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Growth Channels for a Niche App

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App Masters22:21Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

A niche app like Waterspeed grows best by sharpening its App Store keywords, charging more, and reaching its sport communities itself. Paid marketing help can wait, because most of these gains can be done alone.

Key takeaways

  • A niche app hits a ceiling on search traffic. 7:03
    • Waterspeed is stuck at about 50 downloads a day, and "sailing" is crowded and hard to rank for.
    • Steve suggests picking the sport with the most traffic. Surf, surfing and surf report show more search volume.
  • Renaming the app around the biggest search terms is the first fix. 16:00
    • Put surf and surfing in the app name and repeat them in the subtitle. Sailing stays in as a close second.
    • "Kayak" shows the most volume, but probably only because an app called Kayak exists, so it is not a real signal.
  • A yearly price of about $6 is too low and should go up. 7:56
    • That is about 50 cents a month. Conversions may fall, but serious sailors and surfers who own expensive gear will still pay.
    • A higher price also pays for ads, because each subscriber earns more.
  • Press, trial offers and Reddit can bring users at almost no cost. 8:45
    • Run a longer free trial, such as 14 days instead of 7, and pitch it to App Advice. Steve's clients saw a big jump in downloads and subscription revenue.
    • On the sailing, surfing and kayaking subreddits, tell your story and ask for feedback. Don't just ask people to download.
  • Paid marketing help is not needed until the free steps are done. 11:46
    • Steve's agency starts at $3,000, yet he advises easy tweaks first, because many people want help when they don't need it.
    • Apple Search Ads gives $100 free to test. It shows how many of the 50 daily downloads turn into paying subscribers, and so how much can be spent.

I just think on a grander scale people do feel like they need marketing help when really they probably don't need that much marketing.

Steve Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 A watch-first speed tracker that has stopped growing

Waterspeed works well and users like it, but growth stalled after launch.

  • The app tracks speed on the water from the Apple Watch alone. 1:46
    • No iPhone is needed on the water.
    • The watch syncs to the phone on land for review.
    • Max is a former developer who took up sailing last year and found no app that fit.
    • He calls it somehow a runtastic for water sports, with features built only for water sports.
  • It launched in June, and good feedback has not turned into more downloads. 3:10
    • It has some thousands of users, and they love it.
    • Max has already tuned keywords, the video and the screenshots on his own.
    • Revenue is a subscription, and he wonders if he needs Apple or Facebook ads.
    • Steve finds the app well-designed, with little he would change 4:56.

5:03 Choosing a lead sport and the next channels

Search volume by country should decide which sport leads, and community channels cover what search cannot.

  • Steve wants one lead sport, but Max wants to keep all four. 5:03
    • The app covers sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing and paddling.
    • Windsurfing is big in Europe. Sailing and paddling are bigger in the US.
    • Steve says to localize the name by country, such as a surfing version for the US.
    • Max's own research agrees that sailing is overcrowded.
    • "Surfing" also catches unrelated searches like couch surfing.
  • Reddit and Facebook are the untapped next step. 7:03
    • Steve calls Reddit an untapped network with a vibrant community.
    • Sailors there would likely love the app.
    • Steve's example: if 450 downloads bring one subscriber, Max can work out what he can afford to spend.

7:45 Pricing, trials and whether to pay for help

Higher prices and a press-backed trial can grow revenue, and paid help is optional.

  • Hardcore buyers will accept a higher price. 8:00
    • People pay about $8 a month for Netflix without a second thought.
    • Steve guesses Max himself would pay around $20 a year.
    • Sailing is an expensive sport, so its buyers already spend on gear.
    • Steve says people who balk at the price don't care about this crap anyway.
  • Max's choice is to stay at his current pace or pay for help. 10:00
    • Staying put means two or three new subscribers a day, about $500 a month.
    • Steve's packages include rounds of ASO, help with an Apple feature and the trial campaign.
    • Max guesses next year could bring $1,000 a month.
    • The press connection is the key part. Steve thinks anyone can run the campaign, though some clients couldn't get it done.

11:11 Hiring help comes after the product is ready

Most founders want paid marketing help before they have exhausted what they can fix themselves.

  • The right choice depends on the founder's long-term goal. 11:23
    • Someone who wants this to be a full-time career should hire help and learn from it.
    • Steve works with clients to teach them, so they can run things alone afterward.
    • Steve says he would rather figure things out himself than hire someone, but that people differ.
    • An agency job is meant to be shared work, not offloading tasks.
  • Fix the product before spending on marketing. 12:52
    • A game developer planned to spend $5,000 to $10,000 on help after an earlier game failed.
    • The new game was not much different from the old one.
    • Steve told him to improve the game first. The earlier failure was probably the game, not missing help.

13:30 Finding the jump from 50 to 1,000 downloads

Growth comes from a sequence: fix keywords, raise exposure, then spend on ads once the numbers show what they return.

  • Max has no US press contacts, but he has already won press once. 13:46
    • He is Italian and lives in Dubai. He got a feature in Gazzetta dello Sport, which has about 10 million daily readers.
    • Steve says he needs confidence, not a US address. He can approach US outlets the same way.
  • Change keywords first, then run campaigns and ads in order. 17:24
    • Put Waterspeed, surf, sailing and kayak in the name, then repeat surfing in the subtitle.
    • Next run the free-trial growth campaign, then Apple Search Ads once download volume rises.
    • Target competitors such as Surfline. Surf report is a suggested search term.
    • Search ads only work if the higher price lets him pay for the traffic.
  • Impressions show whether a change is working before downloads move. 18:13
    • For one client after iOS 11, impressions tripled, from a few hundred to thousands.
    • Downloads rose only about 6%, so the next step was changing screenshots.
    • Max asked how long a keyword should run. Steve gave no fixed time and pointed to this data instead.

19:14 Doing the outreach alone

Promotion and community outreach can be done by the founder.

  • Max can run the promotion himself. 19:23
    • Steve does not know the sailing or kayaking worlds either, so he cannot supply contacts.
    • His edge is marketing and storytelling, and Max can tell his own story as well.
    • He should pitch a well-designed app the way he pitched the Italian paper.

20:33 When to work together

Spring is the better time to start, because winter is the low season for water sports.

  • Steve is open to collaborating, but later. 21:33
    • He likes the design and sees the Apple Watch integration as the app's strength.
    • The app also works on an iPhone alone, like Runtastic.
    • A pitch in spring ("surfing is coming up, get ready for summer") fits the season. They agreed to a follow-up call after Max starts tweaking.

In the growth library

Massimiliano Picchi and Steve P. Young, Creator of Waterspeed (the coachee); Steve P. Young, founder of App Masters, as coach. A coaching call for a niche Apple Watch app for water sports stuck at 50 downloads a day. It covers raising subscription prices, focusing ASO on higher-volume terms, running a longer-trial press campaign, testing search ads and community channels, and why many app makers need less marketing help than they think.

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

Transcript506 lines
0:00

coming up is a coaching call with someone who created an app that is the run keeper for water sports called water speed you'll discover what growth channels are best for a niche app why you should increase your in-app purchase prices and why you probably don't need any sort of marketing help all that it's so much more hey guys it's Stevie Young founder of rap Masters Co now before we get started on this coaching call with max I do want to let you know that the video does freeze a bit it a bit but the audio is fine and dandy and I think the content is good so bear with me with the video I was at home I was in a rush that day but I was managed to record the call it does freeze but the audio still works and there's some very valuable nuggets in there so stay tuned without further ado here is the coaching call yeah I'm alive all right hi max so I've no idea what the app is about but tell me about yeah

1:18

where you see if I'm good and you're calling all the way from Dubai right yeah okay well tell me about the company ok so I got this idiom last year because I started sailing them and I didn't find any app that could help me in on the water just using the Apple watch okay and in my previous life I was a developer now I'm totally different but so I decided to try to develop for my own an app that is tracking in real time your speed you're hitting on the water while you're sailing or windsurfing or any sport on the water okay so use your Apple watch with without using any iPhone and you get how you are performing okay then when you come back on the land the Apple watch synchronizing automatically with the iPhone and you can track you can review let me tell you is somehow a runtastic for water sports so you said it's like runtastic but for water sports got it yes what a bit differently is to specialized features

2:51

just for the watersports that is not running is not cycling of course I'm not runtastic but I'm trying to do my best job for the water sports okay so what so I did it I published in June now I have some thousands of users and they got me very amazing feedback they love the app the app is working very well and so what I've done is to learn by myself a s oh I started I try to search my keywords I'm using a mobile election I'm using up any I've tried to you know improve this partum and and I'm now I have an average of 50 download per day and someone is paying because I have the in Apple chasing is a subscription ok it's a cult Matt what's your otters water speed bill one-word no-spaces one word okay water speed yeah I tried I put a video I'd be the screenshots I on my very small experience I try to do my best to follow all things to do when publishing so my problem now is that I'm not really

4:27

growing with downloads just working on the SAO because my little limited experience but also because I'm missing something else maybe marketing maybe I need to do Apple advertisement maybe I need to do Facebook advertisement maybe I need to do something else that I don't know because I'm stuck to 50 download birthday when I think my app is worth it more because it's very well done and it's very useful number yeah I'm looking at the app I think it's phenomenally it's well-designed there's nothing that I would change too much the thing that I would look at from a market perspective is is it sailing right because I feel like it's me when it's when you're talking about sailing I could be completely wrong I'm not in that market is it sailing or is it surfing like pick one of those things which one has more traffic they saw for those two it's for sports on the water so it's for sailing windsurfing kitesurfing and paddling but

5:29

do you know what which one has more traffic which one's the bigger market right depends on depends on the on the country windsurfing is very famous in Europe where sailing and paddling is more famous in United States so to be honest I don't know and I get your suggestion but I'd like to my wish is to keep on at least this three four sports because they are pretty famous so no I'm with you I just think when I'm Justin when I'm looking at your app name for example you know I see wind speed sail surfing kayak now you can localize it by different countries if you know that surfing is huge in the US and not saline and if it has a higher volume I might call it water speed surfing or certain timer right like I hear let me just look at what people are searching for in the App Store it go surf yeah you know that I also made my research from words and sailing is pretty famous but it's very overwhelmed it's not very big it's not

6:44

very easy to be ranked at on just on sailing right so like surf report is one that I got surfing is the other one couch surfing flip surfing it could be surfing so that's what I would analyze from an ASO perspective I think from it is so like you will hit a ceiling right like there's just a ceiling like there's just so much that you can capture so what I would explore too is Reddit and Facebook right I think reddit is an untapped social network per se because there is a vibrant community and probably somebody that would be talking about saline would love that right that's what the other channel is I would explore now max if you know like hey I know like 450 downloads I'm gonna get one subscriber right then you could back out the math about how much you can potentially spend based on how much you're gonna bring in revenue that's what I would look at - it's like okay well how much can i really afford to pay

7:43

for this alright I think you're on subscription right yeah so there's my favorite growth hack of all time really works well for subscription that I would run to is I know it's monthly monthly $1 yearly is about $6 correct so yeah I think you can go higher on that like you're not you're not gonna have a really successful huge business just charge you six dollars a year that's really cheap like that's like 50 cents a month so I might play around the pricing because I think while your conversions might decrease you're gonna get the hardcore people anyway like yourself alright like how much did you pay for this app right probably $20 a year it's like nothing off it's nothing right so I mean people justify paying a Netflix subscription for 8 bucks a month I mean if they don't they don't care about this crap and you're gonna go after the hardcore people anyways so they're gonna be willing to pay they're probably look

8:35

at the surfboard or they're stealing like Sayle is an expensive sport right like you got much yep so I would charge more and then the subscription wise the growth hack that I love I have a youtube video about this where I say you know here's how you grow attack a subscription now you know there's a pay to free campaign where you can go a longer trial period for your monthly so if it's seven-day you say I'm going 14 days and then you get press for it so that's the vital thing you have to get press for on an app advice so email Tyler at app advice and say hey Tyler you know my normal subscription for my kite surfing I went sailing app is seven-day trial but we're gonna do a longer trial for these couple of days for 14 days and every time I done that for a couple of our clients we've seen a tremendous increase in downloads for yours and my be a little bit niche but you'll see good downloads and then we actually see

9:28

subscription revenue go up too but how can I reach these kind of contacts we can do together and what should be the budget for doing that ok so I thought this was just a complete coaching call I don't sell that on let me tell you that zip up I'm thinking I'm thinking if I should really be serious on this up that now is just my night activity ok I can keep drawing 50 download per day and two three new subscription per day and which may be five hundred dollars per month next year and no one thousand dollars next year maybe or maybe I can decide to put some money and try to do something different I'm not an expert I don't know it is the right way to do that and if I can find some good growth hacking just spending some money some thousand dollars I don't know what do you suggest so if you wanted to work with me our base package packages start at three thousand and includes this campaign what

10:50

do we do is a couple of rounds of ASO will help you with an apple feature and then we have that pay to free campaign that we can run because the thing about the pay to free campaign is having the connection is key to but I think anybody can do it but you know like obviously people have come to me and said hey CI I couldn't get it done I'm like whoa I mean I'm like I've done a good job of building up that connection so yes I get that sometimes it doesn't always work but for me it pretty much works being so that's what I would do but I mean the way I would answer that max is it's something you have to figure out in terms like what your long-term goal is because I think a lot of people think that you can you don't know enough right like Max and I think you know a lot already and I think that some people are like hey let me hire some professional help because you think it would actually make a huge

11:39

improvement and sometimes that's not always the case where I think there's a lot of things that you can get done on your own that you can still find success for so what I would do if I are you is easy tweaks and I think it would be fine but if you're like no I really want this to be my full-time thing I want to learn from this and I think that's the way I approach any client that I work with is like hey I'm not here to just for you to offload some work I'm here to also like work together teach you different things so that you know hopefully after we're done working together you will figure stuff out on your own - and that's my end goal but it's it's completely up to you because I don't think I've always been the type that I'd rather just figure out on my own rather than hire somebody but certain people are different but I also want to you know say that hey sometimes I talk to people like whoa you know I'll have

12:31

to check out the applicant guy I talked to yesterday last week I said it seems like you feel like you're being making a mistake because I looked at his game I was like it's not that much different right and he was telling me he created a game way back in the day it didn't work out and so he ended up not like scrapping all together but now he created this brand-new game he's putting it together and now he's gonna spend some money so he's like five or ten thousand dollars you want to spend on this on this happen I said look the game is not that much different if he was like you just want help for the sake of wanting help right but the game itself is not that much different and so you're feeling so I said go focus on the game itself make it better and then spend that money because right now you just feel like oh you know didn't work last time because I don't have professional help no that's not why it didn't work is

13:15

because your game sucked probably right so I'm not saying that that's the case for you but I just think on a grander scale people do feel like they need marketing help when really they probably don't need that much marketing so afford for after after studying and researching what I feel now is that I don't know what can drive me from 50 to 1,000 downloads maybe I have in my mind I should be feature on some on some magazine maybe or I should find some connections that spreading the voice in some other channels but I don't have any connections in us because I'm Italian living in Dubai so it's not easy for me I can try to find from the scratch I did it in Italy today if I have an article in the home page of the selling page of gazeta Punto Gazzetta dello Sport that is the the first newspaper the the first newspaper in Italy they have like 10 millions of daily daily readers I did by myself but

14:37

is in Italy it is not in u.s. yes so I don't know if I should keep going by myself trying to speak with people and try to create my own connection or maybe do something different give me Steve I got from your messages from from from your videos and from your website that you have the right approach with customers you are not a shark otherwise I wouldn't be here okay so I'm not I don't think you just want my three thousand dollars at once because it's not creating your future so what is your suggestion just trying to make some tweaks to improved by myself just to learn some small group you know heaps yeah also max the the tip that I would give is I did a quick little search on mobile action just to see where things fall in so surf is the one category that will go after right I look at Apple's search ads to one I would increase my yearly subscription revenue numbers and I would just play around with that and I think

15:57

you can charge a lot more for this app because you're gonna get the hardcore people to I would focus reorganized my app name on search related terms so like surf right now kayak has the most volume that's probably because there's a app called kayak not necessary because people care about kinda more right so yeah I say surf and surfing are probably the terms that I would go after if I'm in the US and the sailing is not far behind but it is in there but I would rearrange the app name that way the other thing I would look at is so like definitely go after competitors I think would be key because if you look at it surf report is the dotto suggested one so think through like surf line was the one that I saw in the app store see if Apple search ads would work for you and it would only work for you if you can pay that traffic if you're able to charge more and earn more to write it completely makes sense so how much how

16:51

much it should be dad I don't know because that you gotta gonna have to go into the search ads and figure out cost per tap and everything else I started with a small budget you know Apple gives you a hundred bucks for free to play around with that because then I could say you know what the conversion rate is right with the fifty downloads how many paying subscribers are you getting right done no based off of that then you know like okay I know I can paper-towel about this right and so that's what I would focus on number one it's going into that route and then I mean the way I would do this do this do the ASO just we modify the terms a little bit and then what I would do is like put you know wince water speed surf saline and kayak or whatever it is and then in the subtitle put surfing blah blah blah like repeat that right quit surfing and then after I do that then I would run my growth hack

17:47

with a page of free campaign and then I'll run some search ads on it because then I know that the balance volume is gonna go up and then now I can see okay based on the down-low volume what I'm able to do obviously with that update I charge more for my subscription and then I run some search ads on and how long it should be a keyword should run to get ranking or to give me the right feedback I'm on a day only a day yeah for a client of ours I just looked at the data with iOS 11 things are starting to a lot the we it was a small increase in downloads about 6% wasn't huge because iOS 11 is just really really different but we like tripled his impressions we triple the impressions now I'm like all right I know I'm getting more exposure because you went from like a few hundred to thousands of impressions now alright now I've done good work I know my process will always increase impressions now it's like okay what do I need to

18:45

modify I already told them I need to we need to change some screenshots we need to do some things around that and now I think that's the next step because now the data that says okay small increase in downloads pretty much flat if you think about it right but now okay that gives me data to see okay what else do I need to move next on so like look at your competitors surf line all these things that will help your impressions grow and then once your impression grows then now you just got to make a few tweaks to get you to get rank better for like surfing and surf and all that junk okay and about the second point the growth talking promotion it's something that I can do by myself you can yeah you can definitely do it myself yeah you can do it yourself I mean if you want hired help if you're like hey I really want this to be my full time then you know go out yourself I don't think there's more

19:37

I can add you're like hey I'm not from the US so I don't know who to talk to I'm not in the Saleen or kayaking business the next I don't know who to talk to either I'm gonna rely on you for that the only thing I can say is I know how to market so I know how to tell a story I not approach them but you do - so you got it on Italy you I just think you needed a confidence boost just because you're not in the US doesn't mean that you can't approach these guys but hey look I've got a really good app and you do it so really well-designed app you can still approach these guys just like you did for the Italian publication but the other one that would explore is reddit like look on the subreddit of saline and surfers and kayaking just like hey guys I've got this app out there you know this this is Who I am tell your story and I'd love to see you know get your guys's feedback on the app and that's it you know like really ask

20:25

for the feedback necessarily not just be like self promoting go check out and download my app but like hey check it out use it tell me what I can do better on okay all right max okay one last question my last question is okay let's say now maybe there is a friend of mine and we want to - it's really really maybe we will do together seriously and we will put some money on this up now let's say if we want to start collaborating would you like to do that do you feel my up could could do better and you want to do together yeah let's do it I like the design of the app I like I'll have to play around with the more I don't have an Apple watch anymore but yeah you can you can you can use with the iPhone without the Apple watch it just that you just used as a runtastic on the on the iPhone itself I think what I would I think Apple with is the Apple watch integration and yeah so you know now and Max like it's it's

21:37

getting winter time so you know I almost feel like maybe come spring would be a better time for us to engage and then be like hey you know surfing is coming up get ready for the summer things like that that'd probably be the better time for now it's probably your low season anyways so yeah it's probably better okay ring hits okay okay I'm asking about that okay well we can do a follow-up call if you need be but absolutely thanks for make sure I'm just doing this and let me know when you do start tweaking how it goes okay all right thank you so much mate thanks for your time thank you for your time okay thank you talk to you later bye-bye