GTM Sauce

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Run Apple Ads in every country except the US to find where buyers are

Found the Netherlands: same keyword popularity as the US, difficulty 17 vs ~60

Workedapple-search-adsmarket-selectionlocalization

What they did

Created an Apple Ads max-conversion campaign targeting all countries except the US, with a few top-of-funnel keywords and a $2 target cost per install. Checked impression share by country and which countries produced paying users (India: impressions, no purchases; Netherlands, Canada, UK: impressions and sales). Cross-checked with Mo's Astro-based Claude skill listing keyword volume by country: Netherlands had the same popularity (~55) as the US but difficulty ~17 vs 60-something. Then stop the worldwide campaign and create a Netherlands-only campaign with more budget.

What happened

Netherlands identified as the top market for the niche; sales seen there; Steve says the approach has worked 'time and time again'.
Stage
live app

In their words

Live App Teardowns: App Growth Optimization

Play from 46:52
46:45

HYeah. Back. Yeah, there is an option, see, the middle one, blue, "Redeem code".

Steve P. Young… there's search volume, figure out if they're okay with just English, figure out if you can get to number one for that country and you're starting to get downloads, then go ahead and localize the crap out of everything with the help of AI. Distribution happened with the help of AI it you this is the same question you can say for, "Should I build a bunch of different apps with AI, with the help of AI?" Yeah, but like distribution matters above all, so that's how I would do it. Like we're number, you know, since Mo's video and since we started talking, I'm I figured out that for this particular app category, there's a lot of search volume in the Netherlands for my app. I was getting sales. I ran a max conversion campaign outside of the US. So I said, "All countries except the US," for my app, and I did a max conversion. I gave it a couple of different keywords that were like super like top of the funnel, and then just ran. I saw impressions in India, nobody bought, but I saw impressions in the Netherlands. I saw impressions in Canada, UK, like the obvious ones, but the Netherlands. And then Mo, thank you, Mo, he through his MCP server stuff, he said, "Hey Steve, here's all the different countries where there's volume for your particular niche for these keywords." And Netherlands happened to be number one, and I looked at the earlier today in our app founders, the that same keyword has the same search score, it's like 55, in the US as it does in the Netherlands, but in the Netherlands, the difficulty is like a 17, according to Astro, but it's like 60-something in the US. So, should you localize it? Yes. Which country? You know, really look at the data, let the let the data tell you. All …

1:08:34

HYes, let me go first, Steve. Okay. So, Steve, how do you know someone has the newest iPhone duo?

1:14:23

HWe got Jake from Cal AI.

Steve P. Young… All right, last question, I'll say goodbye. Thank you, Hakim. The "I wanna run Apple Ads for my app in worldwide, so what is best strategy for segmentation? Need I run a campaign for each country?" Okay, Mo. So, Muhammad, what I would say is the best strategy is to find a country that converts pretty well, that there's low difficulty. So for me, it's Netherlands, and I happened to find this because I started a worldwide cunt- campaign using a max conversion campaign. So everybody everywhere else but the US. Then I looked at the impression share. Right, I only gave, "Hey, I want $2 per install." I looked at the impression share, and I saw the countries that I saw the most impressions on. Then what I would do is then stop that campaign, found Netherlands, then I would create a Netherlands-specific campaign, so that I can give it more budget, because I know I can grow in that particular market a bit more than I can maybe in India where I'm not, am I getting down I'm getting downloads, but no conversions. So I'm trying to find the country where I can get you know, a low cost install, but still people are willing to pay. And this is what Mo talked about in his podcast, this has worked time and time again, and so that's how I would do it if I were going through with you. All right, that is it. I gotta get out of here. I wanna give a shout out to my son. I know he's downstairs, but he's off to college. So it's bittersweet for me and the wife. We're excited for him to go on this new adventure and get off to college, but this weekend …

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Tags: apple-search-ads, app-store, max-conversion, country-discovery, impression-share, astro