12.Your next two hours of app marketing

In this chapter: everything in this book, compressed into one worksheet you can complete in two hours, on paper, for one app. You finish with one move, a ready material, a way to measure it and a journal entry — or with a well-founded decision to wait. An optional shortcut through the free Next Move tool is described at the end; you do not need it.

The problem

Reading about decisions is not the same as making one. The most common outcome of a book like this is a list of good intentions and no change on Monday. The fix is a fixed, time-boxed routine you can repeat every week or every month: the same steps, the same sheet, the same two hours.

What is going on

The worksheet follows the book's chapters in order. Here is the route and roughly how long each step takes. The times add up to about 100 minutes, leaving about 20 as a buffer — the same rule as chapter 10.

The five materials

Step 6 asks you to produce something you can use immediately. Pick the one that matches your move:

1. Listing copy draft — a new subtitle, short description or first lines of the description, within the store's limits (for example 30 characters for an App Store subtitle, 80 for a Google Play short description) [S01] [S13], each claim true of the current version.
2. Screenshot brief — for each of the first screenshots: the message in one line, what the screen shows, and why a visitor from your main source cares. Not final artwork.
3. Positioning comparison — your three main claims next to one competitor's, marked "provable for us / not provable / not relevant", and the gap you will lead with (chapter 7).
4. Investigation checklist — the exact data to pull, in which console or tool, with the result that would confirm or rule out each hypothesis (chapters 2, 5, 6).
5. Experiment card — hypothesis, variant, audience, sample estimate, stop rule and pre-committed actions (chapter 4), or a channel experiment card (chapter 9).

When the right answer is "wait"

If step 3 finds no changed rate, or step 4's checks show the movement is within your normal range, the move is wait with a re-check date and a trigger. You still complete step 7 (what you will watch) and step 8 (the journal entry). That is a full, successful session.

Working with little data

If your app is new or tiny, step 2 will be mostly blind spots — App Store Connect, for example, hides some metrics until there are at least five first-time downloads [S05], and Play's peer benchmarks appear only when there is enough data [S12]. Then the best move is usually one of two things: a check that creates the missing data (add events, set up a custom page URL for tracking), or a positioning move that relies on qualitative evidence (reviews, competitor listings, community questions) and is cheap to reverse.

Worked example

Fictional example · E12 · Saltpine · tags: ios, small-sample, positioning, listing-test

Situation. Saltpine is a new iOS app for planning sea-kayak trips, launched six weeks ago by a solo developer. Around 60 downloads a week in the UK and the US combined, a one-time purchase to unlock route export. The developer has two hours on Sunday.

Step 0. App: Saltpine. Platform: iOS. Market: UK. Goal: more downloads (positioning first). Time: 120 minutes.

Step 1 — observation. "UK total downloads were 31 last week and 38 the week before (App Store Connect)." Definition checked: total downloads include redownloads [S05].

Step 2 — funnel. Impressions ~1,100/week; conversion ~3%; downloads 31–38; purchases 2–4 per week; no in-app analytics yet (blind spot for activation); purchase events only from App Store Connect.

Step 3 — changed step. None clearly. Two weekly counts around 35 can differ by about ±17 by chance (chapter 8's two-period rule, ±2.8√35), so 31 vs 38 is ordinary — and both weeks sit inside the six-week range of 27–41.

Step 4 — hypotheses and checks.

1. Noise. Check: 6-week range was 27–41. → Supported.
2. The page does not say who the app is for. Check: read the listing as a stranger; compare with the two best-known competitors. → Both competitors lead with "routes and tides"; Saltpine's subtitle says "Plan your paddle" — generic.
3. Visibility is low for "sea kayak" terms. Check: source split. → 70% of impressions from search; conversion on search visitors not separable at this volume.

Step 5 — decision. Type: test, in the cheapest reversible form. Move: prepare a screenshot brief that leads with the one thing competitors do not say — offline tide-aware route export for sea kayaks — and test it on the default page as a product page optimization treatment against the current screenshots [S04]. The message difference is deliberately large, because Saltpine's traffic is small (step 7). Separately, prepare a promotional-text draft for a custom product page used in the next community post; Apple lists screenshots, promotional text and app previews (plus keywords) as what a custom page can vary [S03], so the subtitle stays as it is for now.

Step 6 — material (excerpt).

• Screenshot 1 message: "Plan a tide-safe route, then take it offline." Shows the route planner with the tide panel open.
• Promotional text draft for the custom page (170 characters max [S01]): "Plan sea-kayak routes around the tides, then export them to use offline on the water. Built for paddlers, not hikers." (117 characters) ✓
• Parked for later, on the default page with a new version: subtitle draft (30 characters max [S01]) "Offline kayak routes & tides" (28) — after two rejected drafts of 31 characters. A subtitle change needs a new app version [S01] and is not part of this test.

Step 7 — measurement. Product page optimization test, one treatment, 50% of UK traffic: about 550 impressions per arm per week. Chapter 4's planning rule for a move from 3% to 4% conversion (p = 0.03, d = 0.01) gives about 4,700 visitors per arm, so the minimum run is 9 full weeks — inside Apple's 90-day limit [S04]. After week 9, apply the treatment only if Apple reports it better at its suggested confidence; at 90 days without that, report the estimate and precision information available and record it as inconclusive unless the planned precision excludes a meaningful effect. This design is not powered to distinguish effects smaller than one point. The custom page's own downloads and conversion [S03] are recorded as a description of the community audience, not compared with the default page.

Step 8 — journal. Prior: "Specific positioning beats generic for this niche." Confidence: low. Re-check: after week 9 of the test.

Decision: Test the specific positioning as a split test on the default page; keep the subtitle; use a custom page only to describe the community audience; add basic in-app events next session. Time used: 1 h 50 min.

Do this now

1. Print or copy the worksheet below. Block two hours in your calendar.
2. Complete it for one app, one market, one goal. Do not switch apps halfway.
3. Finish with a move, a material, a measurement card and a journal entry — or with "wait" and a re-check date.
4. Repeat on a fixed rhythm (weekly or monthly), reading last session's journal entry first.

Don't change anything yet when…

• You cannot finish step 3 because every funnel step is a blind spot — your move is a check that creates data.
• Step 4's boring hypothesis (noise, season, a definition change) survives its check.
• The material in step 6 would need a claim you cannot prove for the current version.
• Another change to the same step is still inside its measurement window.

Worksheet

Your next two hours — the complete offline worksheet: steps 0–8, space for each answer, the five material templates and the time plan. It works on paper, without an account and without Indevaro.

Optional: a shortcut through Next Move

If you would rather start from a prepared draft, the free Next Move tool at indevaro.com/tools/next-move covers part of this worksheet using public evidence. You give it your public store listing (on the stores it supports), a market (country and language), a goal — downloads, paying users or positioning — a time budget (two hours unless you change it) and, for a positioning goal, one competitor. It returns one move with the public evidence behind it, a ready material (one of the five types above) and a measurement instruction; when public evidence is not enough, it returns a decisive check instead of a guess. It can draft steps 4–6 and suggest what to measure in step 7. It cannot see your private metrics, so steps 1–3 and the actual numbers in step 7 still need your consoles — and the journal in step 8 is still yours.

The Indevaro workspace connects store, revenue, analytics and error tools and keeps plans, drafts, tasks and follow-up together. The worksheet above is complete without assuming daily use or claiming outcome proof.

Sources

• S01 — Creating your product page (Apple Developer) — https://developer.apple.com/app-store/product-page/
• S03 — Custom product pages (Apple Developer) — https://developer.apple.com/app-store/custom-product-pages/
• S04 — Product page optimization (Apple Developer) — https://developer.apple.com/app-store/product-page-optimization/
• S05 — Metric definitions, App Store Connect Analytics (Apple Developer Help) — https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect-analytics/reference/metrics-definitions/
• S12 — Acquisition reports, Play Console Help — https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859173
• S13 — Create and set up your app, Play Console Help — https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859152