Ignore ASO At Your Peril: How To Leverage App Store Optimization To Market Your App

forbes.com

After years of Cinderella stories about app-based startup successes, reality is encroaching.

As USA Today noted recently, there hasn’t been a runaway hit app like Uber or Snapchat for a few years. A glance at App Annie’s list of the top 20 apps from May 2015 to May 2016 shows no new entrants, apart from the occasional game which rises to the top for a few weeks before falling down the rankings. The apps with staying power have arrived and are here for the long haul.

But a change is planned. Apple is planning to launch paid search ads for apps. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, told The Telegraph that the move will help app developers who haven’t been able to get much traction with traditional advertising. 

While it remains to be seen how paid search ads might help developers launch new apps, one tried-and-true method is app store optimization, or ASO.

How I Learned About ASO The Hard Way

There are some 4 million mobile apps in the major app stores. Getting one discovered is one of the biggest challenges facing app publishers today.

I learned this the hard way. In November 2013, my company launched a gay dating and social networking app. My team members and I poured our hearts into this startup only to bring it to the verge of collapse shortly after its release because of a common rookie mistake: We had submitted it to the app store and thought our job was done. It was only a matter of time before we’d be swimming in downloads – or so we thought.

You can guess what happened next: not much.

The situation was dire. We had almost no downloads and our user base was shrinking every day. The app didn’t have any working marketing channels and Facebook had just banned ads related to online dating services. It got to the point where we decided that if we couldn’t find a buyer within six months, we’d pull the plug.

Thankfully, we brought in an expert growth strategist who was quick to explain that we couldn’t rely on Apple to bring in users and had to focus on ASO. 

After years of Cinderella stories about app-based startup successes, reality is encroaching.

As USA Today noted recently, there hasn’t been a runaway hit app like Uber or Snapchat for a few years. A glance at App Annie’s list of the top 20 apps from May 2015 to May 2016 shows no new entrants, apart from the occasional game which rises to the top for a few weeks before falling down the rankings. The apps with staying power have arrived and are here for the long haul.

But a change is planned. Apple is planning to launch paid search ads for apps. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, told The Telegraph that the move will help app developers who haven’t been able to get much traction with traditional advertising. 

While it remains to be seen how paid search ads might help developers launch new apps, one tried-and-true method is app store optimization, or ASO.

How I Learned About ASO The Hard Way

There are some 4 million mobile apps in the major app stores. Getting one discovered is one of the biggest challenges facing app publishers today.

I learned this the hard way. In November 2013, my company launched a gay dating and social networking app. My team members and I poured our hearts into this startup only to bring it to the verge of collapse shortly after its release because of a common rookie mistake: We had submitted it to the app store and thought our job was done. It was only a matter of time before we’d be swimming in downloads – or so we thought.

You can guess what happened next: not much.

The situation was dire. We had almost no downloads and our user base was shrinking every day. The app didn’t have any working marketing channels and Facebook had just banned ads related to online dating services. It got to the point where we decided that if we couldn’t find a buyer within six months, we’d pull the plug.

Thankfully, we brought in an expert growth strategist who was quick to explain that we couldn’t rely on Apple to bring in users and had to focus on ASO. 

ASO Is Only Part Of The Solution

Now, our app ranks No. 1 for the keywords “gay dating.” ASO has helped boost its organic downloads by about 300%. The app is poised to hit a $1 million annual run rate by the end of the year and is on track to pull in $10 million by 2018.

While ASO has undoubtedly played a large part in our app’s turnaround, it wasn’t the only factor. We credit a stellar customer support system which helps drive five-star reviews on the Apple App Store and Google Play. In addition to a Twitter campaign and paid acquisition, we also partnered with a YouTube star to create videos; the first one was viewed more than 400,000 times and led to more than 15,000 downloads, which drove the cost per download to less than $1.    

As our experience illustrates, there are many ways to resuscitate a failing app. But ASO should always be your first go-to solution. Once you’ve established a growing user base, then you can start exploring paid acquisition.

And keep in mind that while ASO is becoming a part of startups’ marketing strategies, the field is evolving. The landscape changes every few months. But, keep up with it and with any luck, you and your app will live happily ever after.