Great User Acquisition Strategies for App Marketers: What Works in 2025
Lakshith Dinesh
Reading time: 5 mins
In today’s saturated app market, acquiring users isn’t just about throwing money at ads. It’s about crafting smart, multi-faceted strategies that deliver ROI while adapting to constantly shifting platforms, policies, and user behaviours. Whether you’re an indie developer or managing a top-grossing title, the best user acquisition (UA) strategies in 2025 combine data, creativity, and agility.
In this post, we’ll explore actionable UA strategies that work today — and how platforms like Linkrunner help you track every step from click to loyal customer.
Understand Your Ideal User First
Before any campaign launch, the most successful app marketers ask a simple question: Who exactly are we trying to reach?
Build audience personas: Effective UA starts with deep customer understanding. Move beyond age and location. What motivates your ideal user? Are they time-starved professionals seeking productivity? Casual gamers drawn to bright visuals? Build multiple personas based on actual behavioural and engagement data.
Tap internal insights: Your current users are a goldmine of information. Use in-app analytics, CRM tools, and customer feedback to identify which user cohorts are most valuable. What acquisition source did they come from? What actions led to retention or purchases?
Smarter segmentation: The more refined your audience, the more efficient your spend. Segment by device type, operating system, install source, behavior funnels, or monetisation triggers. Linkrunner makes this easier by letting marketers visualize cross-channel journeys and define custom cohorts based on real engagement patterns.
Invest in Cross-Channel Marketing (With Cohesive Messaging)
Gone are the days when a single UA channel (like Facebook Ads) could scale your app. In 2025, savvy marketers diversify while maintaining message consistency.
Use the full channel spectrum:
Paid: Meta, TikTok, Google UAC, influencer whitelisting
Owned: Email, SMS, blog content, push notifications
Earned: PR, social mentions, App Store reviews
Synchronize messaging: A user who clicks a TikTok ad should encounter the same visual language and value prop in your App Store page. This alignment can dramatically improve install rates and reduce bounce.
Real-world example: Social platform Lemon8 saw explosive growth via a hybrid strategy — creator buzz on TikTok, curated feature stories, and strong App Store screenshots. By the time users saw the install button, the narrative had been clearly communicated multiple times.
Leverage Influencer & Creator Marketing
Influencer marketing isn’t just a trend — it’s a staple of mobile UA in 2025. But execution is everything.
Micro vs. macro: While large creators offer reach, micro-influencers deliver niche relevance. A beauty app might see better ROI from 10 micro creators with loyal skincare followers than one mega-influencer with a general audience.
Repurpose creator content: Don’t stop at sponsored posts. Take high-performing creator videos and turn them into paid ad creatives. They often outperform brand content by feeling native and genuine.
Use MMP links: With platforms like Linkrunner, you can generate trackable influencer links that plug into SKAN (on iOS) or integrate with probabilistic matching on Android. This lets you attribute installs — even in a privacy-constrained world.
Success story: A meditation app used TikTok creators to demo their features, then retargeted viewers with influencer-style UGC ads. Result: 3x ROAS compared to conventional campaigns.
Optimize App Store Presence (ASO)
Your app’s page is where acquisition often succeeds or fails. App Store Optimisation (ASO) is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost UA tactics.
A/B test frequently: Don’t “set and forget” your listing. Regularly test icon designs, preview videos, feature bullet points, and even user reviews displayed.
Keyword mastery: Use ASO tools to find underutilized, high-conversion keywords. Balance high-volume terms with niche phrases your ideal user would type.
Localize everything: If you’re targeting Latin America or Southeast Asia, localize your listings fully. According to AppTweak, localized pages can boost installs by up to 26%.
Retargeting & Lookalike Audiences
Acquiring new users is just one part of the journey. Retargeting past users and finding more like them helps scale efficiently.
Retarget churned users: Some users download and disappear. Win them back with contextual re-engagement — via push, ads, or in-app messages. Segment by abandonment point (onboarding, checkout, etc.).
Lookalike expansion: Use your best user cohort to build high-intent audiences. Linkrunner can help extract these audiences from event-driven data, enabling you to feed clean cohorts into Meta, TikTok, or Google’s UA engines.
ROI case: Liftoff reports that retargeted users are 50% more likely to convert than cold traffic. Combined with solid creatives and audience hygiene, retargeting can significantly reduce cost-per-purchase.
Privacy-First UA: Navigating ATT, GDPR, and SKAN
Privacy regulations have made mobile UA harder — but not impossible. The key lies in adapting measurement and targeting techniques.
ATT & SKAN 4.0: iOS campaigns must now comply with Apple’s SKAdNetwork, which limits user-level data. Attribution windows and postback timers require careful configuration.
Aggregated data is king: Rather than focus on individual users, shift to analysing cohort-level performance. Tools like Linkrunner let you group users by campaign, geography, or creative variant and assess LTV, retention, and revenue.
Google’s Privacy Sandbox: Android will soon shift to a more privacy-centric model. Linkrunner is already testing ways to integrate with these APIs, helping marketers stay ahead of the curve.
Probabilistic fallback: In SKAN-limited environments, probabilistic matching (within privacy-safe limits) helps fill gaps in attribution. It’s not perfect, but it gives marketers directional clarity without violating policy.
Bonus Tip: Creative Testing as a Growth Lever
In 2025, your creative can be the single biggest driver — or blocker — of growth.
Test fast and often: Creatives fatigue quickly. Build a testing framework where you trial different angles (feature highlight, emotional appeal, social proof) weekly.
UGC performs best: Ads that mimic organic content — like selfie videos, creator demos, or stitch reactions — can increase click-through rates by up to 35%.
Measure everything: With Linkrunner, you can track which creatives not only get the install, but actually bring in retained users.
Conclusion: Smarter UA Starts with Smarter Measurement
In 2025, mobile UA is as much about agility and measurement as it is about budgets and channels. Great campaigns are built on knowing your audience, testing relentlessly, and adapting to privacy changes.
Platforms like Linkrunner are the glue that hold it all together. From measuring SKAN conversions to mapping out user journeys across influencers, retargeting, and ASO tweaks — Linkrunner gives you the attribution clarity needed to scale confidently.
Ready to supercharge your UA strategy? Explore Linkrunner and start measuring what matters.
