Invalshoek: finding the angle before you promote an app

Dutch has a word that app makers could borrow: invalshoek. It means the angle of approach, the point of view from which you look at a subject, and in writing it names the choice made before the first sentence: which side of the story are we telling? An app needs the same choice before anyone writes a store description, designs a screenshot or emails a journalist.

Most apps that struggle at launch don't lack features. They lack an angle. The listing describes everything the app can do, the screenshots show five screens with five different promises, and the press email opens with the founder's biography. Each piece is fine on its own. Together they never tell anyone why this app matters to them.

This guide covers finding the angle, turning it into the material that store visitors and journalists see, and briefing the specialists who promote apps for a living.

Three questions that make an angle

Positioning sounds like work for a marketing department. For an app it comes down to three answers short enough to fit on an index card.

Who is it for?

Go narrower than feels comfortable. "Freelancers" is a market; "freelance translators who invoice clients in several currencies" is a person you can picture, find and interview. You can widen the audience later. Starting wide gives you copy that fits everyone and convinces nobody.

What one job does it do?

People pick up an app to get something done: get the receipt into the books, find a quiet table for Friday, remember the dog's medication. Choose the job the app does best and that your users face often. Other features support that job in the listing. They don't compete with it for the headline.

What does it replace?

Every app competes with something, and often it isn't another app. It might be a spreadsheet, a paper notebook, a group chat, a phone call or simply doing nothing. Naming the alternative tells you what to say. If you replace a spreadsheet, talk about the formulas nobody has to repair. If you replace a group chat, talk about the decision that no longer disappears under a scroll of messages.

A one-page positioning worksheet

Fill this in before any promotion work starts, ideally with whoever will write the store copy in the room. Keep it to one page. If an answer needs a paragraph, it hasn't been decided yet.

1. The person: one sentence describing a specific user and the situation they're in when they open the app.
2. The job: the task they want done, in their words rather than yours.
3. The current alternative: what they use today, and what annoys them about it.
4. The difference: the one thing your app does that the alternative doesn't, or does badly.
5. The proof: something a skeptical visitor can see on a single screen that shows the difference is real.
6. Their words: three to five phrases users actually say about the problem, collected from interviews, support email or reviews of the alternatives.
7. The promise: one short sentence that combines the person, the job and the difference.
8. What you're not: the audiences and features you will deliberately not lead with, for now.
9. The hero screen: the screen in the app that shows the promise best.
10. The check: what you'll look at after launch to see whether the angle works, such as product page conversion and how many new users complete the core task in their first week.

Here is the worksheet filled in for a fictional app for allotment gardeners. The person is someone who shares a garden plot with two or three friends and visits on different days. The job is knowing what was watered, sown or picked, and what needs doing this weekend. The alternative is a group chat plus memory, which tends to fail somewhere around the third heat wave. The difference is a map of the plot with tasks pinned to each bed, and the promise reads: "Your shared plot, and who's watering it this week." What the app is not, for now, is a planting encyclopedia, even though the team has the data for one.

From worksheet to store listing

Each element of a store listing has a job, and the worksheet tells you what goes where. This table maps the two.

The opening lines of the description carry the most weight, because they're what visitors see before they tap to expand the rest. Put the job and the difference there, and save the feature list for further down. On the App Store, promotional text can be changed without submitting a new version, which makes it a good place to try a wording or a seasonal angle. On Google Play the listing text also feeds search, which is one more reason to write in the words from item 6.

Keywords follow the angle rather than the other way round. Once you know the person and the job, the searches you want to win become much easier to pick, and our guide to the App Store keyword field covers how to fit them in. The fields are short on both stores, so check every draft with the ASO character counter before it goes to review.

Localize the angle, not only the words. The alternative you replace may differ by country: in one market people track their plot in a shared spreadsheet, in another on a whiteboard in the shed. A translator can't know that. A short conversation with a few local users can tell you.

Screenshots that tell one story

Screenshots are the angle made visible, and the first two or three do most of the work. Treat the set as a short sequence rather than a gallery: the promise first, then the proof, then the difference, then supporting features for anyone still scrolling. Each screenshot makes one claim, with a caption in the user's words and a screen that backs it up. The sign-up form and the settings screen don't belong in the set.

Our guide to screenshots that explain the app in five seconds goes into captions and layout. The point here is order. If the angle is right, the order of the screenshots follows from it.

If you're torn between two angles, you don't have to guess. Apple's custom product pages and Google Play's custom store listings let you show different screenshots and text to visitors who arrive from a particular campaign or link, while Product Page Optimization on the App Store and store listing experiments on Google Play let you test variants against the original. Pick one angle as the default and run the second where it fits a specific audience.

Press pitches built on the angle

Writers who cover apps receive a steady stream of launch announcements, and an announcement on its own isn't a story. The angle is. A pitch built on it talks about the person and what changes for them, and it often lands better with writers who cover that person's world than with app and tech media. The allotment app belongs in gardening columns, local news and community newsletters, where it is unusual, before it belongs in a roundup of new apps.

Keep the pitch short. Write a subject line with the person and the change, a first paragraph with the problem and the alternative, a sentence on why it matters now (a season, a rule change, a local event), and a way to try the app. Link a press kit page with the icon, a few screenshots, a short screen recording and a contact address that a real person answers.

What app promotion partners do

Three kinds of specialists do most of the hired promotion work around apps. They overlap, and some firms offer all three, but the skills are different.

ASO specialists

App Store Optimization specialists work on the listing itself: keyword research, names and subtitles, descriptions, screenshot sets and captions, localization, store experiments, and the timing of in-app rating prompts within the stores' rules. Their work builds up slowly and is cheap to change, so it is usually the first promotion budget worth spending.

User acquisition agencies

User acquisition (UA) agencies buy installs through paid campaigns: ads in App Store search results, Google's App campaigns, social networks and mobile ad networks. They are good at running many creative variants and moving budget toward what works. They can't fix retention. If people leave after a day, paid traffic simply fills a leaky bucket faster, so look at how many users come back before you scale spend. On iOS, App Tracking Transparency limits what can be measured, so ask any UA partner exactly how they report results.

PR and outreach

PR people and outreach specialists work with journalists, newsletter writers, podcasters and creators. Good ones know which writers cover which audiences and won't send your pitch to a list of hundreds. They need a story, people willing to talk (the founder, a few users) and assets ready before they start.

How to brief a promotion partner

A partner can sharpen an angle you have chosen, but can't choose it for you. Send the worksheet before the first meeting and cover the rest in a short brief.

• The worksheet, plus which parts are fixed and which are open to their advice.
• Your store data so far: impressions, product page views, conversion, ratings, and top search terms if you have them.
• The goal in plain words, such as more trial starts from one country, rather than a ranking.
• Budget, time frame, and who approves copy and creative.
• Access through the user roles in App Store Connect and the Play Console, never by sharing your own login.
• What's off limits: paid or incentivized reviews, bought installs, and competitors' brand names in your metadata, which Apple's review guidelines rule out.

If a partner promises a chart position, guaranteed downloads or a number of five-star reviews, end the conversation. Nobody controls rankings, and the shortcuts that claim to (bought reviews, install farms) put both the listing and your developer account at risk. For comparing proposals and writing the contract, our guide to choosing an app agency or studio applies to promotion partners too.

Then print the worksheet and pin it above the desk of whoever writes your store copy. When a draft starts to drift, item 7 is the sentence to hold it against.