How to approach a winning ASO strategy in 2024

Our approach on how to build a winning ASO strategy for a game cover the different aspects on how to approach App Store Optimization in the different app phases:

1. App Development

2. App in Soft Launch

3. App In Production with Live Ops

Let’s see more in-depth what ASO can do in the different stages on a mobile app.

ASO in app development

In the stage to provide a product with engaging gameplay and effective monetization features ASO takes the role of providing clear themes/ topic on an initial stage shortlisting sets of characters (animals, planets, heroes,…) and scenarios (universe, sea, countryside, cities,…) and even on early stages on how to focus the gameplay (RPG, FPS, tile matching) and gender (casual, midcore). The idea is to base the game core features on a previous market research based on market trends, competition, audience segmentation taking into account the organic potential and organic market of the game.

ASO Strategy: Define compelling marketing assets (characters, scenarios, locations) to include in the product based on market trends and product niche and support product design and dev teams to define creativities and USP. Also support on understanding organic target for monetization and pricing modeling
- Define most appropriate characters /assets / items / scenarios to target organic growth
- Support on defining style and messaging for creativities with the product team unifying the USP of the game
- Support on organic assessment for monetization purposes

Main Goal: Establish a clear theme/topic area to focus on for the gameplay and define main keywords for the game.

We will be using BI tools to identify markets, audience segments, competition, trends & ASO tool for an initial keyword research to identify the 3-5 main keywords of the game:

Support the developer team to shortlist and propose some characters / scenarios and design teams based on market research
Elaborate an initial keyword research to help understand the USP together with UA and monetization
Support UX / product design on creativities based on audience and competitors
Deconstruct the gameplay together with dev and monetization to check alignment with store policies and best practices

ASO in soft launch

At this stage we need to determine growth assessment and work for an ASO plan to maximize initial performance. The idea is that we have a go-to-market strategy for the store pages so the UA testing runs smoothly. Besides this, we need to provide a polished product, technically efficient with engaging gameplay. ASO will need to check gameplay and monetization models for publishing store limitations, define with UA, Social, and Product the USP and initial audience segmentation.

ASO Strategy: Define with other marketing teams (UA, ad monetization) the audience segmentation and markets priorities and align initial marketing USP (including social media and community, brand, etc.).

Based on this, elaborate an initial game assessment to understand the organic growth potential of the game and initial growth estimations for the first months. This is crucial for UA to know how much budget and efforts they should allocate

Define audiences and USP together with the marketing team
Understand your niche to deliver a growth forecast based on different scenarios. Use BI tools for benchmarking and previous a/b tests results.
Deliver optimized store pages in main markets prior to game launch

Main Goal: Define the game niche to create initial store listing pages as well as growth forecasting based on market trends and category benchmarks; Initial game optimization (US title + description) to maximize launch boost. We will be using BI tools for market research and ASO tools for initial keyword research.

We will be focusing on two main pillars within ASO during this phase: visibility and conversion.

Increasing organic “Visibility”:
1. Define brand title
2. Produce initial description in your English default main store page using relevant keywords
3. Define top markets priorities to localize their store pages (titles, descriptions)
Increasing organic “Conversion”:
1. Define app icon and check branding and industry limitations
2. Define store screenshots including call-to-actions aligned with USP
3. Define a video preview. Check social media coverage, promos, PR… to align USP in marketing
4. Localize store visuals in main markets and optimize them through testing

How to Grow your App in the App Stores in 2024

When your app is already live in the mobile store, we need to understand the app’s growth potential for organic performance based on current status, on what we can do to unlock growth providing a reliable way of organic measurement, an ASO roadmap to deliver organic growth and revenue from an already polished game in production in the mobile stores.

ASO Strategy: Establish growth goals based on performance forecast with aggregated data on how to increase organic visibility and visit-to-install conversion, including main milestones to boost organic visibility and conversion, main markets to focus on and overall ASO strategy to provide organic growth based on performance plus our forecast with ETA so external stakeholders understand what we are doing, why and when we deliver.

Analyze performance to understand trends and patterns
Establish performance baseline, forecast growth potential based on organic performance, mkt plans (UA budgets, Social..) and product updates and define ASO KPIs and goals (monthly, quarterly)
Understand strengths and weaknesses based on what worked and what didn’t to define priorities and main markets based on performance, growth potential and UA plans, starting with the most powerful growth drivers
Aggregate ASO metrics and KPIs into the categories Visibility and Conversion (Visit-to-Install CVR) for better monitoring ASO actions
Define OKRs and align ASO KPIs with Acquisition plans and business objectives and OKRs.

Main Goal: Increase organic growth by establishing ASO goals, defining them using KPIs. Identify growth opportunities, forecast growth potential and establish ASO roadmap including milestones to follow-up on results.

We will be using ASO tools to track keyword ranks and research as well as for BI purposes, and analytics data to optimize our ASO flow (store consoles, inhouse analytics dashboards, MMPs…). Again, we will be focusing on two main elements within ASO: visibility and conversion.

Increasing organic “Visibility”:
1. Optimize game titles & subtitles in top markets
2. Optimize game descriptions in top markets
3. Align ASO with UA to find new market opportunities: Optimize game localization in other markets based on UA / product priorities
4. Setup and monitor ASO dashboard, KPIs, organic performance analytics, forecasting and OKRs: Aggregate Keyword Optimization KPIs and sync them with team and game OKRs objectives
5. Setup UA specific plans to scale organics
6. Sync and align with the dev and marketing team for promoting Live Ops events: Plan w/UA, Social
7. Support the developer team on building native user prompts to boost ratings and reviews:
8. Optimize App Ratings
9. Monitor Crashes & ANRs
10. Other secondary tasks

Increasing organic “Conversion”:
1. Optimize game visual assets in top markets. Define priorities based on historical testing results, current conversion rates per country and starting with the more visible assets.
  - Apply consistent brand awareness through the user journey, positioning & message for store visuals
2. Take accountability for providing responsive designs
3. Implement additional store visuals to increase performance
4. Setup and monitor ASO dash, KPIs, organic performance analytics, forecasting and OKRs: Aggregate Conversion Rate Optimization KPIs and sync them with team and game OKRs objectives
5. Setup a User Reviews Strategy to increase Engagement
6. Optimize App Ratings and Reviews User Flow to increase user conversion
7. Sync with Social and UA efforts on applying design consistency

ASO focuses on optimizing app visibility as well as Visit2Install conversion. Making ASO work also for other acquisition channels is key for the app’s success.

A winning App Store Optimization strategy will be defined on how you approach organic growth based on the app’s potential to scale together with the product team.

Feel free to reach us out in case you have any questions.