How To Survive in the Finance Category With Low Costs?

The user acquisition managers under the Finance Category that have been using our platform have managed to survive in the market by meeting their KPIs.

Nil Ozertan
April 16, 2021

It is undeniable that the finance market is a bottomless pit and new reforms are being established each day. Especially the blockchain-based coins have reached their highest values for the past couple of days and traders are becoming more interested in cryptos. 

It is a fact that the volatility is very high in this market but it is important to know how to keep up with the changes. Therefore, each trader and also investors are craving new tactics to get the best out of it. But since decentralized trading has become the new trend, surviving gets even harder in this world. For instance, it is recently expected that the privately-owned companies will list their shares on the stock market and will make it accessible to the Public (see, Coinbase Inc. has reached a $100B valuation with its IPO). Let’s see what kind of new trends we will encounter in the future and how we will cope with them...

It is not surprising to observe how competitive and expensive finance app marketing became for the last couple of months. With Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies stepping into the market, which was considered a pipe dream at the very beginning and now the future is heading towards it, made it harder to keep the already existing users' resistance in the market with stable costs. 

As you all know, the users’ preferences are changing and competition is increasing each and every day which makes it harder to manage and optimize campaigns for any app marketer. 

With the huge involvement of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies into the market, it is important to find a way to keep track of the recent incidents in the market, maintain your spot in the market and at the same time increase the efficiency of your campaigns accordingly. 

According to Apple, 60% of the downloads occur after a search in the App Store which means a very big portion of the download sources of any app marketer. Therefore, you need to keep your guard up towards the recent trends in the market which are fluctuating with the actions of your competitors!  

 The user acquisition managers under the Finance Category that have been using our platform have managed to survive in the market by meeting their KPIs. 

Are you curious about how we managed to make this happen? 

Here are some tactics and tricks that might also help you out as well! 

But first let’s understand, what exactly happened in the market?  

What Happened in The Market?

It is undeniable that the increase in competition affected the increase in cost for finance app marketers. Especially the apps that have Bitcoin or Crypto trading features have started to launch aggressive strategies and more people are putting interest towards these apps each day. They have tried to find a way to cope with this golden era change but it is hard to maintain resistance with low costs and relatively high competition in the market. 

As you see in the below data which is from apps connected to SearchAds.com, the Finance Category has become the most expensive category among other categories with relatively low Conversion Rates (CR) and Tap through Rates (TTR).

apple search ads finance

For early October, the Finance category has

  • 17.63% lower ranking compared with the top-ranked category in terms of Conversion Rates (CR) 
  • 6.16% lower ranking compared with the top-ranked category in terms of Tap Through Rate (TTR)
apple search ads finance apps

Regarding the Cost per Tap (CPT), the Finance category ranks as number two which indicates that the CPTs have increased because there are more aggressive competitors in the market that have given high bid amounts to get the dominance of the keywords. 

On the other hand, an increase in the bid amounts with high competition has also caused an increase in terms of the Cost per Acquisition (CPA) level. This explains why the costs in the Finance category have increased and thus, why the users in this category are becoming more expensive for the finance app marketers. 

The users have changed their preferences to search for a finance-related keyword and that is why  the keyword research we have conducted for our clients has started to lose its value against the new keywords that are out in the market. 

Those new keyword researches include almost all the features that could be done with the new apps that include Bitcoin and other cryptocoin currencies with unique features. Therefore, the most common and generic keyword research had almost no effect to stand up for the new keywords out in the market. The reason for that is old finance apps don’t contain all the features and new coin-related keywords for their apps. 

Moreover, those aggressive competitors have also stolen the brand names of most of the Finance apps in order to leave them out in the competition. It is  common knowledge that the brand names are considered as a warranty for any user. However, the existing users in the market have been forced to face high Cost per Tap (CPT) amounts for their brand names as well which caused an overall increase in their costs. 

This led the finance apps to make two big adjustments; 

  • Some have developed new features to reach out the competitiveness of the Bitcoin apps by drawing the interest of their users to a whole different perspective
  • Some have held on tight for the keywords that they already have the market dominance for and increase the conversion rates for those keywords

What Have we Implemented as SearchAds.com? 

As you all know, the SearchAds.com is a cost effective platform for all the user acquisition managers to run more effective campaigns and to make the campaigns performance even more optimized with many features. 

For our clients who have been managing their campaigns at SearchAds.com, we have developed a unique strategy which helped us to decrease their Cost per Goal amounts while maintaining the number of Goals per day stable by relatively increasing the number of Conversion Rates, Tap Through Rates, and the number of Installs.

How We Achieved This?

To start with, it is one of the essential points for any User Acquisition Manager to be ready for any kind of fluctuation in the market. As SearchAds.com, we are achieving this goal with our automation rules which are helping us to keep on track of each action that has been happening in the market even while you are away!

We have firstly taken our precautions towards protecting our brand name with our automation rules based on the CPT amounts: 

apple search ads automation

For instance, we have the above automation rule that helps us to be aware of any competition that is rising out in the market. It also notifies through email (you can also choose to be notified via Slack) to let us know that there is another competitor bidding on our brand keyword. Also it takes action immediately if the CPT amount at yesterday is 10% greater than today's CPT amount.

For sure our goal is not to lose your brand name dominance by decreasing our bid amount :) But first, we need to get ready for the competition in the market before we face any further costs. 

Therefore, this automation rule helps us to decrease our bid amount slightly. And with the email notification, we are aware of the situation which means that we are taking manual actions for slightly increasing the bid amounts for getting our dominance back for our brand name. We are also developing new strategies in accordance with the changes in the market to make our brand name cheaper for us again!

The next step is common knowledge, that without pushing the keywords you are bidding on to spend, you are not able to detect their performance and make optimization decisions accordingly. Since we have an extensive database, we get to decide which keywords are the promising ones for us and which are not. 

We have basically conducted a keyword analysis to seek this. In the end, we have the list of keywords that we need to be bidding on and disregarding some of the keywords in order to avoid making unnecessary spending. By taking this action, it is inevitable to face a decrease in terms of spending. 

However, again based on the keyword analysis which is conducted earlier, we have created Broad Match campaigns with the well-performing keywords that are meeting with our KPIs which helped us to keep our spending stable as before. 

Also, we have paused all the keywords that are making spending but that were not bringing any in-app events for a certain period of time.
The below chart is one of our Finance category app marketers account that we are currently managing and we have implemented  the strategy described above: 

apple search ads finance apps

As you can see the Conversion Rates (CR), Tap Through Rates (TTR), and the number of Installs have relatively increased where we have managed to decrease the Cost per Goal (CPG) for this particular app. 

The ideal scenario is to enable the keywords to spend as possible to see their overall performance at the very beginning. However, it is important to make sure that the spending amount we are aiming to make is profitable. Therefore, spending money unconsciously will cause you to face a high amount of Costs but with the strategy we have developed, we have managed to decrease the Cost per Goals and increase our number of Goals as you can see below on the monthly basis:

Takeaways

We can’t say that this will be the only alteration in the market. We are in such an era that everything is shifting towards the technology-friendly field. This means that we are surely expecting new features, and new app launches each day with distinctive properties which will boost the competition in the market. It will become hard for you to maintain your resistance in the market and the efficiency of your campaigns. 

The Finance Category is also expected to see a higher competition in the upcoming days. Mainly due to new cryptocurrencies being introduced each day. However, the key is to be ready for this scenario and we have that key for you! 

On top of those, there are also the iOS 14 IDFA changes that we need to be getting ready for which will make Apple Search Ads more and more important. This will also have an impact on the increase in the competition level that will increase the necessity of making minor and major adjustments for each ad level. Therefore, with those upcoming changes, the whole App Industry will surely be also expecting to be changing and as SearchAds.com our goal is to make you the least affected ones.

Are you ready to take your spot with us?  

As SearchAds.com, we are providing you with an efficient platform where you can conduct your optimizations for your running campaigns and advertise them accordingly with your KPIs and your competitors’ behaviors. 

Moreover, with the Mobile Action, you are also able to conduct the keyword analysis just as we have conducted and developed your own strategy. Or, you can reach out to us by scheduling a demo so that we can collaborate and develop together as well!

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