We all want to succeed in the App Store. However, the competition is getting tougher and tougher every single day. Therefore our marketing strategies also need to adapt and improve. In a post-IDFA world, Apple Search Ads might be the ultimate tool to overcome user acquisition challenges
Skipping the organic line sounds great but there await difficulties, too. We cannot just pay our way into the number one spot. We have to spend some time on Apple Search Ads Optimization in order to build an effective strategy. Thus we have a dog-eat-dog world there, too.
For this reason, we decided to compare the Apple Search Ads strategies of two competing apps in this blog post.
Since these kinds of apps that have specific purposes can highly benefit from Apple Search Ads in terms of app marketing, this should be an interesting case.
If you are ready, let’s start by introducing the rivals: The Weather Channel and Clime: NOAA Weather Radar Live.
The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is offering a handful of features such as daily forecasts, allergy risks, and an easy-to-use interface. It probably gives you everything and more that you look for in a weather forecast app. However, we all know that a great app is not enough to receive downloads. What we need is a great app that is visible in the app store. And when we look at the App Profile, we see that it has a considerably high visibility score of 90.
Its category rankings also approve of its success. As you can see it has been at the top of the weather apps for quite a long time.
Clime: NOAA Weather Radar Live
Now let’s talk about Clime: NOAA Weather Radar Live. It is a weather forecasting app that offers pretty similar features to The Weather Channel. It also has a notably close visibility score with its arch-rival.
They are currently ranking at second place however don’t let this fool you. In this competition, the top app in the Weather category changes constantly.
This confirms that they are both successful in their app marketing strategy and continuously engage in optimization in order to maintain their rankings.
Who is winning in Apple Search Ads?
Now as we have some idea about their competition and what value propositions these apps have, we can move on to their Apple Search Ads strategy.
The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel definitely invests in Apple Search Ads to boost app growth. As you can see, their ads appeared for 11,257 keywords during the last week.
However, more is not always better. That is why we calculate a Search Ads Visibility score based on the popularity of the keywords an app bids on and the impression share it receives. This way you can get a quick understanding of the effectiveness of their Apple Search Ads strategy.
Now, let’s see some of the keywords The Weather Channel bids on.
A popularity score of 72 is huge. But more importantly, The Weather Channel is getting almost half of the impressions from this keyword.
This means that half of the people that search for weather apps in the App Store are presented with an ad from The Weather Channel. You can guess how this can impact boost their presence in the App Store.
However, earning impressions in such a popular keyword is no easy feat. The Weather Channel is ranking second organically for this keyword. This is significant because ASO and ASA should be inseparable in our user acquisition strategies. Any weakness in one of these strategies will impact the other.
However, this is not the only inference that we can make using Our Apple Search Ads Intelligence tool. As you can see, The Weather Channel is also bidding for keywords that have lower volumes with higher user intent.
These low competition keywords can be invaluable for your strategy as they can result in lower costs and higher retention rates especially if you can get a good portion of the impressions.
What we see above is that The Weather Channel is bidding on a lot of keywords but the majority of them have volumes lower than 10. Moreover, the impression shares of The Weather Channel for these keywords are also lower than 10%.
These keywords might come from broad match or search match ad groups however, it might be a good practice to remove some of these underperforming keywords from their campaign.
Since dealing with tons of keywords in a large dataset can cause difficulties like this, using our Automation tools to improve your efficiency could be beneficial. This way you can make the best out of your Apple Search Ads budget.
What do you think? Do they set an example of how to use Apple Search Ads? Let’s check out their competitors and see how they compare.
Clime: NOAA Weather Radar Live
Clime: NOAA Weather Radar Live is hot on The Weather Channels’ trail with a Search Ads Visibility Score of 78. As you would remember, The Weather Channel’s score was 80 while they bid on more than 11 thousand keywords. Clime: NOAA has nearly the same visibility score as The Weather Channel but they bid on just 2,300 keywords.
However, there is more. Let’s investigate the competition further using our SearchAds Intelligence tool.
Clime: NOAA also bids on some high-intent keywords and receives a good amount of impressions. As you can see, they are bidding on some keywords such as ‘my lightning tracker’ or ‘weather alerts free’.
The Weather Channel does not receive any impressions from these keywords. This is yet another indicator of the importance of competitor analysis. Using SearchAds Intelligence, you can discover the best keywords to get ahead of your competitors!
They are also successfully preserving their own brand keywords against other apps.
As you can see, they are doing great in the competition with other weather apps and utilizing Apple Search Ads to maximize the growth of their business.
Apple Search Ads Lessons from The Weather Channel and Clime: NOAA
So, we have looked into the eyes of the competition and examined the Apple Search Ads strategies of two competitors. Let’s take a look at some of the Apple Search Ads best practices we can learn from these apps.
- Popularity matters.
We know it is not a high school drama but if you manage to win impressions for popular keywords, your visibility will significantly increase.
- Relevancy matters.
Don’t forget to complement your efforts on Apple Search Ads with App Store optimization.
- Bidding smart matters.
Use Keyword Auction Insights. Find out which keywords your competitors are bidding on, analyze and be one step ahead all the time.
- Efficiency matters.
Bulk operations and automation tools will both save you time and money. Take advantage of them.
Schedule a demo with our experts today and let’s make sure that your app’s presence in the App Store scares off the competition!
