User Acquisition (UA)

What is user acquisition?

User acquisition is the method of driving new users or customers to be acquired for a mobile app business through marketing activity.

There are many types of UA activities, but they are mostly broken down in the form of paid and owned media:

Paid media marketing

This type of marketing involves the use of media channels to display direct response ads whose creativity encourages users to install apps. One common example of paid user acquisition includes targeted posts, banners, or ads published on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn; or a video ad running on mobile ad networks.

Paid media also includes influencer marketing, which harnesses the fame and/or influence of high-profile individuals to reach potential new users in their networks. In all of these cases, marketers must invest capital resources in order to utilize these channels

Owned media marketing

In contrast to paid media marketing, owned involves leveraging owned marketing assets to obtain users.

Examples of owned media assets include email messages, SMS, QR codes, and rewarded user invite communications. User acquisition campaigns harnessing owned media assets might include converting existing web users to app users via email targeting or adding user invite banners in a game to encourage sharing with friends in return for in-game currency.

App store optimization

Also known as ASO, this type of marketing is an important activity under the marketing budget meant to boost organic installs and thus an important part of user acquisition.

The equivalent of the web’s SEO, ASO focuses on optimizing an app’s store page headline, description, keywords, and other components to boost app store rankings. ASO usually falls under the responsibilities of the UA manager, and it can either be done in-house or serviced via an external ASO agency.

User acquisition is the method of driving new users to a mobile app through marketing activity. is the process through which new users