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Case Study: 14.5K Downloads with a Paid-to-Free Campaign

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App Masters11:27Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Making a paid app or an in-app purchase free for a couple of days, with press coverage, is the best growth hack in apps. It brings about 15,000 downloads, lifts other apps, and raises keyword rank at almost no real cost.

Key takeaways

  • A free campaign brings thousands of downloads within days. 2:23
    • Paintball Rush got 14,500 downloads in about a week, and most came in the first two days.
    • BGR covered it on August 2 and App Advice on August 3, and the day before the app had about five downloads.
  • The campaign costs almost no real money. 4:36
    • Only 14% of the nearly 15,000 downloads took the free in-app purchase.
    • With a $1 to $2 price, the giveaway is about $2,000 to $3,000 of potential revenue, not cash spent.
  • The campaign also lifts the rest of the portfolio. 5:47
    • Spaceman Dodgeball, which got almost no downloads, rose 490% week over week.
    • Four people bought other in-app purchases, such as the mega pack.
  • The download spike pushes the app up in keyword search. 8:00
    • The app reached number two for "paintball" and still got about 400 downloads a day on day five. A past campaign on another app fell back to zero by day four.
    • That rank brought about 1,000 or more organic downloads, though it later slipped to about number 11.

I'm able to drive 15,000 downloads in a matter of days without really spending a dime.

Steve P. Young, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 What a paid-to-free campaign is

A short free window plus press coverage can turn a monetized app into a download engine.

  • The campaign works for paid apps and for free apps. 1:10
    • A paid app goes free for a couple of days, gets press and drives thousands of downloads.
    • A free app makes one in-app purchase free instead.
    • It has also worked for virtual goods, such as gems for a character.
    • Client results can't be shared, so the numbers come from his own game.
  • Paintball Rush is the test case. 1:43
    • Apple featured it in May, in China only, and that brought about 30,000 downloads.
    • He wanted more downloads after the feature ended.
    • He says he can rerun the campaign and get press any time he wants.

2:23 The numbers behind the campaign

Press timing and the shape of the offer decide how big the spike is.

  • Coverage on two separate days shaped the spike. 2:45
    • He wanted both sites to cover the app on the same day, but App Advice ran a day later.
    • Day four shows the residual effect of the App Advice story.
    • Past campaigns usually fell back to zero, so he compares this one with them later.
  • Press coverage required a second free purchase. 4:11
    • Two in-app purchases went free: double stars and remove ads.
    • App Advice's Tyler wouldn't cover an app with ads, but agreed once ads were removed.
    • The campaign was first built around double stars, number three in the list.
    • The data comes from his best portfolio, where he keeps his good apps.

5:44 Other apps and purchases gain too

A free campaign sends buyers to the rest of a developer's catalog, most of all in games.

  • Apps with many in-app purchases and game portfolios gain the most 9:07
    • Friends running the campaign reported more in-app purchases.
    • Players who like one game go browse the publisher's other games.
    • Young can't share his friends' data, so he shows his own, which is small.
    • Another client ran the same campaign and saw a much bigger purchase increase.
    • The camera app O Snap draws few downloads, while Spaceman Dodgeball is a game, so it gets browsed.

6:58 Rank keeps downloads coming

Apple rewards a download spike with keyword rank, and that rank brings organic downloads after the press fades.

  • Usually a free spike collapses within days 6:58
    • O Snap went free and got about 30,000 downloads in a couple of days.
    • It was back near zero by day four.
    • Press landed on the 2nd (BGR) and the 3rd (App Advice), so a decline was expected from the 3rd and 4th.
    • Young expected hundreds of downloads a day by the 5th.
  • Paintball Rush kept selling because its rank rose 8:20
    • Downloads climbed on the 3rd and 4th, and Apple then raised the rank for "paintball".
    • That rank alone is worth about 400 downloads a day, by Young's estimate.
    • The 5th brought 437 downloads, when the app should have been dead.
    • Young is working on a way back to the top spot and will share that data in a later case study.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency and app publisher. A paid-to-free campaign, where a paid app or an in-app purchase goes free for a couple of days and gets press coverage, can drive thousands of downloads at almost no cost. Paintball Rush got about 14.5K downloads in a week, lifted downloads for the publisher's other apps, and climbed to number two for the keyword 'paintball'.

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

Transcript286 lines
0:01

coming up I'm going to share a case study with real data on the impact of running a pay to free campaign and why I believe it is by far the greatest growth hack in the app space stay

0:27

tuned what is up app Nation is Steve Pou young founder of appmaster doco the place you go when you want real data real numbers of campaigns of strategies that are working in the app space one of my most popular videos you have to check out is where I compare Center Tower to mobile action and just why it's so valuable that you might need both tools when running apps or optimization but for this particular video I want to share the results real numbers with you of running a payto free campaign brief overview read about it I'm going to link it up to the show notes about what this whole campaign is about so if you don't aren familiar with it I'm going just tell you a quick overview it's where a paid app goes free for a couple of days you get pressed for it and you drive thousands of downloads but what I discovered through running this agency and also helping clients and doing all my own is that you can make if you have

1:26

a free app you can make one of your inapp purchases for free we've even done it for virtual Goods so think a character where you have to buy gems we made those for free and run this campaign successfully but I can't share those numbers because they're my clients but I can share the numbers for paintball Rush which is an app that we publish a game that we publish and it was featured by Apple in May drove about 30,000 downloads through the Apple feature it was only featured in China but it drove 30,000 downloads just in China alone so we found it to be successful uccessful and I wanted to drive more downloads and I know this is a campaign that I can continually run anytime and get pressed for frankly any time I want and so I want to share sort of why I believe real numbers on why I believe this is the growest the grest the greatest growth hack in the app space so let's share some numbers here as you can see paintball Rush did

2:28

14.5 th000 downloads within a matter of a week so really the biggest impact that you're going to see if you want to run this campaign you make it free for a couple of days the biggest impacts are going to be coming within the first two days that's it and you you usually see a drop off so as you can see on August 2nd is when we got BGR to cover it August 3rd app advice actually covered it I wanted both sites to cover on the same day but I'll go into why appid device didn't cover on the second they decided to cover on third and then in the fourth you see the residual effect of the app advice coverage and then the fifth and sixth and seventh I'm going to share some real data on why I'm still able to drive downloads and compare it with my other campaigns you usually go back down to zero after running this campaign but because we ran this campaign successfully I'm going to share why I believe that it still continue to drive

3:25

downloads it's not huge but it was doing a lot more I think we had five okay on July 1 on August 1st there like five downloads and then as you can see running this campaign we got hundreds of downloads or thousands of downloads okay let's look at the real numbers here so 14.5 downloads for paintball rush you can see this is all my other apps on this actual profile you see that you know there's some good data I'm go in depth in some of them but here it is this is all the data from everything within my app portfolio I have another app portfolio but this is the app portfolio that I'm more proud of so I keep all my good apps here all right so let's look at this here's the key thing only 14% so like I said this was a free app we made one of the inapp purchases we actually made two of the inapp purchases for free so what happened was we're actually running this campaign for double Stars the double the stars number

4:19

three that you see right here but app device didn't want to cover it because we had ads so I asked Tyler if he would cover it if I said remove ads he said sure so I had to remove I had to make the remove ads free too but out of the close to 15,000 downloads only 14% took advantage of the inapp purchase so if we thought 14,000 was going to take advantage of it let's say I think our remove ads is a dollar or $2 but we're giving up maybe $2,000 $3,000 running this campaign we're able to drive 14,000 and this is not even real money that we're playing with this is like potential money so really it's a free campaign that we're running and driving 14,000 downloads for this particular app right 15,000 downloads and only a small percentage of people are taking advantage of the actual free product brilliant right like why wouldn't you run this campaign but there's more now check this out I was actually able to increase downloads for

5:27

my other apps what what get out of here and if you even look at some of the mega packs now they're not huge numbers but if you have an app that has lots of Ana purchases you can see it the 7 eight and N those are the other inapp purchases that are in the app people still bought those so we got an increase in downloads for our other apps and look at the games right went up 490 increase in my Spaceball Spaceman dodgeball which gets pretty much no downloads at all that went up week over week and then the mega pack some people bought you know four people it's not much but four people bought the other Ina purchases now if you have an app like a productivity app or something else with a lot of inapp purchases you can see the VA the value of running this campaign because I've heard from other friends I can't share their data they're like hey we got a lot of increase in our inapp purchases running this campaign

6:24

and I said all right well let me just share the data of my own app so that people can see that it is true it's not much but my other client that we ran this for he got a real big increase I didn't but I'm not jealous or anything but as you can see the power of driving this and if it's a game and you have portfolio of all games just think because o snap is a camera app I can see why not a lot of people are downloading that but Spaceman dodgeball they're checking out other games they like your game they're going to go check out the other games that you have in your portfolio Okay now here's the cool thing that I found out too by running this campaign so this is osnap that I made free we did about 30,000 downloads within a couple of days and as you can see it went straight up and then went straight back down almost practically right you see the first couple of days and the third day by the fourth day

7:12

we're pretty much back at zero that's what generally happened but it didn't happen with paintball rush and I'll share why in a bit so here's what happened okay on the third is when we got app advice the second is when we got BGR so we can expect until probably the fifth is when we're going to start trickling down right so the third and fourth is when we start trickling down and by the fifth we should be pretty much close to where we are in the hundreds but guess what happened we were still driving about 400 plus downloads a day I was like what what was happening here why was why was this happening I didn't I didn't get it I was like okay I'd be happy to continue at that 400 downloads rate for free right organic downloads so I started looking at the data guess what happened on those days we were actually number two for the term paintball yeah so just if you look at this right the second is when we went

8:09

free the third we started driving some more volume for the day for down download Volume and the fourth we're driving a lot of volume and Apple started increasing our rank for the term paintball and this is why you're able to see hey we're still driving good amount of volume good amount of downloads for this for this app organically now when it should be dead by now because we're number two so on the fourth you see 400 437 on the 5th and by the fourth we're number two already so we're still driving downloads and as you take it further we're we're about number 11 right now so it started dipping I'm trying to figure out a way back to get back to number two so that would be a later case study but once I get back to number two I'll share some of the data again like hey without running any campaigns here's where we're at organically as you can tell so I can kind of guess that organically if I'm ranking number two

9:08

for paintball I'm able to drive about 400 downloads a day just by being number two for paintball that turn paintball that's what the cool thing was you started increasing ranks for what for doing nothing besides running a pay to- free campaign I'm able to drive 15,000 downloads in a matter of days and also organic downlo started increasing because of the the increas in rank for paintball so I would let me sum this up because I'm not doing a good job summing up let me sum this up so why I believe the three reasons why I believe this is the gr greatest growth hack number one I'm able to drive 15,000 downloads in a matter of days without really spending a dime no brainer there number two I got an increase in inapp purchases and an increase in downloads for my other apps by doing nothing but running this campaign and lastly I saw an increase in my keyword ranking for paintball really highly competitive term I'm able to get

10:09

number two and still drive organic downloads I got a probably about a thousand plus organic downloads just from running this campaign because I was able to increase ranks for painball three reasons no-brainer if you want to learn more about this campaign and how to run it yourself I have a mini Cor that I'm promoting you don't have to check this out so there is a blog post that tells you exactly how to run this campaign but if you want to know sort of the hidden tricks of making sure that this is a successful campaign and if you want my email scripts that I use when I'm pitching the press that ensures that I'm all I can almost guarantee at least one of the sites will cover it if not both you you buy this course you get the exact email script that I use when I'm emailing the two sites that I mentioned all right so if you want to get access to this it is m M s.co p2f that's two the number two F

11:07

atms. p2f all right guys thank you so much I hope this was valuable if you found anything out of this let me know and if you run this campaign tell me the results too you want me to use it as a case study thank you so much for your attention and I'll see you on the next video bye