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The Simplest Apple Search Ads Advanced Campaign to Manage and Scale

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App Masters10:40Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

A single advanced campaign with Search Match on and a few broad match keywords copies Apple Search Ads Basic but reveals the search terms that work. That gives beginners and apps with low-volume main keywords an easy campaign to manage and scale.

Key takeaways

  • Apple Search Ads Basic hides which search terms bring downloads. 7:04
    • Basic only asks for the app, a daily budget and a cost per acquisition goal, then runs.
  • An advanced campaign with Search Match on and broad match keywords lets Apple do the work. 5:18
    • Seed it with a few keywords that have volume, such as white noise, meditation and sound machine, all on broad match.
    • Use one country and one ad group per campaign, and add no negative keywords.
  • The maximum cost per tap comes from the cost per acquisition goal times the conversion rate. 4:17
    • A $2.35 goal at a 40% conversion rate gives about $1.94 per tap.
    • Leave the cost per acquisition goal blank, because a low goal can choke scale.
  • The search terms report shows which keywords to reuse. 8:47
    • After about a month, one client had a keyword nobody had thought of that performed well, so it was added as exact match.
    • Winning terms can also feed App Store optimization (ASO).
  • This setup suits apps whose main keyword has little search volume. 9:42
    • An app like Blinkist ranks well for book summaries, but most people search for audiobooks instead.

So this mimics Apple Search Ads Basic, but gives us the keyword data.

Steve P Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Who this campaign is for

A simple advanced campaign suits beginners and anyone who struggles to find the right keywords.

  • The campaign teaches the ins and outs of search ads and is easy to scale. 0:13
    • It is one of Steve's favorite campaigns to scale.
    • It helps people who can't find the keywords to target.
    • A client ranked well in ASO for its exact match keyword, but few people searched for it.
    • That is the case where this campaign pays off most.
  • Basic is too limited, so the campaign is built as an advanced one. 1:12
    • Steve dislikes how small Basic's parameters are.
    • His own app runs exact, search match and broad match campaigns, the full best-practice setup.
    • Over 12 weeks it spent about $50 at $1.70 per download, but it is a lot of work to manage.

1:54 Setting up the campaign

Budget, country and bid are set with a few simple rules, and the bid follows from what a download is worth.

  • Start with a $1,000 budget capped at about $30 a day. 2:41
    • The campaign is named for the country, such as US, plus search match basic.
    • Working in an incognito Chrome window feels faster in both Apple Search Ads and App Store Connect.
    • One country and one ad group per campaign shows the best performer at campaign level.
    • When localizing, countries can be grouped into tier one and tier two.
  • The bid ceiling is what a download is worth to the app. 3:26
    • Divide new monthly revenue by downloads to find that value.
    • An app earning $4 per download can pay up to $4.
    • Starting with a high 40% conversion rate helps the keywords see volume.
  • A very low cost per acquisition goal can be skipped, because Apple recommends leaving it blank. 5:01
    • Some people pair a $6 to $30 tap bid with a very low goal.
    • That trick sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
    • Steve prefers blank, which is also Apple's advice.

5:21 Keep Search Match on and seed the keywords

Search Match stays on beside the broad keywords, so Apple finds terms you would not have picked.

  • Search Match stays on even with broad match. 5:22
    • It is usually turned off when broad match is used, but here Apple should do the work.
    • The ideal main keyword has no search volume, so Apple has to find the terms.
    • The app title has background noise, and sleep sounds and nature sounds are wanted too.
  • Broad match plus Search Match shows many relevant terms. 6:04
    • Any relevant search for a seed keyword gets shown, and Apple adds its own keywords.
    • The aim is to copy Apple Search Ads Basic as closely as possible.
    • Advanced is used because it shows which keywords perform best.
  • The last settings are left simple. 7:11
    • Keep iPhone only, because new users are wanted.
    • Custom assets are skipped, then create the campaign.

8:30 Find and reuse the search terms

The search terms report turns the campaign's spend into keyword data you can use elsewhere.

  • The search terms report sits inside the ad group. 8:39
    • Open the Search Match campaign, then the ad group, then search terms.
    • At first mostly low volume keywords appear.
    • With enough spend, the actual search terms show up.
  • Each found term can be used twice. 9:04
    • Use it in ASO, or add it back into the campaign.
    • Basic offers no visibility at all, so this is a big gain.
  • The simple structure scaled where the manual one stalled. 9:20
    • Separate exact, broad and Search Match campaigns got no impressions.
    • Tired of managing them, the speaker built this campaign and let Apple run it.
    • It now scales Apple Search Ads for a client.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters. A simple Apple Search Ads advanced campaign mimics Basic but exposes the search term data Basic hides, so you can discover keywords you never considered. It suits beginners and apps whose main keyword has little search volume, and one example ran at about $1.70 per download.

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

Transcript231 lines
0:00

Coming up. I'm going to share with you the simple as search ads campaign that you can set up and actually scale stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is your boy, Steve P young founder of App Masters.com. And today I want to share with you a simple apple search ads campaign that you can set up to get going to really learn the ins and outs of search ads. And then it's one of my favorite campaigns to scale. Now, before we get started, this campaign is perfect for beginners.

0:28

This campaign is perfect for people who are having trouble. Finding the keywords that they should be targeting. So for example, if you have an app that doesn't get so much traffic for your main term, your main keyword, then this campaign is perfect for you as well, because we had a client. The exact match keyword that we're trying to rank for. We rank really well ASO wise, but there's just not a lot of volume. Not a lot of people searching for it.

0:54

So this would be an app similar to like, Blinkus like, yes, there's some volume now for book summaries, but not a lot of people are looking for books, summaries. A lot of people are looking for audio books, right. And so if you've got an app like that, where you're finding that not a lot of people are searching for that term, this campaign works for you as. All right, let's get to it. First and foremost, most people have set up an apple search ads, basic campaign.

1:17

Now I don't like basic because the parameters are very small. You give it your app and then a budget, a daily budget and your cost per acquisition goal. And that's it. And then go, boom, let it fly. Right. I don't want to do that. So we're going to set up an advanced campaign. Now, here, you can see, this is one of my apps. I've set up all the best practices. So I've an exact match, the search match and abroad match.

1:42

And last 12 weeks I've spent about 50 bucks, but I'm getting a dollar 70, which is pretty darn good, right? Dollar 70 per download. Now, if you don't want to do all this fancy stuff that I've done, it is a lot of work. What you can do is set up this campaign. So we're going to go into create campaign, select the app here. Now I want to pause here. A little trick that I've discovered is if you go it called incognito in Chrome, it actually goes faster than just using your normal Chrome.

2:13

That's just something I found out whether you're doing an app store connect or apple search ads, I just go incognito. It's a little bit faster for me. All right. When do search results. So as you can see, background noise is the main keyword that I have picked a country you want. I'm going to put United States who give it a campaign name. So I like to call this bra. Search match basic. Now you want to give it a budget, whatever budget you have allocated.

2:41

I generally say start with a thousand dollars and then you can daily cap it to about $30 a day. Right? Start with that. If you can add group name, I just pretty much say the same thing. So for most apple search ads campaign, I have one country per campaign and one ad. Per campaign. And that just allows me to easily see at a campaign level, which one is performing the best. Now, if you're starting to localize, you might want to group certain countries together, like tier one, tier two and all that stuff.

3:10

But I like the granularity that just happened. Us only campaign with one ad group per campaign, right? That's the normal way I set this up. Now, the maximum cost per tap here bid is going to be dependent on what your ceiling for cost per acquisition is going to be. So if you have some data, the easiest way to figure this out is what is your new revenue per month and what are those downloads? And. Right. So you can start off with, if you make $4 for every download.

3:40

Great. You can go up to $4, right? In terms of how much you can pay for a cost per day. Now I have this fancy, fancy, this spreadsheet that I put together where I have cost per acquisition goal. So if my cost per acquisition goal was $2 and 35 cents, this campaign, I know just from historical data, usually convert at about, let's say on a high end 40%. So I'm gonna start with a little bit higher percentage than normal, because I want to make sure that these keywords are going to see volume.

4:10

Okay. So I'm gonna start with, uh, uh, 40%. So that puts me. About a dollar 94 cents per cost per tap. That's a maximum cost per tap I can afford to pay. If my CPA goal was $2 35 cents, that the formulas super easy. Okay. Your cost per acquisition goal multiplied by the conversion rate. So I'm going to put that in here. You don't necessarily need a cost per acquisition goal. We have seen other clients use cost per acquisition goal here and without.

4:40

Functionality, what tends to happen is this takes precedent over anything else. So usually if you put a low cost per acquisition goal, you might hit it. Great. But your scalability goes down, right? So generally I leave it blank, right? And I have tried, there's a little trick out there where you can put a super high cost per tap bid, like $6, $10, even $30, and just put a really low cost per acquisition goal. And sometimes that works, but sometimes it doesn't work either.

5:12

So just be careful with that. I personally just prefer to just leave it blank. Okay. Which is what apple recommends to now. Here's the trick you want to leave search man. That's very key. Generally we turn it off if we have broad match campaign, but I'm gonna leave it on. Okay. Because I want apple to do the work and here are the keywords that I think have rank. Right. And plus the Minky where that I want doesn't have any search volume.

5:35

So for me, like maybe I have background noise in the title. So I want that. I definitely want sleep sounds. I want nature sounds in there. So you want to put some keywords that, you know, Have volume you want to put as much as you possibly can, but you don't need a whole lot to get going. Okay. So white noise meditation. I'm going to fit a sound machine and I'm going to leave it all on broad match. Then I'm going to hit save here.

6:01

Yeah. Here's what's happening. All those keywords are on broad match. So all the search terms that people search for that are relevant to that particular keyword like background noise. So sound machine meditation. They will be shown because search matches turned on. Apple will come up with different keywords on their own. Right. I'm not going to add any negatives because again, this is supposed to be a simple. Right.

6:27

What I'm trying to do is really mimic what apple search ads basic. And I'm doing that to the best of my ability, but I'm putting on a Vance because when you put it on advance, you can actually see the keywords that perform the best. So after a month or so, we started noticing for a client of ours, that one of the keywords was really doing well, performing well, and I had never thought of this particular. Ever, but it was really performing well for us.

6:53

And so I added that as an exact match. And then we're going to use that in our ESL strategies. So this mimics apple search ads basic, but gives us the keyword data. Once we there's enough data, it gives us the keyword data that apple search ads basic does not hold. That makes sense. Okay. Last steps. I'm going to keep it iPhone. Just because I want to, new users definitely want that and everything else. And then you can do custom assets.

7:20

Oh, cool. Not going to do that. I'm just going to keep it the way it is. And then you can hit create campaign. Boom, your. I want to take a quick break and thank my sponsor for this video search ads.com. Search ads.com is one of my favorite tools actually to use. We actually started using it for one of our clients, and it helps you automate your entire search apple search ads, campaigns. So it allows you to automate certain things where if a keyword is really performing well, you can slowly start increasing the.

7:49

For it to try to give it more visibility if it's performing really poorly. Well, it can decrease the bids too. And the best part is it works with your attribution tool. So if you are trying to, for one of our clients, we're trying to really aim for complete registered. And you can do that within search ads.com. So we've connected. AppsFlyer and then we can see how well the campaigns are doing from a cost per registration, not just cost per install, the great platform, all the things I do manually through apple search ads.

8:22

Right now, you can actually automate within search ads.com. Go check them out. Search ads.com All right. The last step I want to get into is I'm going to show you where to find these keywords. So I'm going to go into my search match campaign, the existing search match campaign right now. And then what you can do is go into the ad group. You don't necessarily need to, but then you can go into search terms right now. Here's what's generally going to happen is all these low volume keywords you're going to see.

8:52

This is probably the wrong campaign, but the steps are the same. But once you have enough data, enough spend on your campaign, you'll actually see the actual search term that shows up. And so you can use that search term for your ASO. You can use that search term and add it back into the campaign. It allows you to see the more visibility than you would normally get with an apple search ads, basic, which has no visibility whatsoever.

9:18

So that's why I really liked this campaign. And I just on a hunch, it said, you know what? I'm tired of managing a lot of the things and our exact match, broad match, search match. We're not getting any impressions whatsoever. So I decided to create this campaign and let out. Do its job. And it's actually working. Finally, we're able to scale apple search ads for a client of ours using this exact campaign structure. So if you're just getting started, it's a great campaign because it gives you some visibility and it's easy to set up, easy to maintain.

9:50

And then if you're in the other camp where your search terms, your main keywords don't have any traffic. That apple do the work. They'll do the work. And then giving using that formula, they'll hit your cost per acquisition goals as. I guess that's it. Hope you enjoyed it? Let me know in the comments or make sure you hit that like button. If you did enjoy the video, and if you want us to sort of help you manage your apple search ads, we'll go check out@masters.com and every Friday we go live on YouTube.

10:19

We take a look at your apps, give you feedback on your particular apps. Have a guest on too, because you don't want to just see me all the time. If for guests on to where we break down a certain strategy that's working in app space. And then the second half of the YouTube live stream, we take a look at your apps. That's every Friday at 9:00 AM. Live on YouTube. All right. So next time I'll see you on the next.