Growth of Mobile App Marketing in Southeast Asia

Last Year (2017) was a great year for mobile App Marketing in Southeast Asia markets. Following are some interested facts to know:

• We downloaded over 2 million apps from the iOS App Store and over 3.5 million apps from the Google Play in last year (2017).
• AppsFlyer has identified the top five industry trends that ruled Southeast Asia region in 2017.
• In SEA, non-organic installs increased 145% between 2015 and 2017 but the share of organic installs declined 11% within the same time frame. 
• The number of retargeting conversions doubled in SEA to over 217% in 2017 from 2016.
• Media Cost on cost per install (CPI) or Cost per Action(CPA) campaigns, has increased 50% year-over-year in SEA.
• The average revenue per user (ARPU) has risen by 60% year-over-year.
• Brands lost over $2 billion to app install fraud in 2017(one out of ten non-organic installs being fraudulent). 
• In 2017, a new type of fraud come into existence called Device-ID Reset Fraud.
• Apple Search Ads also become a major player along with Facebook and Google in the region.
• Generally, a mobile user installed average 100 apps in 2017 and 20 of which he is using regularly on monthly basis (on average, spending two hours per day on mobile app).
• Mobile apps playing a key role in almost every sector (retail, travel, banking, media, entertainment etc.) today in SEA region.
• 93% of digital ad campaigns used mobile formats and overall, mobile reached higher or equal benchmarks compared to desktop.

Facts behind the success of Mobile marketing campaigns in 2017:

• Mobile App Marketers increased advertising spend in optimizing post-install metrics using the tactics of app retargeting and tracking different kind of events.
• Improvements in deep linking now help mobile marketers to redirect users from their ads to a specific landing page within their app.
• Data such as retention, audience segmentation and funnel analysis help to build effective re-engagement campaigns and optimize ROI positive campaigns. Now, there are many mobile marketing analytical tools or platform available in SEA region to support and to improve campaigns.

According to eMarketer, mobile ad spend in Southeast Asia (SEA) will be double (more than $2.20 billion USD) in the next five years from 2017 to 2021 because of heavy mobile investments across the region. I think, as a mobile app marketer in SEA market, you can increase advertising spend to get better results on mobile marketing campaign in this year too but advertisers in SEA markets are more conscious this year about the fraud, quality and retention strategy so be careful.

Mobile App Marketing Introduction

Mobile app is specially programmed or designed to run directly on mobile devices or other smart devices (like tablet or watches) instead of mobile web-browsers. Most of the mobile Apps were preinstalled on the mobile device on the time of its purchase, but there are many mobile applications that you require for every day for various uses or purposes and you can easily download them from the Google Play or from your mobile device’s operating system. There are many platforms that are operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Window Phone Store and BlackBerry App Store which are main distribution channel for mobile apps.

Mobile App marketing is mainly focused on app promotion and the engagement or retention of users who have already downloaded that app. People download apps every day, but the truth is that many of them are abandoned or never even used.

Tips to Create a Successful Mobile App:

• Make it useful
• Make it require fewer steps
• Make it intuitive
• Make it usable
• Make it adaptable
• Make it safe
• Make it open to feedback
• Make it up-to-date
• Make it energy-efficient

If you are a mobile app publisher or have huge mobile web-users - there are many Mobile App Affiliate Programs Network or Providers that you can join to earn commissions as an affiliate: AppNext, Yeahmobi, Avazu, Mobvista, NativeX, Dot Com Infoway, Adjust and Appsflyer.

Following are major mobile app marketing KPIs(Key performance indicators):

• Mobile App Downloads/Installation
• Uninstallation 
• Registration
• Subscriptions
• Crashes
• Upgrades
• Install Source (Attribution)
• Virality and K Factor
• Channel Breakdown
• Geo-metrics
• Demographics
• Type of device
• In-app behavior: clicks, levels completed, purchases made.
• Whether user is new or returning
• Operating system
• Time of use
• Retention Rate
• Sessions Length, Interval and Depth
• Monthly/Weekly Active Users
• Social Shares
• Rating
• Avg. Revenue per User and Lifetime Value 
• Time to first purchase
• Organic Conversion Rate
• Cost Per Install (CPI)

Important terms you should know about mobile app marketing:

App store optimization (ASO):  Process of ranking highly in an app store's search results and top charts rankings. ASO is the process of combining multiple tactics that are relevant to app ranking or to boost an app’s overall position in the search results.

Category Ranking Algorithms: It depend on country ranking, so apps will first be ranked by their categories, before ultimately being listed according to their popularity in the country.

Keyword ranking algorithms: An app is ranking according to its relevance to chosen keywords. Even when your app is extremely popular, it will still not be displayed within the search results if its keywords are not optimized accordingly.

Cost per Install(CPI) Campaign: Here affiliates are charged just for the number of downloads for that specific app. In other words, it is total advertising dollars you spend divided by the amount of new installations you get within a given advertising campaign.

CPLU (Cost per Loyal User): is the amount of advertising dollars you spend divided by the amount of new and loyal application uses you get from the ad campaign.

Cost Per Action(CPA) Mobile Affiliate Campaign: To make sure the app is not just installed, it is also used accordingly.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Increasing the conversion of app store impressions into downloads.

App Retention Rate: The retention rate will allow you to define, not just how many downloads you have, but how many users you have. In other words, number of users you have returning to your mobile app on a weekly/daily/monthly basis.

SDK: A software developer's kit (SDK) is a set of programs used by a computer programmer to write application programs.

ARPU: Average Revenue per User is ratio of total revenue generated within a given time frame and total revenue of active users within a given time frame.

App wrapping: A way to provide extra security to your software or mobile applications.

App Icon: First visual element or logo that people see when they view an app store listing.

Push notifications: alerts or banners that appear on a user’s mobile device home screen or lock screen.

In-app messages: appear when your users are currently active in your mobile app.

Session length: It is the time that your users spend in your app

Acquisitions: The number of users who download your app through a source like Facebook or Instagram ads.

KPI (Key performance Indicators):  a measurement that will directly affect your marketing objectives.

App analytics Tool: To understand how your mobile application works and what you can do to improve it and attract new users or customers. Examples: Apptica, AppSee, Adjust, Apsalar etc.

How to Become an Affiliate

If you are interested to earn money from your website, articles, blogs, social media pages and your published content online, the first thing you have to decide whether you want to work with any affiliate network or want to work directly with advertisers. There are many advertisers like Flipkart, Lazada, Amazon etc that are offering in-house affiliate programs. If you have good web traffic on your published web-content/blog, you can join affiliate program related to your content and based on your web-users interest. There are number of affiliate networks who have various kind of affiliates programs in all sectors(Travel, Retail, Finance, Games etc).

Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest and popular ways to make a good income each and every month. As an affiliate, you can earn commission by selling someone else's products or services at your website/blog. Becoming an affiliates is an easy process on any affiliate network. Search popular affiliate network of your region and visit their official website to sign-up as a publisher/affiliate. There will be a sign-up form(application form) that need to be filled with your details(Name, Company Name, Address, Payment detail, Website URL, Marketing methods, target region etc.) and before submitting your application, you have to read out and have to accept their T&Cs.

All affiliate network have some processes to review new affiliate applications. Mainly any affiliate network do check website's web-traffic & content and detail filled by applicants is real or not. Once they will review your application, you will get a confirmation email on your registered email ID with login detail or some verification code to add on your websites/blog. They will assign an account manager for you and you can take him/her help anytime.

Once you will able to login on any of affiliate network or advertiser's affiliate platform, you can check all programs listed with its commissions or payouts. There will be many affiliate programs available on their dashboard but you need to apply for them according your content and web-traffic.

To promote any affiliate program on your website/blog, you need to divert your web-traffic to advertiser's website to purchase its products or to become its member or to fill any lead. To divert your web-traffic, you need affiliate links, clickable banners and text links. You can get these promotional materials from your logged-in accounts if you are live for that particular affiliate program.

Following are some example of Promotional Materials:

• Standard tracking link
• Text Links
• Banner Links
• Search Box
• Products Feeds
• Voucher Codes and Offers
• HTML/Emailer/Newsletters

For your information, affiliate links or text links which will be provide by affiliate network to you contain cookie and based on that cookies they can capture your users session to complete transactions or any registration. You can check your performance and stats only with the help of these affiliate links, so don'f forget to implement them on your website to redirect your web-users to advertiser's website.

Text link Promotion Example:

Banner Promotion Example:

Type of affiliate programs:

You can only get access to get your affiliate links to promote any affiliate program if your website is appropriate for that particular program and you should be live for that affiliate program(campaign). Once you are able to get or copy your affiliate link for a particular program, you will be eligible to earn commission from that affiliate network based on payout type(CPS, CPS, CPL etc.).

To select or apply any affiliate program, first research your target market and identify interest of your website/blog visitors. There are many way to earn commission from any advertisers like based on number of clicks by your web-users, number of sales by your users or number of leads filled by your web-users.

You will get paid for your valid/confirmed sales or clicks or leads or download only and within 30 to 90 days based on advertiser's validation period. You can ask your affiliate manager and can check at Affiliate network's dashboard about the T&Cs to promote any affiliate program and about the payouts or payments.

Digital Marketing Overview

Digital marketing or Internet marketing applies on the technologies or platform such as websites, emails, social media, mobile apps, games, software, branding & online promotions etc. with the help of Internet using on electronic device such as computers, smartphones, tablets and game consoles. Online advertising or Online Marketing is famous terms use now-a-day in Digital marketing which is a form of advertising use to provide information or deliver promotional massages to people using Internet on their electronic devices. Online advertising business growing rapidly and is widely used across all kind of sector like retail, telecom, travel, banking, insurance etc.

As you know, Internet has changed the world and make easy to access information, communication with people all over the world; share content like articles, videos, images etc. and business promotion.

Online Marketing/Advertising is simply advertising on the search engines result pages, advertisement placed in email and other destination on Internet means make more visibility of your business or products to increase sales or customers and for brand awareness.

Type of Internet Marketing:

Search Engine Optimization/Marketing: Process of increase visibility of a website or web page in a search engines include image search, map search, video search and other Internet locations. Search result are of two kinds Organic Search Results and Paid Search Result (PPC Advertising).

Social Media Marketing: Means using bookmarking and aggregating as a Marketing tools and main aim of social media marketing is about collaborating, generating content, sharing, branding and most of all, connecting.

Social media is an online technology platforms that allow users to do the following:

• Bookmark and aggregate content
• Create and share content
• Use other Internet users’ preferences to find content.

E-mail Marketing - A tool for customer relationship management (CRM), an oldest and yet still one of the most powerful of all eMarketing tactics to deliver commercial messages to an audience. This kind of Internet marketing is a tool for building relationships with both existing and potential customers. It should maximize the retention and value of these good customers or clients to greater profitability. Before applying this marketing tactic for generate leads or increase business; careful planning, careful testing and evaluating to optimize your revenue must be needed, because it may be highly cost effective, but the cost of getting it wrong can be very high indeed. The E-mails that used in email marketing can be categorized as follows: transactional e-mails, newsletters, and promotional e-mails.

Steps to Execute E-mail marketing

Referral Marketing: It is a kind of viral (word of mouth) marketing that means promote products and services to new customers through referrals.

Content Marketing: Sharing of media, information in variety of formats like news, videos, e-books etc. and publishing content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined target audience in order to drive profitable customer action.

Display Advertising: There are following kind of different ways to use Display Marketing:

• Map Advertisement
• Pop-Ups/Pop-Unders
• Advertisement as a interstitial banners on others web pages
• Wallpaper Advertisement

Affiliate Marketing: It is revenue sharing model and type of performance based marketing in which the website owners place advertisements on their website in order to help selling the merchant's product or send some potential customers to that specific merchant's website.

Key Digital marketing strategies to grow business online:

• Marketplace analysis.
• Objective setting
• Strategy
• Tactics

Content Writing Secret and Tips

Content is a king of a website that should be more accessible to visitors with quality and relevant information. Content writing is specialized style of writing, which differs slightly from news, articles or Journalistic styles. Following are few secret and tips to write great content:

• Content should be informative and related to your website's nature. 
• Focus on your visitors. They will like only if it has something to offer them.
• Choose a simple and impersonal style as your reader not judging your knowledge, they just want full information. Write informally, where possible!
• You have less time to impress your visitor so write attractive content so they can stay on your website for long time and do some click, sale or lead whatever you want from them.
• You should know to select topic, research for relevant keywords, evaluate the market and target audience, write interesting copies, and promote content on social media and finally evaluating its performance to change if not work.
• Research is your key to an effective piece of writing. 
• Read/browse the website/blogs/articles online related to your content and first gather resources to usee as reference material.
• Don't try to copy someone else. Your content should have an individual style that is unique to your personality or brand.
• Style is your most prized possession as a writer, and it should continue to evolve over the lifetime of your career.
• You start out reading and studying the styles of writers you admire. Then you use what you learn to develop your own style.
• Every piece of content has a TOPIC (a subject of discussion or conversation), a POINT(a major idea), and a SLANT(a specific point of view).
• Make the first sentence or headline your best. Your headline and first sentence should take the reader smoothly to your main point. But do say something that makes people pay attention.
• Always ensure to put the most important information first followed by the less important ones.
• Break your website content into small paragraphs with impressive sub-headings.
• Your readers don't want to waste time on content that isn't accurate and trustworthy. So the rules are: no hype and no stretching the truth.
• Tell your readers what to do, avoid the passive voice and keep the flow of your pages moving.
• Typo and spelling errors will move always your visitors and trust of search engines.

Good content tells who, what, where, when and why. Great content also tells "so what." Tell your readers how they'll benefit from the information you provided.

Search and Purchase Your Domain

The first thing before creating a website is to get yourself a domain name which is your website's home address. A domain name is the thing that looks like mysite.com in the address bar of your internet brower.

To purchase a domain, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that domain for your website. Domain name represents the URL(permanent web address) of any website so that when someone type your websites domain name with www. and with a extension like .com, ,org that you have purchased, anyone can see your website online in all browser.

You can purchase domain name through a domain name registerer or hosting provider and you have to check that preferred domain name is available or not. If domain name already registered or already own by somebody else, you can't purchase that so you have to choose another one with another extension if available. Take your time on this step because whatever you choose will represent your brand. Domain names are registered on an annual basis, and you can usually register it many years in advance (or set 'auto-renew').

The following are top domain registerer, purchase portals or company where you can search & purchase domain name to create your own website:

1. GoDaddy.com
You you have picked a name for your site, enter it into the box below and the Domain Name Availability Search will see if the name has already been used, or if it is free for you to use for your site.

2. Bigrock.in

3. Crazydomains.in

4. Register.com
5. Domain.com

Naming a site after its domain name is important, for the simple reason that when people think of your website, they'll think of it by name. If your name is also your URL (i.e, web address), they'll automatically know where to go. If your business name is XYZ and your business website's domain name should you XYX.com, XYZ.org, XYZ.co.in etc. to make visitor-friendly.

You can select almost any name you like for your site, and while there are virtually no rules regarding what name you can choose, it’s good to keep in mind these things when choosing your domain name:

• Your domain name should be relevant to the content of the website.
• The shorter and more memorable your website address is the better. Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters but it should be short and generic.
• Try to avoid names that could be similar to competitor business website name. 
• Ensure you pick a suitable extension for your site. .com, .org or .net sites are the most popular as they are global extensions, though other, cheaper options are also available.
• I personally feel that a domain name that matches your brand name is very important. The very name that you use to advertise your product is the name that you will want for your domain, because that is the first thing that people will try in their browser. It is also the easiest thing for them to remember, and whatever that is easily remembered, will be more likely to be tried out than the obscure domain name.
• Very often, if you can't get the domain name you want, the domain name registrar will suggest alternate forms of the name you typed. Like myXYZ.com, theXYZ.com or XYZs.com etc.

About Affiliate Marketing Concept

Affiliate Marketing is a kind of marketing practice in which an individual or organization promote other people’s or company ‘s  product  on their website or blog and make sales or benefit for them. In return for each customer or sale, affiliates get some compensation based on performance. In simple word, we can define affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing model as get paid a commission on the sale of products you recommend online.

As an affiliate, you need to promote another company’s product,  using special links and code to track advertizer’s sale or lead. To track properly refer traffic, affiliate network play vital roles, they provide tracking code to affiliates, proper summary of sale tracked with clicks on advertisements, impressions, time, date, commission earned etc.

To get more profit, you should choose a right merchant affiliate product to promote, best affiliate network to apply right product, confident enough of the quality of your website, good position in search engines, using other search engine marketing practices etc.

Before knowing about affiliate marketing, you should know about some other important terms used in digital world.

Affiliate: an individual or group of people or organization gives the distribution of the advertizer’s product and in return, get some commission based on performance (clicks, impression, sales, lead etc.). Sometimes they also called publisher as they publish others products on their website.

There are various kinds of affiliates, some of the popular forms of affiliates are below:

Content Affiliate – Maximum affiliates promote advertizer’s content on their website or blog or portal and monetize their traffic by merchant banners or text link. Usually they have simple websites that publish content on specific area of interest. They only work with advertisers who are relevant to their area of interest.

PPC Affiliate – These affiliates promote their websites or sign up merchant affiliate campaign usually via Google Adwords, Facebook and other search engines. This type of affiliate marketing is relatively high risk, as PPC affiliates pay for users on a per click or sale basis, but only receives payment from the network once a sale or lead has been completed.

Email/Newsletter Affiliate – They have their database to send regular newsletter or emails to promote their offers and other promotions with merchant affiliate links or website’s link.

Shopping Portal Affiliate – These affiliates promote all e-commerce brands or merchants at one place, they bring together links to a variety of merchants in one place to make easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.

Product/Price Comparison  - These affiliates provide products (what you are looking for) detail and where you can find that product at the best price and also show related products.

Cashback and Rewards Site – These affiliates award their users with some cashback amount or gifts from the part of the commission they earned from an advertiser.

Voucher/Coupon Codes Affiliate – Some affiliates promote various merchant on their website/portal together with their offers and discount codes (announced by advertizer regularly). Visitors come again and again on their website to get the latest coupon to shop or purchase other services online at discounted price.

Blog/Forum/Review Affiliate – People share their own interest and experiences in common places like a forum or review site. Affiliate or Forum site owner placed some banner there to get commission based on clicks or sales or lead.

Social Network Affiliate – As you know, social website has huge traffic; Social Network affiliate using this platform to earn money using some applications, ads, pages and branding.

Other popular type of affiliates are:

• Mobile-oriented affiliates
• Remarketing/retargeting solutions
• Software/Toolbars 
• Video marketers

If you are one the affiliate from above, to earn money you should aware about below tips to find a related affiliate program.

• Sign up right affiliate network and  merchant affiliate campaign.
• Increase traffic or visitors by increasing organic searches and niche keyword searches for your websites.
• Quality of website to increase the trust of visitors and search engines.
• Competitive analysis and market trend research.
• Online and offline promotion of your website.
• Relevant content and white search engine optimization.

Before signing up a right affiliate network, you must know about affiliate network.

Affiliate Network -  Affiliate network act as intermediate or bridge between affiliates and merchants (advertizer) that provide a link to allow publishers the ability to find and join affiliate programs. An affiliate network is composed of a group of merchants and a group of affiliates. Merchants join the network and affiliates join the network in order to advertise the merchant products in exchange of a commission from the merchant. Affiliate networks present some great advantages for the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant gets potential access to a wide networks of affiliates.

Affiliate network provides for merchants some services and benefits may include tracking technology, reporting tools, payment processing, and access to a large base of publishers.

For affiliates, they provide services and benefits include simplifying the process of registering for one or more merchant affiliate programs, reporting tools, marketing guidness and payment aggregation.