ASO Expert Interview: Pablo Penny

Today we’re having the pleasure to interview Pablo Penny, ASO Manager atPhiture. Learn more about his various app marketing challenges and achievements. Discover his tips to build a successful keyword optimization strategy and increase visibility.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I am a consultant at Phiture which is a mobile growth consultancy based in Berlin. We help apps grow their user-base through activities related to acquisition, engagement & retention and monetization. Amongst other, we have two industry-acclaimed frameworks – the Mobile Growth Stack and the ASO Stack which we use to help our clients. We support a number of large international brands such as Skyscanner and Headspace as well as fast-growing startups in growing and improving their apps. I specialize in App Store Optimization and on helping various clients improve their downloads by increasing their apps’ visibility and conversion in the stores.

2. For how long have you been involved in ASO or app marketing?

I started the job in ASO and app marketing at Phiture in 2016 and have since optimized over 6 different apps. Before that I completed a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management for several years in London. This is where – as part of my research and part of my teaching experience I first became actively involved with startups and mobile. I now use my experience to develop useful frameworks for ASO and for researching around apps and ASO and run the ASO Monthly publication which along with our ASO Slack group is a valuable resource for anyone engaging with ASO.

3. What was it about this industry that made you choose it as a primary job?

What I love about the mobile industry is the positive ways changed people’s lives and the digital world. The huge amount of data that people can now access on-the-go via social media, messaging and more opens a whole new world of possibilities. Data is the new oil of the digital economy, making app marketing particularly exciting. Due to people mostly carrying their mobile phones with them, apps provide access to real-time data allowing marketers to reach out to users at the right time and place. ASO is interesting because it’s still somewhat of a black box with limited information from Apple and Google on what works in the stores. So there’s some great opportunities for experimenting and getting ahead of your competitors’ apps.

4. How do you see the world of ASO and App marketing evolving?

The app industry has grown massively over the past few years. Although marketing apps successfully takes way more effort in 2017 than it did a few years back, the market is far from saturated. I think a lot of apps will be integrated into messenger platforms in the future, also, accessing apps instantly, without having to download them from the store will become more relevant, thus changing the roles of the stores and ASO. As many opportunities related to data collected from users are still to be uncovered, the value of data gathered through mobile devices and apps will likely increase even more in the future..

5. Tell us about your most challenging ASO “experiment”

At Phiture we improve many different apps for our clients. These are often apps that have great teams behind them with really well designed app App and Play Store assets. When clients approach us they want to get even better at ASO driving even more installs. We’ve had many challenging experiments particularly with designing and testing store assets. The hardest have been the ones when we’ve wanted to develop and test something completely new – based on a large body of research, branding, data and outstanding design. Which is why for A/B testing we keep a backlog of experiments for our clients, with carefully phrased hypotheses, with different variants – clearly demonstrating the thought process. What’s challenging is that while carefully crafted and unique experiments can often become a huge win, there are even more failures. It’s about those few experiments that win, that can have a huge impact on the growth trajectory of a company.

6. What is your favorite app?

I love the Headspace meditation app. Headspace is one of our clients – they have an amazing team who are changing people’s lives to the better with this great app.

7. What should be the biggest focus for app developers and marketers in 2017?

Chatbots and conversation interfaces will become increasingly relevant and should be considered for an app’s mobile strategy. Instant apps could be the death of the App Store although this will probably still take a while. Regarding ASO, I think a real game changer in the upcoming iOS 11 and the new App Store will be video previews.

8. Tell us about your experience with AppTweak and give us your favorite feature.

I use AppTweak almost on a daily basis and make regular use of most of its features. I use AppTweak to conduct keyword research, discover high volume keywords, track and monitor keywords over time and more. Which is why I am always excited when AppTweak puts something completely new out there – especially when it’s a feature that I hadn’t expected. I really love the visibility score graph and possibility of seeing your historic keyword ranks as compared to your competitors.

9. Do you have any “masterchef” ASO tips?

Make sure you use a systematic process when improving the visibility of your app and conducting keyword optimization. When conducting KWO for many of our clients I have found that while working with a large amount of keywords and considering so many things you can easily miss out on essential steps of KWO. This is why we developed the Keyword Optimization Cycle at Phiture which simplifies this process by helping through the processes of researching, prioritizing, targeting and measuring, which are essential for improving your app’s ranking.

Pablo is ASO Manager at Phiture, specialized in mobile growth consulting. Pablo manages large ASO projects and helps to drive organic downloads for well-known brands in Europe and the US. Pablo is responsible for publishing the ASO Stack and manages the ASO Stack Slack group.

Want to contact Pablo? Find all details on his ASO Expert profile page.