Are apps the end of pure organic growing?

Apps are now a standard in the daily lives of consumers and businesses, regardless of whether you like them or not. Apps are available for all things, including shopping, banking and gaming. A recent survey found that 88% of mobile time is spent in apps.

Statista data for Q2 2022 shows that there are over six million apps in the Google Playstore, Apple App Store, and Amazon Store.

Source: Statista

Marketing your app correctly is essential and an integral part of any business’s marketing strategy. App marketing must take into account the entire ecosystem that impacts your app’s marketing performance in order to be successful. Marketers need to consider all data when analysing an app’s performance, regardless of whether it is app store optimization (ASO), or combining organic user acquisition and paid user acquisition (for instance via Google App Campaigns or Apple Search Ads).

Here are some of my marketing tips and knowledge.

Organic growth by itself won’t get you far

ASO was a key part of your app’s marketing strategy a few years back. However, in order to remain competitive in the highly competitive app marketing landscape you must increase your User Acquisition (UA). ASO is still important, but it must be combined with your paid acquisition strategy to ensure that an app continues to grow. Paid and organic UA have the same goal: to increase quality conversions at a low cost per unit.

A solid ASO foundation is essential to ensure that you have a steady stream of quality users across all channels. This is vital as users will eventually land on your app store listing. If you don’t invest in ASO or optimizing your store listing, you are literally wasting money.

Paid user acquisition may lead to organic app installations. Your app store listing will be more visible if you use ads. Your app’s popularity will determine how high your app ranks in the app store. It increases your app’s visibility in search results and browse sections. Increasing visibility means that more people will find your store listing and download your application. The growth cycle continues!

Understanding the relationship between ASO and paid user acquisition is key to a successful strategy. Understanding how your paid funnel affects organic growth is crucial. App Radar’s all in one platform has been a great tool for GAMEE. It allows us to work together and maximize the impact of paid and organic user acquisitions for both Apple and Google app stores.

Analyzing app performance

You should not just wait for perfect results after putting in a lot of work optimizing your UA. You should analyze your app’s performance throughout the campaign and ask the right questions. It would be interesting to see how much growth you achieved through ASO. Was it paid UA traffic? It can be difficult to answer all of these questions given the many factors that could play a significant part. Let’s take, for example, a few scenarios.

Scenario one: A drop in app installs

Is there a drop in installations? This might seem alarming at first. The good news is that every drop in installs has a reason. There is a solution for every problem.

Paid user acquisition efforts are a crucial factor to be aware of. If you notice a drop in downloads, it is worth checking if you were running ads during this time. You can increase traffic to your app by running ads. If you remove or reduce these ads, it could have a major impact on your results. Analyze the relationship between organic and paid conversions. Then analyze how paid conversions affect your total growth. Determine if an increase in installs could be due to decreased activity via paid channels.

What can you do now?

You can begin by looking back at the past 30 to 90 days and understand the extent of the impact. You should consider reactivating ads if you notice that your Google App Campaigns have been reducing your installs.

Scenario 2: An increase of app installs

This is what we all want. This should be a goal that you want to achieve throughout your marketing campaigns. You need to understand what caused the increase. If you don’t know the source of your success, it can be difficult to transfer and attribute success from one place or another.

To find out the answer, you can look at the conversion breakdown. Are you using Google Ads or Apple Search Ads? It is likely that your app growth was influenced by a paid campaign that you ran at the same moment as the installs increased. You should also evaluate which ad platform works best. Is it possible to get a lower cost per conversion using a paid channel? You can compare your app’s performance with other campaigns to get a better idea of how it is performing. How have your impressions, conversions and costs performed compared to previous periods. All of these factors will help you decide if you need to change your campaign’s focus or make adjustments.

GAMEE’s experiences have three key takeaways

GAMEE has taught us that app marketers should always be working on three things:

ASO

It’s the final point for all your app activities. A good ASO strategy can multiply every dollar and hour spent elsewhere. App Radar’s platform proved to be extremely helpful in maximizing our campaigns.

Test

To get the best results, use custom app store listings whenever possible, various combinations of paid advertising networks and app store A/B testing.

Prioritizing

Choose the markets, demographics, and/or audiences you want to win, then focus your ASO and pay channels on them.

Although it is difficult to analyze the impact of organic and paid user acquisition, there are some things you shouldn’t do. It is not possible to rely only on organic UA and paid UA. Both UA and paid UA must work together to create a successful app marketing strategy. You should allow for testing. This allows you to adjust and pivot your strategy as you go and adapt it to suit your target audience. If your app is well managed, you will see the benefits of your strategy.

Jan Gemrich is the Chief Marketing Officer of GAMEE, which is a high-engagement, play-to-earn gaming site that attracts more than 30 million users. GAMEE is part Animoca, a top blockchain gaming company. Jan was previously employed by Google for over 9 years. He is based in Prague, London and Toronto and was responsible for user growth (Google Pay and Android) and the launch and maintenance of new products (Pixel and Stadia em>

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Apps are no longer able to grow organically. Search Engine Watch was first to publish this article.

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