Acquisition Channel Trends & Opportunities: Marketplaces, Apple, Influencers
This week I've analyzed over 2300 marketing articles and identified 3 acquisition channel opportunities that can help you get more paying users:
1. Shopify announces another way to promote your apps
Last week, Shopify held Shopify Unite 2021, a conference for developers. They announced a bunch of new things, including 0% fees for all Shopify apps making <$1MM. One thing stood out for me, however:
For developers looking to invest in accelerated growth, we’re excited to share that we’re expanding the capability of Shopify App Store ads by introducing awareness ads.
Search ads will now be called “conversion ads.” Where conversion ads help target merchants with existing intent who are already searching for a specific type of app or have a certain need in mind, awareness ads can help inform merchants of opportunities they had not yet considered.
The opportunity: If you target e-commerce owners, Shopify and Shopify ads is a channel to definitely consider. Also, if you're still in the idea phrase and wondering what to start, consider app plugins. My Zero to Users research has shown that app exchanges like the Shopify App Store are a major acquisition channel for founders.
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2. Apple's ATT is killing advertising. Here's how to adapt
Eric Seufert is perhaps the most knowledgeable person in the world when it comes to Apple advertising updates. He rarely does "how to" articles, but when he writes them, they're really good.
This is the case with his article on adapting to ATT where he lists 6 different things you can do to survive:
- Overhaul the creative production process
- Use interest group targeting
- Bid on top-of-funnel conversions
- Revisit the product’s FTUE, user onboarding, landing pages
- Invest requisite resources into a conversion value model
- Get (much) better at modeling from restricted samples
The whole point is that you'll be working with a) Much more limited data b) With visitors who are less relevant than before, so things that worked in the past (like bidding on conversions and having extremely relevant landing pages) might not work as much now.
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3. Here's how to influence the influencers
Everyone's talking about doing influencer marketing and how important it is, but nobody's talking about how to influence the influencers and get them to promote you in the first place.
That's why this article by Amanda Natividad got my attention. She describes several interesting approaches on how to increase the chances an influencer will choose your product to promote:
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Your organic product placement will have a higher likelihood of success if you send your product to a celebrity who has shown relevant interests.
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Do intel and contact people who work directly with influencers and celebrities. Examples: nutritionists, publicists, personal trainers.
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Don't ignore the unboxing experience. YouTubers, for example, often can open a gift live and the unboxing experience has a big effect on their reactions.
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I think the main thing with 3) is that influencers are people. They're more likely to promote what they like, they also have people influencing them and their psychology (first impressions) is just like anyone elses.
If what Seufert is saying is true, then advertising will fundamentally be changed. I know we used similar/lookalike audience to get started, and ignored interest-based audience. Would be curious to hear other peoples' experience on this.
Lookalike audiences are very powerful and you should still be able to use those, but the initial data will be very limited until you have your own customers.
Shopify reducing their fees to 0% is a big deal. Suddenly thousands of mini SaaS businesses are getting 20% bigger MRR.