A complete guide to concentrated marketing strategies

Marketers across industries face constant pressure to balance rising acquisition costs, evolving privacy standards, and the need to achieve more with limited resources. One strategy that helps address these challenges is what’s called concentrated marketing. 

Rather than spreading campaigns across broad audiences, this approach narrows focus to one segment where the brand can deliver the greatest relevance and impact. Concentrated marketing is often used by startups, niche app developers, and businesses with limited budgets, and increasingly by established brands when launching new products with precision. 

This blog explores what concentrated marketing is, how it compares to other approaches, when it is most effective, and how mobile marketers can put it into practice to drive app growth globally.

Concentrated marketing, also called a concentration strategy in marketing, is when a company directs its efforts toward a single, well-defined market segment. Instead of targeting multiple audiences, all resources, messaging, and channels are aligned to the needs of that group.

For mobile apps, this often means designing campaigns for one priority audience, such as parents of young children for a kids’ game or fitness enthusiasts for a workout tracker. By narrowing the focus, companies can position themselves as specialists within that segment.

Concentrated marketing is sometimes confused with niche marketing, but they are not the same. Both involve focusing on a specific audience, but the distinction is in scope. Concentrated marketing is a targeting strategy—choosing one segment to focus on—while niche marketing usually refers to serving a very small, specialized group with unique needs.

Marketers can choose from three main targeting strategies: undifferentiated, differentiated, and concentrated marketing. Each has distinct advantages and limitations depending on goals, budget, and audience.

Undifferentiated (mass marketing)

Undifferentiated marketing, or mass marketing, uses one message for the entire market. Traditional examples include TV commercials, billboards, or app install campaigns shown to broad audiences. This strategy offers scale and lower creative costs but lacks relevance, making it harder to build lasting loyalty.

Differentiated (multi-segment marketing)

Differentiated marketing targets two or more segments with tailored campaigns for each. An app company might promote one version of a campaign to students and another to professionals. This approach extends reach and allows customization, but it requires more research, budget, and content. It can also create a fragmented brand identity if messages diverge too far.

Concentrated (niche marketing)

Compared to differentiated marketing, concentrated marketing is more cost-efficient and allows stronger audience loyalty. For example, a fintech app could build campaigns solely for freelancers, or a meditation app could concentrate on students preparing for exams. The trade-off is that growth is limited by the size of the chosen niche.

Comparison at a glance

Apps that commit to a concentrated marketing strategy are achieving measurable growth by focusing on well-defined user groups. The following four cases illustrate how this approach works across mobile categories.

Niche health and wellness apps

Health and wellness is a category where concentrated marketing strategies thrive. Calm Kids focuses on parents seeking child-friendly wellness tools, offering sleep stories, meditations, and lullabies designed for young children. Breethe positions itself toward women, particularly busy professionals and mothers, framing mindfulness as simple and practical for everyday life. SilverSneakers GO targets adults 65 and older, providing age-appropriate workouts, on-demand classes, and community features. By concentrating on the distinct needs of specific groups (in this case, children, women, and seniors), these apps build loyalty and engagement.

Like any approach, concentrated marketing has clear advantages, but this niche strategy also comes with risks and growth limits. Marketers should carefully weigh the pros and cons before adoption.

Advantages

• Higher ROAS and efficiency: Concentrated campaigns direct budget toward one audience and a few core channels, reducing waste and often improving return on ad spend (ROAS). By focusing narrowly on a segment, companies can drive user or revenue growth more efficiently.
• Deeper audience loyalty: Tailoring messaging, features, and experiences to one group builds stronger relationships. Customers recognize the product is designed for them, which supports long-term satisfaction and engagement.
• Cost savings for startups: Startups and small businesses avoid the expense of running campaigns across multiple segments. A focused niche strategy helps them grow efficiently and compete against larger players.

Limitations

• Growth ceiling: Concentration limits the immediate market size. Scaling requires expanding to new segments or diversifying beyond the original niche.
• High risk if the niche declines: Relying on one audience increases exposure to shifts in consumer preferences or new competitors. If the niche shrinks, growth may stall
• Potential brand pigeonholing: Strong association with one group can make repositioning or entering new markets more difficult.
• Scalability challenges: Growth beyond the core segment often requires new research, messaging, and campaigns, which adds cost and complexity.

A concentrated marketing strategy framework helps allocate resources precisely and maximize value from a defined audience. By following a clear process, companies can focus their efforts where they matter most and achieve stronger outcomes.

Step 1: Audience research

The first step is to research your audience in depth. This means moving beyond demographics to uncover motivations, behaviors, and preferences. AI-driven segmentation and predictive cohorts can reveal which users are most likely to convert or stay engaged, while large language models (LLMs) can surface themes from app reviews or customer support data. The goal is to identify a segment where your app delivers unique value and where resources can be focused most effectively.

Step 2: Choose channels

Once the audience is defined, the next step is to select the channels where that group is most active. Concentrated marketing is most effective when spend is directed toward one or two priority channels rather than spread across every platform. For some apps this may mean TikTok or Instagram, for others, in-app advertising or connected TV (CTV). Focusing spend on the channels your audience already uses improves relevance and efficiency.

Step 3: Craft creative and messaging

Creative and messaging must be tailored to resonate with the target audience. Generative AI (GenAI) tools can help scale creative variations quickly, but the core message needs to reflect the values and priorities of the segment, whether that is affordability, exclusivity, convenience, or community. Formats should also match the chosen channels, such as vertical video for TikTok or carousel ads for Instagram.

Step 4: Measure and optimize

Measurement is critical to ensure the strategy performs as intended. Concentrated marketing requires continual monitoring and optimization to keep resources working effectively. Privacy-first frameworks enable attribution on iOS, while A/B testing makes it possible to refine creatives, audiences, and messages over time. The insights gained from one segment can inform future campaign optimization and guide expansion into new niches.

A concentrated marketing strategy can help app marketers address rising acquisition costs, stricter privacy standards, and limited budgets. By focusing on one well-defined audience, brands often build loyalty, improve retention, and achieve more efficient results than broad campaigns when executed well.

However, every decision about creative, placement, or channel carries more weight when the strategy depends on one segment. That’s why partnering with a reliable mobile measurement provider (MMP) is essential. Adjust supports marketers with accurate attribution, unified and privacy-first analytics, frictionless deep linking, and more, enabling teams to adapt to user behavior shifts in real time. By linking campaign performance to outcomes and enabling continuous optimization, Adjust helps improve engagement, conversion rates, ROI, and  true long-term growth.

Request a demo to see how Adjust helps you measure and optimize concentrated marketing strategies and grow your app business.