This is a recent presentation i did for 'SF Mobile Entrepreneurs' meetup. The presentation is slightly modified with more text to make it easier to understand on SlideShare.

1. How to Grow Your
Mobile Audience
aka Mobile Acquisition
aka Just create a great product
David Truong
@daveytea
e: david@app.io

3. Who Am I?
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Founder
Educational games for children (4-8 years old)
400k+ downloads
Games played 5 million+ times around the world
Featured numerous times in the App Store

4. Who Am I?
• Head of Business Development
• Interactive demos of apps, in your browser (!!!)
• Alternative to Test Flight / HockeyApp
• Another way to market your app (instead of
video)
• Clients include Fortune500 companies and
Billion $ ‘startups’
• Example

6. 1. Feature on a niche blog (Moms with Apps)
2. First email out (4,000 cold email addresses, sort of targeted)
3. Edu App Store feature (1 app)
4. Price change + price optimisations
5. Niche website promos (Moms with Apps + Smart Apps 4 kids)
6. Second title release + features
7. One day feature in China App Store
8. Kids App store section release
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7. Getting Featured
There are no ‘official’ rules about this. But these things have helped me:
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Create a quality product that users love
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Speak to your users, learn startup methodology, MVP, etc
Make the product easy to use (menus, UX)
Give the product polish (see other top apps)
Know your users and customers
Don’t over-do social sharing / viral triggers / push notifications

8. Getting Featured
Follow Apple Developer & Marketing guidelines
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Consistent UI/UX experience (don’t put elements in weird places)
Clear information around IAP (no dirty tricks!)
Regular updates to app
Read App Store Marketing guidelines (there’s an email address there too!)

9. Getting Featured
Utilise and showcase Apple’s latest and greatest hardware
!
• Listen to WWDC announcements or special events

10. 1. Feature on a niche blog (Moms with Apps)
2. First email out (4,000 cold email addresses, sort of targeted)
3. Edu App Store feature (1 app)
4. Price change + price optimisations
5. Niche website promos (Moms with Apps + Smart Apps 4 kids)
6. Second title release + features
7. One day feature in China App Store
8. Kids App store section release
7
3
6
5
1
4
2
8

11. Community Outreach
Find your ‘niche’!
What is your niche?
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• Cold emails?
• Didn’t work for me. Principals, schools = too busy to think about iPad apps
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• App review sites?
• Didn’t work for me. Tons of small sites, big review sites are hard to get in contact with
!
• Niche website promotions?
• Yes worked for me. Being part of MomsWithApps Free App Friday promotion and other
niche community promotions
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• Amazing customer service?
• Yes worked! Great customer service to one random parent resulted in hundreds of
sales from schools and institutions she was connect to
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• Engaging with the niche community?
• Yes worked! Great to get feedback and learn from their experience + get tips + get early
downloads

12. Other important factors
• App Store SEO
• Title of app
• It matters a lot! Don’t repeat words in the title!
• Keywords
• It matters a lot! Don’t repeat words that are already in your title!
• Localisation
• Can help a lot! Localise the app descriptions + keywords as people do search in their
native language (even if they are in English speaking countries)
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• Regular updates
• Provide value to users. Keep ‘mindshare’
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• Paid acquisition
• Tried Google Adwords + FB Ads (didn’t try other mobile ad platforms)
• FB wins (by far)…

13. FB user acquisition
Micro target your niche on FB!
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Continually optimise to improve performance with multiple
campaigns. ALWAYS BE OPTIMISING!
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Utilise ‘Custom Audiences’ to algorithmically target similar users

15. Above all, create a product that your users will enjoy!

16. How to Grow Your
Mobile Audience
aka Mobile Acquisition
aka Just create a great product
David Truong
@daveytea
e: david@app.io