Basically, user acquisition is the way businesses use their marketing efforts to get more people to use a software tool, subscribe to a new software, or download a game or app. This method should be data-driven and someone should be constantly looking for patterns to see what works when reaching out to clients.

Without user acquisition, it would be very hard for businesses to find new users. Businesses use a few main kinds of user acquisition in order to get more customers. These include:

  • Paid: targeted posts/ads on social media
  • Owned: emails, blogs, SMS, or social media content
  • App Store Optimization (ASO): optimizing your app so it ranks higher in the app store’s search bar results

There are key metrics marketers use to calculate how much money should be spent on the efforts listed above. Those include:

  • CPM: cost per thousand impressions
  • CPA: cost per acquisition
  • LTV: lifetime value
  • ROAS: return on ad spend

These metrics are calculated and then based on the results, the marketing team can decide how much money to spend on paid ads, app store optimization, or any other efforts they use to get more customers.