1- Service Planning
Step 1: Decide white-hat or black-hat strategies?
As shared, you can make this decision based on the app-launching strategy of your business
Case 1: You have only 1 main app
It would be best if you only went with white-hat services to ensure the app’s safety
Case 2: You have 1 main app and some clone apps
You should get white-hat services for the main app
And… implement the black-hat strategies for other clone apps
Step 2: Service planning & getting a quotation
After defining the strategy you want to subscribe to, it’s time to plan in detail. Regardless it’s a white-hat or a black-hat approach, you can initiate the plan by answering these questions:
Question 1: What services do you need?
| White Hat | Black Hat |
|---|---|
| Keyword Research | App Review |
| Metadata Writing | Boost Keyword Ranking |
| Creative Production | Reporting |
| Localization | |
| Keyword Optimization | |
| Reporting |
You may consider excluding some services from the plan because you already have an in-house team to handle them. And, for the included items, please ask the agency to give detailed explanations of each. So that you can fully understand the scope of the service
Question 2: What is the pricing model of the agency?
- Model 1: Fixed Charge per Service Period (weekly, monthly)
- Model 2: Fluctuate Charge per Service Quantity (number of reviews, number of keywords, number of targeting countries…)
White-hat agencies are more likely to offer Model 1, while black-hat agencies often go with Model 2. You’d better clearly define this with the agency and avoid future arguments
Question 3: What are the KPIs?
The agency should propose the KPIs for every single service that they offer, for example:
- Keyword Optimization:
- New Ranked Keywords KPI
- Higher Keyword Ranking KPI
- Or… other committed KPIs for this service
- Creative Production:
- 1 new Screenshot version per month
- 1 new Featured Video per month
- Or… other production KPIs
Question 4: What is the minimum service period?
Sometimes, you may want to test the agency’s capacity before officially signing the long-term contract. Let’s ask them for the shortest service period, then try.
Step 3: Estimate the monthly cost
Based on the above information, let’s estimate the monthly cost and expected monthly performance. If you find all reasonable, let’s start the service.
2- Operate Black-hat Services
When it comes to operations, there is a vast difference between white-hat and black-hat agencies. In this section, we would like to spotlight Black-hat Services first.
Please find the comparison in this table:
| Services | White-hat | Black-hat |
|---|---|---|
| Metadata | Available | N/A |
| Creative Production | Available | N/A |
| Keyword Optimization | Agency to monitor and optimize keyword | Client to self monitor & provide the agency the keyword list to boost |
| Review | N/A | Available. But client needs to write content or get extra charges if need the agency to write |
| Report | Available | N/A. Client needs to self monitor |
As you can see, the black-hat service requires your team to get involved (a lot) in the operational works
1. Write weekly app reviews and submit them to the agency
Your team may need to prepare (write) weekly reviews to send to the agency for them to publish to the app store using bot farm. However, you may hire the agency to prepare for you at additional costs.
2. Update weekly boost keyword lists and submit them to the agency
Your in-house team will need to measure the weekly keyword ranking and install performance. Based on the analysis, you will need to come up with a list of weekly potential keywords and send to the agency to boost in the upcoming week.
3- Monitor the Agency’s Performance
When working with the ASO agency, you should understand that the agency can only impact the upper funnel’s metrics, such as:
1- New ranked keywords
2- Ranking changes of existing keywords
3- App Store Reviews
4- Number of Installs
5- …. etc
Thus, it would help if you put reasonable expectations on the ASO Agency. For example, you should not expect them to help increase “in-app purchases”, as this event falls into the middle or bottom-funnel that the ASO Agency cannot touch.
