Hire or train: Can anyone really be a UA manager?
Helping you stay 2.5 steps ahead of the games industry. Don't be too serious, except about UA.
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The world of user acquisition (UA) management is as dynamic as it is demanding, raising a crucial question for organizations: should they hire seasoned professionals or invest in training promising candidates? A UA Manager isn’t just about crunching numbers like ROI (Return on Investment) and LTV (Lifetime Value)—it’s about leadership, adaptability, and strategic decision-making in a fast-evolving digital landscape. While hiring experienced talent might seem like the easier path, training offers the chance to build a team that aligns perfectly with your company culture and long-term goals. In this article, we explore the key responsibilities of UA Managers, compare the pros and cons of hiring versus training, and provide insights to help organizations make informed decisions that enhance performance and morale. If you’ve ever wondered whether anyone can truly excel in this role, read on to find out.
“Anyone can be a user acquisition manager.”
That’s what my girlfriend told me recently.
“Hah, you wish”, I thought. Then I realized, she could be right.
Everyone can be a UA manager, but not everybody can be a good one.
It’s not an easy job and very few appreciate it: trust me. I’ve been doing this for couple of years.
What are the Challenges of Hiring a Skilled User Acquisition Manager
The challenges of hiring a skilled User Acquisition Manager include a competitive market, limited availability of experienced professionals, high salary expectations, and the difficulty of finding someone with expertise across diverse ad platforms and performance analytics.I started thinking about how hard it was hiring a good user acquisition manager, when Pixel Federation was looking for a performance marketing specialist.
We had a really tough job on our hands.
You need to be fresh, ambitious, intelligent and – most importantly – passionate.
- Why is it so hard?
It’s nearly impossible to hire an user acquisition specialist in e-commerce or other industries, so imagine finding someone with gaming experience too.
The task of bringing on new team members is always hard enough but in this case demand strongly exceeds supply.
There are far fewer people with relevant experience than there are open positions to fill.
Location is another problem.
Gaming studios are spread all over the world, but we face a situation where no one within 50 km of our office in Bratislava, Slovakia has heard of terms like retention, ROI or LTV.
What Are the Best Approaches to Hiring or Growing a UA Specialist?
The best approaches to hiring or growing a UA specialist include defining clear job expectations, leveraging industry-specific networks for recruitment, and assessing candidates’ data-driven decision-making skills.
Hiring an experienced, top-level performance marketing professional could be costly for us.
And what does experienced and top-level actually mean, anyway?
The truth is that no matter how great of a marketer you may consider yourself to be, it takes the dedication and skill of an entire team to succeed.
You don’t have to be someone with 10+ years of marketing experience working in high profile Silicon Valley startups.
You need to be fresh, ambitious, intelligent and – most importantly – passionate.
I find myself at a senior level.
Why? It’s not only because the countless campaigns I created, not even maintaining a positive ROI, but mostly because I love what I do and I see myself doing this for a long period of time.
Of course, there are also some requirements and skills you need.
Why Analytical Skills Are Essential for a User Acquisition Manager
Analytical skills are essential for a User Acquisition Manager because they enable data-driven decision-making, precise campaign optimization, and performance evaluation.
A user acquisition manager should have an analytical inclination and should be comfortable in working towards optimizing a set of metrics. This is crucial. But there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Even smaller studios have business intelligence departments, where everything is handled by an analyst. By everything I mean things like LTV or p(l)ayer segmentation.
How to Adapt ROI and CPI Strategies for the Gaming Industry
To adapt ROI and CPI strategies for the gaming industry, focus on targeting high-LTV players, optimizing campaigns across game genres, and leveraging ad creatives tailored to gamer preferences. Regularly analyze campaign performance, adjust bids, and refine audience segmentation to balance acquisition costs and maximize returns.One big obstacle for online marketing specialists or other job titles to overcome when moving to the gaming industry is changing their thinking about ROI and CPI.
It requires a lot more attention than just cost per click campaigns.
Adding the mobile platform. Whoah. Welcome to a new world of mobile advertising – App Store Optimization and a lot more.
Why Thinking Outside the Box is Crucial for Effective User Acquisition Management
Thinking outside the box is crucial for effective User Acquisition Management as it fosters creative solutions, innovative ad strategies, and unique targeting approaches.
Even without experience, you need to think “out of the box”, in order to complete the day-to-day tasks of user acquisition: testing creatives and all variants, optimizing campaigns against a specific metric and reporting results in a reasonable form to managers.
Conclusion
I guess we could just train up new staff.
But this involves delayed productivity and a higher burden on existing team members (which I already feel!).
In our case, we take comfort in the fact that there are suitable candidates available, they just currently have different job titles.
Title photo: https://unsplash.com/@goian
Helping you stay 2.5 steps ahead of the games industry. Don't be too serious, except about UA.
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