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5 Growth Hacking Strategies to Increase Your App Downloads

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App Masters11:04Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

App downloads grow when a good app is pushed through five levers: a free promotion backed by press, App Store optimization, localization, exclusive press pitches and a direct pitch to Apple's category managers. Each lever puts the app in front of people who are ready to download it, and none of them rescues a weak app.

Key takeaways

  • A temporary free offer with press coverage drives a burst of downloads and sales. 0:47
    • The offer can be a paid app made free, or one in-app purchase made free for a couple of days in a free app.
    • One friend sold more in that campaign than in the previous few months combined.
  • App Store optimization still brings organic downloads, but only for good apps. 2:54
    • Brands like Uber and Kindle can maximize it because their apps are strong.
    • The people saying it no longer works were reskinning apps to hack their way into downloads.
  • Localizing the app name and keywords opens new regions at a low cost. 4:39
    • Apple lets you target about 28 regions.
    • The order is name and keywords first, then screenshots and description, then in-app content.
  • Giving one writer an exclusive still wins press coverage. 6:45
    • Reporters at The Next Web and TechCrunch both said exclusives still work.
    • The cost is that you cannot pitch anyone else until they pass.
  • A direct pitch to Apple's category manager can win an App Store feature. 8:48
    • Find the manager on LinkedIn, guess the email with Email Hunter and pitch at least two weeks before launch.
    • An approved app makes the pitch stronger, and one of his own apps was featured in China.

I think the people who are complaining about it not working, they're just not making a good enough app.

Steve Young, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 The paid-to-free campaign

A paid-to-free campaign works only when press makes people aware of it, and the in-app version has one design rule.

  • The campaign needs press to bring the downloads. 2:17
    • Young pitches App Advice and BGR, the biggest sites, and gets clients covered there.
    • Reddit has an app hookup subreddit that works too.
    • Done in a few days, it can bring thousands to hundreds of thousands of downloads.
    • His warning: You can't just do it and hope that these downloads will come.
  • An in-app purchase offered free must be non-consumable. 2:36
    • A non-consumable is bought once and kept forever, like removing ads or unlocking new levels.
    • Gems are a poor fit, because players can always buy more.
    • His team now builds such a purchase into new apps for this campaign.

2:54 App Store optimization

App Store optimization is SEO for the App Store, and like web SEO it rewards a strong product and brand.

  • ASO needs the same base as SEO: a good app, a brand and good content. 3:44
    • Young says people are moving away from ASO, and he wants to double down on it.
    • With the fundamentals in place, clients with good apps get a ton of downloads.
    • He also teaches a black hat tactic, using App Store reviews to lift keyword rankings.
    • He says it has worked many times for clients and his own apps.

4:39 Localization

Localization applies ASO to other languages, so the app can be found outside English-speaking markets.

  • Localize the app name and keywords for each language, not just English. 5:00
    • Gonzalo, founder of eTips, shared the strategy.
    • Young has not used it himself yet, and says so.
    • It goes in line with ASO, so it is the same keyword work repeated per country.
    • He credits Gonzalo because he dislikes people passing off others' strategies as their own.

5:32 Localize in stages to open new regions

A translated app name and keywords bring downloads from a new country before the rest of the app is translated.

  • Start with the name and keywords, and leave the app in English. 6:08
    • Gonzalo recommends this first step for anyone on a budget.
    • The cost is small, and the gain is more downloads from that region.
    • Game makers should look hard at China and Japan.
    • Users there can't see the keywords, but they do see the translated name.
    • Some will be annoyed to open an English app. That is the only downside, and it is small.

6:41 Pitch an exclusive to one reporter

Reporters still value an exclusive, so a named pitch with the word in the subject line gets attention.

  • Pitch one named reporter and put "exclusive" in the subject line. 7:13
    • Writers like being first, so the offer flatters them.
    • You can also pitch a whole outlet, such as "exclusive to TC" sent to its tips address.
    • The pitch gives that writer the first right to cover the launch.
    • TechCrunch and VentureBeat are the targets for an announcement exclusive.
  • No reply means a pass, so start press well before launch. 7:57
    • Only then are you free to pitch anyone else.
    • iMore never answered his launch exclusive, then wrote about the app anyway.
    • Press should begin before the app is out.

8:48 Pitch Apple for a feature

An App Store feature is partly a vanity metric, but a well-timed pitch to the right manager is worth making.

  • Wait for approval before pitching, because it makes the pitch stronger. 9:40
    • Each Apple manager owns one category, so match the manager to your app.
    • Review takes about a day, so waiting costs little.
    • Approval shows the manager that reviewers already passed the app.
    • He prefers approved, and accepts submitted or in review at the least.
    • Games are likely to be asked to launch on a Thursday, though that may change.

In the growth library

Steve Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency and training. Five app growth tactics: temporary free promotions, ASO, localization, press exclusives and pitching Apple's App Store managers for a feature. The payoff is thousands to hundreds of thousands of downloads from a paid-to-free push, plus sales bumps larger than the prior few months combined.

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

Transcript273 lines
0:00

coming up I'm going to share five of my alltime favorite growth hacking strategies to increase app downloads you don't want to miss it stay tuned what is up appnation it is Steve Pou founder of atms. the place you go for all your action-packed app marketing content and I've been really really studying the app space for a very long time and I'm going to share five of my favorite all-time growth hacking strategies so number one which is still a favorite of mine is called a payto free campaign now traditionally this campaign is all about making a paid app free for a couple of days getting pressed for it and driving hundreds well thousands if not hundreds of thousands of downloads within a couple of days I find it it's very useful campaign and now we're actually moving towards building inapp purchases specifically for this campaign so what I mean is traditionally paid to free is paid app gone free for a couple of days

1:22

but now growth hacker in me says what if I have a free app well you can make one of your inapp purchases for free for a couple of days get pressed for it and then drive thousands if not hundreds of thousands of downloads within that span and I've seen increases in both downloads and revenues so if you've got models a revenue model that isn't dependent just purely on ads but you've got other inapp purchases in there in your app you will see an increase in sales I've done it for a couple of clients and my friend even actually reported back to me he said hey I saw a bump in sales I made more sales in that campaign than I did the past few months that the app has been out there so it's a brilliant I love this campaign and like I said we're actually using it now as we're building apps we build inapp purchases to just make it free for a couple of days and use this particular campaign so a couple of things you got

2:17

to know about this campaign one you have to get pressed for it so app advice and BGR are the two websites that I always pitch and I tend to get my clients on there they're the biggest sites out there Reddit has an app hookup subreddit that you can use as well so make sure people know about it you can't just do it and hope that these downloads will come and number two if it's an inapp purchase make sure it's a non-consumable that's like you buy it once and you get forever so think remove ads new levels not gems you can't you know you can always buy gems so something you can buy once and get forever all right number two my favorite growth hacking strategy is App Store optimization now I know a lot of people know about App Store optimization which if you're not familiar with it is just SEO for the App Store but as I found that most people are sort of moving away from it now I want to double down on it because

3:15

I still think it's a great great Avenue to drive organic downloads and I think the people who are complaining about it not working they're just not making a good enough app right but if you think of a big company like Uber or Kindle they have opportunities there because they're a well-known brand because they've built a really good app they can really maximize App Store optimization to drive even more downloads so I think for ASO to work just like SEO on the web you need a good website you need a good brand you need to create good content and with the fundamental blocks of ASO you can drive a ton of great downloads through ASO I've seen it work for my clients who have really good apps and I think it's still a valid strategy it's the people who are complaining about it right now are the people that were reskinning and trying to sort of hack their way into downloads by using ASO those are the people that are suffering

4:16

from it those are the people that are saying it's no longer working so really really focus on ASO and I've shared this black hat strategy in the past but leveraging app story reviews to increase keyword ranking rankings and I have that course in the links below if you want to check it out but it's a great great strategy and I've seen it work many many times for my clients and my own apps all right so number three now I got to give a shout out to my friend Gonzalo founder of etips who share this strategy with me I've yet to utilize it for myself so I just want to be clear on that I hate people who share strategies based on other people and don't really come up and they they pretend it's theirs all right but so Gonzalo uses his strategy to maximizes it it's called localization it's localizing your app name and your keywords for the other languages not just English so really really focusing

5:12

on ASO this goes in line with ASO and localizing your app name and your keywords for the other countries and the languages right Apple has about 28 different regions that you can Target and really really focus more on having good localization so for instance in the UK you guys call it local localized with a c in the US we say Z that's just one example that you want to leverage but China Japan if you have a game really start thinking about localizing your app name for that particular market and what Gonzalo recommends is at first if you're on a budget localize the app name and the keywords then if you see an impact in downloads then go ahead and localize the screenshots and localize the description and once you have have that then take it a step further and localize the inapp content in your apps right right now you can keep it all English and keep your screenshots all in English but if you localize the app name and the

6:10

keywords you're sure to find more downloads for that particular region the only downside if you haven't localized the actual app is that these people let's say in Japan or China might be a little bit mad because they downloaded your app and still in English whereas the app name and the keywords they can't see the keywords but the app name is in their native language so that's the only downside but it's a small downside to actually and the upside is huge because you get a lot more downloads for that particular region right number four I'm G to pull up my notes oh is the exclusive strategy so when you go out to PR now I've actually interviewed a couple of different reporters so the editor of the next web Steve o' here who's a writer at Tech Crunch and I thought this strategy was going away but it doesn't they both said this strategy still works so it's giving the exclusive to a publication when you're about to

7:04

launch now if you really want to be on Tech crunch on Venture beat give them the exclusive on your announcement so the strategy that I've used in the past is I actually find the right reporter and then I pitch that reporter and say exclusive to let's say I'm pitching Steve from TechCrunch exclusive to oh here and I give the subject line my my pitch so you're giving the publication the writer the first right to write the article that means you can't pitch anybody else okay you can't pitch anybody else and it works and they still said I thought it stopped working but they still both said hey we love exclusives you know they like ego I like exclusive if you make it exclusive to me I'm happy to have that too so it's sort of stroking the the blog's ego it's sort of stroking the reporter's ego but the only downside is you can't pitch anybody else until they've literally just said we're not interested most likely they're

7:59

just not going to respond which means you know they they're passing on it I've actually pitched imore an exclusive all on launch never got back to me they ended up writing about the app and I was like I'm following up here and he said oh where already wrote about and said oh okay thanks so you can do the exclusive strategy to the actual writer or to the publication if you're using the tips at techcrunch.com email address then you can say exclusive to TC and then go into your pitch so it works still it seems to be something that they still like so definitely leverage that if you're trying to get press and you're not hearing back from people and try to do press early on all right I'm going to do another blog post SLV video about this but try you got to do press really really early in the the launch process before your app is actually out there all right last one number five my favorite growth hack strategy and it's

8:53

actually more of a vanity metric if you want to think about it but it's the App Store feature hack so the app store managers at Apple hi guys they all manage a category so what you want to do is go in LinkedIn find app store manager and find the category of that person find their email address and you can use my favorite plug-in for Gmail or for Chrome is called email Hunter and that's email hunter. what that will do is put a big old button in on LinkedIn with that you can click and what it'll do is sort of guess that person's email address then you make your pitch and say hey Apple give them two weeks notice so give them two weeks notice and Pitch them say look it's coming out I generally like to wait until I have the app submitted and at least waiting for in review I would prefer you actually have it approved I think it makes the pitch sound even better because the the manager knows the the reviewers went

9:55

through it it's all good to go now that the App Store reviewed times or only a day there's no reason why you shouldn't just wait until your app is approved and you can put that into your pitch and this is the same strategy that I've used for my clients to get featured and I've actually gotten an app featured for my own app it was all it was featured just in China but we get we did pretty well and we're pretty happy with at least getting one country to feature us but you find the right sort app store manager make the pitch give them at least 2 weeks notice before you launch and if it's a game they're probably going to want you to launch on a Thursday although that may change as time goes on all right those are five of my favorite growth hacking strategies and if you want links to any of the content so this was based on an article I wrote for entrepreneur.com and I put the whole article in the link below so

10:45

you can read about it and you can read it on entrepreneur.com and it goes into specifics of each strategy and more details on how you can run and execute each and every single strategy all right guys thanks for tuning in and I'll see you on on the next video