Coming up I’m going to share some wins that we were able to achieve in March 2016 and also share some strategies that completely failed. Stay tune.
Transcript:
What is up App Nation? It is Steve P Young, founder of appmasters.com. And here, I want to share with you some strategies that we tried that did not work. I’ve been sharing a lot of strategies that do work, but I’m going to share some strategies that don’t work for us. So that you can sort of avoid, or even iterate on our strategies to make it work. So hopefully you’ll find some value out of this.
I’m going to look over here sometimes, because I do have a presentation that I’m kinda basing this video off of. So I’m going to look over here. If you see me looking over here, you know that there’s something over here.
But what is up? We had a great past couple of months. And I’m going to share some victories for you as well. So we actually got a couple of different clients featured by Apple. And you know the best part of this is – 1, it was a huge win.
So one of the clients, he came to me. He was an indie app developer. I saw the game, I said– He was actually looking for a publisher. And I said, “You know what? This is a great game that you’ve built. Let’s try this, let’s see if we can get it featured. ‘Cause I think it has a good chance. And if it doesn’t work and we don’t get that feature, well this is not going to be the last game that you create. But if it does work, then you’ve got some downloads that really will help with your future games.
So he trusted me, we helped him. We did phenomenal – we did over 6 – multiple 6 figures and downloads during launch week, and it was a phenomenal success for us. And that’s what really makes me proud out of all these features. So we had 9 – a total of 9 app launches in March. And these 2 app launches that we had, that were actually featured by Apple – those were the best success stories out there.
But it wasn’t just because – that we got it featured. It was actually helping the indie developers out – for 1. And then 2, I almost am building this muscle, where I can tell which apps are quality enough for a feature – and what Apple is actually looking for in a possible feature. So I think that muscle is getting a lot better. And I can be really, truly honest with clients, to see if the percentages are good. Because these 2 were probably the 2 most promising of our app launches, in terms of getting featured.
We also had some huge successes from – that’s Apple feature side. PR side, things are phenomenal. Phenomenal, I can’t complain about that. But from an ASO standpoint, we’ve been running a lot of different influencer marketing campaigns. And the goal being to trend. I’ve got to give a shout out to Gregory Storm, out there. And he’s the one that has me fascinated about this particular topic.
But using influencer marketing, to sort of trend in the app store. Now, this – I’ll get into this more in detail in the failure part of this episode – in this video. But we were able to finally get an app to trend, okay? The app name, we got it to trend in the app store. If you guys aren’t familiar with this, it’s when you’re in the app store. The app App Store. And you go into the search tab – well you see these keywords that are actually shown. These are the trending searches that Apple has mandating.
And what we’ve found out, is that if you become one of these trending searches, this can lead to thousands of just pure, organic downloads. So we’ve tried a couple of different campaigns, a couple of different times to try to trend. Didn’t. Finally got 1 to hit, and that led to – I can’t share the exact numbers – but 6– Not 6 figures, 5 figures. Within a couple of days, we were able to achieve that, and this is the app.
And we actually got this client to rank number one for his most preferred keyword. This was the keyword that he was targeting. When he said, “Steve,” when he was about to hire us – I want to be number 1 for this keyword. And we were able to achieve that. It’s actually bumped down to number 2 right now. But during the time span when we were running a bunch of different campaigns for him, he was actually number 1.
And it was for a keyword that frankly I didn’t think I would be able to achieve. Because the data from Sensor Tower shows that this keyword has 4.9 traffic on a scale of 10 – which is decent amount of traffic. And a difficulty of 3.7. Now I was afraid that because he was such a new app, and there were plenty of other apps that were ranking well for this keyword. That we wouldn’t be able to achieve a top 5 for instance. But through the different strategies that we’ve been able to develop, we were able to get him to number 2. And on a few days were able to hit number 1 as well.
So really great success stories there. Alright, now let’s get to the juicy part, alright? Let’s talk about things that did not work. That completely failed. Okay, so I’m going to refer to my notes here. But 1, like I said, we – while we were able to trend for that particular client. There has been multiple, maybe 4 or even 5 app launches that we did that did not trend. And unfortunately – I want to share this story – ’cause I want to share some of my failures. We even spent more for another client, to try to get them to trend and it didn’t work.
So, like anything in life, it really depends on the app. And I had really high hopes for the other app. I won’t share with you exactly who it was. We spent a lot more, did not get it to trend. But this particular app, Logic Puzzles, we were able to get it to trend. So it really, really depends. I’m still trying to figure out exactly why this one trended, versus the other ones. And it could be just the type of app or just the graphics. We’re trying to do some analysis there.
The other thing that I’ve tried is – I’ve actually bought some incentivized downloads. So this is where you can buy some downloads, and get a real big burst real quick. And I did that to try to trend. By having – buying some social media shares through fiverr. So I thought, “Hey with the burst of downloads, and people sharing it on Twitter – with pretty decent following.
I don’t know if these accounts were all spam followers. They had decent amount of following. So I’m going to assume that half of them were decent. But I thought, “Hey, if these people are sharing the app, and we’re getting a burst of downloads at the same time, will we trend in the app store? Didn’t work. Like I said, maybe there’s something that you can iterate on. But that’s the strategy that we tried, did not work.
The other thing that I’ve tried also is actually getting people to search for a particular keyword for the app, and then downloading the app. Now, with this campaign, maybe it was the site that I was using. But I couldn’t get a huge amount of people doing it all at once. So I only got a few, maybe a handful. I think anywhere from 10 to 15 on any given day, doing this campaign. And doing it.
And so I was trying to see if I can make that trend. If I can couple the incentivized downloads with the social media shares – along with the searches for the app in the app store, and the downloads. Could I get all 3 happening at once, to then trend in the app store? Did not work, right? So tried it, let’s see if I need to iterate on it. I want to try a little bit more campaigns to see how to really make this work. But didn’t work, okay?
And the last thing I want to leave you with, ’cause I’ve been sharing some of the success through Facebook. And said, “Oh my goodness, another client featured.” Well, in total, in March – we had 9 app launches. Great, lot of big successes in there as well. But only 2 apps were featured by Apple. So not a bad hit rate, but also I want to share with you the exact numbers. Meaning – hey, we’re not all going to be there.
I know I’ve gotten this question from somebody. What’s the ROI? What can I expect? Look, I’m sharing some of these strategies with you that did not work, to tell you that really does depend on the app. So if you’ve got a good app, it really depends on – I think I know which channels would work best, in terms of getting downloads for the app.
But it really depends. Still depends on whether – on a various amount of factors. And I can’t tell you exactly what those factors are going to be. It’s not like an add where I can sort of put down these levers, and change the copy and change the image. I can’t do all that with – when I’m working with. ‘Cause I’m all about growth hacking the app store. And so, I share these numbers – in terms of the number of app launches. So that you understand while I’m sharing a lot of the success, there are some failures through the – any app launch as well, alright?
So if you got anything out of this, find a way to let me know that you saw this. And then if you saw some of the strategies that did not work, and you know one that does work – and you want to sort of talk through some other hypotheses with me. Reach out to me, let me know what’s worked for you, what hasn’t worked for you. And I’m happy to sort of figure out a different strategy with you that might potentially work. Just know that I might share it in a future video – depending on what you say to me, alright?
Hope you enjoyed it, and if you got anything out of this – I always end it this way. You don’t have to thank me, but I hope you use some of this knowledge and then iterate on it. And if you do, please tell me if you do iterate on it. Alright guys, I will see you on the next chat. Bye.
