Pet Project Club Meeting Report: IT Product Promotion 29.04

The meeting turned out to be very engaging. We met Dasha @angrysushi, a marketing expert, and discussed how to bring products to market even on a limited budget. I remembered the following points (mostly about mobile apps):

1. ASO (App Store Optimization) — it's not only or mainly about keywords. One key insight: the app icon should be treated not just as a picture, but as a full-fledged creative. It's important to understand how it looks in search results and how users click on it, since behavioral factors (installs) ultimately affect relevance and rankings in the store. Similarly, you should look at the product preview in the AppStore — now you can upload three screens, one of which can be a vertical video or a horizontal video. And this channel works great if someone is actually searching for your app.
2. Product economics. We discussed the basic metrics LTV (how much money one user brings) and CAC (cost to acquire that user). And the core balance of user economics: if LTV/CAC is less than one or close to it — the project runs at a loss. We discussed that the cost of development is currently decreasing thanks to no-code tools, while the cost of acquiring an audience, on the contrary, is rising. We also talked about the CPI metric (cost per install), which differs from CAC because installing does not mean paying and starting to use the app, and for some apps this metric may be more important than CAC (which can be optimized). Most importantly — Dasha named several companies whose reports she relies on for benchmarking.
3. "Quick test". Instead of polishing the app for months and optimizing the sales funnel (and paywalls), Dasha recommends doing a minimal test in your niche (for ). You just need to look at the cost of installation (CPI) and how the app "positions" in a specific category without extra efforts. This works for the AppStore, but unfortunately not for Google and Meta — they need several dozen targeted events to optimize impressions, and with high installation costs (which can reach several hundred dollars/euros), such a test cannot be called cheap.
4. Where to find traffic with a $100 budget? Besides the aforementioned Apple Search Ads, another great channel can be TikTok, including through the UGC format (user-generated content or mimicking it) — when you run a campaign, your users show and recommend your product.
5. There was a brief case review from participants, but firstly, there was little time left for it, and secondly, the products were not Dasha’s core areas, so there was no practical expertise on those niches:
   • CarCare Diary (car maintenance diary): We discussed how to use a blog and SEO pages (guides like “when to change oil”) to attract organic traffic, as well as the possibility to “parasitize” on competitors’ searches in stores. Also, how to analyze competitors’ promotion trends via apps like appfollow.io
   • VPN service: We reviewed the specifics of working in an overheated niche in North American and European markets. We brainstormed together about testing TikTok and finding narrow, specific user queries.
6. Useful tools. Recommendations surfaced during the conversation: Facebook Ads Library (to sneak peek competitors’ creatives) and, of course, Google Keyword Planner for finding topics and tools to track competitors' tags.

The meeting confirmed: the promotion topic is huge, and it’s better to dissect it — Apple separately, Google separately, traffic buying separately. We agreed that if any of us have specific questions, we can contact Dasha (contact info is at the top of this news) for advice or collaboration.

P.S.: It was great to see everyone, photos from the meeting attached