# Optimizing your Keywords and Monetization -- Part 2 with Ramit Arora, Microsoft

Channel: Sub Club by RevenueCat
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPenDf1Wj2I
Duration: 21 min
Language: English
Words: 4100
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/fPenDf1Wj2I

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[0:00] so without further Ado I wanted to introduce ramit he has helped lead the Microsoft app teams there so the first thing I wanted to get to you and you can tell us a little bit about your role at Microsoft but I keep getting people asking me Microsoft they're like Enterprise why are you speaking to Microsoft at an app event and so tell us a little bit about what you do but then also like how the apps inside Microsoft are kind of a startup inside this massive company yeah thanks a lot for having me David and hi everyone and London is Awesome by the way so I'm a

[0:35] growth lead I'm part of product management at Microsoft 365 consumer business so basically our word excel PowerPoint apps and there's also the Microsoft 365 app so my current role is very focused on leading our apps on the Mac platform I mean Mac app store is a big part of it we also have a direct Channel and then I sport IOS and Android basically our mobile apps as well and we sell Microsoft 365 personal and family which is sort of our consumer subscriptions and then we also sell co-pilot Pro and we have a fairly large business on App Store so like straight up in app purchase business on app store

[1:13] and we are very much like you guys when it comes to just growing our apps and essentially yes Microsoft is an Enterprise company in a lot of ways but we are also a very big consumer company our app presence is actually pretty good so yeah if you you look at a sensor Tower a data AI Microsoft apps are some of the leaders in monetization on the app store some of the biggest apps some of the biggest performing apps and before talking to you I kind of always thought of it like a lot of the questions I got this morning about why I was talking to Microsoft you think of it

[1:45] as like oh it's an afterthought it's something Microsoft does because they have to but the more you and I have gotten to know each other and talk through how Microsoft thinks about it it's pretty cool how you are able to operate as a startup and how much growth and monetization you are seeing on the App Store it's not an after it's actually like a huge line of bus yeah and it's a big part of the strategy so for our consumer business app stores are very important and we actually have a pretty decent amount of people and money that we spend on all the things that are

[2:16] somewhat covered in this conference like ASO MMP we have a paid ad strategy we have a ASO strategy we have teams that are doing optimization on the funnel so at all parts activation monetization and acquisition and renewal optimization and so on I like to say we have an equivalent of say Revenue cat and bra and some app companies inside obviously we work with a lot of vendors as well so yeah we have a pretty decent strategy around that awesome so I wanted to dive into ASO because I think again even though it's Microsoft I think we all have a lot to learn from the strategies that you and your teams have employed

[2:53] there at Microsoft but before we go I know you needed to make a small disclaimer yes yes so all opinions are my own and do not represent Microsoft's official STS so so yeah so that is a disclaimer that I'm always supposed to make yeah of course and that's the thing Microsoft is such a big company there's so many things going on it makes sense that we're going to talk about some of the things you've learned and stuff but it's not official Microsoft strategy but on ASO I think a lot of people in this room again people I talked to this morning think oh Microsoft can just own

[3:24] any keyword and like oh it's just all brand search like people just go and search word but as you and I have discussed that's not actually the casee so tell me a little bit about what kind of ASO work Microsoft does to find the right audiences on the App Stores okay so I mean just like most other app companies we have a ASO vendor and we work with them on a number of things and so if you look at it broadly there's the brand optimization which we can get because our apps are named Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Etc so like our brand is very much in the title itself

[4:00] most of the time so for the keyword optimization piece we do comparative keywords so if you look at app stores a lot of times we are not the number one productivity app so there are other apps that are on Mac on iOS also on Android there are a number of productivity apps that keep going up and down in the chart so we have a competitive strategy with keywords the app stores are kind of a a great equalizer right yeah it is a democratic place right so it's not that you're Microsoft so you can just show up there and it's not an exclusive to Microsoft oft channel right so like app

[4:31] store really democratizes everyone like just how Paramount Pictures and a YouTube influencer at the same stage when it comes to YouTube like in terms of eyeballs it's the same thing with App Store like a new app can pretty much get the top spot we have a comparative strategy so we always for the most part know who are the top competitors and sometimes actually when it comes to App Store it's not even some of the names that you would think like I mean sure there are the big ones like Google canva Etc but there are a lot of smaller compar editors smaller apps like productivity apps that are also at the

[5:03] top spot so we we do have a strategy to get some of that keyword so competitive is a smaller part but actually jobs to be done is a bigger part of the strategy so we have like generic and non-generic keywords so essentially keywords like notes resumés we have a lot of like user research around what are our apps used for because our apps are very general we try to focus on jobs to be done like resume creation is a job to be done note taking a job to be done slide creation of presentation decks Excel has budgeting as a big one invoice creation so those are some of the jobs to be done

[5:39] that we know so we try to optimize for some of those keywords because somebody may be looking for invoice and may end up at Excel because not everybody is like a business owner looking for a QuickBooks type of solution sometimes you just need something very simple and Excel can do the job so those are the kind of things that we keep doing and there's no like constant set we are always so every month we have an update date and our paid ASA also kind of guides us and also there's this whole thing that once you are ranked say top three in a keyword we can remove that

[6:09] keyword and get new keywords in if you're seeing that we are consistently ranked for like say a year or so we can then you know slowly take that keyword out and put like an AI or a co-pilot because we we also have like newer features and newer things coming in like AI is a big one so we try to rank for that and things like that yeah I think even for smaller and midsize apps ASO is super competitive so Microsoft does have an advantage but I mean you heard it here like on the App Stores you were competing with the biggest company in the world you know multi-trillion

[6:38] dollar company in ASO and so the same strategies that ramit at Microsoft is employing is what we all and I have apps on the App Store as well personally in addition to working at Revenue cat and so it's the same kind of strategies we should all be employing thinking through the jobs to be done and you were talking about App Store search ads and I wanted to touch briefly on how you look at the profitability of specific keywords and then how that helps inform your strategy because I think that's something you know all app company should be thinking about I mean there's no one answer because at any given point of time we

[7:12] are running multiple campaigns so like say if we are getting certain keyword that is really sticky we can always bring it back but very basic like ASO 101 like the keyword bank is very small like it's 100 characters and then you have I mean yes you can stuff a few things in the description but it also has to make sense so there is that aspect that description has to be clean it has to reflect Microsoft we are not a junk app that we will write anything in the app store right so we we have to make sure that everything that is external facing is like making a lot of

[7:46] sense and it's not just keyword optimization it's not just a bunch of keywords stuck together so there there has to be some flow and logic to it but yeah if we do find from ASA we find some things that are high performing we can obviously bring it back to our general ASO like organic or we can just bid more there and and there's also the whole MMP angle there with ASO like trying to really make sense that if this is the keyword that is only driving monthly active usage or is it driving real subscription because we have very strict CPI limits like cost per install limits

[8:22] that we want to kind of go after yeah I think that's a mistake a lot of folks make in their ASO strategy is going after keyword that are easy to rank for and so like at Microsoft because the apps get downloaded so much you could probably rank for something like swimming but it's like that's fine but that's not going to drive business value and so your ASO strategy shouldn't just be about ranking but it should be about using App Store search ads and other tools to understand the profitability of the specific keywords and being way more focused on your approach instead of just so scattershot do you see any

[8:55] differences between IOS and Android on that front are there any differences there yeah I mean there's the at20 rule sort of a thing like Android has a very large install base but we constantly have seen and so Microsoft apps are available I believe in six plus app stor so in China we have a number of app stores that the apps are available in there are also pre-installed deals but still Android monetizes way less than iOS does so there's a at20 sort of a thing I mean it's not exactly at20 somewhere like that that Android and purchase Revenue still lags pretty significantly to iOS and it becomes

[9:33] especially interesting from like a LTV to Mau perspective that for an Android User for example if you have to run a paid ads our CPI limits are like 50 times Less in some cases than than iOS CPI limits right because basically it's like you can drive installs to Android and and you can keep getting like more and more monthly active usage but the percentage that converts to paying users is like super super low so so you have to be so careful with Android both with cost per install like what you pay from a paid ad but also sometimes in terms of your organic strategies so for example

[10:10] if you have like an engagement platform that you are paying by I don't know data points right by data points or by usage or by Ma you have to be really careful because your Android campaigns might start costing you more in terms of cogs because the LTV because because essentially if we are selling a consumer product our ltvs are not like in thousands of dollars they're in hundreds of dollars so we are just operating like any other consumer SAS startup in that sense that we are making sure that our LTV to CAC ratios are kind of in range so that we don't overspend on inapp engagement or on ads it's not that we

[10:50] are Microsoft so we'll just like go and drain money right like so all the same restrictions apply and It ultimately comes to the LTV CAC ratio yeah well so I mean I get asked this all the time you know oh we've got millions of active users on Android but it's just not monetizing how do we improve monetization like I can now tell them I talked to ramit from Microsoft and it's the same thing it's just like Android does not monetize as well as iOS and like understanding that reality can help you inform the Android strategy but then also Android I think we're going to see a lot of evolution I'm actually going to

[11:25] be talking to the Google Play Partnerships team on a fourth coming episode where we talk about some of the experiments that people are starting to find success with on Android but it's good to hear from like a prioritization standpoint that yeah you can put a ton of work into it and Microsoft has and has all the resources but it's just a different platform and it just monetizes differently and understanding that helps inform strategy of how you invest how many data points you collect how you spend on tooling for Android versus iOS so super helpful to know another thing I wanted to dive into was monetization and

[12:00] AB testing and if there's any particular tests or anything that you think are especially interesting on subscription monetization yeah so before I get into that I'll finish the Android versus iOS like I'll just conclude it by saying that I think Android is a very promising platform it's just that maybe developers need to think more than just straight up expensive subscriptions like because a lot of the subscriptions are very North America based I think some of the price points may need to go down some new business models may need to be there like there has to be much more thought that has to go in to monetize that

[12:43] platform it's a harder platform to crack it's you can't just copy and paste your iOS strategy yes exactly it's it's just a harder platform to crack and there has to be more Android specific strategies that need to get applied I'm not saying it's not a promising platform I think we think it's a promising platform form but there there's just more to be done there so now moving on to AB testing so yes a lot of our teams do AB testing on mobile Microsoft 365 apps like word Exel PowerPoint as well as the 365 app and other apps that we have in the family we keep doing number of experiments and

[13:16] some of the things that have really worked just like very plain barebones ideas that have worked I think CT like if you have a free trial make sure the C CS say is it's a free trial like try free for 1 month something like that because there's one thing that we have observed is that CTA has to really communicate the free value if it's available so that it's just more comfortable to press that button right so basically like you have a free trial wording up on the top but then you have say something that says buy now for example people are just not comfortable because a lot of times you know because

[13:56] of how there is like a lot of this one click buy type of things that have happened in the recent past like people are very apprehensive of pressing the buttons right because they're like oh I'll just touch this and money will be charged so if you have a free trial if you have a more comforting motion like definitely make sure to have that on the CTA then another thing we have found a lot of success with is cards and gifs so instead of like lines of text using some kind of cards with gifs what would be in the GI yeah I I pronounce it gifs but

[14:27] gifs yeah gifss potato potato what's in the gifs like an animation and like demonstrating the value almost like a little video kind of yeah sometimes that or sometimes just illustrations so for a Microsoft 365 subscription some of the more important things if you open any of our apps some of our more important things are like there is the premium apps that you get on desktop and then there's the one TB one drive storage that you get and then there is access to AI features that you get so those things like you can write them down or you can actually have like illustrations showing that you are

[15:02] getting you know one TB one drive for each of your family members so you'll have like six people showing and you see that one TP one drive is going to all six of them so if you can show them more visually it helps in converting better so that's more of a sort of a pay wall optimization type of a thing but yeah no that's a great tip and I I mean I've been hearing that more I actually I've been experimenting with a video on my pay wall in my weather app and have seen really good results from EXA what you're saying it's like yeah people just don't

[15:31] read so you can put all the great like copyrighting you want but it's like you got to show them and in the age of Tik Tok and reals and everything else like what better way to show them than with animated video you know illustrations or other ways to like really capture their attention and then communicate that value in a way that they probably won't read even if you write it very cleverly so yeah that's a great tip another thing you had mentioned was experimenting with just the ordering of subscriptions yeah yeah so this was a very interesting experiment where we had our family and personal so family is slightly more

[16:06] expensive it's like $9.99 and personal is a $6.99 subscription in the US and other region prices are different but so we just reordered them so we made family as a default subscription so personal used to be the default and then we reordered it and then we did one more change so actually two separate AB test so one more change where we started showing monthly equivalent price so like if it's $99 for the year then we just show something like $8 or something like a monthly equivalent price so both of those were very successful so monthly equivalent price when people can see oh it's just going to cost me $8 even if

[16:40] they have to be build for the whole year it's good like we we saw success there and the second one was yes this reordering where it was very interesting that when we reordered both started selling more and the one that went below the personal one it actually started selling a lot more so I think from a psychological perspective when we were backtracking maybe there was this whole idea that people saw this default subscription which was more expensive and they're like no no no this is more expensive but let me get this other one which is cheaper but it kind of increased their purchase intent somehow yeah now the question in that increase

[17:19] sometimes this is very psychological like sometimes when you see an expensive thing like you walk into say like a Louis Vuitton store you see a lot of these expensive things and then you end up buying a tie from there because you know it's the cheaper thing but you still bought something from Louis Vuitton right so it's kind of like that where you see this more expensive option up on the top and then you end up buying the cheaper one because you still bought something and you still unlocked and you still have a premium experience so something like that I didn't plan this but we ended up talking about pretty

[17:50] much the top four things that I recommend people experiment with under pay walls because like yeah you can test like colors and change the color of the CTA button and all that kind of stuff but like the highest impact are price testing and included in that the pricing and packaging like I did a test in my weather app of defaulting to only showing the $4 a month subscription versus showing the $40 a year subscription and I had a 20% increase in conversion to paying by them just seeing that $4 and so by experimenting with the packaging saw a 20% lift in conversion to paying and and then the other things

[18:28] we talked about you experimenting with video and stuff so these are some of the lowest hanging fruit not just for any app here in the audience anybody listening on the subclub podcast but it applies to Microsoft as well like the biggest companies in the world like this is where the leverage points are on your pay wall so that's where you should be experimenting so we are at time but I did want to give you an opportunity is there anything you wanted to share as we wrap up maybe go and download the Microsoft 365 apps and give us great reviews and actually you know if you like them of course yeah know and and I

[19:01] think everyone here should go download the apps you know before talking to Ram I thought oh Microsoft they're just you know boring Enterprise company but the more I've talked to ramit The more I've realized like they're doing really Innovative stuff and like working hard at optimization and working on onboarding and pay wall testing and packaging testing and so you know when you're doing research on like best practices in the industry the apps ramit works on are actually fantastic examples of of the type of growth experiments and the type of onboarding and the type of things that you want to do in your own app yeah and let us know what you think

[19:35] and I'm available on LinkedIn so yeah happy to help out anybody awesome and then as we wrap up most of you probably know I'm with Revenue cat I'm the growth Advocate we're a subscription management and optimization platform you know help simplify billing across iOS Android and the web and normalize all the crazy intricacies between IOS and Android so you can run your CRM campaigns based on the same toen instead of having to do different ones for the different platforms and really help subscription apps I mean our mission as a company is to help developers make more money and so we build the tools to do that I do

[20:09] bi-weekly interviews with top industry folks to help subscription apps grow so check out the podcast on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast thanks again so much for your time and for sharing your knowledge and we'll have to to do some more collaboration in the future yeah absolutely and thank you so much David for having me and thank you everyone for joining thanks so much for listening if you have a minute please leave a review in your favorite podcast player you can also stop by chat. sub club.com to join our private community [Music]

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