What is Organic Uplift?

An organic uplift is a form of scientific marketing analysis that measures how a campaign affects certain key metrics on individual behavior like engagement, conversions, or in-app spending. Marketing directors want to see how and why their sales increase during certain advertising campaigns.

In order to gauge the campaign’s organic traffic, it’s important to have a user group as well as a control group to supply the data. Organic uplift also provides a way of predicting user behavior during subsequent campaigns. In order to measure organic uplift, however, it is pretty simple: It is the percentage of the number of organic users per non-organic users. For example, a 100% organic uplift is one organic install for each non-organic install.

Organic Uplift, though seemingly less relevant now than it was a few years ago, is an important metric in determining user acquisition and how many of those organic users will install the app versus those installing as the result of a paid activity. This principle helps us understand how apps will perform in the app store and determine the longevity of that success over time.

How Organic Uplift Works

  1. It measures organic traffic

    Organic Uplift is a tool for marketers to measure the relationship between paid and unpaid app installs. Users who download a free app based on a free or organic search can increase that app’s ranking on the platform, whether Google Play or the App Store. As the app’s word of mouth or referrals get better in an organic search, the higher visibility or ranking that app receives. With a high organic install rate, the cost per install rate goes down for the app developer or advertiser.

  2. It measures user behavior during campaigns

    Marketers want to have solid analytical data that helps them understand how they can help grow businesses more rapidly. During the campaign, the marketing team is constantly monitoring their data on users and how they make their purchasing decisions on a website or within an app. Once the campaign ends, the actual users and a control group are compared by percentage to see how they responded to ads, promotions, and offers. Those percentages gauge a campaign’s impact on organic traffic.

  3. It compares results

    Marketers may look at results from PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic versus SEO organic traffic to see which source is best during a marketing campaign. PPC can yield faster results but SEO organic traffic driven by keywords may take a longer time to show results. Most data points to SEO as a better investment in the long run. It takes longer to produce results, over months and often years. But organic traffic tends to yield higher click-through rates.

  4. It increases visibility

    Organic Uplift defines visibility as either impressions or downloads, both of which are important measurements when determining the full breadth of uplift. Whether a user is seeing an app in the store, via search or on charts, or they are discerning between downloading or not, organic uplift is directly influential in the measurement of driving downloads.

  5. It encompasses paid and organic strategies

    In modern-day marketing, the lines between strategies that happen naturally and organically versus those that are paid to get more and more blurred every day. In fact, as it stands today, one cannot exist without the other. Where organic used to be the only option, then shifted to the top of the funnel, now it can exist at the bottom of the funnel after a paid campaign drives traffic, increases search ranking, and scales visibility. At that point, organic uplift can occur.

  6. It looks at "velocity"

    Velocity, as measured by this principle, determines the rate at which an app gets downloaded over a period of time, which makes a huge difference in the algorithm for ranking within app stores. Naturally, the higher the velocity, the higher you rank, but it's important that you are driving quality users who are likely to download and interact with your app.

Why Organic Uplift Matters

  1. It provides helpful analytics

    Using special analytical tools and spreadsheets, marketers can effectively measure the campaign based on how users respond to ads, promotions and offers. Marketers use the data to make predictions about user behavior in subsequent campaigns. By looking carefully at the metrics, marketers can keep what works and toss what doesn’t work. That saves time, money, and effort.

  2. It's driven by SEO

    Marketers want to get as much traffic as they can from organic searches. SEO fuels organic traffic. Marketers may get more permanent traffic from these searches. Strategic keywords and links to a marketer’s site can create a ripple effect of positive energy for months and even years to come. Organic searches are a long-term strategy that can produce effective results.

  3. It looks at what works best

    Marketers are always looking at the metrics to see which strategies work best in marketing campaigns. Organic uplift compares how organic and paid searches relate to one another. Progressive marketers have come to understand that the best campaign results are a combination of both methodologies.

  4. It defines a clear measurement for stakeholders

    When a marketing manager or ASO manager is well-versed in organic uplift, they can bring defined metrics back to the table so the larger organization can be informed and set realistic goals. That way, proper resources can be allocated and broader growth measurements can be set, optimized, and mapped against.

  5. It helps paint a clearer picture of ROI

    When you factor paid ROI with organic uplift, you can get a more holistic picture of the effectiveness of your ad spend. This allows you to draw better predictions, set new targets, and scale a plan of growth.

  6. It helps segment your strategy by channel

    Some channels perform in the framework of organic uplift, while others do not. Paid media, for example, is exempt from this rule if they do not allow view-throughs, links, or API measurements. Instances like this include offline channels, branding campaigns without links, audio channels like podcasts or Spotify, or earned media channels like PR and influencer marketing campaigns.