App Marketing Stack is a project designed for app marketers. It’s a curated directory of tools and resources on app marketing and mobile growth.
In Search of Mobile Playbook
Mobile is the new normal. It took only twenty years for three-quarters of the global population to own a smartphone. We’ve also seen a lot of companies achieve astounding success by capitalizing on its incredible growth. Uber, Airbnb, Instagram…the list goes on and on. Many now-famous growth tactics have been developed over the last decade in particular, when everything about mobile—especially smartphones—was still new.
But, as the system matures, and competition remains fierce, app marketers need an increasingly creative and sophisticated playbook if they want to make growth happen. But what should be in that playbook? Well, you need a good framework—and a knowledge of the tools and references necessary to use that framework to its fullest.
The Framework
For the framework, luckily, there is Andy Carvell. The mobile growth manager at SoundCloud, Carvell invented a visualization called the Mobile Growth Stack—and, in doing so, shed light on how best to look into growing a mobile product holistically. First proposed (and now updated) in an article on Medium, the Stack is a great way to conceptualize the different layers of growth in the mobile ecosystem.
This framework is extraordinary. It’s full of information without being overwhelming, and it allows you to see the whole landscape of marketing possibilities. It details every channel that app marketers should pay attention to. It also organizes growth tactics by when they arise within the customer life cycle of acquisition, engagement, and monetization, so you know exactly when you should leverage each tool.
The best part of the framework is its very detailed list of analytics possibilities. Anything can be analyzed and turned into data—so it’s important to know what metrics can (and should) be prioritized.
Our Contribution: The Resources
Carvell’s framework helps you see mobile growth holistically. But to build your own playbook, you need to know how best to wield each of these growth tactics. And, for that, a comprehensive list of best practices is invaluable. You want something that helps you plan your action items strategically and introduces you to the necessary tools, so you can get things done as effectively as possible.
And we decided to go ahead and make that for you. That’s why spent some time gathering all the best tools and resources in the industry, and putting together a little website called “App Marketing Stack.”
It’s set up in the same format as Bram Kanstein’s Startup Stash, the famous directory for information about building a start-up. But this time, it’s based on the Mobile Growth Stack framework. We’ve gathered 150+ useful articles and 60+ related tools that help simplify some of the growth tactics. And we organized them into an easy-to-use format.
Let us know if you have any feedback in the comments, and happy reading!
Happy growing,
Patrick & Leslie