💎 Growth Gems #37 - Gems from "ASO Strategy for 2021 - Unlocking App Growth"
Hi there,
Today's gems are mined ⛏️ from a SplitMetrics panel "ASO Strategy for 2021 - Unlocking App Growth" with Daniel Peris (CEO and co-founder at TheTool, PickASO), Peter Fodor (CEO at AppAgent) and Thomas Kriebernegg (CEO at App Radar).
ASO Strategy for 2021 - Unlocking App Growth
💎 #1
Because moving forward there won’t be as precise targeting from ad networks, we will see less pre-qualified traffic coming to the app stores. The role of the stores is going to be more critical in really explaining the product.
💎 #2
Apple is trying to regain control over Facebook and Google. We’re going back in time to 2015 when featuring was important and the Apple editorial team could make games popular (instead of games mainly leveraging advertising to get to the top like it’s been lately).
💎 #3
One of the biggest factors for mobile games in 2021 will be brand recognition. Even though it’s hard to know which branding direction to go when you’re getting started as a gaming studio, you should make sure your creatives on the app stores are recognizable and have brand consistency.
💎 #4
Add your brand name or logo to your icon so users can always recognize your different games. The more users see your brand name, so more they will be inclined to download your (new) app or game.
💎 #5
You should do PR campaigns to make sure people know your brand, build quality backlinks and improve your SEO for your Google Play Store listing.
💎 #6
The most important thing for branding is to figure out what is your unique selling proposition, what are the key messages you want to communicate in ads and app store listings, and what is your tone of voice. Find the essence of your brand and be consistent. This can be done without any budget.
💎 #7
Be extreme or aggressive when A/B testing. Don’t test a white image against another white image.
💎 #8
Put your best, most popular and most relevant keyword on your first screenshot.
💎 #9
There is a cost to producing and localizing screenshots with text. If an experiment shows that not having texts on screenshots gives the same performance it’s therefore best to remove the text because you’ll end up being faster at testing.
💎 #10
It’s a great exercise for designers to produce quality screenshots without any copy. It forces them to figure out how to convey the message visually by enlarging or highlighting things.
💎 #11
Your call to action should illustrate the benefit to the user. So it’s not necessarily “Install Now” but instead something that solves their problem in order to convince them to download. Example: “Lose weight now” for a calorie counter.
💎 #12
SplitMetrics released an ASO benchmark for screenshots on mobile games. Using a hand pointing in the direction of the “Get” or “Install” button really works.
💎 #13
Be careful about adding fake download buttons because Google Ads (UAC) has some bots reviewing the ads that try to find these buttons and they can label your ads as misleading.
💎 #14
For the App Store where there is autoplay, invest time in defining your poster frame because it is the first second of the video and stands for a larger part of your store listing. Some people also have autoplay off. On the Google Play Store where there is less autoplay the feature graphic is critical.
💎 #15
The example of Clubhouse (getting huge growth and investments) points towards voice in general and voice advertising to become one of the biggest channels. Branding and being first for your brand name is therefore critical because if people hear a voice ad about your app then search for it, you’re at risk of them downloading your competitor’s app.
💎 #16
When exploring new channels, contextual advertising is going to become more important because with the IDFA deprecation you’ll have to think more about what kind of content your target audience consumes and their interests.
💎 #17
Building your brand is about building your community, your product’s brand but also your personal brand.
💎 #18
Apple is building its own search engine. First it was just rumors but now the “Apple bot” (similar to the Google bot) started crawling websites. If Apple changes Google search to Apple search on Apple devices and also starts running Apple Search Ads to it, it would be a major shift.
💎 #19
Apple’s spotlight search (on Mac) and iPhone search might be the first spot for Apple to display ads for apps, ecommerce, etc.
💎 #20
Use your keyword learnings to adjust your visual assets. Example: the best performing search phrase could be used as the headline of the first screenshot. For DoubleDown Interactive the insight that “Cleopatra Slots” is a very popular search term served as a guidance for the theme of the first new screenshot.
Stay savvy!
⛏️ Sylvain