Breaking into the kids' app world is notoriously tough. Parents are on the lookout for safe, ad-free apps that are both fun and educational, but the app stores are packed with outdated coloring apps that feel cluttered or pushy with purchases.

Just take Tinty. After they launched, they were barely hitting 30 installs a day. The app itself was beautiful and packed with content, but it was completely lost in search results.

That's when the Tinty team came to us with a big question: was there a way to grow naturally without a huge budget? They set out to test whether a data-driven ASO strategy could actually turn their little app into a profitable business.

Tinty isn't your average coloring app—think of it as a creativity playground, not just a coloring book. Made by real artists, it's designed to light up the imaginations of 2 to 7-year-olds. 

The tools are so intuitive that kids just get it, and the whole thing is built to be super safe and reassuring.

Kids have a world to explore: thousands of coloring guides, a blank canvas for free drawing, fun effects like glitter, and even color-by-number to make learning digits fun.

The real magic, though, is how it all feels. The app is clean, modern, and distraction-free. For parents, it's a trusted spot where they know their kids are not only having a blast but are also building key skills like creativity and coordination.

When Tinty first launched, the team hoped the app’s quality would speak for itself. But in the kids’ category—one of the most competitive and saturated spaces in the App Store—even great design and rich content don’t guarantee visibility. 

For weeks, installs hovered around 30 a day—far from what was needed to validate the subscription model.

The challenges were clear:

• Competing head-to-head on high-volume keywords meant going up against entrenched players with years of momentum

• Parents search differently across markets, so localization couldn’t be an afterthought

The goal was simple but ambitious: turn low visibility into sustainable organic growth. The client wanted to understand if the channel could pay off at all—and whether it was possible to build traction in one of the toughest niches in stores without heavy paid spend.

We moved fast. Instead of betting everything on a handful of keywords, we treated ASO as an ongoing experiment—testing, scaling what worked, and dropping what didn’t.

We started by rebuilding Tinty’s metadata from the ground up. Titles, subtitles, and keyword fields were localized for each target market, with translations tailored to how parents actually search in different regions. 

The rollout spanned highly competitive geos such as France, the US, Brazil, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Russia, and the UK, as well as additional markets in Latin America and Asia. 

Breaking into search results in these regions required precise keyword targeting and strong creative assets.

New screenshots and graphic assets highlighted the app’s kid-friendly design and showcased the depth of content available with a subscription.

App Store events became an extra surface for discovery. We created and published themed events with descriptions optimized for indexing. They actively drove new traffic from parents browsing seasonal and educational topics.

Our strategy was to promote small groups of keywords at a time (6–10 per cluster), monitor reactions daily, and decide fast. If an organic uplift appeared within four days, the cluster stayed. If not, we dropped it and moved to the next.

Over a month, we rotated through hundreds of keywords to map where growth and retention signals were strongest.

We guided the client through Apple’s featuring process, preparing a polished presentation that showcased Tinty’s educational value and safe environment. This added credibility and opened another growth lever beyond search alone.

Alongside these efforts, we also kept an eye on store ratings—because even the best ASO works better when an app’s reputation supports conversion. We’ve shared more in this article. 

Throughout the process, we didn’t just track installs. We monitored trial starts, subscription conversions, and retention tied to keyword clusters. That way, we could prioritize not only the keywords that ranked, but those that brought users likely to stay and pay.

In just a few weeks, this multi-pronged approach transformed Tinty’s presence—from an app buried in search results to a listing consistently pulling organic traffic across multiple geos.

The impact was immediate. Within weeks of launch, Tinty’s numbers shifted from near-zero to consistent, scalable growth. 

Here’s how the numbers changed once the strategy went live:

• Conversion rate: ~3% impression-to-install conversion, competitive for the kids’ category.

• Organic installs: from ~30/day at launch to 2,500+ installs per month, with peaks of 300/day and a stable average around 100/day.

• ROMI: with monthly marketing costs of ~$365, we achieved a 234% return on marketing investment, covering even the initial ASO and event setup costs.

• Monetization lift: trial-to-subscription conversions proved strong enough to validate the model, confirming that organic installs were bringing paying users.

• Resilience: even after App Store algorithm updates caused a short-term dip in visibility, growth continued upward thanks to ongoing keyword rotation and localization.

What stands out isn’t just the spike in installs but the sustainability of growth. Tinty went from barely visible to consistently ranking, with keyword groups delivering both traffic and engaged users. 

The results confirmed once again that organic could be a long-term growth engine—laying the foundation for future scaling.

Scaling an app in such a competitive category always teaches us lessons that apply far beyond kids’ products. The biggest wins came from disciplined iteration, smart clustering, and continuous optimization.

Here’s what worked for us with Tinty—and what we’d suggest trying in other apps too:

• Iterate fast. Don’t keep pushing keywords that show no lift. If there’s no organic reaction within four days, move on and test new clusters.

• Think in categories. In kids’ apps, one massive category splits into sub-niches like coloring, toddlers, learning numbers, and ABC games. Working across clusters yields better results than betting on one “main” keyword.

• Balance volume and retention. High-volume keywords aren’t always the best choice. Tracking which clusters bring users who stay and subscribe is just as important as chasing rankings.

• Leverage seasonal ASO. Events, holidays, and themed updates (like Halloween or back-to-school) provide natural hooks for visibility boosts.

• Keep evolving. App Store algorithms keep changing, and they always will. Ongoing optimization—rotating keywords, refreshing creatives, publishing in-app events—ensures growth doesn’t stop after the initial push.

As David, Product Manager at Tinty, put it: 

“We weren’t sure this channel could really pay off, but it worked out great. Anyone aiming for sustainable growth needs specialists who know how to work with keywords, screenshots, and algorithm changes—and to keep iterating across new geos and keyword groups.”

Tinty’s story shows that organic growth doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from testing, adapting to algorithm shifts, and finding what truly drives engaged users.

With LoveMobile, the app went from almost no visibility to thousands of installs and 234% ROMI. In a space where many apps fade into the background, Tinty now has a clear picture of how to keep growing—and a strategy with just enough color to stand out.