The App Store Optimization Conference on October 3rd will be a special day where organic marketing knowledge is shared for the sake of education of app development and marketing teams, and with the belief that sharing ideas or techniques is not harmful to the growth, but rather a boon for the field of ASO as a whole.
This trait of education as a core value was what propelled Incipia and Phiture to wrote hundreds of deeply detailed blog posts and led to the creation of the ASO Stack framework and the ASO Stack Slack (1,500 ASO marketers worldwide), the Advanced ASO Book, and to put on the first in the conference series: the ASO Conference Berlin.
The ASO Conference NYC promises to continue in this tradition and allow thought leaders to share their hacks and techniques, speakers and attendees alike to feel safe and comfortable to share the tricks and challenges they have come across with one another, and for the discussions that follow to lead to realizations not possible to achieve from going it alone.
So who should attend the ASO Conference?
While certainly all are welcome, here are a few profiles of people who should definitely attend this conference:
- Specialists — ASO and organic marketers who have been managing ASO for some time. These folks should attend the ASO Conference to gain advanced techniques to improve their expertise.
- Growth/performance marketers — non-ASO trained marketers who have come to own ASO as a marketing channel among others, but don’t know as much about it as they want to. These folks should attend the ASO Conference in order to deepen their knowledge so that they can feel confident in owning this channel.
- Marketing executives — directors, department heads and VPs of marketing who have been hearing more and more about ASO and want to know more about it, at a high-level. These folks should attend the ASO Conference to learn how ASO can support their growth targets based on the experiences of others, how to resource/support it, and where the industry is heading.
Read on to learn about the second half of the now-finalized agenda and circle back to part 1 of the speaker sessions if you missed it!
Peter Yoon — The Nuances and Impact of Localization
Adaptation strategies take into account the behavioral differences that exist in international markets, whose values are shaped by unique cultural views. These strategies are planned with a deeper consideration for local consumer preferences and other location-specific requirements. Standardizing products and communications may save on costs and lead to a single brand identity. But if you take this path, you may be leaving a lot of growth and millions on the table.
The rise of international marketing was one of the key future predictions from the ASO Conference Berlin keynote and a vital pillar of a modern ASO strategy. Even for teams that haven’t already tapped out on growth in the US or other English markets and still need to achieve growth, setting up an international strategy is increasingly becoming key to not jumping into a race in last place as more and more apps solidify their presence in other countries. Peter’s experiences building and scaling ASO globally for one of the world’s most valuable startups will prove invaluable for app teams looking for efficiencies when tackling the task of localization.
Growth marketers working on apps that are challenged to establish an ASO strategy in a wide number of countries will learn about tools, processes and prioritization from Peter’s session.
Luca Giacomel — Analyzing the Influence of Metadata Optimizations, Algorithm Updates, and Seasonality on Organic Downloads
Understanding the performances of metdatada updates in the mobile stores is never easy. There are many confounding factors (seasonality, advertising, mis-attributions, influencer marketing..) that will prevent you from seeing if your work has been effective, disruptive or if it simply didn’t have any effect. In this talk I will therefore present you some strategies and tools you can use to evaluate the performance of your ASO work.
There are more tools and data than ever in today’s digital environment — but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll find the right approach to address tough questions; especially when unfamiliar tools introduce a new set of caveats. As a data scientist with a rare combination of statistical intellect and business acumen, Luca has made many valuable contributions to the ASO community (such as this one!). This is definitely one you won’t want to miss!
“How do I cut through the noise and measure the impact of my work? Pre-post comparisons just won’t cut it — there’s got to be a better way…”
Analysts, data-driven marketers and data-inclined executives will be enthralled by Luca’s session, and are likely to come away with an answer to elusive questions, such as the ubiquitous and challenging question of how to attribute results to an organic marketing strategy.
Fabien-Pierre Nicolas & Genie Ko — Build & Apply a Consumer Segmentation
This session will discuss how to perform consumer segmentation research and apply these insights to optimizing your app’s storefront, including processes for transforming the research into an actionable plan, designing, and testing store assets.
It’s easy to skip the research phase and go straight to keywords and screenshot buildout before knowing exactly what to say, or even who you’re speaking to; especially if you are taking on an ASO strategy after already running growth in another area of the business. Yet when you only have 30–80 characters and 3 screenshots to tell your story, applying the fundamentals of speaking clearly to your target market cares about leaves little room for error. The team at SmartNews has achieved massive growth, joining the unicorn club and achieving 500% growth in the US, proving their strategies are after burners for growth — and that’s in the hyper-competitive news space!
Executives and growth leads should join Fabien-Pierre & Gene’s session to check their understanding of segmentation and ensure their storefronts are not leaky buckets due to improper communication strategies.
Mirela Cialai — Why App Store Ratings Matter and the Winning Approach to 5-Star Ratings
In the current crowded app marketplace with the App Store forecasted to hit more than 5 million apps by 2020, increasing the discoverability of an app has become extremely challenging. This can be addressed by starting to pay attention to one of the most important triggers in app discoverability: App Store Ratings.
What happens when a non-metadata factor has a negative impact on ASO visibility? Mirela’s session covers this case, which resulted in a steep decrease in ratings & ranking. From top of the charts to nearly losing charting status and back again, Mirela will explain how she led her team through a recovery based on systematic optimization of Zinio’s ratings process.
Product managers, ASO marketers and executives should join Mirela’s session to understand how ratings affect ASO visibility, and how to recover from negative performance in ratings.
Andrea Raggi — How to Leverage Apple Search As and Keyword Ranking Tools to Automate Building the Optimal Keyword Set
The relationship between ASO and Apple Search Ads is increasingly intertwined and apparent. Therefore, knowing how to leverage all available keyword data such as conversion rates, search popularity and available impressions will increase your ASO potential. Andrea will walk you through how he leverages scripts to discover new keywords on Apple Search Ads and how to use that data to feed into automatically creating the optimal keyword set.
The rise of store ads is in one way a challenge to organic visibility, but in others a golden gift for App Store marketing research, analytics and precision. The team at Phiture have an established expertise in building technical solutions to repetitive problems (such as this Search Ads creative set statistical significance calculator) — Andrea will explain Phiture’s approach to applying automation to the intersection between ASO and ASA and how your team can save time and increase their productivity in keyword research.
Search Ads managers and ASO marketers alike can benefit from attending Andrea’s session, which offers pointers on how the two roles can work together for a greater impact on app growth overall.
Oliver Jiang — What You Need to Know About Organic Uplift
Organic uplift is a hotter topic than ever for the highly competitive modern ASO strategist, and a high impact data point that once calculated can bring big benefits to both paid and organic teams. But beware: the devil is always lurking in the details. This session will explain some of the gotchyas and other challenges to calculating and interpreting organic uplift for business applications.
Arguably the collaboration that will bring organic and paid marketers to the table faster than any other, organic uplift is fast becoming a standard practice of doing business. A heavily leveraged insight for startups looking to scale up, organic uplift is also a dangerous data point that can fall victim to contamination caused by factors or dynamics outside of the reach of direct measurement. In this session Oliver will share learnings from Incipia’s treasure trove of tribal knowledge on the subject of organic uplift.
Marketing executives and marketing lead (paid OR organic) should join Oliver’s session to learn how organic uplift is calculated, what caveats exist, and how to safely apply the coefficients to decision-making.
Gabe Kwakyi — Building a Modern ASO Report
As the field of ASO enters a new era of complexity, establishing a modern analytics stack is an imperative for generating the targeted insights needed to stay ahead of the competition and grow your organic share of voice. Gabe will explain how modern ASO reporting should go beyond keyword and downloads tracking and enter a new era of intelligence by considering the exponential nature of visibility, monitoring organic uplift, proactively diagnosing performance gaps and more.
In modern ASO strategy, primarily keyword-focused optimization is no longer a guarantee for results, rendering the old phrase “ASO is SEO for the App Store” now defunct. What does this mean for ASO and reporting on ASO? Join Gabe in exploring the new normal and get a critical look at how your ASO reporting must evolve.
ASO marketers and executives should join Gabe’s session to learn how to measure the new factors that affect organic visibility in the world of modern ASO.
ASO Panel: Beyond Keywords
ASO is no longer the mobile SEO, and the rise of browse/explore has threatened to overtake search as the major way in which users discover new apps. In this session, panelists will offer their insights into how ASO is evolving beyond keyword metadata management and what the new set of levers are for managing ASO in 2019.
ASO marketers will benefit from this panel session by diving into the future of ASO. From evolving discovery, to algorithmic changes, to new Google Play betas, to navigating the organic squeeze, topics from this panel promise to be innovative and informative.
ASO Panel: ASO Nightmares
What happens when an algorithm change flushes your performance down the drain? Or when you just can’t get an experiment win? Or when a poorly rated, lowly app overtakes you in the rankings? Or worse? This session is all about sharing the experiences and opinions of how to handle when ASO goes wrong.
Growth marketers taking the reigns on ASO should join this panel session not just for commiseration (though that’s always nice!), but to learn vicariously from the mistakes and challenges of others before hitting the same stumbling blocks. Even experts may stand to learn a thing or two!
We’ll see you in New York!
