Solving The App Growth Puzzle — My 4-Step Approach for App Marketing
Do you struggle to balance your app marketing budget? Are you overwhelmed by all the “best practice” marketing tactics? These are important questions if you’re a small app developer on a budget, because choosing the right tactics can make or break the success of your app.
Now, I love app marketing because I get to see both sides of the product. I see the efforts that go into user acquisition and marketing on the app developer side. I also get to use those apps and “feel” what they’re like.
In a previous article My Go-To User Acquisition Tactics I mentioned a few common approaches to app marketing that included SEO, SEM, WOM to drive downloads.
However, in my experience, I see integrating App Store Optimization (ASO) and Apple Search Ads (ASA) as the best approach to optimizing the user experience as they are considered the effective direct levers for small app publishers.
My App Growth Puzzle
There are four steps to achieving app growth. The steps are shown in the illustration below.
Step 1: Product Collaboration
Successful app growth hinges on collaboration. I am a product-led growth believer. Because all marketing tactics supplement the core product, it is crucial to work closely to see the effect on each phase of the growth journey to ensure the product’s core value is communicated via the marketing tactics. Good collaboration empowers me to understand what features are coming in the next release, what bugs were fixed, what part of the user journey has room for improvement, and identify and manage critical reviews in the storefront.
ASO and ASA may be the initial steps to acquiring the users, but the key growth driver is a healthy product that turns the users into happy users that create stickiness. It relies heavily on the product to test, optimize and implement new features or experiences to achieve this. In addition, I recommend implementing an app messaging and analytics tool in the early phase that enables product marketers to run engagement and retention campaigns. The collaboration flow is the product team works on solving the user’s pain point, and the product marketer creates the message and reflects it on the app metadata. Then the product team can use the set of metadata to wrap into the build and submit it for review.
Step 2: Search Intent and Use Case
I start by understanding the user journey to prepare product metadata properly.
What search terms are they using in the app store? What problems do they want to solve?
I focus on keyword research during this phase. This aims to identify what keywords align with the users’ search intent and what the app provides benefits to the users. Try not to mix up the features and the benefits. The user’s search intent is searching for a solution for the problem, and ASO’s job is to provide bread crumbs that help the store’s algorithm determine if the app fits users’ search.
I prefer using the use case and the user persona to understand the user’s psychology, brainstorm keywords, and verify them through the ASO tools. There are many helpful ASO tools like AppRadar, and AppTweak with handy features to help you find out more keywords that your competitors use a lot and the level of the competition.
We now have:
- Keyword seed list with competitiveness levels is for organic and paid acquisition.
- Use case theme is for brainstorming with the creative team on the visual assets.
Both information is helpful for downstream marketing tactical plans such as ASO, Ads, and content strategy.
Step 3: App Store Optimization (ASO)
The impact of due diligence during ASO is felt throughout the app life cycle because it can significantly reduce overall ad costs. The caveat here is integrating with the App development lifecycle. ASO is one of the means to drive product growth — by communicating the app value to the user in a dynamic way. For more ASO tips, you can refer to this post.
The goal here is to represent the benefit of the app to the users and attract the users to download, and the output of this phase is an ASO suite for the app product page.
It is good to run an A/B test to determine the optimal icon, screenshot, and app previews via Apple product page optimization if the resource allows. Even if you have resource constraints, I still strongly recommend running AB tests at an early stage because it helps in the long run. The other approach is to utilize custom product pages that customize screenshots, promotional text, and app previews based on the different use cases for the user. Those creative assets can be used for Apple Search Ads later.
I track app visibility, conversion rates, and user feedback & reviews as the starting point. Once I obtain the result from the organic acquisition, I use them as a benchmark for the future.
Step 4: Paid Acquisition — Apple Search Ads
As a beginning phase, a bullseye approach is my favorite. Using the Apple Search Ads is straightforward for the iOS app. Since I have established the keyword seed list and various creative assets, it is handy to implement the Apple Search Ads (ASA). The output is three campaigns per storefront. Many agencies suggest four different campaigns, but I simplify three campaigns for a startup.
The three campaigns are:
- Branding campaign — to establish brand power. It helps you understand app awareness by looking at the impression changes.
- Discovery campaign — to utilize Apple’s algorithm to reveal more search terms and phrases. It helps you discover unknown keywords and phrases.
- Conversion campaign — to focus on downloads.
I suggest running the campaigns for four weeks as an Ad cycle. It gives you adequate data and time to incorporate the product team in updating the build and ASO. There are many metrics related to the ASA; the main metrics I track are tap-through rate (TTR), conversion rate (CR), average cost-per-acquisition (CPA), average cost-per-tap (CPT), and installs. If you want to pick up other metrics to monitor, check out Apple Search Ads or SearchAds.
Infinite Growth Loop
This article is about my approach to app growth. I do not focus solely on ASO or Ads. Testing, refining, and implementing are the key to driving the infinite growth loop. Once I have established the user base, I start other channels to drive more growth.
With the user base established, it is time to use in-app messages and push notifications to engage with users and nurture retention.
No product has a forever competitive advantage, the same as the growth tactics.
I am learning and adapting best practices from experts constantly. I hope this could help small app publishers. As Richard Branson said: “A big business starts small.”
Let’s nurture growth together. I’m happy to chat more. Happy to connect via LinkedIn here.
