App Marketing Strategies: The Most Effective Campaigns

- Coming up you're going to discover the most effective app marketing strategies to boost your downloads. Stay tuned. (robot machine sounds) What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.co, the place you go when you want action packed content. Today I want to talk about all the different app marketing strategies out there. You know as you're planning your launch, kinda figuring out which one you should focus on.

Is it PR? Is it an Apple feature? Is it influencer marketing, ESO? Which one is going to give the biggest bang for your buck? And I'm going to highlight all of them to you by these different parameters. But, before we get to this great infographic that we put together, if you want to see this infographic, use the link in the video or your favorite pod cast app and you can access that. But, before I do, I also want to tell you about a great event that we have coming up in September 13th and 14th, it is App Masters Connect.

We got about 20 or so ticket left, 30 max, so we sold a third already. But it's a great event that we've got people lined up, and the thing that I want to highlight, because I always figure out, I always find that at events, there's this weird division between speakers and attendees. And so we've got six speakers lined up already. What I really want to do for the three remaining spots, I think nine is a good number to hit for speakers, is source them from the attendees.

So if you are one, interested in attending, it's going to be a great event because it is one event that really has great content and two, you're gonna build meaningful connections. And isn't that why we go to events anyways, for connections? So it is the event that allows you to connect with really successful app entrepreneurs, so if you wanna do that, buy the ticket. And two, if you want to speak at the event, I'd love for you to buy the ticket and then we will figure out who's going to be speaking already there.

So it's just for me from I would like the end vision, this is why I'm doing this. The end vision is to not even ask for speakers, it's to source all the speakers from the attendees because we have such high-caliber attendees that anyone could speak, so that's why I'm doing it the way I'm doing it. Hope to see you there. If you are interested in learning more go to appmastersconnect.com, we are gonna sell out so make sure you buy your ticket pretty soon, it's appmastersconnect.com.

Alright, let's get into the infographic. Alright, here we go. So we write this, this is the infographic that you can see on the screen. And we've ranked it into different tiers, and I'll tell you why I did it this way. So what I really wanted to kind of calculate was one, effectiveness, right? So, the variables under effectiveness are gonna be control, how much you can control it. So if you see a five star or really close to five stars, you have complete control of the outcome.

Cost, five stars, extremely costly, and then downloads potential, five stars means millions of downloads. So based off of that, I tiered up each campaign that we've gotten really good at and the campaigns that I feel that most app creators think about when they're launching or promoting their app. And I have different tiers. Tier one is going to be the most cost-effective for instance. Tier twp is gonna be a little bit more expensive than tier one, but still equally pretty good in terms of cost-effectiveness.

And the last thing is tier three, I don't think you should pay too close of attention to these particular ones, unless, and there are some "unless" variables in there as well. Alright, let's get into tier one. So tier one, we have Apple feature. Look, this can translate into hundreds of thousand of downloads for your app, especially if you're a game. If you're not a game, because you've got so many clients featured by Apple.

Hold on, let me just take a second here to... I've seen so many different articles on Apple features from people who, I would assume, have not gotten any features, so they're just an app. It kinda bugs me. (laughs) But anyways, our strategies, we've gotten 12 of our clients featured by Apple and three in main, like home-page features, three in main. So I'm telling you from experience, not just reading other people's blog post that, from a control perspective, I would say you're probably in good control, meaning you gotta create a good app, and then there's enough strategies out there to get in touch with Apple.

So let's give it a three star, you don't have complete control, but you have some control. Cost wise, it doesn't really cost anything to try to get a feature. You can look back into our playlist, and I'll look that up as well, but we have a YouTube playlist about all our Apple feature strategies that you can check out. Definitely check that out. But cost wise, it's not very costly. And then downloads wise, you can get to 600,000.

I'm sorry, 600,000, six figure downloads, 100,000+ for games. And then it can get to, I would say about on the low end, five and on the high end, about 20,000-60,000 downloads for non-games. For one of our clients, they did about 50,000 downloads because of the Apple features, and this was a non-game. And then for other clients, depending on really the app, it kind of varies between five to, I would say 20, to anywhere from like 100,000 even.

But that's what the Apple feature is, and obviously, I would take focus on that because it's low cost, right? The other one, one of my favorite campaigns, is the Paid to Free campaign. It's where you make one of your in-app purchases for free if you got a free app, or if you've got a paid app, you can make it for free and you can drive a tremendous amount of downloads. Control wise, you have complete control over this because it's literally, the way to do it is to reach out to the press, and so if you can build up a good enough relationship, you can really get covered and featured by the two sites.

The biggest sites that I found are AppAdvice and BGR. So control wise, it's in your control, and obviously, pricing, the in-app purchases, that's in your control as well. Cost, very little cost. And then downloads, I gave it three stars because while we've hit 100,000 before, twice actually, for a couple of different clients, you generally are probably in the 5,000-20,000, so kind of like an Apple feature actually, while I'm recording this, kind of like an Apple feature.

And cost wise, it's very low, right? You're giving up potential revenue, but even with giving up the revenue part, only about, from my experience, only about 11% take advantage of the free in-app purchase, so you're not even giving as much as you think. And from a downloads perspective, it's a really great way, a low cost-effective way, to drive downloads. The last one in tier one would be App Store optimization. Now this, I would say you don't have complete control over it.

You do have some control over it because Apple has their algorithm and Google has their own algorithm. But control wise, you can pretty much control how you want to approach App Store optimization. Cost wise, I put two stars just because it would be very cost-effective if you learned how to do it yourself. Like, we'll do it. That's how I've been able to do it. I just interviewed people on my podcast and learned from them and then because of that, I've gotten really good at App Store optimization.

So cost wise it can be really low, but if you do hire somebody, that's why I put it at two stars, then it might get pretty high for that. Downloads wise, I put it in the realm of Paid to Free at three stars because I feel like there is a ceiling for App Store optimization. Like, you're not going to get the millions of downloads. While it'll definitely help, and if you're doing any UA, it's gonna feed into the organic growth.

I just did a great interview with the VP of ad marketing and ad monetization at Kongregate, and he talked a lot about this. Using app store optimization and UA to help each other out in the long term because a part of the algorithm is downloads, the number of downloads you're able to achieve. So if you've got a UA campaign going, then obviously optimizing your app name and your keywords is gonna certainly help you with that as well, it's gonna feed into each other.

Alright, let's go into tier two. And I'll start to speed it up a little bit more as well. Facebook ads, I love it, but this obviously can get a little bit more costly. You have complete control over it, you know who to target, you've created a good game, you control the creative, so all that is within your control. But I think cost wise, it can get a little bit more expensive than some of the campaigns that I have up there, but you can scale that.

And downloads wise it has the potential to drive millions of downloads if you have the money for it. Video ads on ad networks, they seem to be the most, the best converting ones. And you can see one, they're the best converting from a CPI perspective and two, they're the best performing in terms of CPM perspective monetization standpoint. So it's a win-win for all parties. You're gonna see video ads really exploding, they've already been pretty much out there, but really great way to drive downloads.

Control, again, you have control over the creative. Cost wise, again, very costly. You're looking at CPI's of probably $2+. Facebook ads, if you optimize it really well, you can get under $1, and then video ads probably $1-2 for this. Then downloads wise, it can get millions and millions of downloads. So a lot of these tier twos, they can drive a lot of downloads, and tier one, you might hit a ceiling with tier one, but they're very cost-effective.

So a blended approach of tier one, tier two, is probably the best strategy, and that's why a lot of the big game companies are doing this, it's a blended a strategy of both apple feature and then user acquisition. So tier two is probably more user acquisition, tier one is more like growth hacking in a way. The other thing within tier two is influencer marketing. Gotten really good success, especially for games with influencer marketing.

Trend Pie is a sponsor of the podcast and a good friend of mine as well, and we use them for our clients and we've seen some really good results. So if you're a game, influencer marketing, I would really think about that. Or even in the health and then productivity space, influencer marketing would do pretty well. Again, you have the control, meaning you figure out from an influencers' perspective, is it musically? Is it twitter? Is it Instagram?

Is it YouTube? You control which social media network you want to go towards. For these influencers, cost wise it can get very costly running these campaigns. And a lot of the bigger game companies are spending six figures on influencer marketing campaigns and driving tremendous amounts of downloads. So again, you can hit millions of downloads using this particular campaign. And lastly, I wanted to put this into the tier two bucket as well, Apple Search ads, really effective, Google AdWords, really effective in helping you drive cost-effective downloads.

And so control wise, again, you have the control. You figure out which keywords you want to target, and how much you're willing to pay for them. Cost wise it can get up there if you're not targeting properly, so be careful with that. And then downloads wise, I kind of brought it down to about three stars. I do think you're going to tap out after a while or you're just gonna have to continue paying more. These are the tier two campaigns.

And then lastly, I want to talk about the tier three's. These are probably campaigns that I wouldn't focus too much of my attention on, because we've gotten really good at this. So Product Hunt is one great site for press. It's like a Reddit or a Digg, but for products really cool. I've bought about $3,000 or $5,000 for my eBook. This was early on in Product Hunt days, but that was an eBook that was hunted on Sunday actually.

We hit number one and so forth, but it brought a good amount of revenue on Product Hunt, so really good. But I feel like with Product Hunt, one, you have to know a Moderator, it's beyond your control, that's why I have it as two stars. If you know a Moderator, great, you can do a lot better on there. Cost wise, it's practically nothing unless you know a Moderator. I mean, if you know a Moderator, it's practically nothing.

It's kind of like PR, cost wise, you can do it yourself and it doesn't really cost you anything besides time. Downloads wise, that's why I kind of threw it out into tier three, it's been okay. A lot of our clients have been featured number one, number two, they've done fairly well, but it is just that spike of 1,000 downloads for one of our clients who we ran all these campaigns on pretty much. Apple feature, paid to free, influencer marketing, and Product Hunt on, and obviously the apple feature did great, but I would say Product Hunt was about 1,000 downloads, and that was really good, we were up there.

But the paid to free did 12,000 downloads for our app, and if I didn't have the connection at Product Hunt, Product Hunt is a lot more. (laughs) If I have the connection app advice, great, I got 12,000 downloads from it Product Hunt, we had 1,000. We had to get up boats, we had to tell our friends to do that, so it was just so much work where, the paid to free, I just said, "Hey Tyler, I got this "app, would you mind covering it?", and he did, and we drove 12,000, whereas Product Hunt, we only drove 1,000.

So that's why I say it's not as effective as it once was. Still a great platform, so if you get number one on there, I know for the apple features we said, "Hey, we're featuring "on Product Hunt, go check us out there, too", so it's a great way to leverage for other outcomes but not so much if you're just thinking about downloads per say. And last thing is PR. Look, we've done a lot of PR, we've been on TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Mashable, The Next Web, all the big major tech blogs, and the way I put this on...

I mean, even Paki Gamer, and TouchArcade for games. So we've been on all these major sites and the one thing that I don't like about press is control wise, you have very little control. It's kind of like Apple, right? You have very little control, it's editorial, so you're pitching somebody, reporter, editor and so forth, to say, "Hey look, my app is pretty cool. "Do you think it's cool?", and if they think it's cool, then they'll feature you.

But if you compare that with an Apple feature, I'd rather focus on getting somebody an Apple editorial to like my app because that can lead to tremendous amounts of downloads, whereas press coverage, you're not going to get that many downloads. So I would say PR, I would just throw that out the window. Unless, and this is the only time that I would kind of think about PR is one, this is just for apps obviously, one, you're trying to raise money, you're trying to raise more, another round of funding, so investors want to see that you've got some activity out there, that becomes important.

Two, you've got a long-term play, meaning you're in this for the long haul and you're trying to build a brand, you want to build a brand or yourself, and that's where PR comes in to play, I want to build a brand. But if you're an indie, you're like, "I don't give a "crap about brand right now. I just want downloads that "I can turn into users and users into revenue", and that's all you're focused on, then don't worry about PR.

PR is really for the bigger guys who are trying to build a brand, and that's who we target when we really think about PR. So that's it, those are the three different tiers. If I missed something, let me know, and say, "Hey, Steve, what about this particular campaign?", I'm happy to redo this infographic. But for now, these are things that we've gotten really good at and these are things that I've heard just from people.

But for the most part these are things that we have experience with and that's why I'm able to put them into different tiers. Unlike other people, I'm telling you from being a practitioner, not just from reading other blogs as well. Alright, guys, if you are enjoying this content, if you want a deeper, another level on how to execute every single one, so what I'm doing is opening up our playbook, and I've opened up before, and it seemed like it was too costly for most people, and I get it.

I think at $1,000-3,000, at that price point, you're probably thinking about, "Hey, can I just pay "you, Steve, to execute on it?". So what we're doing is making it really, really affordable. It's gonna be a monthly fee, I haven't figured out pricing exactly yet, but it's gonna be a monthly fee under $100 per month. If you want access to it, it's in pre-order mode right now, but if you want access to it, it's coming out after the 4th of July week.

So if you want access to it, go to appmasters.co/playbook, and sign up to be on a special invite list where you get that special pricing when we launch. So appmasters.co/playbook, it walks you through our apple feature strategy, how to do the paid to free strategy, which I'm uploading that course on our complete ASO strategy, so literally tier one is all in there for you. Tier two, we've got the Facebook ads, we've got influencer marketing courses on there as well, and even Apple Search ads.

That's in tier two. In tier three, I have my PR and Product Hunt courses if that is something that is relevant to you, we have those courses as well. So if you want access to all that for one low monthly price, my phone just went off, it's appmasters.co/playbook. And lastly, the Santa Cruise event if you want to check it out, it's appmastersconnect.com. Alright guys, I'll see you next time. Bye.