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Interview with Alex Goncharov: 5 Tools for Your First Mobile App Marketing Campaign

interview with Alex about first mobile marketing campaign

We recently had a pleasure of meeting Alexander Goncharov, mobile app marketing expert, who delivered over 20 million paid installs in Joom through Facebook and Google ads. He shared some exciting tips on how to make your first mobile app marketing campaign more effective.

Alexander has a BA degree in business informatics. Since 2017, he has worked at segmento.ru, joom.com, and ivi.tv. Alexander mainly focuses on user acquisition and manages ad campaigns throughout various platforms (Facebook, Google Ads, Snapchat, and TikTok). 

The Main Differences of First Campaign From Others

Like with any other campaigns, before launching your first one, you should ask yourself these important questions: 

  1. What are your main goals? 
  2. What should happen for you to be able to call the campaign successful? 
  3. Which exact metrics will you be monitoring and why?

But in comparison to the rest of the campaigns, the first one is ‘more theoretical’. You and your team should test the waters and understand how the audience will react to your app. During all the other marketing campaigns, you will be trying to improve, optimize, and scale your application, which is the ‘more practical’ part. But the first one will give you more perspective on the process than any theoretical knowledge.

It is incredibly important to choose the right tools at the very beginning of your journey, as they will help ensure that you are moving in the right direction. 

Top-5 Favorite Tools For Mobile Marketing Campaign

There are different sets of tools for social media promotion and the technical aspect of your marketing campaign. Moreover, we should not forget about the instruments that can be used before the launch to gather data and set benchmarks.  

Step 1. Before launching your first marketing campaign

Make sure to do your research. You have to know what your competitors are up to and what metrics they choose to focus on. Have an overall understanding of the market and dive deeper in your category. Sensor Tower and App Annie can help you with that.

Step 2. During the first campaign 

  • The Technical Aspect

An MMP (mobile measurement partner) is the main instrument for any performance marketer. An MMP is a platform that collects, organizes, and standardizes app data. As a result, you will be getting a uniform assessment of campaign performance metrics. Usually, this is done through implementing an SDK (software development kit). Your main focus would be on the events that you need to set. Whether that’s the number of subscriptions, purchases, or views – you should definitely monitor those to understand if the campaign is successful.

Basically, when you’re just getting started, it is enough to have only one main instrument – and that’s your MMP. You can use Adjust or Appsflyer

In case you are focusing on Facebook, I would definitely recommend Facebook SDK as it’s an amazing (and free) option.

  • Social Media Promotion & Advertising

Choose one single platform for your first marketing campaign. Your decision should be based, mainly, on your audience. What platform is it concentrated on? What platform do your competitors use? Also, do take geography into consideration – what part of the world do you want to focus on?

By the way, the choice of platform can depend on the category and the monetization method of your application. Fitness and wellness apps are usually advertised on Facebook; if your users have a high LTV, then it’s better to choose Facebook or Snapchat, etc. 

It is practically impossible to underestimate the importance of a great promo video when we are talking about social media advertising. A team of professionals from Perfomante can get your creatives ready in the shortest time frame.

One of the best social media promotion tools that you can use is Facebook Ads Library. You will be able to get cool insights about the ads that are running on Facebook right now.

Step 3. During the rest of the campaigns

An MMP is a universal instrument that you’ll keep on using throughout every campaign. However, there are some other tools that you’ll start adding to your kit as soon as you are ready to launch the next marketing campaign. For example, instruments that take care of the ASO analytics and services that help you automate your ad strategies.

Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Budgeting

The do’s and don’ts are quite simple.

  • Don’t spend too much on your first campaign simply because right now you are testing your application. You are going to be spending small amounts extremely fast, in order to get as many test results as possible. 
  • Don’t expect to get your investments back during the testing period. 
  • Do keep track of all the money spent in total (for future reference).

20-30% of the budget – on testing, 70-80% – on the app’s growth.

Alex’s perfect formula for the rest of the campaigns


You are still spending some funds on various tests (new creatives, settings, approaches, etc.), but your main focus is now on the ‘economics’ (the growth of the app). 

Sources of Learning & Inspiration

  • You should definitely learn more about the related areas. User acquisition is the main hard skill of a mobile app marketer. Expand your knowledge in product analytics and have a great understanding of the metrics that are used by the specialists. Dive into the development part and learn more about your SDK of choice.
  • Don’t forget to keep up with the global trends. Yearly reports will show you what the fuss was all about and, potentially, what to look forward to. But you should keep an eye on the latest news as well.
  • My favorite blogs and newsletters include GoPractice (a blog about mobile apps; their creation, marketing, and analysis); the newsletter of Marketing Examples is full of successful marketing examples (perfect for inspiration); the corporate blogs of different MMPs (for example, Facebook for Business) – you will get the latest information about the global trends and the changes in the industry.


Check-list: 8 Things To Remember Before First Mobile Marketing Campaign

  1. Ask yourself the right questions! Why are you launching this marketing campaign? What are your aims?
  2. Decide which tasks you want to outsource. Many tasks can be outsourced. The one specialist that I would recommend always having inside the team is the person who is responsible for User Acquisition.
  3. Study the market, monitor the competitors, and set your budget. What place on the market do you want to occupy? How much would you have to spend?
  4. Work on the analytics, set up your events. This stage is mainly about integration.
  5. Get the creatives ready. The formats are going to depend on the platform. Are you using photos, videos, text, or everything at once? This one and the previous two stages usually come in combination.
  6. Work on the project on a daily basis.
  7. Understand the users’ point of views. Use the app you are launching. Thus, you’ll be able to fully understand your audience and make the right improvements.
  8. And lastly, test, test, and test again. That’s the only way to find the creatives that bring the best results and the most effective marketing funnel. Be consistent, be patient, take advantage of the right tools, and, the next thing you know, you have nailed your first mobile app marketing campaign.

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