GTM Sauce

A design app · App Masters client

Rank for a niche keyword first, then climb to broader ones

Outranked Canva on a keyword

Workedaso

What they did

Client app first targeted a niche keyword Canva couldn't focus on, then moved up to bigger keywords.

What happened

Outranked Canva on that keyword (while earning far less).

In their words

Steve Young - Beginners Guide to Buying & Selling Apps 2026

Play from 26:39
26:20

Joseph ChoiYou would search a popular term, and a lot of the top apps don't make as much money as they could, cuz they just haven't dialed in the you know, the onboarding and the paywalls and stuff. It must be true, cuz Apple must care about They probably do care about revenue, like it's a signal that the user had deeper intent with the app, which is good for them.

26:39

Steve YoungIt's so crazy, cuz I think it's different. Like one of our clients were able to like outrank Canva, and it started off just going after a niche keyword, and then eventually going up. And so we were able to outrank Canva on this keyword, and it obviously, we're not making more than Canva, [laughter] but like Canva can't go after those our keyword, right?

27:00

Joseph ChoiThe most profitable app founders I know have been using Superwall to A/B test their paywalls, because, yes, they have the basics, like building and deploying paywalls super quickly without coding, targeting users with different paywalls based on behavior and demographics. But now, Superwall AI actually predicts who will subscribe before they see a paywall. The AI can do this because Superwall analyzes over 1 billion paywall interactions to score …

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Tags: app-store, niche-keyword, keyword-ladder