses for product promotion. So what do we know?

1. What is the product?
2. Who is the target audience?
3. What needs are covered by the product?
4. How does the product retain users?
5. How are the product and its competitors advertised?
6. How is the Store positioned, and how is the Store designed?

What users have already used the product, and what are their complaints? In the end, we've come a long way and we have enough information to compile it into a single document. Now we can start brainstorming — but that's another story.