App marketing at SerpHike combines ASO (App Store Optimisation) with paid user acquisition, both measured against install-to-retention rather than raw install volume. PW.live saw 58% more installs plus 41% better 30-day retention through this approach in 2025.
How SerpHike runs app marketing properly
What's included?
- App Store and Play Store listing optimisation: title, keywords, screenshots
- Review and rating strategy to improve store ranking
- Paid UA campaigns across app-install ad networks
- Post-install retention tracking, tied back to Marketing Automation
| Client | What was scoped | Result |
|---|---|---|
| PW.live | Store listing rewrite + paid UA refocus | 58% more installs |
Evidence: app growth from a real client
Installs are easy to buy, users are not
Paid installs can be bought in any volume. Retained users cannot. Adjust's benchmarks put average retention at 26% on day one and 7% by day 30 (Adjust retention guide), so most installs bought on a cost-per-install target never become customers. We plan app marketing around the users who stay.
The levers we use
- App store optimisation: Apple says around 70% of App Store visitors search, and nearly 65% of downloads happen straight after a search (Apple Ads). See ASO
- Apple Search Ads and Google App campaigns: capturing that search intent directly
- Paid social: Meta and TikTok for discovery, with creative refreshed weekly
- Creators: short honest demos from people your users already follow
- Lifecycle: onboarding, push and email that get new users to value in week one
Measurement after App Tracking Transparency
Apple's privacy changes made user-level tracking much harder; Meta said the change would cost it around $10 billion in 2022 (CNBC, Feb 2022). We use SKAdNetwork and Google's privacy-preserving measurement, run incrementality tests and judge channels on cohort retention and revenue, not platform-reported installs alone.
This approach delivered 58% more installs and 41% better 30-day retention for PW.live.
How we measure it
Cost per retained user at day 7 and 30, cost per paying user, return on ad spend by cohort and organic installs from store optimisation. Read why installs without retention are a trap and how to run paid UA without overspending.