Solved: Need help identifying the best Apple Search Ads agency

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I saw your query about finding a good Apple Search Ads agency and thought I could offer some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running these kinds of campaigns. It’s a common challenge, a lot of app developers struggle with marketing after they’ve poured everything into building a great product, so you're certainly not alone in this.

Finding the right partner to help you navigate the App Store is a big decision, and getting it wrong can be expensive and frustrating. Getting it right, however, can completely change the trajectory of your app. I’m happy to give you my perspective on how I’d approach this if I were in your shoes.

We'll need to look at how you vet an agency...

First things first, let's talk about how to actually pick an agency. This is where most people get tripped up. It’s not just about finding someone who says they can run Apple Search Ads; it’s about finding a team that can become a genuine growth partner for you. The difference is massive.

Your number one focus should be on their case studies. I can't stress this enough. Don't just glance at them; properly dig in. Are they showing you vanity metrics like 'impressions' or are they talking about what actually matters: signups, trials, revenue, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)? More importantly, have they worked with apps or software before? The dynamics of marketing an app are quite different from, say, selling a physical product online. You want someone who already understands the ecosystem.

For instance, I remember one app client we worked on in the sports and eLearning space. They had a fantastic app but were struggling to get traction. Our task was to drive signups. We ended up driving over 45,000 signups for them at an average cost of under £2 per signup. We achieved this by leveraging a mix of channels, including Apple Search Ads, Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram), Google Ads, and TikTok Ads. A good agency will understand that while Apple Ads is a brilliant starting point, true scale often comes from a multi-channel approach. They should be able to explain why and how these platforms work together. If a potential agency can show you a relevant case study like that and walk you through the strategy, that's a very strong signal.

Of course, you’ve got to be realistic with results. Your niche might be more competitive, or your app's pricing model might mean a different target CPA. But a solid case study shows a proven track record of their process working. It demonstrates they have genuine expertise.

The next step is to get on a call with them. Book an intro meeting or a consultation. Many good agencies, like us, offer a free initial consultation where we'll have a look at your current situation and give you some upfront advice. This is your interview. You're not there to be sold to; you're there to gauge their expertise. Ask them direct questions:

• -> What would your initial 30-day plan for my app look like?
• -> What kind of keywords would you start testing on Apple Search Ads and what's your reasoning?
• -> How do you define and measure success beyond just the number of installs?
• -> What potential challenges do you see with marketing my specific app?

Listen carefully to their answers. Are they giving you specifics, or just vague promises? Tbh, in paid advertising, anyone who promises you a specific ROI or a guaranteed number of downloads from day one is either inexperienced or being dishonest. It's impossible to predict performance with 100% accuracy. What you are looking for is an agency that has a clear, logical, and tested process for *finding* that ROI. They should be talking about testing, learning, and optimising, not pulling numbers out of thin air.

Finally, look at their reviews and social proof. What are other clients saying about them? Strong, detailed reviews are definately a good sign. When you combine strong reviews with detailed case studies and a really impressive consultation call, you start to build a picture of a trustworthy and competent partner. On that note, a little inside tip: if you’ve seen their detailed case studies, had a free strategy review where they’ve given you tons of value, and you *still* feel the need to ask for references to call one of their existing clients, it might not be a good fit. For us, that's often a bit of a red flag because it signals a fundamental lack of trust from the beginning, and a successful agency-client relationship has to be built on trust.

I'd say you need to get the foundations right first...

Before you even spend your first pound on ads, there's some critical homework to do. An agency can drive traffic, but if the foundations aren't solid, that traffic will never convert, and you'll just be burning money. This is about understanding your customer and your numbers.

First, you need to get brutally specific about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). And I don't mean the sterile, demographic-based profile like "males aged 25-40 who are interested in technology." That's completely useless and leads to generic ads that speak to absolutely no one. You need to define your customer by their pain. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare.

Let's say you have a financial planning app. Your ICP isn't 'millennials interested in finance'. Their nightmare is 'being 35, watching friends buy houses, and having no clue if they're saving enough for their own future, feeling a constant, low-level anxiety about money'. If your app is for mental wellness, the nightmare is 'the feeling of being overwhelmed, knowing you should meditate but finding it impossible to quiet your mind, and feeling like a failure for it'. Once you isolate that nightmare, your entire marketing language changes. Your ads, your App Store description, your screenshots—everything should speak directly to solving that specific pain.

The second piece of homework, and this is probably the most overlooked aspect by app developers, is calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). The real question you should be asking isn't "How low can my Cost Per Install go?" but "How high a Cost Per Install can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is your LTV.

Let's walk through a simple calculation. It looks like this:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's break that down with a hypothetical example for a subscription app:

• -> ARPA: This is what a customer pays you, on average, each month. Let's say your app has a subscription of £9.99 per month. So, ARPA = £9.99.
• -> Gross Margin %: This is your profit on that revenue. You have to account for the App Store's cut (usually 15-30%). Let's say after Apple's fee, your margin is 75%.
• -> Monthly Churn Rate: This is the percentage of customers who cancel their subscription each month. This is a critical health metric for any subscription business. Let's say you lose 8% of your subscribers each month.

Now, let's do the maths:

LTV = (£9.99 * 0.75) / 0.08
LTV = £7.49 / 0.08
LTV = £93.63

In this example, each customer you acquire is worth £93.63 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number is your north star. It unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. A healthy ratio for a growing business is a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). This means, with an LTV of £93.63, you can afford to spend up to £31.21 to acquire a single paying subscriber. Suddenly, a £5 Cost Per Install that leads to a paying subscriber doesn't look expensive; it looks like an incredible bargain. This simple calculation completely frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality installs and allows you to focus on acquiring valuable, long-term users.

Finally, you need to think about your offer. For a B2B company, the offer might be a demo or a whitepaper. For you, the offer is your app itself. This is your unfair advantage. You don't have to use a high-friction "Request a Demo" button. Your call to action is "Download for Free." You must make it as easy as possible for a user to experience that "aha!" moment where they see the value your app provides. The best way to do this is with a free trial (with no card details) or a freemium plan. Let them use the product. Let them feel the transformation from their 'nightmare' state to a better one. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're not just generating installs; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who have already sold themselves on your solution.

You'll need a proper plan for Apple Search Ads (and beyond)...

With those foundations in place, now we can talk about the actual advertising strategy. You're right to be focused on Apple Search Ads. It's almost always the best place to start for an app.

The reason is pure intent. You are placing your app in front of people at the exact moment they are in the App Store, actively searching for a solution to their problem. This is the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. The traffic you get from Apple Search Ads will likely be your highest quality and have the highest conversion rate to paying users. An agency's first job is to dominate this channel for you.

The strategy here revolves around keywords. This is where your ICP pain-point research becomes gold. You don't just bid on broad, expensive keywords like "fitness app." You get specific. You target keywords that express a clear problem:

• -> "how to start running"
• -> "couch to 5k training plan"
• -> "stop procrastinating app"
• -> "daily mood tracker"

You also want to run campaigns targeting your competitors' brand names. If someone is searching for a direct competitor, they are clearly in the market for a solution like yours, and it's your job to present them with an alternative.

However, there's an uncomfortable truth about Apple Search Ads: the search volume is finite. At some point, you will hit a ceiling where you've captured most of the available search demand and can't spend more without your costs spiralling. This is the point where a basic freelancer might get stuck, but a strategic agency will shine. This is where you need a scaling engine.

This is why the multi-channel approach I talked about earlier, when discussing the app client in the sports and eLearning space, is so important. To truly scale your app, you need to go out and *create* demand, not just capture existing demand. Here's how other platforms fit in:

Meta (Facebook & Instagram): This is your primary tool for demand generation. Here, you're not targeting keywords; you're targeting people based on interests, behaviours, and demographics. Most importantly, you can create Lookalike Audiences. You can take a list of your best customers—the ones who subscribed and have a high LTV, who you acquired from Apple Search Ads—and tell Meta, "go and find me millions of other people in the UK who look just like these ones." This is incredibly powerful. Your ad copy here won't be keyword-focused; it will be problem-focused, speaking directly to the 'nightmare' we identified earlier.

One critical point on Meta: you must avoid the trap of optimising for the wrong thing. When you set up a campaign, Meta will ask for your objective. If you choose "App Installs," you are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the people who will install my app for the lowest possible price." The algorithm will do exactly that, seeking out users who are known to install lots of apps but rarely engage or spend money. You are actively paying to acquire your worst possible users. Instead, you MUST optimise for a conversion event further down the funnel. This means setting up tracking for in-app events like 'Free Trial Started' or 'Subscription Purchased'. You will pay more per install, but the quality of the user and your ultimate ROI will be orders of magnitude higher.

Google App Campaigns (UAC): This is another powerhouse for scaling. It's a bit of a 'black box' system where you give Google your creative assets (text, images, videos) and your target CPA, and its machine learning will promote your app across its entire network: Google Search, YouTube, the Google Display Network, and the Google Play Store. It can be very effective for finding new pockets of users.

TikTok: Depending on your app and target demographic, TikTok can be a goldmine. It's a visually-driven platform, so it's perfect for showing your app in action. User-generated content (UGC) style videos—ads that look like native TikTok videos—perform exceptionally well here.

A good agency will build a phased plan for you. Start with Apple Search Ads to get a baseline of high-quality users. Then, use that data to fuel Meta and Google campaigns to scale up and reach a much broader audience.

You'll want to focus on constant optimisation...

Driving growth isn't a "set it and forget it" activity. It's a continuous loop of testing, learning, and optimising. Any agency you hire should be obsessed with this process. Their job is to take your ad budget and systematically figure out how to make every pound work harder than it did the month before.

This involves having a rigorous testing framework. They shouldn't be guessing what works; they should be building a machine to discover what works. This means constantly testing variables:

• -> Audiences: On Meta, this means testing different Lookalike percentages (1%, 1-3%, 3-5%), and different interest-based audiences layered with behaviours.
• -> Keywords: On Apple Search Ads, this means constantly researching new keywords, adjusting bids on what's working, and pruning what isn't.
• -> Creative: This is arguably the biggest lever for performance. An agency should be constantly testing new ad creative. Different video hooks, different static images, different headlines, different calls to action. We've seen some B2B SaaS clients see huge results with simple UGC videos. You should expect your agency to be pushing for new creative assets from you regularly, because creative fatigues quickly.
• -> App Store Page Optimisation: Your App Store page is your campaign's landing page. The icon, the first two screenshots, and the preview video are absolutely critical. These need to be tested and optimised just as rigorously as the ads themselves. A good agency will provide guidance on A/B testing your App Store listing to improve your install conversion rate. Even a small lift here has a huge impact on your overall campaign costs.

The goal of all this testing is to build a clear picture of your funnel. You want to know your Cost Per Install, your Install-to-Trial rate, and your Trial-to-Subscription rate for each major channel and campaign. When you have this data, you can make intelligent decisions about where to allocate your budget to maximise your overall ROI.

To give you a clearer picture, I've put my main recommendations for you into a table below. This is the kind of structured approach you should be looking for from an agency partner.