How Much Does it Cost to Market an App?

Unpack app marketing costs like a pro, dive deeper into this handbook, and use it as a resource to negotiate, compare, and find companies with the best budgets.

The conquest of marketing is expensive but also fragile if not done right. 

Some make it, others don’t.

Reasons for failed marketing attempts are often recognizable and can be avoided. 

Just keep an eye out for who did it wrong.

Quibi, for instance, became a lesson for app marketers, a case study often mentioned to instill fear in marketers.

To be very honest, even though it might sound harsh, it totally makes sense when you see their marketing strategies.

Quibi raised $1.75 billion, spent $63 million on a big launch and Super Bowl ad, then had to close down in just six months after the launch.

Experts say the failure was a result of ‘Old-Fashioned Hollywood-styled marketing,’ but makers also credit it to the pandemic. Either way, the whole thing ended with app makers having to return leftovers of $2 billion to investors.

As for your your app marketing budget, get ready to spend anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 depending on your aspirations.

Now, the next question is for you:

Are you confident about your marketing strategy—or is your app marketing budget at risk?

If you stuttered even a little with your answer, you need to stick to this blog until the end.

Here’s everything we gathered to help you out.

Dissecting the In-Depth App Marketing Costs

If you’re going for app marketing strategies that avoid outsourcing, you will need a careful plan to take care of the budget you can afford.

We are not trying to scare you.

But it’s important to have a critical understanding of how much each phase of marketing costs. Otherwise, the whole thing can go south.

It’s better to explore numbers for a realistic calculation of the budget.

Let’s have a look!

App Marketer Salaries

Salaries are dynamic. Every time you pick a different location, you get a different bill.

Here’s an example.

India is often known as a more cost-effective market compared to its counterparts in Europe and the USA.

If you’re building an internal team, the most influencing factor for mobile advertising costs will be the kind of folks you’re hiring.

The data we have gathered is from Glassdoor. It throws some light on how marketers in different locations are getting paid hourly.

Here’s the outlook.

Note: Salaries paid to app marketers can be dynamic as perks, taxes, inflation rates, and more evolve.

CPC Marketing

Cost-per-click (CPC) is what you pay for every time a person clicks on your ad.

It can go as high as the difficulty or competitiveness of your keyword goes. Locations also influence the overall rate.

Here’s a sample of data from Google’s Keyword Planner.

Data was gathered for locations like India, the USA, the UK, Singapore, Japan, Germany, and China.

By the way, it’s a free tool you can use to pick your keywords.

Tentative Budget Required Based on Median CPCs

CPI Strategy

Cost Per Installation (CPI) refers to the money that goes into downloading the app and installing it on the device.

As of the second quarter of 2022, the iOS CPI was $3.01, and for Android, it was $2.04. Mind you, this is the CPI specifically for shopping apps.

Between 2023 and 2024, the global median cost per install (CPI) grew from $3.04 to $3.44.

Influencing factors like rising acquisition costs were affecting the global median. However, in Europe, there was a slight decline, possibly due to the regional ad market shifts.

Here’s some detailed data based on stats shared by Adjust’s Report Titled Mobile App Trends 2025 Edition.

Tentative Budget Required Based on CPIs

App Growth Tools

Now that you have budgets for CPIs and CPCs sorted, research and growth tools that you use influence your marketing costs for an app further.

Plenty of names are in the market to boost your mobile app SEO and help you out with app store optimization for maximum impact.

We have gathered a couple of popular names here, such as Superwall and Airship, to show how app store optimization cost can be influenced.

Here’s how much these cost.

1. Superwall

The tool makes paywalls more optimized and irresistible. Using Superwall can greatly help marketers like you convert casual visitors into loyal subscribers.

It’s your secret weapon to ensure marketing spend turns into real revenue.

2. Airship

This is the tool you could confidently call your app’s personal cheerleader.

It can enable perfectly timed push notifications and personalized messages. To get the attention of users when the timing is just perfect, you can prefer Airship.

Airship’s plans are customizable depending on your requirements.

AI Productivity Tools

The best way to grow your marketing’s impact is to do it smartly.

AI Productivity tools can help produce more content and implement an AI-powered SEO or image generation strategy. In short, these tools help fill all possible gaps.

With AI, that’s pretty much achievable for any kind of business. But most AI productivity tools come with fees that multiply your overall mobile app marketing costs.

We have collected some AI productivity tools to demonstrate how much they charge.

1. GPT

Open AI’s chatbot, GPT, has multiple advanced models that are greatly useful for writing high-quality and engaging marketing copy.

Marketers and writers are using these tools to speed up productivity by creating impactful CTAs faster, implementing a smart content creation strategy, and decreasing the overall research time.

Beyond the plans mentioned further, there are team plans. These plans cost:

• $25 per user/month billed annually
• $30 per user/month, billed monthly

There’s an enterprise cost as well that is customized.

Here’s GPT’s official pricing.

2. Midjourney

AI art generators like Midjourney can upscale the whole game by generating graphics.

Midjourney can generate high-quality graphics with simple prompts, helping you save significant mobile app advertising costs when hiring multiple designers.

Midjourney’s plans are divided into multiple layers, starting with a basic plan that costs just $10 per month (can include additional taxes).

We pay ~$11 per month, approximately, for each personal account.

3. Notion AI

Marketing’s new best friend, Notion AI, has a significant reputation for enabling what one could call ‘Magical Marketing.’

It can help implement the abilities of AI in SEO content, create killer copies for you, upscale your campaign ideas, and offer much more.

App marketers often use it for analytical and auditing purposes.

Here’s how much it costs!

AI Chatbots

Automated customer assistance isn’t a new concept, but it’s definitely influencing customer engagement trends.

Integrating AI chatbots might influence your overall marketing costs for an app, but in parallel, you also get to deliver a personalized user experience. 

AI chatbots are available 24x7. As a result, you can improve your customer experience, boosting their retention rates. This keeps the money flowing and enhances the reputation of your brand.

But upon diving deeper, you will find there is a major difference between the quality of free and premium chatbots.

We have picked a couple of options to give you an idea of how adopting AI chatbots will impact your cost of mobile app advertising.

1. Intercom

Say hello to Intercom—a marketer’s secret weapon that turns chats into conversions with a personal touch.

We are factoring its pricing into this app marketing cost budget, and seriously, it’s worth every penny for keeping users hooked.

Here’s how much you pay for Intercom!

2. BotPenguin

You can use the Baby Plan if you have trust issues. But what makes BotPenguin the best is its ability to swoop in the automation in grunt work.

It can be used to generate leads, automate event booking, support customers, and more across social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.

The features are simply impressive, and here’s the cost that lets you explore them!

App Store Optimization (ASO)

Such a cost can be ongoing. So, to market apps better on app stores, keep that factor in mind while planning the budget.

ASO is not just about finding and using keywords; it goes deeper into analyzing user behavior and optimizing images for greater impact as well.

You can take up the task of enhancing ASO yourself if you have the expertise. While the labour cost of the task will be eliminated, the app store optimization cost will still impact your budget.

Alternatively, certain ASO tools are available in the market.

Picked ‘App Tweak’ from them to demonstrate their prices.

1. App Tweak

Additional Costs

Till now, you have the idea of marketing components that are generally used by app marketers.

Now, depending on the priority, further costs can be dynamic, adding a little more bucks to take your average app marketing cost to the next level.

These costs can be:

Compliances

Modern marketing tactics can’t avoid ethical practices. It’s all about keeping things inclusive, safe, and user-friendly today. There are tons of compliances in place to ensure that.

For instance, GDPR, WCAG, and HIPAA. The EU implements and keeps an eye out for violations of GDPR. In contrast, CCPA is for the privacy of the Californian customers.

There are costs beyond this that should be considered.

Here’s an overview!

Calculating the App Marketing Cost Estimation

Now that we have a tentative but complete framework covering each layer that leads to the overall app marketing budget, we can go for a sample calculation.

Fictional parameters used for the calculation of marketing budget

• Target: 10,000 installations and 5,000 clicks.
• Location of the Business: India

Here’s what we found when we did a calculation from the ground up!

This cost implements a multi-channel mobile app marketing strategy.

It combines paid ads (CPC/CPI) for immediate reach and installs with organic growth via ASO, content marketing, and social media.

This tentative cost of marketing an app is further supported by a cost-efficient in-house team from India and AI tools for content and graphics.

In parallel, it also ensures compliance with GDPR and app store policies.

Note: These calculations can significantly vary based on your marketing goals and the location of your service providers.

What will be App Marketing Costs if You Outsource?

Outsourcing to digital marketing companies with expertise in promoting apps is an option that shortens things out for you. You do not only outsource your marketing project; you outsource all the routine work that is aligned with it.

And yes, marketing can be a frustrating task.

But not for experts who can help your app meet its goals.

Where do you find them?

Well, there are tons of app marketing companies worldwide, including the USA, the UK, India, Singapore, Australia, etc. Find them, connect, and collaborate to achieve results that are data-driven and taken care of by industry veterans.

To estimate app development costs, let us help you figure out how much it costs to market an app if you decide to outsource to the most preferred locations.

For estimation, we are taking a project of 500 hours.

1. Cost of Hiring App Marketing Companies in India

Outsourcing to app marketing companies in India can start from even below $25 (₹2,170) per hour. At $25 (₹2,170) per hour, the cost of a 500-hour project can be $12,500 (₹10,85,060) plus taxes. If you hire companies from Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the country, you might even get tax relief and other such perks.

These SEZs can be Noida, Kochin, Kandla, Madras, etc.

2. Cost of Hiring App Marketing Companies in the USA

The USA is one of the hotspots for companies to outsource their marketing efforts. The market constantly remains popular among global talents to find great opportunities due to tons of perks such as employee rights and financial incentives.

As these perks attract more marketing maestros in the country, you get to hire companies that can help you achieve your desired marketing goals. As for the cost, you can hire digital marketing companies in the USA with expertise in the app industry for as low as $50 per hour and as high as $300 per hour.

For a 500-hour long project, at $50 per hour, that’s an approximate cost of $25,000 plus taxes.

3. Cost of Hiring App Marketing Companies in the UK

The UK remains among the most preferred options for marketing needs, whether someone wants to promote an app or a website. It makes sense if you see how much talent immigrates there and how many folks each year complete their marketing degrees.

There’s so much talent for you to leverage, keeping you in pace with marketing dynamics.

Now, if that inspires you to hire digital marketing companies in the UK with expertise in app marketing, you might have to pay an hourly cost falling between $25 and $300.

You need answers to questions like how complex your marketing goals are to get an idea.

For a 500-hour long project, if you hire a company at $30 (£23.16) per hour, that’s an approximate cost of $25,000 (£19300) plus taxes.

Tips to Reduce the Cost of Marketing an App

App marketing is crucial, but it doesn’t mean you have to spend your entire fortune on the project. There are tips and tricks you can use to keep your budget minimal.

Now, let’s get into the details to understand more.

1. Leverage Organic Growth Channels

Instead of only focusing on the paid visibility of your app, give a shot to organic tactics. 

Tons of organic growth strategies are used for long-term growth. If done right, the impact is often considered stronger as well. 

An organic strategy can also help you boost ROIs and CTRs.

To understand the impact of organic strategies on the cost of marketing apps, it’s better we explain a few examples.

Let’s take a look!

2. Optimize ASO

App Store Optimization (ASO) is a practice that involves optimizing the app’s existence on Google Play Store, Apple App Store, etc. The strategy consists of targeting keywords through app titles and descriptions, optimizing images, focusing on ratings, and more.

Collectively, these factors give app stores signals describing the potential of the app. Upon receiving positive signals, app stores reward such apps with growth. But it’s more complicated than this, so you might need an expert on ASO practices.

3. Build a Website

You need a web presence for your app. To ensure that your app appears whenever someone uses a related keyword or the app name on Google, you will need to implement a great SEO strategy.

If you have a budget, you can also hire SEO Companies to multiply the impact of your investment.

Target high-search volume keywords but also use low-volume keywords smartly. It’s a slow process, but if done correctly, your app might have a chance of dominating search engines like Google.

You will also need free analytics tools like Google Analytics or Keyword Planner. Both tools have crucial roles to play in the world of web content and competitive content analysis.

4. Content Marketing

Create valuable content that serves a purpose.

Educate folks about your app in a subtle way. Grow your app’s audience using niche-specific content, target the most asked queries, how-to guides, video content, and more.

If you have the option, integrating a blog section to publish about trending topics of the niche can be greatly helpful.

This allows you to solve user queries, boost visibility, build trust, and find more folks by spending less.

5. Social Media Engagement

Social media platforms can be a blessing for your app’s growth if you know how to take advantage of them. Onboard Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, and more such community-driven platforms, and engage actively.

Social media makes free advertising for apps possible, and if your content is good enough to go viral, that can be great for your overall marketing strategy. Duolingo is the perfect example of this.

The language learning app went viral, thanks to its witty, clever, and engaging social media marketing strategies.

6. Focus on User-Generated Content (UGC)

UGC can be great for the organic growth of your content. User-generated content endorsing your app becomes helpful in convincing the target audience.

But beyond that, Google and app stores use UGC as a convincing factor to give your app a boost to the top.

You can collect UGC through multiple resources. Leverage in-app advertising trends, or maybe go for in-app referral programs; either way, offer perks in exchange for reviews and see your user-generated content grow.

7. Organize High ROI Campaigns

If you’re going to splash cash on ads, make every cent count.

Check out who showed some interest in your app. Retarget such users. Integrate personalization into your marketing tactics so the right folks see the ads, not the ones who find them annoying.

Also, don’t forget to A/B test your ads to boost conversion.

If needed, play around with creatives, copies, and more to keep your CPIs and CTRs profitable.

8. Build Strategic Partnerships

Piggybacking on others’ reputations isn’t a bad strategy to market your app.

Check out app advertising rates charged by big folks. Compare and go for the option you can afford; it’s better to start from somewhere than nowhere.

If you already have some traction on your app, go to your non-competitors and offer a cross-promotional strategy. Their authority can build trust for your brand.

Automate Whatever You Can

Don’t waste too much time or money on stuff that AI can handle well.

Use AI productivity tools like GPT to speed up content generation. You can also use it to deploy smarter chatbots for faster query resolutions.

App users will be happier because of faster resolution time, and staff will enjoy the reduced work burden.

What’s Next?

Next is the step where you calculate every penny you need to spend.

We have given you a foundation to help you calculate a tentative budget.

From CPCs, CPIs, tools, and compliances, we have given a tentative figure of everything that can influence your budget.

Now, the job of building a strong framework is on you.

Your framework should have everything that defines your expectations and the costs these expectations attract.

Proper budget planning can keep you ready for any kind of shocking challenges.

Having a budget prepared can be a great start to transition your marketing efforts from neutral to first gear.

Lastly, there are some killer tips to put a cork on your strategy so it doesn’t bleed cash like water.

Now that everything is done, it’s on you to crunch the numbers, pick your strategies, and execute like a pro; whether you’re building an in-house team, outsourcing to experts, or mixing both—just don’t be the next Quibi, okay?