One of the biggest challenges of digital marketing is quantifying brand awareness and connecting it to lower-funnel conversions. In the mobile space, Digital Turbine and Apptopia believe they’ve found a way to do just that.
Using online surveys of mobile phone users from Digital Turbine and mobile performance data on app installs and usage from Apptopia, the companies quantified mobile user awareness of apps across multiple industries and then later in the same quarter identified the correlation between awareness and installs. Taken together, the numbers should provide some understanding of the effectiveness of mobile install marketing.
The companies call this calculation of the strength of install volume relative to awareness the Brand-Relative App Growth or BRAG Index.
“The BRAG Index compares an app’s install volume at the end of the quarter to its category peers with a comparable brand funnel at the beginning of the quarter,” the report reads. “If an app had as many installs as others with a similar brand funnel, the app’s BRAG index would be around 1. Apps scoring greater than 1 outperformed their competition, while apps scoring less than 1 delivered fewer installs than their competitors. ”
The top performers in each of the five categories monitored by the report were Cash App (financial), McDonald’s (QSR), News Break (news), Shein (shopping), and Tubi (streaming video).
“Top BRAG users do not necessarily have the strongest brand awareness or install volume – these apps have BRAG rights based on their install success relative to their brand strength,” the report continues.
The big picture: mobile awareness and conversions
Privacy changes from Apple, and to a lesser extent Google, make it harder for mobile developers to track users across apps and to quantify the impact of marketing campaigns. It is becoming difficult, if not impossible, to follow a single user on their digital journey. As a result, marketers need more indirect ways to capture the impact of the upper funnel and, specifically, to connect that impact to conversions.
With this in mind, Digital Turbine and Apptopia developed the BRAG Index.
“The BRAG Index was created because we don’t believe mobile growth exists in a vacuum,” the report said. “Certainly ‘brand’ affects the ability to grow, but brand affects much more than potential installation growth.”
In fact, Digital Turbine and Apptopia don’t just want to associate attention with installations. They also aim to capture the specific dynamics driving the success of mobile marketing in each industry.
For example, companies note that in finance, “the battle to become a financial super app is influenced and won through brand strength and regular engagement [by] leading P2P payment apps and creative social engagements.”
Other tactics drive success in other industries. You can learn more by checking out the report.
