Solved: Apple Search Ads Cost in Norwich (Data Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

That's a very common question, and it's smart to be thinking about budgeting before you dive in. The short answer, though, is that you won't find a specific cost for Apple Search Ads in Norwich. It's a bit of a myth that you can price things out on a city-by-city basis like that.

The good news is that the way it *actually* works is much more powerful once you get your head around it. The cost isn't determined by geography within the UK, but by a UK-wide auction driven by competition for keywords and how relevant your app is to the user. Essentailly, you're not buying ad space in Norwich; you're bidding against other app owners for the attention of a user, wherever they are in the country, at the exact moment they search for something you offer.

I'm happy to give you some of my thoughts on this. Instead of chasing a Norwich-specific price, we need to reframe the question entirely. The real questions are: "How much is a new user actually worth to my business?" and "How much can I therefore afford to pay to acquire one?" Once you know that, you can build a predictable and scalable advertising machine. Let's walk through how to figure that out.

We'll need to look at what really drives your costs...

Think of the App Store as a massive, real-time auction house. Every time a user in the UK types something into the search bar, an auction happens in milliseconds. The winner gets their ad shown at the top. But who wins, and what they pay, has nothing to do with whether the user is in Norwich, Newcastle, or Newquay. It's all down to these factors:

1. Keyword Competition: This is the big one. If your app is in a crowded space like 'food delivery', 'taxi booking', or 'mobile games', you're bidding against huge companies with deep pockets for those obvious keywords. The Cost-Per-Tap (CPT) for a term like "food delivery app" will be incredibly high. However, if your app serves a more niche purpose, say "Norfolk birdwatching guide", the competition will be far lower, and so will your costs. The more specific and relevent your keywords, the better.

2. Your Tap-Through Rate (TTR): This is the percentage of people who see your ad and actually tap on it. Apple wants to show ads that users find helpful. If you have a high TTR, Apple's algorithm sees your ad as highly relevant and rewards you with a better ad position and often a lower CPT. A poor TTR signals your ad is irrelevant, and Apple will charge you more to show it (if they show it at all). This is why a good app icon, name, and subtitle are so important – they are your ad creative.

3. Your App Store Conversion Rate: This is what happens *after* the tap. Of the people who land on your App Store page, how many actually download the app? A page with compelling screenshots, a great preview video, clear feature descriptions, and strong social proof (reviews!) will have a high conversion rate. A high conversion rate means you can afford to pay more per tap, because you know a higher percentage of those taps will turn into valuable users. A low conversion rate means you're just wasting money on taps that go nowhere.

4. Your App's Niche and Monetisation Model: An app that makes money from a £99/month subscription can obviously afford to pay a lot more for a user than a free app that relies on occasional ad revenue. We've seen this in our own campaigns. One app growth campaign we worked on achieved over 45,000 signups at under £2 per signup. That was for an app in the events and sports space, which is moderately competitive. On the other hand, campaigns for gambling or finance apps can see costs many times higher because the potential lifetime value of each user is enormous.

So, you see, your focus shouldn't be on the user's location, but on optimising these four factors. That's how you control and reduce your costs, not by trying to target a smaller geographic area.

I'd say you need to calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) first...

Before you spend a single pound on ads, you need to answer the most important question in business: What is one customer worth to you over their entire relationship with your app? This is your Lifetime Value, or LTV. Without this number, you're flying blind. You have no idea if paying £2 for an install is a bargain or a disaster.

The calculation might seem a bit intimidating, but it's simpler than it looks. It breaks down into three core metrics:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): On average, how much revenue does a single user generate for you each month? This could be from subscriptions, in-app purchases, or ad revenue.
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? After app store fees, server costs, etc., what percentage is left as gross profit? Be honest here.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your users do you lose each month? (i.e., they unsubscribe or stop using the app). This is absolutly critical.

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let’s run an example. Imagine your app has a subscription that brings in an average of £10 per user per month (ARPA). Your gross margin is 70% after Apple's cut and other costs. And you've found that you lose about 5% of your subscribers each month (Churn).

LTV = (£10 * 0.70) / 0.05

LTV = £7 / 0.05

LTV = £140

In this scenario, each new subscriber is worth £140 in gross profit to your business. Now you have your North Star. A common rule of thumb is to aim for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you could comfortably afford to spend up to £46 (£140 / 3) to acquire a single new customer and still have a very healthy, profitable business model.

Suddenly, a Cost Per Install of £2 or even £5 doesn't seem so bad, does it? It looks like a profitable investment. This is the maths that allows you to scale confidently. To make it easier, I've built a little calculator for you to play with your own numbers.

You probably should use a structured approach to testing...

Right, so we've established that your cost is set by a UK-wide auction and that your budget should be based on your LTV. The next logical question is, "How do I actually get started without burning a load of cash?"

The answer is a structured, methodical approach. Don't just throw a bunch of keywords into a campaign and hope for the best. That's a recipe for disaster. I'd recomend a two-stage process that we use for our own clients, which works incredibly well to minimise risk and find what works quickly.

Phase 1: The Discovery Campaign

The goal here is pure research. You want to let Apple's algorithm do the heavy lifting to find out what people are actually searching for when they download your app.

• Campaign Type: Create a new campaign and enable 'Search Match'. This is a feature where Apple automatically matches your ad to relevant search terms they think are a good fit for your app, even ones you haven't thought of.
• Budget: Keep it small. You don't need to spend a fortune. A budget of £20-£50 per day is more than enough to gather data.
• Keywords: Add a handful of 'broad match' keywords that are obviously related to your app. These are your seed keywords to give the algorithm a starting point.
• The Goal: Run this for a week or two and keep a very close eye on the 'Search Terms' report. This report is gold. It will show you the *exact* queries users typed before tapping and installing your app. You'll uncover surprising terms and phrasing you would never have guessed.

Phase 2: The Performance Campaign (or Exact Match Campaign)

Once your Discovery campaign has identified a list of high-performing search terms (those with a good number of installs at an acceptable cost), it's time to take control.

• Campaign Type: Create a second, seperate campaign. This is absolutly crucial for proper budget control.
• Keywords: Take the winning search terms from your Discovery campaign and add them to this new campaign as 'Exact Match' keywords. This tells Apple you *only* want to bid on these specific, proven terms. This gives you maximum control over your bids and budget.
• Negative Keywords: This is just as important. Go back to your Discovery campaign and add the winning search terms as 'Exact Match Negatives'. This prevents your two campaigns from bidding against each other for the same search term, which would just drive up your own costs. Also, add any irrelevant search terms that appeared in your Discovery report as negatives in *both* campaigns to stop wasting money on them.
• The Goal: This campaign is built for scaling. Because you're only bidding on keywords you know convert, you can allocate more budget to this campaign with confidence. You continue to let the Discovery campaign run in the background on its small budget, constantly feeding you new potential keywords to move over to your performance campaign.

This two-campaign structure gives you the best of both worlds: a low-risk research engine that constantly finds new opportunities, and a high-performance engine that you can scale predictably. Here's a quick visual of how that works.

You'll need a realistic budget...

So, what should you expect to pay? Based on our experience with clients, like the one who achieved 45k signups at under £2 per install, and looking at the broader market, here's a realistic picture. For a typical app in a moderately competitive niche in the UK, you should probably budget for a Cost Per Install (CPI) in the range of £1.50 - £4.00.

Could it be lower? Yes, if you're in a very niche category with little competition, you might see CPIs closer to £1.00. Could it be higher? Definitly. If you're in a highly competitive space like finance, dating, or hyper-casual gaming, your CPI could easily be £5.00, £10.00, or even more. The key is that your CPI must be lower than your affordable CPA that you worked out from your LTV.

Here's a rough guide to how competitiveness can affect potential costs, just to give you a feel for it.

For a starting budget, I usually recommend clients start with at least £500 - £1,000 for the first month. This is enough to get through the discovery phase and gather meaningful data on which keywords are working without breaking teh bank. Any less than that and it's hard to get enough data quickly to make good decisions. You can use this final calculator to see how your desired number of installs and your estimated CPI impacts your required budget.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull this all together, here is a summary of the actionable steps I'd recommend you take. This is the exact process we'd follow if we were starting a new campaign from scratch.

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's certainly more complex than finding a simple price for advertising in Norwich. But this complexity is also where the opportunity lies. Most amateur advertisers don't do this work. They don't calculate their LTV, they don't structure their campaigns properly, and they burn through their budget with very little to show for it.

By taking a professional, data-driven approach, you can build a significant advantage. It takes time and expertise to manage this process effectively – from the initial strategic setup to the ongoing analysis and optimisation. This is, of course, where working with a specialist can make a huge difference, saving you from costly mistakes and accelerating your path to profitable growth.

Hopefully this detailed breakdown gives you a much clearer picture and a solid framework to get started. If you'd like to chat through your specific app and goals in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your situation together.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh