Practitioner pattern · Steve P. Young (Sells agency services, app audits and a paid community (App Masters community, Road to 1k challenge))
Use App Store search if people search for your app type; otherwise Meta ads
Steve's rule from client data; one or two channels can reach $5M ARR
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What they did
Check your app type's keyword popularity in any ASO tool (MobileAction, AppFollow). Popularity 30+: use ASO and Apple Ads (pull demand). No search (e.g. social apps): use Meta to push the message. Then focus on one or two channels and exhaust them before adding more.
What happened
Client examples: $5.8M/year mostly from App Store search; ~$5M lifetime mostly from Meta; $1M/month mostly TikTok.
“if people search for your type of app, right, there's search volume of over 30 or more. You can pull any ASO tool: MobileAction, Appfollow, any of them. If it If people do search for your app, then you can use ASO and ASA.”
“If people aren't searching for it, you got to push that messaging, so that's where Meta comes into play.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Put about 75% of Meta spend into web-to-app ads, the rest into install ads
- Build several apps for searched keywords; grow the one that ranks #1Winner ranks #1 for keywords at popularity 41; ~1,000 downloads/week, $35K MRR
- Grow an app nobody searches for with Meta ads~$5M since launch; App Store brand searches rose once Meta spend began
- Run an Apple Ads Max Conversions campaign with a $2 target and $30 daily budgetSlightly beat the agency's Basic Plus campaigns for a big-spending client
- Don't target by gender, age or state in Apple AdsKills impressions; seen repeatedly across accounts Steve reviews
- Optimize Meta ads for purchases, but also send paywall views and checkout startsSaid to improve results; no numbers given
- Show the paywall during onboardingSales and retention both rose; no numbers given
- Title the first trial email "Our most popular workouts" instead of a benefits pitchWorkout rate doubled
- Add "TV ad" and "lawyer" to the "How did you hear about us?" questionARPU up 30%, even without running TV ads
- Show the paywall before asking people to sign upPaywall views 40% to 94%; trials up 190%, sales up 52%
- Test a hard paywall against locking more of the app's contentSimilar numbers; hard paywall raised conversions a little
- When people close the paywall, offer 3 items for $2 one-timeEarly: that purchase is being bought all the time; no numbers yet
- Blinkist: Redesign the paywall to fix customers' biggest complaintConversion up 23% (Blinkist's published case study)
- Offer yearly with 7 free days, or $1.99 for the first monthConversion 19% to 25%; proceeds up 21%
- Before the paywall, add "We want you to try it free" and social proof screensResumee-style reminder screen didn't work as well; new version's results not shared
- Show a longer free trial only to people who close the first paywallClients report longer trials win only as a second offer; no numbers
- App Masters: Find a keyword you can rank #1 for, then build the app for itOwn app now #1 for its main keywords; no revenue shared
- Momingo: Write answers to "Does [app] work?" style questions so ChatGPT recommends youFounder says he gets ChatGPT traffic; no numbers