How To Start Applying Mobile Growth Stack To Your App?
Before starting reading, you can download the Mobile Growth Stack in Google Sheets form here.
Andy Carvell developed the Mobile Growth Stack as a framework for growth strategy. Some marketers and growth experts have used it as a template for their mobile growth executions and strategy development. It may seem like a complex sheet with lots of information but if you ever released a mobile app, you have already experienced most of the items in the cells by yourself and you already have execution priorities that change from app to app and business to business.
It is a layered framework that you can implement whether you have a new or an established mobile product. The first layer is the “execution layer”, which involves operations from development, product management and marketing like acquisition, retention, monetization, tech or strategic management of an app. The second layer is the analytics and insights of the first layer, which takes you in an eternal loop to the first layer to improve and grow your mobile application with an agile working strategy.
The goal of this article is not to deep dive into all the details of the framework by parameters, but to give you some idea about the beginning of the growth approach Nuclesus takes with every mobile project and every client. Running a successful mobile business, like the other types, is an execution challenge of harmony between different teams; from design to customer management, from back-end development to social media. To do that right, you first need to identify your market, know your potential users and comprehend your competitive advantage and disadvantages. We, Nuclesus, generally start working on a project by analysing the market and doing user surveys to understand the brand positioning, content success, expansion opportunities or the need to pivot the product in another way.
When we understand and enhance the current state, we work on the success of the activation and the onboarding steps of the app. The benchmark with competitor apps and the current per cent of activated users give us the KPIs for the next months to operate closely with UX- and development teams. It is critical to focus on activation before spending money on paid users for better conversion rates and lower CPI. We always remind our clients that “growth” is not advertising or expansion; it is an inclusive vision of the product with every element that can be improved. Without “healthy” rates of user activation and average LTV lower than CPI, you will need the chance to get financed by investors or scale with your capital.
