Most app developers think Apple Search Ads is just about bidding on their brand name and maybe a couple of obvious keywords. They set it up, see a few cheap installs, and think the job's done. This is why most of them fail to scale and are leaving ninety percent of their potential growth on the table. Profitable app marketing on the App Store isn't about getting the cheapest installs; it's about building a machine that aquires high-value users, consistently and predictably. Forget the low-effort tactics you've read about. We're going to build a proper strategy.
If you've launched your app and are now struggling to get any paying users, this is for you. This guide will walk you through the exact process we use to take apps from zero to tens of thousands of valuable users.
So, why should I even care about Apple Search Ads?
Let's get one thing straight. Apple Search Ads (ASA) is fundamentally different from running ads on Meta or TikTok. On social media, you are interrupting someone's scrolling. You're trying to create demand out of thin air. With ASA, you are capturing demand that already exists. Someone has literally opened the App Store and is typing in words looking for a solution to their problem. The intent couldn't be higher. You're not trying to convince them they have a problem; you're just showing them you have the answer.
When you run an 'awareness' campaign on Facebook, you're essentially telling the algorithm to find the cheapest eyeballs possible, people who are least likely to ever buy anything. ASA is the complete opposite. You're getting in front of people at the exact moment they are looking to download an app like yours. This is why it's one of the most powerful tools available for getting more users for a startup app. It's not about shouting the loudest; it's about being in the right place at the right time.
Your Foundations: Don't Spend a Penny Before You Do This
Before you even think about opening the ASA dashboard, you need to get your house in order. Running ads to a broken foundation is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. You'll spend a fortune and have nothing to show for it.
1. Your App Store Page is Your Landing Page
This is the single biggest mistake I see. Devs spend ages on their app but five minutes on their App Store listing. Your App Store page—your icon, screenshots, video preview, description, and reviews—is your landing page. It's what convinces someone to tap 'Get'. If it's rubbish, your ads will fail. Period.
-> Screenshots & Video: Don't just show UI. Show the benefit. Use the Before-After-Bridge framework. Show the user's pain point (Before), show the ideal outcome (After), and then show how your app is the Bridge to get them there. If you have a meal planning app, show the chaos of an unplanned week, then show the calm of a planned-out menu, then show the feature that does it.
-> Reviews: Social proof is massive. You absolutely need a plan for how to get initial app reviews. No one wants to be the first to try an app with zero reviews. It feels risky. Run a small campaign for friends and family first if you have to, just to get some initial positive ratings on the board.
A poor product page is often the real reason for low user acquisition and retention. Fix this first.
2. Know Your Numbers: What's a User Actually Worth?
The second fatal error is flying blind on metrics. You can't know if your ads are profitable if you don't know what a user is worth to you. You need to calculate your Lifetime Value (LTV). This tells you how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer (your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC).
Here's the simple maths:
LTV = (Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let's do a quick example. Say your app has a subscription that brings in an average of £10 per user per month (ARPU). Your margin is 70% after Apple's cut. And you lose 5% of your subscribers each month (Churn).
LTV = (£10 * 0.70) / 0.05
LTV = £7 / 0.05 = £140
This user is worth £140 to you over their lifetime. A standard goal is a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. So, in this case, you can afford to spend up to £46 to acquire that customer. Suddenly, a £5 Cost-Per-Install doesn't seem so bad, does it? Without this number, you're just guessing. This calculation is the bedrock of any plan to scale your app installs profitably.
The Four-Campaign Structure That Actually Works
Right, let's get into the nitty-gritty. Don't just chuck all your keywords into one campaign. That's a recipe for disaster. You need to structure your account to control your budget, bids, and messaging properly. I always use a four-campaign structure. It's been the foundation for our most successful UK app campaigns.
The Core Four Apple Search Ads Campaigns
| Campaign Type | Goal | Keywords | Expected Performance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | Defence & Capture | Your app name, variations, and misspellings. (Exact Match) | Highest Tap-Through Rate (TTR), lowest Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA). |
| Competitor | Conquest & Steal | Your main competitors' brand names. (Exact Match) | Medium TTR, higher CPA than Brand but often high-value users. |
| Generic | Discovery & Volume | Non-branded terms describing your app's category or function, e.g., "photo editor", "budget planner". (Broad Match) | Lower TTR, CPA will vary. This is where you find scale. |
| Discovery | Keyword Mining | Enable 'Search Match'. No keywords needed. Add all your Brand, Competitor, and Generic keywords as negatives. | Lowest TTR, variable CPA. Its job is to find new, unexpected keywords for your other campaigns. |
This structure gives you total control. Your Brand campaign protects your turf from competitors bidding on your name. The Competitor campaign is an offensive move to steal users who are already looking for a solution in your category. The Generic campaign is where you'll find most of your new users. And the Discovery campaign is your R&D department, constantly finding new keyword ideas that real people are searching for. You regularly review the search terms report in the Discovery campaign and move any promising keywords into your Generic or Competitor campaigns as exact matches.
What Keywords Should I Be Using?
Your keyword strategy flows directly from the campaign structure above. It's not just about what you bid on, but how you bid on it. Apple Search Ads has two main keyword match types: Broad Match and Exact Match.
-> Exact Match: Your ad only shows for that exact phrase or very close variations. You use this for your Brand and Competitor campaigns, and for any proven keywords in your Generic campaign. It gives you maximum control.
-> Broad Match: Your ad can show for a wider range of related searches. You use this in your Generic campaign to discover new variations of your core terms.
The most important part of keyword management is your Negative Keyword list. This is crucial. In your Brand campaign, you should add all your competitor and generic keywords as negatives. In your Competitor and Generic campaigns, you should add your brand term as a negative. In your Discovery campaign, you MUST add every single keyword from your other three campaigns as a negative. This forces traffic to the right place and stops your campaigns from competing against each other, which just drives up your costs.
For example, if we were tasked with reducing the cost per install for a hiking app, the keyword strategy would look something like this:
- Brand Campaign Keywords (Exact Match): "Trail Finder UK", "trailfinderuk"
- Competitor Campaign Keywords (Exact Match): "AllTrails", "Komoot", "OS Maps"
- Generic Campaign Keywords (Broad Match): "hiking app", "walking routes", "peak district trails", "uk footpath map"
- Discovery Campaign Negatives: "Trail Finder UK", "AllTrails", "Komoot", "OS Maps", "hiking app", "walking routes", etc.
This ensures someone searching for your brand sees your brand ad, not your more expensive generic ad. It's a simple bit of housekeeping that makes a massive diffrence.
How Much Should I Spend and How Do I Scale?
This is the million-dollar—or, rather, thousand-pound—question. There's no single right answer, it all comes back to your LTV and goals. If you've just got a set ad budget to spend, you need a plan to deploy it wisely.
I'd recomend starting with a modest budget, maybe £500-£1,000 per month, to gather initial data. Don't spread it too thin. A good starting allocation might be:
- Brand Campaign: 10%
- Competitor Campaign: 30%
- Generic Campaign: 40%
- Discovery Campaign: 20%
Run this for a few weeks. Monitor your Cost-Per-Install (CPI) and, more importantly, your Cost-Per-Action (CPA) for valuable events like a trial start or a subscription. Once you see which keywords and campaigns are delivering profitable users (based on your LTV calculation), you start to scale. This is where the real growth happens. Scaling isn't just about increasing the overall budget; it's about re-allocating spend from underperforming areas to your winners.
We've used this exact method to help apps scale succesfully. For one events and sports app, we started on ASA and then expanded, eventually getting them over 45,000 signups at under £2 per signup by applying this structured testing approach across Meta, TikTok, and Google as well. The principles of finding what works and then doubling down apply everywhere. If you're based in the UK and thinking about expansion, it's also a vital part of scaling a UK app into the US market, as you'll need to adapt keywords and budgets for the new audience.
For more detail on setting up your initial budgets, our complete budgeting guide for Apple Search Ads in the UK has more specific examples.
Going Beyond the Install: Measuring What Actually Matters
Here's a piece of contrarian advice: stop obsessing over your Cost Per Install. A low CPI is a vanity metric if those users never open the app again or never spend any money.
The whole point of this is to acquire valuable, long-term users. The professionals focus on downstream metrics. What's your trial start rate? What's your subscription conversion rate? What is the Day 7 retention of users from your 'Competitor' campaign versus your 'Generic' campaign? This is the data that lets you make smart decisions.
To track this properly, you'll need to integrate the Apple Ads Attribution API or use a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) like AppsFlyer, Adjust, or Branch. Yes, it's an extra step and can have a cost, but it's the only way to truly understand the quality of the users you're acquiring from different campaigns and keywords. It’s the difference between flying blind and having a proper cockpit with all the instruments. The goal must be a clear ad strategy that targets high-value users, not just installs.
Where Do Other Ad Platforms Fit In?
Apple Search Ads is incredibly powerful, but it shouldn't exist in a silo. A truly effective app marketing framework uses multiple channels that work together.
-> Meta (Facebook/Instagram) & TikTok Ads: These are brilliant for reaching people who aren't actively searching for your app. You can build audiences based on interests and behaviours to create demand. For example, if you have a prize draw app, you can profitably acquire users with Meta ads by targeting people interested in competitions and similar apps. The key is to run a conversion-optimised campaign, not an awareness one. For an in-depth look, our Meta App Ads UK guide covers optimising for ROAS.
-> Google App Campaigns (UAC): If you have an Android app, this is Google's equivalent to ASA and is non-negotiable. Even for iOS, it can drive installs across YouTube, Google Search, and the Display Network. The best campaign for app downloads on Google is almost always a dedicated App Campaign.
Think of it like this: ASA captures existing demand from the bottom of the funnel. Social media ads create new demand at the top of the funnel.
The Main Advice I Have For You:
This is a lot to take in, I know. If you only take away a few things, make them these. This is the core playbook for turning Apple Search Ads into a growth engine rather than a money pit.
| Action Item | Why It's Important | How to Implement |
|---|---|---|
| Calculate Your LTV | Tells you what you can afford to spend per user. Without it, you cannot measure profitability. | Use the formula: (ARPU * Gross Margin %) / Churn Rate. Be honest with your numbers. |
| Overhaul Your App Store Page | This is your landing page. A bad one guarantees ad failure, no matter how good your targeting is. | Focus on benefit-driven screenshots, a compelling video preview, and getting initial positive reviews. |
| Implement the 4-Campaign Structure | Provides control, prevents budget waste, and allows for systematic keyword discovery. | Create separate Brand, Competitor, Generic, and Discovery campaigns with correct keyword match types. |
| Build Rigorous Negative Keyword Lists | Stops your campaigns from competing against each other and ensures searchers see the most relevant ad. | Cross-negate keywords between all campaigns. Your Discovery campaign should have all other keywords as negatives. |
| Measure Post-Install Actions | Shifts focus from cheap installs (vanity metric) to profitable users (what actually matters). | Integrate an MMP or Apple's attribution API to track trials, subscriptions, and other key events. |
Why You Might Need Expert Help
You can absolutely implement all of this yourself. The principles are straightforward. But the reality is that proper execution is complex, detail-orientated, and very time-consuming. It's not a 'set and forget' channel. It needs constant monitoring, analysis, and optimisation. You have to analyse search term reports, adjust bids, test new creative sets, and manage budgets across multiple campaigns.
This is where an expert can make a huge difference. An experienced consultant or agency has done this hundreds of times. We know the benchmarks, we can spot opportunities and problems faster, and we can avoid the common costly mistakes that can drain a startup's budget. The goal is to get you to profitability faster and help you scale more aggressively than you could on your own. It's often a struggle to know where to begin, or you might need help identifying the best agency for your specific needs.
If you're finding that your campaigns aren't performing, your costs are too high, or you simply don't have the hours in the day to manage this properly, it might be time to get a second opinion. We offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation where we can take a look at your account and give you some honest, actionable advice on what to do next. Feel free to reach out for a chat.
