41.9k downloads later, here are 5 things I believed about marketing apps that turned out to be completely wrong

I got to 41.9k downloads after a lot of trial and error and failures. Almost all of it came from unlearning stuff I was sure about.

Mostly for iOS here but 3 and 4 also apply to web apps and SaaS.

1. "The app name is a branding decision"

Wrong. It's a distribution decision.

When your app first launches, Apple usually gives it a boost for a few days where your app name gets recommended in the autocomplete of the App Store search bar. If your name is something nobody searches for, that boost does nothing for you and you don't get it again.

What I do now is put a popular keyword in front of the name:

<popular keyword> – <your app name>

Calorie Tracker – CalGenie

Get lucky with a popular enough keyword and that first week alone can bring hundreds or thousands of downloads.

1. "Good screenshots means showing what the app does"

Nope. Nobody downloads a feature. They download an outcome.

So now I sell the benefit in the screenshots instead of listing what's in the app. I use the free tier of AppScreens to create app screenshots but you can also use GPT Image 2.5 or Canva or Figma, lots of available tools out there for creating app screenshots.

Same thing with the icon. I used to treat it as decoration but it's the thing that decides if an impression turns into a download in the search results, so I take it seriously now and generate mine with Nano banana.

And for the actual keywords in the name and subtitle, I use Astro for keyword research to find high-intent ones worth targeting.

1. "SEO isn't worth it for an app"

I thought a website was a waste of time when the App Store listing exists. It isn't.

Just a single page targeting high-intent keywords people are actually searching on Google. Google Trends is free and usually good enough to start. You can pay for Ahrefs or Keywords Everywhere but you don't have to.

Two things I learned the hard way: it ranks much faster if the main keyword is in the domain name itself, and once you rank, LLMs like ChatGPT start recommending you too.

1. "I posted content and it didn't work, so content doesn't work for my app"

The problem was never the app. It was volume.

Cross-post to Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and the rest. Formats that work: tutorials, problem -> solution, listicle, meme, storytelling.

You've got two options. Short-form video, like a face reaction to catch attention plus a demo. Or slideshows of 3-6 images, which are significantly faster to make and you can run them across many accounts to maximize reach and your chances of going viral.

The funnel is views -> app downloads -> purchases.

I did it manually for a long time until managing all the accounts became too time consuming. Now I fully automated it because I now have 19 accounts.

1. "Ads are for companies with money"

This one kept me out of the cheapest traffic I've found. Apple Search Ads lets you target the exact high-intent keywords people are already typing into the App Store, so it's not a gamble the way most ads are. And they give a free $100 credit to start.

If you've launched something and it went nowhere, it's probably not because you're bad at building. It's more likely you believe one or two of these like I did. Happy to answer any questions.