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5 Deadly App Marketing Mistakes

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App Masters17:22Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Apps make more money when they fix the funnel, ask for the sale early and offer several ways to buy. Only then does extra traffic pay off, since ASO, Apple features and PR cannot carry a business alone.

Key takeaways

  • Fixing the funnel earns more than chasing downloads. 1:02
    • Geometry Solver, at about 50 downloads a day, went from $1 to over $17 a day in revenue with no increase in downloads.
    • A robot call blocker app saw 70% more trial conversions and 46% higher revenue per download, and nearly doubled its monthly recurring revenue.
  • Users should meet the price early, so the sale is not left until late. 4:53
    • A pricing page in onboarding, as Calm and Headspace do, shows that a paid option exists and lets ready buyers buy at once.
    • Geometry Solver locked its popular shapes and moved the banner ad to the front, which pushed more users to pay.
  • Several price options sell more than one. 8:22
    • A single remove-ads option feels like a loss of $1.99, while an unlock-shapes and a both-for-$3.49 option feel like a gain.
    • Some buyers pick only the cheaper remove-ads option, and anyone who pays once is more likely to subscribe later.
  • ASO works best when paid acquisition feeds it. 11:48
    • Keywords are only one part of ASO, next to download velocity, screenshots and search boost campaigns.
    • Million-dollar apps all use paid marketing, and more paid downloads lift keyword rankings and organic downloads.
  • An Apple feature is nice but cannot be repeated or controlled. 13:10
    • One kids music app got about 3,000 downloads over the lifetime of its feature.
    • A free promotional campaign brought 941 downloads and can run every month, which could mean 10,000 to 12,000 downloads a year.

If you've got some downloads coming in, so anywhere with at least 30 downloads per day, you've got enough to fix the product.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Fix the funnel before you chase more downloads

A small stream of downloads is enough to fix the product and the funnel, and this pays off before any push for more traffic.

  • Niche apps with steady traffic convert well after small product changes. 2:43
    • Geometry Solver was picked because its audience is specific, so those users are likelier to pay.
    • Sales rose right after the product changes, while downloads stayed flat.
    • The question asked most on live streams is how to grow downloads. The better question is how to earn more from the downloads already arriving.
    • The chart plots downloads in blue against sales, and only the sales line moves.
    • The robot call blocker cannot be used without paying. Its gains came from pricing page changes, and trial conversion counted only users who stayed on after activating.
  • If traffic is too low to test the funnel, buy targeted downloads with Apple Search Ads. 4:19
    • You know which keyword you bid on, so the audience is the most targeted.
    • Use an exact match campaign.
    • Below 30 to 50 downloads a day, buy some first downloads, then test the funnel and see how much money it makes.
    • Two Apple search campaigns are called a must-have setup.

4:53 Ask for the sale early

Selling can't wait until users love the app, so the paid option has to be visible from the start.

  • A pricing page in onboarding reaches buyers who are ready now. 5:48
    • Calm asks why you downloaded, then offers sign up or exit.
    • Organic users arrive with unknown intent, and the page catches those who came to buy.
    • Headspace and Nomo Robo follow the same pattern: a few intro screens, then the pricing page.
    • Free content only continues if the business makes money.
  • Making users meet the paywall turns a free app into a paid one. 6:55
    • Rudy first made everything free, then locked the more popular items.
    • The banner ad had appeared only after a tap on a square. It moved to the page most people see.
    • The first extra income lets him reinvest in Apple Search Ads, which was impossible at $1 a day.
    • Small wins matter: you got to get to 17 before you get 100.

8:41 Options give buyers a sense of control

People buy more when they feel in control, so a pricing page should offer a few clear choices.

  • Offer a few options, but not too many 8:41
    • The familiar set is monthly, annual and lifetime.
    • A subscription app can also add a remove-ads purchase for people who dislike subscriptions.
    • Steve prefers more options than three, but calls three the simple version.
    • Six months works as a plan too.
  • A cheap remove-ads tier can lead to a subscription 11:15
    • Price it at two or five dollars.
    • The old Geometry Solver page offered only remove ads.
    • Buyers choose the cheaper tier because they want the ads gone, or to throw the developer a few dollars.

11:48 ASO is only one part of the puzzle

Keyword work reaches its limit without paid traffic behind it.

  • Paid ads take ASO to the next level 12:32
    • Search ads, Facebook ads or another paid model add to what ASO can do.
    • Steve ranks first on YouTube for app store optimization, yet says keywords are only part of ASO.
    • Big apps know their funnel and run a paid model that works for them.

13:10 A feature is nice but not repeatable

An Apple feature is a one-off boost, while a campaign you control can run again and again.

  • A feature will not make or break a business 13:50
    • Over 34 apps have been featured through this agency, and a handful became game or app of the day.
    • Since 2020 the biggest driver has been the game of the day placement.
    • Put the feature on your screenshots, but treat it as a vanity metric.
  • Repeatable campaigns beat a feature you cannot control 15:21
    • A feature likely comes once, and nobody knows if or when it returns.
    • The campaign ran days before the feature, which arrived a few weeks later.
    • Repeat runs bring fewer downloads each time.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency. Five app marketing mistakes drawn from helping over 3,326 apps: chasing downloads over conversion, delaying monetization, offering a single purchase option, over-relying on ASO, and over-investing in Apple features and PR. Fixing the product and funnel took a geometry app from $1 to over $17 a day with no extra downloads, and a call blocker app saw a 70% conversion lift.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript550 lines
0:00

what is up app nation it is steve p young founder of appmasters.com the place you go when you want action pack content related to helping you grow your app downloads and your revenue and in this video i want to share five key lessons that we've learned from helping over 3 300 apps with their marketing you want to avoid these critical deadly mistakes to make sure you're set up for success now before we get started make sure you hit that subscribe button and also join us every friday at 9 a.m pacific where we take a look at your apps and give you some critical feedback related to helping you grow your downloads through aso and also the product features to help you make more money and get more clarity from your app's features so if you want to get your app audited go fill out the form at masters.com audit all right let's get in to the five deadly app marketing mistakes number one and that is focusing too much

1:05

on downloads i hear it all the time especially on these friday youtube streams where every question i get is how do i grow my downloads how do i grow my downloads help i just launched and i'm not getting any downloads how do i grow my downloads and i always say if you've got some downloads coming in so anywhere with at least 30 downloads per day you've got enough to fix the product focus on your attention focus on your funnel and make sure you're making money i'm going to show you some examples that we've helped with some clients so here's geometry solver they're getting about 50 downloads a day and we did a case study on our most recent youtube live stream and i'll link that into the show notes but where he went from one dollar a day generating revenues to over 17 a day with no absolutely no increase in downloads and those are the things that you should be focused on so instead of thinking

1:58

how do i grow from 50 downloads today to 100 downloads a day while that's important it's also important to fix the app features and how to how do you generate more money from the app from the downloads already coming in so don't always just focus on downloads okay now let's take at the raw numbers if you don't believe me here are the charts so here's the blue this is the app units the downloads and here are the sales so again he was making about a dollar a day until we got together he filled out that form appmasters.com audit i picked it out i said rudy you want to work together and maybe turn this into a case study i really want to help you with your app what i liked about it was it was a niche app right it's geometry solver so i like that it's a niche app because i know i can convert with some few changes he's already gained some downloads i know i can convert them because they're obviously

2:51

very specific it's a specific audience and they're more likely to convert okay so here's what happened as you can see we made some product changes that i will show you in later slides but here's what we did we made some product changes to the app and thank you rudy for being so quick with some of those suggestions that i made and you saw an immediate increase in sales and no increase in downloads so that's the power of really focusing on your product and your funnel all right let's give you another example here is a robot call blocker app that i absolutely love so go check it out it's called robot call blocker it's a black icon search for it it's very very inexpensive and i use it so i'm a paying customer as well as you know i got to work with this client as well so we made some changes to the pricing page the app allows you you can't use the app without paying for it so we made some changes to this pricing

3:46

pages that i can't share with you can't give away all my secrets here but we saw a 70 increase in conversions so people who activated a trial and people stayed on after activating the trial and we saw a 46 increase in average revenue per download now the apps has gone gangbangs gangbusters and we've nearly doubled the the client has nearly doubled his monthly recurring revenue ever since we started working together again not a huge increase in downloads so we really focus on the actual conversions and the funnel now if you're thinking steve please please i still want downloads well i recommend using apple search ads you're gonna get the most targeted audience because you know what keywords you're bidding on so go run those apple search ads put an exact match campaign i'll link up a video where i share two apple search campaigns that you absolutely must set up but i would recommend setting that up if

4:45

you're not getting at least 30 to 50 downloads a day get some downloads in initial downloads and test that funnel and see how much money you're making all right number two and that is waiting too long to monetize i get it we want to make sure our customers love our products make sure they start using it and then hopefully hit them with the sale but i have to force you guys to do this you have to sell it okay look there's a business that i run i try to give away a lot of my content for free and that's why you're watching this on youtube but i also have to make money because if i'm not making money i can't keep continuing to produce this content for free all right so you got to sell it and here are some simple ways that you can do that number one share this in the past so if you've been following the channel for quite some time you're like steve dove share this before but here show the pricing page

5:38

this pricing page during the onboarding process so calm says hey why did you download this app sign up or exit out really key feature there and do you want to buy because what that does is signal to the user that one there is a paid option available and two if you're already sold on the app let's say i told you about an app called calm and i was like it's so phenomenal it's totally changed my life you gotta go check it out so you're like dude steve says it's so great i want to buy so that second user that use case who people who already want to buy you've got to give them the opportunity to buy right so you don't know how they're coming in because you can't target it maybe you can you can't get that sophisticated but if it's organic you don't know if they're like i just heard about com or hey i'm ready to buy so you want this pricing page during that onboarding process all right show you some other examples

6:30

as well here's headspace again lots of info and then boom pricing page and then here's another app called nomo robo which is a robot call of blocking app i recommend checking out my clients app but here's another app where you can see the the pages and then boom the pricing page as well going back to that geometry solver app that i shared with you we went from revenues of one dollar a day to 17 a day here's what you should also do and that is show which things are free and which things are paid now rudy actually let everything be free before i was like rudy you're making everything free how are you gonna get paid so he decided to lock up some things all right this one this one this one some of the more popular ones he's going to lock them up and so this is a great way and look at this page it's nothing like all right cool no problem yes you can buy sorry you can you can buy right here purchases but

7:28

he also locked them up and so that's another great way here's another thing with rudy's app he has this remove ads in-app purchase that i'm about to show you later and so before it was after you clicked on this square that you saw the banner and i said rudy make it more disruptive like put that banner ad right here because most people are going to see this page and you're also going to make more money from this banner ad and people are like i got to get rid of this banner ad right and so this is another simple thing that we did to rudy's app to drive this one dollar a day to 17 a day now i know it doesn't seem like much to you but everything starts you got to get to 17 before you get 100 you know so these small little wins celebrate them and now what rudy is able to do is reinvest that money at a dollar a day he can't invest any money now he can start using some of that funds to reinvest in apple search ads now

8:22

let's get into number three and that is giving multiple options to buy look we're all familiar with this and these are the multiple options to buy there's a great book that i'm reading called the catalyst how to change anyone's mind by jonah berger and he talks about people love options they don't have too many options but people want to feel like they're in control of their own actions and so options are very important and here's what we're familiar with monthly annual lifetime monthly annual lifetime and then these monthly and yearly type of things great now what i'm going to be doing with my subscription-based app and you guys will be seeing a case study of it soon is providing a way to just remove ads as well i'll share why i'm going to be doing that because people want options maybe they don't want a subscription maybe they just want to give get rid of a few things that are bothering them because i want to give

9:16

them with some options but not too many options so don't please give them options okay and here's the most popular way of doing it monthly yearly lifetime monthly yearly six months whatever it is give them options i prefer to give them more options than this but this is the simple way of doing it all right let's take a look at what rudy did with his geometry solver again from revenue dollar day to 17 here's was his old pricing page where he just allowed you to buy out remove ads so that was it i was like really you know we got to give him more options and so as you guys remember we locked some of these shapes we said hey unlock these shapes remove ads or do both for this same price and why i love options is because humans are illogical we're irrational we make emotional buying decisions when we see a pricing page like this let's take it back when we see a pricing page where it just has remove ads one option

10:13

to buy we probably don't want to lose again a part of human psychology behavior we don't want to lose anything and so we don't want to lose the 199 if you're saying either lose 199 which is pay 199 or don't pay i don't want to lose two bucks but if you show more options here one that says unlock shapes one that says both versions where you get to remove the ads and for the same price we become irrational now it's not about losing now we're gaining oh my gosh we get to get this price 349 which is the same price as his unlock shape i'll do it and rudy what he's found out is actually some people just say remove ads and so again this is why it's so powerful you would think that almost 100 would buy the full version but rudy is finding that people are just buying the cheaper option because they just want the ads gone right maybe they just want to support the developer and they're like hey you

11:10

know what i'll just throw a couple of bucks your way so this is why options are so powerful that's what i would do subscription based plans is provide an option where they can buy one time i know they're kind of doing it here with a lifetime offer but think about ways that you can provide more options whether i know a lot of you guys have subscription-based apps and you have this remove ads so give them an opportunity just remove ads make it two dollars make it five dollars whatever it is because once they pay for something they're actually more likely to pay so it is a signal that hey if they remove ads they're probably gonna likely become a subscriber further down the road as well so give them a cheaper option that they can pay you for all right now let's go on to number four and that's relying too much on look i get it i do a lot of aso that's what i'm mainly known for when you search for

12:01

youtube app store optimization guess who's number one this guy but i gotta tell you there are so many other variables to aso than just keyword optimization which is what we mostly think about when we think about aso there's download velocity there's screenshot optimization there's search boost campaigns as well all this stuff go into asl and so what i implore you to do is aso is just part of the puzzle if you rely too much on it to take it really to the next level you're gonna have to spend some money on search ads on facebook ads some paid acquisition model because if you look at any of the million dollar apps the tens of million dollar apps you're gonna find that they have some paid marketing involved they fix their funnel they know their funnel to a team and they've got a paid model that works well for them it all feeds into each other the more paid downloads you can get the more the better your keyword

12:59

rankings are going to be the better your organic downloads are going to be so all of these things all these variables work intertwined together and they all help each other all right now let's look at the last one and that is relying too much on apple features or google features and pr look we're the number one agency when it comes to helping clients get featured by apple we've helped over 34 as of this recording apps get featured and a handful of them have gotten game of day of the day and app of the day so we know how powerful it can be but in 2020 it has changed because the app store has changed it's really the biggest driver is going to come through this right this game of the day and that's where you get a lot of people and also these are great but not the most what i always tell clients is yes it's great to be featured on techcrunch yes it's great to be featured by apple but it's neither gonna make or break

14:05

your business it won't matter it's great it's a nice little vanity metric to say oh i was on an app store feature so definitely put on your screenshots if you get a feature but again it's not gonna you'll be fine whether you get it or not right it's nice to have but it's not a necessity when it comes to figuring out what you should be doing with your app marketing and i wanna show you some numbers too so here's a client of ours that actually got an apple feature and we've ran some campaigns on it and i love this campaign called free promotional campaign so you can search for it search for appsconfree on our website at masters and share how you can do it but here's what happened this free promotional campaign drove 941 downloads so about a thousand downloads by running this campaign is for a very niche app okay because it's a kids music app and most of the time we get thousands of downloads within a matter of days okay

14:58

but again very niche app and we got about a thousand downloads after running this campaign so a few days afterwards we drove it now we got an absol app store feature a few weeks after this and it was a great surprise i was like oh yeah i can't believe it and so that drove for the lifetime of it about 3 000 downloads so again you're like whoa steve is an absorber feature worth it absolutely but here's the problem the problem is that you're only gonna get that app store feature likely just once you have no idea when it if and when you'll ever get it again so the free promotional campaign that i ran that drove thousands well a thousand for this particular app thousand downloads we get to run it every single month so just think about that that's going to be 12 000 downloads give or take let's say 10 to 12 000 because obviously the more we run it the less downloads we're gonna get but that's gonna be about ten to twelve

15:58

thousand dollars per year whereas an app store feature yes we got three thousand downloads but are we gonna ever get that feature again we don't know and it's beyond our control so that's why i say yes it's nice but it's not gonna make or break your business all right guys that's it let me know in the comments below which of the app marketing mistakes the five of them that you fall prey to which one are you a victim of which one are you currently focused on and is it a mistake for you and also if you guys want us to take a look at your app for free it's a long list i gotta tell you but go check out appmasters.com audit and you can fill out that form and you'll be added to the queue and join us every friday live at 9 a.m pacific time 12 p.m eastern time and i think it's about five or six in the in europe but join us every friday live we're gonna take a look at those apps and share with you what's working

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in the app space all right guys until next time i'll see you on the next video bye

17:21

you