Mobile app marketing is becoming more important, with a boost in app usage worldwide, making the need for app marketing companies and agencies more stronger than ever before. Find out about the top platforms that know how to promote your app best from our carefully selected list of only the best in the industry.
The times when tech media pundits talked widely about businesses transitioning from a desktop to mobile or about top level businesses adopting a mobile-first approach are long gone.
Now, it is mobile right from the get-go, by default.
So, keeping this picture of a highly competitive mobile app market in mind, can you imagine what it takes for an app developer to compete and run a successful app marketing campaign?
They Won’t Be Able to Click INSTALL Fast Enough
There’s a massive segment of people who want your app. It’s our job to make sure they see it, fall in love with it, and then grow your brand like crazy.
Start Your FREE Growth AuditPromoting and marketing an app is as tough as developing it. One way of mastering this challenge is to hire a mobile app marketing agency that helps marketing apps via multiple channels, and has the expertise in reaching your target app users.
But this is barely scratching the surface of what an app marketing agency can do for you. So, in this guide, let us first talk about what app marketing is in the first place, and introduce you to the top app marketing companies.
What is mobile app marketing?
Mobile app marketing means to make efforts so that your customers engage with your product and services on mobile. And it also means boosting your app’s presence in the app store with clever marketing techniques.
While the app marketing funnel may include similar stages to the traditional digital marketing funnel, it consists of these three prime stages:
3 stages of app marketing
This concept is therefore all about interacting with your users through all three of these stages in order to drive profitable, long term action. So, the question now lies in how exactly do you interact with them to successfully promote your app.
Let’s take a closer look at the three phases.
Awareness
The awareness stage occurs before marketers launch their apps, where it is all about creating a presence and building brand awareness. This strategy includes a clear brand purpose, communication and positioning – basically answering the who, when, why, where and how of your product and services.
The main goal in this stage is to interact with potential customers, by using methods, such as influencer marketing, and direct their attention to your upcoming brand.
Acquisition
In the acquisition stage, your app has already launched and you are implementing new strategies to continue to acquire users and generate installs.
Acquisition is an ongoing process that needs constant tweaking and extensions of previous strategies and methods of marketing.
So, the main focus here is to keep optimizing for the app store and implementing creative strategies to attract new users and continue to build a loyal customer base.
Retention
When you acquire target users, it doesn’t end just there – you want to keep them engaged and invested in your app. In the retention stage, also an ongoing process, you want to come up with creative methods to turn users into loyal customers.
In this stage, make sure you keep up ongoing communication with users, maintaining an interactive and trustworthy bond.
In this case, push notifications will become your best friend. Keeping users in the loop and sending them alerts and updates about promotions, special rewards or upgrades is a great way to keep up engagement.
User experience is also an important component of the retention stage. First impressions are crucial – and you only get one chance at it. So make sure users can smoothly browse through your app, and use your services at ease from the start.
Mastering these three stages belong to a successful app marketing strategy. If you are able to build a presence for your upcoming app, acquire new users effectively and keep a loyal customer base, you are doing it all right.
But a lot of research and analysis goes into this, so it is easier said than done. This is why app marketing agencies and companies are here to make your life easier by lifting the extra weight off your shoulders.
You still want to understand how the company you hire works their magic though. So, let’s dive into the inner workings of ‘how’ you market your mobile app.
What does an app marketer do?
Understanding how app marketers and agencies work is important to having an overview of the best strategies being used for your mobile app. Knowing the ins and outs of the different methods will inform your decision in choosing the best app marketing company out there.
And it always begins with market research. In 2021 alone, 143.6 billion apps were downloaded, with 55 billion of those downloads being games and 88 billion apps. So, you want to find out what types of users are downloading apps that have similar services to your business.
And don’t forget about the high competition in the app market currently. In 2022, 2.5 thousand new apps were submitted to the Apple App Store, which shows how important competitor analysis is when app marketing agencies come up with their own strategies.
App marketers and app marketing agencies are committed to fulfilling their users’ needs, and therefore create user personas to help create a solid app marketing strategy. The personas typically represent a kind of target audience, containing the characteristics of that particular group.
Other unique identifiers, such as demographics and mobile preferences are also dissected in order to create accurate personas to work out the typical user journey of this group. This allows app marketers to tailor their app marketing strategy to drive profitable action.
Top Mobile App Marketing Companies:
Doing a competitor analysis, market research and creating user personas will help you answer the following key questions in the early stages of the process, enabling you to effectively and successfully market your app:
User persona questions
Mobile acquisition
The first step for users to interact with your app directly is to get them to download and install your app. Mobile acquisition is therefore a must and app marketing agencies work hard to master the art of it.
In order to attract and acquire new users, you want to nail the messaging part, which belongs to a good app marketing strategy.
Here are some messaging formats that are commonly used by app marketing agencies to get people to use your app:
Social
Posting on your social media channels to relevant followers to gain more traction and build brand awareness.
App Store Optimization (ASO)
Optimizing your profile on the app store, including title, keywords, ratings and other ranking factors, to acquire new users and increase app installs.
Paid advertising
Creating social media ads and PPC campaigns, using Google Adwords, native and interstitial ad formats can push your app to the forefront, gaining a wider audience.
Influencer marketing
Getting influencers to advertise your brand will allow you to gain your audience’s trust and therefore a loyal following that will increase your credibility and traffic instantly.
Email marketing
With global the email marketing market reaching 7.5 billion U.S. dollars of value in 2020, this method of mobile acquisition can massively drive customers to your app when promoting your app content, services and any offer discounts via email.
When it comes to app marketing, mobile acquisition is a key component of app marketing agencies’ strategies. You need to implement a good balance of acquisition techniques to secure the long term success and revenue of your app.
But mobile acquisition belongs to a sea full of app marketing strategies and techniques that app marketing companies will focus on.
What are the best app marketing strategies?
A marketing plan that an app marketing agency team will devise for your app, will usually consist of the following concepts:
App marketing concepts
The app marketing best practices also demand an agency to carefully measure KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of such app marketing campaigns. And there is one main app promotion method that stands out from the rest – growth hacking.
Essentially, growth hacking is about finding ways for a particular mobile app to grow its number of users and revenue by integrating non-standard app marketing techniques, preferably on a low budget. Growth hacking focuses on driving scalable growth, in a short period of time, to produce ‘quick wins’.
But growth hacking and the techniques mentioned above belong to the greater process of your app marketing plan, and is integrated in a larger mobile engagement ‘loop’. Like traditional marketing, app marketing takes users through the marketing funnel that consists of the stages of awareness, acquisition and retention.
We call it a loop because users can go back and forth between stages as illustrated in the graphic below:
Mobile acquisition cycle
In essence, app marketing is all about finding ways to reach, attract and retain your customers as well as analyzing and monitoring their behavior and the performance of your app to improve the experience.
Users look for services that fulfill their ‘needs’ and ‘questions’. So, you want your app to be the number one place they go to to get the answers they are looking for. Integrating these strategies and methods, and partnering with top app marketing agencies will help you reach your goals at a higher rate to start making revenue.
How much does marketing an app cost?
Now, your next pressing question must be how much it actually costs to market an app.
Because the main challenges of marketing an mobile app are both to reach and retain your users, there is a swarm of competition for users’ attention in the app store. Therefore, it is worth investing in the best app marketing company to successfully market your app and make it stand out from the crowd.
But you certainly don’t want to overspend your budget, and instead want to get the most value out of your marketing strategy at a reasonable price. Mobile app marketing costs usually consist of components that cover the entire lifecycle of an app:
Mobile application lifecycle
You will find within these stages that there are individual costs that will apply. Here is a brief estimation of the key data points that you can expect when working out your budget to market your app:
Key data points
Element | Cost |
---|---|
App market research | $5k - $15k |
App beta testing | up to $5k |
ASO tools | $250 - $1,500 / month |
App marketing agency | up to $25k / app |
App PR outreach | $100 - $300 / hour |
Influencer marketing | $10k - $18k / month |
Average Cost Per Install (CPI) | $1.75 / install |
Cost Per Action (CPA): Register | $3.5 / install |
CPA: In-app purchase | $87 / install |
CPA: Purchase | $75 / install |
CPA: Subscribe | $37 / install |
For a more detailed overview of the costs you can expect, take a look at our App Marketing Costs guide for extensive data.
Which agency is best for digital app marketing?
So which agency is on the top of the list for digital app marketing?
In order to simplify the answer, let’s dive into the types of app marketing agencies that are out there.
There is a range of types of mobile app marketing companies that can help you with your marketing campaign:
- A specialist mobile agency can serve your app’s marketing needs via some particular marketing channel, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram ads, App Store Optimization, and PR.
- A general agency, with a mobile app marketing agency within it, with added mobile experience.
- A mobile advertising agency, focusing on mobile media buying: Media buyers negotiate and purchase audience-targeted time and advertising space to convey a marketing message.
- App marketing agencies that focus purely on App Store Optimization, and are capable of driving mobile app user acquisition via Apple’s App Store, Google Play or both.
- Agencies that focus on mobile campaign strategies, analytics of a mobile app user in-app behavior as well as traffic attribution.
Partner with the best mobile app marketing agencies and companies
Having now a picture of the mobile app marketing industry, we’ve gathered facts and created a guide that covers the best mobile marketing companies to consider.
Our list includes big international agencies, with broad creative marketing capabilities as well as boutique marketing companies, focussing solely on mobile apps. Each of the companies listed has something different and unique to offer.
List of mobile app marketing agencies, companies and services
Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
---|---|---|---|---|
2019 | 2-10 | - | - | - |
Admiral Media is an award-winning & highly specialized performance and creative agency for top mobile brands and games. We place emphasis on ROI, creative strategy, and detailed reporting. Admiral Media was founded in 2019 by Andre Kempe, a mobile & performance marketing veteran with years of experience in the field. Andre has built a team of experienced marketing professionals that now run campaigns generating millions of downloads.
- Services: Performance Marketing, Paid Ads, Creative Services, Influencer Marketing, TikTok Marketing, Consulting & Analytics
- Offices: Marbella, Spain
- Tagline: We Ship Performance
Founded | Employees | Social | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 51-200 | 5k+ |
AdQuantum is a mobile marketing team that works for a share of revenue it generates, without any fees. We ONLY grow when our partners grow. Preferred Collaboration Models: Rev Share, Profit Share Also, work with CPI+KPI and CPA depending on our partners\’ goals & needs.
Learn more about AdQuantumFounded | Employees | Social | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
2017 | 201-500 | 2000+ |
Airshipis global mobile app marketing automation platform that helps brand owners to grow their business. Plus to the extensive suite of app marketing tools, it provides sophisticated mobile analytics system. It features user-level customer intelligence tool to reveal mobile app users cohorts that drive revenue, tools to predict and prevent mobile app churn, as well as to track mobile users behavioral patterns.
- Type: in-app analytics, Marketing analytics
- Pricing: available upon request
- Demo: available
- User guide: available
Learn more about Airship
Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
---|---|---|---|---|
2018 | 11-50 | - | 200+ | 1,000 |
App Growth Network is a global app marketing agency with three major area of focus – App Product Marketing, App Growth Marketing (UA) and Analytics.
- Type: Marketing analytics, In-app analytics
- Platforms supported: iOS, Android.
- Offices: Vancouver, Canada
- Services: App Marketing, App Store Optimization (ASO), Analytics & Engagement, Paid User Acquisition, Prelaunch and Launch planning & execution.
- Tagline: Analyze, Optimize, Grow
Learn more about App Guardians
AppQuantum
We are a team of gamedev specialists who are striving to skyrocket your game.

Founded | Employees | Social | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
2017 | 101-200 | 690 |
Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
---|---|---|---|---|
2018 | 10-50 | - | - | - |
ARPU Brothers is a mobile app marketing agency that offers developers a broad spectrum of marketing services. Its team has an expertise in running mobile app user acquisition campaigns with Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, AdColony and others users acquisitions platforms.
- Services: User Acquisition, App Store Optimizations, Data Analytics, Attribution Analytics, Mobile App Development, Soft Launch, Monetization, Competition Analysis, Training, Marketing Plan, Fraud Detection, App Search Ads,
- Offices: Wroclaw, Poland, Irvine, US
- Tagline: Mobile Game & App Marketing agency
Founded | Employees | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
2019 | 10 - 50 |
ASOMobile is a comprehensive mobile app analytics for developers, marketers and ASO specialists.
Learn more about ASOMobile
Founded | Employees | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
2014 | 10-50 |
Bamboo is a mobile advertising agency, founded in San Francisco, US in 2014. It specializes on mobile campaign management, mobile growth strategy, creative strategy and production, advertising iteration service. The agency ran paid ad campaigns on top social media networks to acquire mobile app users for leading brands like Dropbox, Hotel Tonight, Peloton, Microsoft and others.
- Services: Media Strategy, Campaign Management, Creative Services For Paid Social, Paid Search and Mobile Ad Channels.
- Offices: San Francisco, US
- Tagline: “Meet the extension of your in-house growth team”
Learn more about Bamboo
Big Ideas Machine is an integrated PR and Marketing agency based in London. They have extensive experience of working with tech and mobile clients on B2B and B2C projects. The owners of Big Ideas Machine have also established themselves as app marketing specialists and have helped launch over 50 apps globally. Big Ideas Machine works on a project or retained basis with clients, and its owners have worked with leading tech and consumer brands in the tech and mobile space including Marvel, The Mirror, Inmobi, Flurry, MobPartner, Rackspace, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Activision, Codemasters, M&C Saatchi Mobile, Glu, Orange and BT.
Learn more about Big Ideas MachineBranch Metrics is a deep-linking, attribution and mobile marketing company. On top of the platform features to acquire, engage mobile app users and tools that help to empower them to share an app content, the company offers tools to measure click, install and re-open attribution.
- Type: App marketing analytics, Advertising analytics
- Pricing: 3 plans – Free, Startup (depending on a traffic volume either $59 or $200 / month), Enterprise
- Demo: available
Branch is also an Apple Search Ads partner, providing advanced ad attribution insights using data directly from Apple. The company therefore ensures reliable and accurate data to track performance of your ad campaigns.
Learn more about Branch Metrics