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How to Market a Paid Niche App & 10X Revenues

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App Masters17:06Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

A paid niche app grows by ranking its name for a few exact keywords, earning reviews through a short free promotion, then buying those keywords with Apple Search Ads. A fixed price tells the owner what an install is worth, so ads can pay.

Key takeaways

  • The app name and subtitle should carry the exact keywords people search. 5:01
    • Apple's auto-suggest showed SWOT analysis and SWOT canvas, so those are the terms to target. Volume is low, but the app already ranks number two for SWOT.
    • Drop the unneeded "C" and repeat the keyword in the name and subtitle, for example a subtitle built around "performance matters" or "performance review".
  • A paid app needs a few reviews before it is promoted. 7:58
    • Apple shows an average rating only after five reviews, and this app has two.
    • The fix is to make it free for a few days, or ask friends to buy it and review it.
  • A one-day free promotion brings downloads, press and more reviews. 8:36
    • An $11 to $12 voice translator app went free for one day, got press on AppAdvice and BGR, and drew about 30,000 downloads. After it went back to paid, it earned an extra $1,000.
    • A niche app should expect only one or two thousand downloads and a few hundred dollars, but those users leave reviews.
  • A fixed price makes Apple Search Ads safe to scale. 10:34
    • On a $4 app, take out Apple's cut and the owner can pay about $2 per install.
    • A friend who did this went from $1,000 to $2,000 a month to five figures a month.
  • Beyond the store, a niche app reaches buyers through targeted ads and useful content. 13:42
    • Facebook ads can target employees of chosen companies around performance review season, and Google Ads can target the few keywords involved.
    • On a small budget, post helpful guides in LinkedIn and Facebook groups instead of pitching the product. LinkedIn ads were pricey and did not work well.

You can start playing around with Apple's search ads and you can literally print money.

Steve Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 The app and what buyers search for

A niche app that blends two business frameworks is best found through the names of those frameworks.

  • The app scores options against weighted criteria. 0:26
    • Users pick built-in criteria or write their own, then rate how much each matters.
    • A graphic shows which option has the most strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
    • The result can be emailed as a PDF or printed, and a website does the same analysis.
    • It works for business choices and personal ones, with both numbers and qualitative notes.
    • The name comes from "comparative SWOT", the mix of the two theories.
  • Buyers most likely search for the two source frameworks. 2:05
    • Those frameworks are SWOT analysis and the balanced scorecard.
    • The balanced scorecard is popular in organizations, where teams set several criteria and score how well they are doing.
    • The owner built the app by merging that scoring idea with SWOT analysis.

3:21 Testing keyword demand and naming the app

An ASO tool shows which terms have real volume, and the app name should repeat the best ones.

  • An ASO tool shows how much search volume each term really has. 5:13
    • Sensor Tower and Mobile Action both work, and both offer free trials for small budgets.
    • Volume for the SWOT terms is small, so wider terms like decision-making and performance analysis are worth testing.
    • The buyer is more business than consumer, so "performance" fits. Typing it brought up "performance matters" and "performance review".
    • Volume stays low even for these, which Steve calls "a little scary".
  • Repeating the target terms can lift the app from number two to number one. 7:14
    • The app already ranks well, so the name should change only a little.
    • For example, make "SWOT Analysis" the full app name.
    • A subtitle like "SWOT canvas for performance matters" puts a second keyword in place.
    • Using SWOT twice in the name and subtitle helps the ranking.

8:33 Reviews first, then a free day, then search ads

A free promotion only works once the app has decent reviews, and those reviews then make niche search ads worth running.

  • Press sites want some reviews before they cover a free promotion. 9:42
    • AppAdvice cares about average reviews. BGR cares less.
    • The app goes free for one day and returns to paid the next.
    • The $4 price stays, because a $4 app reads as premium.
    • A review prompt kit in the code makes it easier to collect more reviews.
  • Search ads should bid on the niche terms the app already ranks for. 10:36
    • Volume is low, but searchers for balanced scorecard, performance matters or SWOT see the app.
    • The friend fixed his app name for better rank, then started the ads.
    • The plan is to make the app free for a while and tune the name.
    • The paid-to-free sites are the same as the BGR one, and a written guide on running the campaign exists.

12:47 Marketing the website beyond the app store

A niche product grows through patient content and tightly targeted channels, not through broad paid reach.

  • Useful content builds a brand slowly. 13:11
    • Steve's own business grew through actionable content, and it took about four years.
    • He is not an SEO person and only shares his own path.
    • The website already has a subscription button, so traffic can turn into revenue.
    • The goal is enough brand equity that people find you years later.
  • Google Ads suits a niche with only a few keywords. 14:08
    • A narrow focus means there is no huge keyword list to build.
    • LinkedIn ads did not work well when he tried them at a San Francisco startup.
    • A broad marketer needs many channels, but SWOT is all this app wants.
    • Facebook is preferred because everyone is on it and targeting is specific.
  • On a small budget, post helpful content in groups. 15:02
    • Steve was found through LinkedIn groups where he posted good content.
    • Facebook groups of HR managers are a good place to try the same.
    • Pitching the product in a group gets ignored.
    • A guide on running a SWOT analysis on performance reviews draws curiosity instead.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young and Paul, Steve P. Young is founder of App Masters (app marketing agency); Paul is the indie developer of C SWOT, a paid iOS comparison app. A coaching call on marketing a paid niche iOS app with keyword-optimized naming, a review-building push, a paid-to-free campaign and Apple Search Ads, plus low-budget web marketing. The same plan took a friend's paid app from about $1,000 to $2,000 a month to five figures a month.

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

Transcript391 lines
0:00

coming up is a coaching call where I discuss how to market a paid app using ASO app a to free campaign and Apple search ads it's the same advice I gave a friend who ended up 10x seen his revenue using this exact strategy stay tuned okay all right Paul so tell me what you're working on right my application is called ACS what's up is on the iOS platform on the Apple Store and it's basically a mix up of the balanced scorecard system and the SWOT analysis system so what it does is that it allows you to compare options could be in business could be in your personal life could be any subject at all to compare them qualitatively and quantitatively so you've got the option of picking criterias that are built into the app or defining your own criteria and then you can give it certain score based on the importance or non importance thereof of those criterias to your objective at the end of the assessment you have a visual

1:18

graphic that shows you which one has most trends which one has more weakness which one gives them opportunity or which one gives you more strength and you can email that result in PDF formats yourself or you could print it out and there's also the website as well so what compare.com where you can do the same analysis pretty much and it's a new breakthrough application I believe and it gives you not just figures it also gives you qualitative criteria in terms of information analysis to compare your options in whatever aspect of life you want to do so so it's called C SWAT STS ot okay color out yes what do you think people will be searching for Paul just SWOT analysis that's one of the things they'll be looking for or they could be looking for balance scorecard balance call card yes Oh card balance scorecard yeah the balanced scorecard is actually popular in organizations so business advice risk where you're trying to

2:28

define multiple criterias and happens a scoring system to try and check ways of doing well we are not doing so well I thought about why don't we meet the two theories of balance Cocker and SWOT analysis and so I came up with a comparative SWOT analysis which mixes of the philosophy of balance poker and SWOT analysis okay are there any specific questions that you want to get into yes so how best do you think I should with marketing this application okay that's perfect and were you from okay I'm originally from Nigeria but I currently hold a British passport and you're calling me from a country that I just carry open Oh mine yeah I love it okay okay all right so Paul a couple different things I love paid apps because I think what you can do with paid apps is use Apple search ads so I have a friend of mine who I gave him the same advice all right there's a couple of I'll give him you the same advice I gave him beginning the

3:38

year and what he's been able to accomplish Paul is 10x his app revenues because he's a paid app based on these strategies all right so essentially you know exactly what the keywords you're going after right SWOT analysis balance card I wrote it down balanced scorecard and SWOT analysis so I'm gonna do a quick search on the Apple Store right now so I see SWOT analysis I suite I see SWAT canvas you see this what I'm doing right now I just put into the app store I went to surge and I put in SWAT s wot and I looked at what Apple was auto suggesting see that yeah so now I see SWAT canvas swatch which I don't know what that is SWAT see which might be another app no it's a game it's what analysis SWOT poker word but SWOT analysis since what canvas are two words that come up so those are key words that you want right so what I might do if I were you what's the C's what's the sea from the sea SWAT come

4:48

from comparative okay so if you don't need it I might just get rid of it okay because what you want to do is optimize your app name for swopped SWT and so SWAT hey I'm gonna put this into just because it's easier I'm gonna put it into a tool that have you heard of sensor tower no okay so Center tower is a great ASO tool mobile action is actually my preferred choice too but either one would work for you in this case but you know like pick one and you can still go on free trial for these guys if you're on a budget so SWAT canvas and then SWOT analysis and I'm gonna throw these keywords in here for you here I'm gonna I should record the screen but oh well I'll just try to dictate this as well and I'm gonna share my screen with you all right yeah move your beautiful face down here so you don't see yourself put you down here okay so here's what I'm seeing there's not a huge lot of Vol a volume for SWAT

6:04

so maybe people aren't searching for those particular terms what else could people be searching for if they wanted to like decision-making maybe probably a decision-making performance analysis okay I like this because you're more gonna be you're not consumer you're more b2b right type of thing like a bit business a business person would use this yes so performance so that's good so performance matters is one that comes up when I put for performance performance review maybe performance and now and now this is it okay so I'm gonna throw all those keywords in there again not huge amounts of volume so it's a little scary in that regard but you're number two for SWAT right now so that's good so what I would do you is yeah yes what in so walk him it's because you're so nice and there's all obviously not a huge a lot of volume on that is run apples right now what here's exactly what I do I would try to get you

7:14

to number one as much as possible so that way it's you can then use so what you can do is repeat certain things so it could be C SWAT your OD number two so I wouldn't change it too much but see SWAT you know SWOT analysis is your complete app name for example right okay and then in your subtitle it just based on the data that I'm seeing he's gonna put performance matters you know like performance review and performance matters or you swot for performance matters things like that right you want canvas for performance matters something like that right because you want that keyword in there and because you're duplicating swot twice you're gonna rank really well for URI number two so you're not doing too shabby that's what I would to optimize the app name and then if you what I would do to is make it free for a couple of days or buy you more your friends some a beer because you need some reviews right now you you don't have

8:12

that many right so you need a few just you need five at least five just for Apple to show average review count right now you only have two as of this recording so that's what I would do too is either make it free and then beg your friends for reviews if your target markets to us beg them like hey I'll buy your beer next time I see you blah blah whatever you can do get them to buy it get some reviews right once you have some reviews what you can actually do is run a paid to free campaign now I just ran this for a client of mine where we he was his was a $11 $12 app ball and we ran it so we made it free for a couple of days we got press for it on a site called app advice and you can also get it the people at BG our boy genius report BGR calm and what we did was we drove about 30,000 downloads now this was a like a voice translator app so you talk into the app and then he'll translate for you in any language that

9:16

you want and so we did about $30,000 T 3,000 downloads for this app and then what you only made it free for one day the next day we turned it back to paid and we drove an additional thousand dollars of revenue well-well just by remaking it P free so what I would do because you're already four dollar app you're considered premium in my eye I would just keep it at that but to run this campaign successfully you do need some reviews BGR doesn't care as much but app advice does care that you have some average reviews so that's why I say do some reviews now you're gonna get a ton of downloads for this hopefully I mean the translator app is more generic yours is probably not as generic as this as the other one so you maybe you'll do like a thousand or two thousand downloads and maybe you'll make a few hundred dollars from the app but what that gives you too is people will start leaving reviews for you to write so now

10:13

you're like okay I get some users who got it for free but they're gonna leave me reviews great maybe if you're a developer Paul then use the iOS review kit I don't know what it's called because I'm not geeky like you guys but you know makes it easier for me to relieve reviews for you I might have that in there because it does help you get more reviews and then now since you have the reviews and you're a paid app Paul I would then run Apple search ads so that when although there's not a lot of volume for this when people do search for balanced scorecard or performance matters or SWA you say hey you know this is the app you're pretty much dominating and because you're paid you know exactly how much you can pay and that's what he did because he knows my friend knows how much he can pay because his a yours a four dollar app take apples cut from it you're like okay probably can get paid two dollars per goal right and then you

11:04

can start playing around with Apple's search ads and you can literally print money and that's exactly what he did he optimized his app name to forget a little bit better rank and then he started running search ads and he went from I don't think he'll mind me seeing this but like let's just see a thousand to two thousand a month - you know like five figures a month just doing search ads yeah that's good any questions place off for that where the sounds like a lot to take in so for now me okay make the app free for some time yeah and optimize the app name as well and contacts on website that can publicize the page to free schedule and also the paid to free website we talked about is that the same as a BG our website yes uncle anything to you us because I wrote about how to run this campaign the paid a free campaign so uncool it to you oh so I don't have to crack my brains remember all these no

12:35

and this is recorded so that's even better for you to wait any other questions how about for the website we haven't talked about the marketing for the website so so the website itself I'm not a website person right like I don't know SEO the way I I can only tell you how I built my stuff and it's all through content marketing it's just and it took me really I'm a four years in you're talking to me four years in you just probably googled something to found out about me right so yeah all I can tell you is my strategy for my business was treat create good content and that actionable content that people can use and then hopefully build up another enough brand equity that four years later Paul that you know about me so like it took a long while to get this if you want to just get how are you monetizing this on the web web now there's a subscription button as well on the on the website okay then I would just again I would

13:42

either run Facebook ads targeting different companies that you think would benefit from this right and probably target around the same time that they're gonna do performance reviews so maybe that's the end of the year maybe you know when they do performance reviews that's when you start being a pain into them so that's what I might start looking at is Facebook ads cuz you can really mess with the targeting and then also think about Adwords just like what we talked about search ads it's that I think the same thing could make sense for you on an AdWords basis you know because you're so specific and you're such a niche you can really target there's only a few keywords that you're going after anyways so it's not huge you don't have to build out this like for me it's like app marketing so kind of like huge in a way but you're like hey SWAT like that's all I want right if I only did ASO it might

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make it easier for me to rank for certain keywords but I do much more I do a broad spectrum at marketing so that Facebook ads and then Google Ads are things that might consider for that and Facebook ads target target certain employees of different companies that make sense for you what do you think about LinkedIn LinkedIn I don't I haven't heard things working that well on LinkedIn we've tried it when I was at a start-up in San Francisco and it just didn't work as well what I might do with LinkedIn is maybe create content right like hey here's it you know how you perform a SWOT analysis or whatever the questions that you think people are curious about with what you provide create content out of it and post it into different groups and that's my window of hacking it and that's how I've been able to people found me through like different LinkedIn groups because I just create good content and I just post

15:24

it into these groups and so that's why I'm I explore with that if you're on a budget okay yeah because it's pricey as well yeah it gets pricey that's why I liked I like Facebook because everybody's on Facebook right and I can target really specifically to certain companies if I'm on a budget I might also look at Facebook groups of people who talk about this whether it's HR managers wherever your target audiences look into the different groups and then again create good content around that group rather than just say hey guys I've got this you know product we love for you to check it out blah blah a lot of people do that all the time and nobody looks at it but you like hey you know if you've ever thought about running a SWOT analysis on your performance reviews I've created this great guide on how do you do that then they're they're more curious about figuring finding that out okay good stuff yeah yeah so anything else you

16:21

want to cover not enough so now I'll go give me some thoughts and don't pull the thoughts into action as well okay well I'll send you this recording after our call and then if the people do want to follow you the website is SWOT compare I'm gonna lick that up into the show notes SWOT compare.com but if they want to say thanks or kind of follow up with you Paul you want to send it anywhere else there is also a Contact Us link in there as well on the website awesome they they can reach out that way all right Paul well thank you so much for letting me record this I really appreciate it and thanks for reaching out to me thanks Steve thanks for your time we should