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September 2016 Report Card: Crushing ASO

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App Masters13:34Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

ASO still works and lifts client downloads from 20% to 5x by optimizing app names and keywords. That provable result now drives half of App Masters' business, so the agency is building on it and on content marketing.

Key takeaways

  • Optimizing an app's name and keywords raises downloads by 20% to 5x. 3:24
    • Some clients doubled their downloads just by changing the app name and keywords.
    • One report doubled impressions and downloads. The next optimization raised impressions again but not downloads, so the team is now tuning for downloads.
  • ASO results can be proven because clients share their iTunes data. 4:05
    • PR is hard to measure: I can get you on Mashable, did you get results? I don't know.
    • With ASO, both sides read the data and optimize together for a couple of months.
  • ASO now makes up half of the business, and content and PR services are the next focus. 3:56
    • Content, PR and Apple features are three pillars that all come down to storytelling.
    • The agency now works with app service providers on content strategy and PR, and plans to publish its own apps in 2017.
  • Rushing a launch wastes press interest, so social games need a longer soft launch. 7:48
    • One client soft launched for only a week. A reporter wanted to cover the game, but it wasn't working up to par.
    • A similar client took the advice to go slower and got featured by Apple. The Apple feature streak of four months still ended in September.

With PR, I can get you on Mashable, did you get results? I don't know, right?

Steve Young, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 September launches and press

Four launches in a month brought solid press for every app.

  • Three games and one movie app launched, almost one a week. 0:53
    • A couple of launches were delayed.
    • Hopes were high for a couple of the four, but Apple has its own thing, and the team took lessons from it.
    • Movie Q is described as the Shazam for movie trailers.
  • Press was won for every launch. 1:26
    • Movie Q got onto Mashable.
    • All three games were included in Social Times' Friday roundups.
    • Any game can get into Social Times, so the team is confident about press for games.
    • More press for Movie Q is still being pursued.

2:20 ASO is not dead

Doubts about ASO made the agency dig deeper, and ASO now stands on its own.

  • Claims that ASO was dead pushed Steve to prove it works. 2:37
    • Search fundamentals stay, as SEO still does on websites.
    • Some clients buy only ASO.
    • His reaction to the doubters was give me a break.
    • Client work gave him the confidence to plan publishing his own apps.

4:48 Content services and a bigger team

The agency's strength is storytelling, and a team of four now carries it.

  • Podcast interviews built his storytelling skill. 4:48
    • His background is content marketing.
    • He wants to turn every strength toward helping other app companies.
  • Two new hires make the agency a real team of four. 6:09
    • He always said agency, never consultant, though much of the work was his alone.
    • His new struggle is becoming a good manager.
    • He wants to push the team and get everything out of it.

6:47 Launch pacing and managing the team

Social, non-casual games need time to gather feedback before launch, and that pace works only if clients trust the advice.

  • Managing a team means keeping the same care for every client. 7:02
    • The aim is a team that wants to do well even for an app it doesn't fully believe in.
    • Steve wants to manage firmly without being harsh, and asks listeners for suggestions.
    • Friends have offered ideas, but he is still working on it.
  • Social, non-casual games should get a long soft launch before the main launch. 7:20
    • Two similar social word games, launched in July and September, show the difference.
    • Time for feedback comes first, then an optimal launch.
    • A simple casual game in the style of Catch the Ap style is a different case.
    • The advice applies to games with a social component.
  • Clients should trust the agency's pacing advice, and right beats fast. 8:32
    • The advice draws on many developers' experiences through the podcast and mastermind, not only his own.
    • Steve had to follow it himself for a new website launch.
    • Sometimes you must balance doing it right against doing it fast.

9:20 What worked: a book and data tools

A founder's memoir offers reassurance, and Mobile Action's data is the most trustworthy for optimization.

  • Reading how a large company's leader struggles shows that the same problems never fully go away. 9:27
    • The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, who runs a VC firm, covers running a huge company.
    • Steve found it reassuring that someone running a huge company felt the way he does.
    • He calls it a phenomenal book.
  • Mobile Action's data is more accurate than Sensor Tower's, though Sensor Tower has the better interface. 10:02
    • He ranks them Mobile Action, then Sensor Tower, then AppWeek.
    • AppWeek has the most accurate rankings data, but its site goes down a lot.
    • Optimization reports use Mobile Action's data to decide what to do, with Sensor Tower as a double-check.
    • A comparison of both tools against Apple's real App Store data is coming.

In the growth library

Steve Young, Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency and podcast. A monthly report card from an app marketing agency covering ASO client results, PR wins, launch lessons and growing from a solo operator into a team of four. The headline result is a 5x download lift for ASO clients, with a typical increase of at least 20% and some clients doubling downloads.

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

Transcript355 lines
0:00

coming up is our September 2016 report card where I share our successes in failures including how we 5x downloads using ASO why with content marketing you'll never have to look for clients and finally feeling like a team all that and so much more what is up appt nation it is steve pure dome founder of app masters co and i'm here with another monthly report update for you guys i want to keep things transparent keep things honest as much as i can for you and kind of share our wins and losses from September 2016 so let's get started all right we actually had four app launches just for app launches this month a couple of things were delayed but you know decent amount of app launches home say almost one a week that we're doing that that was pretty cool unfortunately some of the failures we did we ended our streak if I think it was for receptive four consecutive months of Apple features so no Apple features this week this month

1:16

unfortunately of the four app launches I had high hopes for a couple of them and it just didn't pan out because you know Apple has its own thing but real good lessons from it alright so let me go through something successor from a PR side so of the the other three launches were all games but this one was movie cute great app you gotta check out it's like the shazam for movie trailers but we were able to get them on to Mashable which you know obviously is a great win for us and the other three games were able to get them pressed but I want to you know have a screenshot just for that any game we can literally get on to social times they write a round up every Friday so all those three were incorporated into a round up every fridays but so we feel pretty confident with games that we can get press for but this is the big one the Mashable one that I wanted to share with you guys so big win there we're like I said the

2:12

other three apps were able to still get press for and with movie q we're still trying to work on hopefully get some more press for this as well all right the other thing that I want to share with you so literally now our ASO side of the business which somebody emailed I mean said yeah II know you do this so they suicided the business I've got clients we got clients that we just do purely a so on we've been doing phenomenally they're like amazing I think the thing that I've said in my blog post to is when people started talking about ASO being dead or not a viable strategy anymore I said give me a break SEO fundamentally will still be here right on the website it's still been there so with a so when people started thinking that they was dead I went the opposite direction and started really digging deeper into how I can prove myself with Absalom is a shin and working with these clients giving gave me a lot of

3:08

confidence in terms of hey I actually go back into the educational space which is hopefully something that I'm planning to do in 2017 to start working more on publishing my own apps on the a suicide because of the some of the success that we've done from ASO so here this screenshot shows literally with 5x downloads for our clients and on average what I've seen is increases from the from the the lower side twenty percent and for some of the other clients we like literally double they're downloads just by optimizing their app name and their keywords and let it and so I share this strategy i'll link this up in the show notes here i'm ready it's how we 5x downloads using ASO and it walks you step-by-step the exact strategy that we've used to do so alright so really phenomenal success like I said half of our business now is about just purely working on ASO clients so I think it's a big big lever for us and it's one of

4:05

these things where I can show real results with PR it's like I can get you on Mashable did you get results I don't know right but with these ASO clients they usually share their itunes accounts with me we can look at the data we can optimize and we work for a couple of months together to really optimize a nap and look at the data increase the downloads increase the impressions and I just did a report where we're starting to see we literally doubled their impressions and downloads and then the next optimization we increase the impressions even more downloads didn't increase so now we're looking at how we can optimize better to get those download numbers to up to increase as well and lastly some of the things that we're starting to work on two is we started to bring on clients that kind of utilize our skill set and I think our skill set and you're going to see this in our you brand your website zoom bar

4:57

skill sets more on content marketing that's where my background really comes from PR app store features and apps are optimized ation and if you think about it the three pillars of this right content PR and Apple features it's all about storytelling and I think that's what I've gotten really good at just because I'm interviewing people on the podcast I'm trying to always tell a good story and I want to utilize all our strengths into helping other app companies so we started working with app service providers and really helping them with their content strategy with their PR I think that's a big big focus for us in the future so if you're interested in your nap provider then let me know because I think we can help you out with that too and I love I got tell you guys if you're listening to this or even watching this I love you the audience is amazing any new sponsor that comes on people will check them out

5:54

people have said you know they use trend pie or they use b7 Devon they've got really good results I'm starting to hear from trend pie they're starting to see some really good results through the podcast sponsorship so thank you guys so much and I wouldn't recommend something if I didn't really fully trust them myself ok so the next thing that happened is you actually feel like a team now oh my goodness this is amazing because I've always felt like I've been doing you know sometimes I never said consultant I've always said agency agency agency because I didn't want to be a one-man show although a lot of it was we've always had a team but a lot of it was me doing a lot of different things but now I've hired to other people so now we're a team of four amazingly enough and it feels like a real team so some of the struggles for me now is how do I become a good manager how do I feel like I'm pushing the team

6:45

and getting everything out of the team that I can get out of and still not be a dick that's what I'm trying to figure it out so if you got some suggestions if you're hearing this let me know after a couple of different things from some of my friends who talk about how to do this but that's the thing that I continue trying to improve on is all right become a good manager and how do i force my team to still have the same passion that I have for every single one of our clients and we say look we want to do really well even if we don't believe in the app or maybe the app isn't as up to par as we can want to do really well for them the other thing I want to mention I don't have a slide for this is theirs I want to compare two clients of mine in the past and one is someone that we've launched in September and one was one that we launched in July and I want to kind of they're very similar their word

7:34

games their games social aspect of it and I want to take this opportunity to say look really if you've got a non I would say a non casual game right and there's some social component or it's just not something that like a catch apt I'll style game I would say take your time with it the client that we had I felt like rushed the soft launch I said hey you should take your time with the soft launch they soft launch for a week and then they launched it and one of our reporter friends and add week said they were interested in covering all on its own but unfortunately the app wasn't working up to par and I felt like with these social type of apps take your time with it take your time make sure you soft launch make sure you get feedback give yourself time to get feedback and then do an optimal launch the other client that I mentioned before we got him featured by Apple he taina took my advice and I said wow like if you just

8:33

trust me if you hire us if you're interested in working with us just trust me I'm I'm heads oh I'm really deep into the app space just because of the podcast and the mountain people i talk to because of the mastermind i run because of everything I'm so engrossed in the app space that like just trust me I understand I talked to people right and I'm not just going off of my own experiences i'm talking about other experiences too so just trust me if you do want to work with us and our team just trust us when we say look we should do this and this and just take our time and something that i had to take my own advice on i want to launch a brand new website it's a note you want to do it right or do you want to do it fast just remember that you want to do it right or do you want to do a fast sometimes you got to balance the two okay alright so I want to kind of in with this what worked what didn't work this

9:25

is the same exact format my favorite book the this was a book I've read a long time ago by that this was worth mentioning the hard things about hard things phenomenal phenomenal book it's it talks about Ben Horowitz who runs a fantastic VC firm right now just from what I've heard I'm not in the visemes but anyways he talked about running like a humongous company right and then dealing with some of the same things that I was dealing with and I said wow this guy who's running a huge company is still feeling the way that I might be feeling about things that's pretty cool so it was a really good reminder and I really really did love that book the other tool that I've been using a lot is mobile action now I know center tower I've been talking a lot about it I think the UI on center tower is frankly a lot better than mobile action but I'm really trusting mobile actions data a little bit more I'm gonna have a video soon

10:18

comparing mobile action sensor tower versus app store real you know God's data so I want to see how they both compare and I've been seeing that mobile actions a little bit more accurate and even from our rankings perspective so if you're relying on sensor tower for your rankings data what I've seen because I'm doing so much is so work is that mobile action is actually a little bit more accurate on top of that apt week is probably the most accurate when it comes to the rankings data but apt week sorry Lori the website goes down a lot unfortunately okay so I'm just gonna call out everybody cuz I'm not a lady with anybody really mobile action is sort of it's going up is for me it's number one if I had a rank them all be mobile Action Center tower and then apt week and if you want to start using mobile action use the promo code app masters and you get twenty percent off but mobile action has been sort of might

11:11

go to tool when I'm doing optimization reports I actually use the data that mobile action says to kind of decide what to do I still have Center tower till just double check in fact checked it but an apple search obviously by kind of trust mobile action data a little bit more the last thing I mention is we have the master mind is open if you're listening on the day it comes out mash-up masters elite if you're interested this is the master my one of the best things I've ever done besides just starting the podcast is form a community of Awesome app masters elite now this brand new iteration and we're calling as app masters elite there are some requirements before the mastermind when I first had it almost anybody can join but now you have to meet some requirements to actually be let into app masters elite so if you're interested in joining go check out app masters elite calm and fill out the application then

12:12

what you do that we'll get on a call and see if it's a good fit from our end from your end as well mmm my stomach is girl I got to get some lunch alright guys thank you so much for tuning in really appreciate you like I said really mean it and one of the things i want to do is actually bring on more listeners to the podcast because i need to ask if some people have reached out to me and said hey I listen to the show I think would be a good fit can I come on and I say you know like I obviously do my due diligence but I let them on but I want to sort of get more people who listen to the show to come on to the podcast because what I've learned is I learn about you and your success when you say hey Steve I wanna hire you for a launch and I listen to the show I'm like wow you've got some amazing success you want to come on that's how I normally learn about people but i'll send an email so if you're not on our email list at

13:02

masters co sign up for that email list because i will send an email out asking for people who want to come on to the podcast and share your success story Long's with tips that you can provide for the audience alright guys that is it the podcast is coming up on five hundred episodes have no idea what I'm going to do but I'm hopefully do something special I will do something special I just don't know what I'm trying to put this crazy guess she said no already but I let's try to ask her again so we'll see how it goes alright thank you all for tuning in and i'll see you on the next video