How to use Reddit for app growth: Turning community insights into ASO, UA and retention strategies 

App Store reviews only tell half the story 

Most marketers spend a lot of time analysing App Store reviews. And for a good reason. They can reveal bugs, usability issues, friction points, user sentiment, and more. They are one of the most direct sources of user feedback available. 

However, by the time someone writes a review, they have already found your app, downloaded it, and formed an opinion. What the review rarely tells you is what happened before that. What were theusers searching for? Which other apps did they consider? What nearly stopped them from downloading yours? 

That is where Reddit becomes interesting. People use it to compare products, ask for recommendations, and explain why they chose one option over another.  

For an app marketer, places like Reddit provide a goldmine of user insights that can be acted on across the product. 

What is Reddit and how does it work? 

If you’re not familiar with it, Reddit is a community platform built around topic-specific communities called subreddits, where people ask questions, compare products and share their experiences. Within each community, users create posts and respond through comments, which are then upvoted or downvoted by other members. 

To gain insights about a budgeting app, for example, you could search for “best budgeting app”, “expense tracking app”, “Monzo vs Revolut”, etc.  

You do not need to post or join every community to use Reddit for research. You can extract and analyse publicly available posts and comments to reveal recurring themes, compare audience priorities, and identify patterns in the language people use. 

What Reddit can tell you that app reviews cannot

In simple terms, community intelligence means looking for patterns in the way people talk. For app marketers, those patterns can answer questions that performance data alone often cannot: 

• Why do users choose one app over another? 

• Which problems or frustrations appear repeatedly across the category? 

• What language do prospective users naturally use? 

• Which features influence download, retention or switching decisions? 

• Where do campaign promise and the product experience fail to match? 

But Reddit is not a replacement for keyword tools or product analytics – it provides a missing context. While search data can show you what people look for, Reddit can help you understand why they are looking for it, what they hope to achieve, and what might stop them from choosing your app. 

Why Reddit research is becoming more valuable for app growth

Reddit’s value now extends beyond the platform itself. People increasingly turn to community discussions to research products, compare alternatives, and seek recommendations. These conversations can also surface in Google search, extending their reach beyond Reddit. 

Reddit is becoming relevant to AI discovery too. Recent research found Reddit among the most frequently cited sources across AI search experiences, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity.  

For app marketers, this makes community research increasingly useful. Understanding how people naturally describe your app, competitors, and category can inform ASO, user acquisition and retention strategies, while also helping you understand the conversations that may influence how your brand appears in search and AI-generated recommendations. 

Where to start: A simple three-step Reddit research process 

So, where should you begin? Surprisingly, not with your own app. It can be tempting to search your brand name first, but that gives you a narrow view. Start with the wider category, then look at competitors, and only then focus on your own product. 

1. Start with the category not your brand

Start broad. If you are working with a budgeting app, look at conversations about budgeting apps, personal finance tools, expense trackers, savings apps and money-management platforms. 

As you read, look for answers to questions such as: 

• What do people care about most? 

• Which frustrations appear repeatedly? 

• What words and phrases do users naturally adopt? 

This gives you a feel for what matters across the category. If subscription costs, privacy and bank connectivity keep coming up, you have found three themes worth exploring in your keyword research, positioning, creative and product experience. 

2. See what people really think about your competitors

Next, look at the products people compare most often. For a UK budgeting or finance app, that might include Monzo, Revolut, Emma and other apps that repeatedly appear in the same conversations. 

Look for answers to: 

• Why do users switch from one app to another? 

• Which frustrations generate the strongest reactions? 

• Which features appear repeatedly in comparisons? 

• Which competitors seem to be gaining attention, and why? 

Imagine people repeatedly saying that the Monzo app is excellent, but its customer support is difficult to reach. That could reveal a positioning opportunity if your app offers genuinely responsive support. 
 
Remember, an interesting Reddit comment shouldn’t be automatically a campaign message. Make sure your app can genuinely deliver on the promise to avoid user disappointment and churn.  

3. Then look for conversations about your own app

Once you understand the wider market and its competitors, turn your attention to your own app, assuming there is enough discussion to analyse. 

• Why do your users stay or leave? 

• Which features create advocacy? 

• Which features are valuable but hard to discover? 

• What terminology do users use when describing your app? 

This is where the picture becomes more specific. You can see what keeps loyal users around, what pushes dissatisfied users away and which valuable features people struggle to find.  

Turn interesting conversations into ideas you can test 

Once you’ve collected the data about the market, competitors, and your app, it’s time to turn it into an actionable framework. Here’s an example of what the analysis may look like.  

If you use Reddit for app growth effectively, one theme can create opportunities for several teams. For example, if users consistently praise a particular app feature, you could highlight it in paid creative, reinforce it in App Store screenshots and make the feature easier to discover during onboarding.  

The point is not to collect interesting Reddit comments and leave them in a spreadsheet. Those insights should feed directly into your ASO, product and user acquisition strategies. Pick the strongest patterns, decide what they might mean, and turn each one into something your team can test. 

A real use case: What we learned from Monzo’s Reddit community 

To illustrate how this can look in practice, we analysed conversations from the Monzo Reddit community. We examined hundreds of Reddit discussions. The comments were exported as a JSON file and analysed using AI to identify recurring themes, unmet needs and opportunities for product improvement. 

What we discovered 

At first glance, many discussions appeared to be about individual features. However, a deeper analysis revealed broader themes. 

Users value feeling in control 

One of the strongest patterns was that users rarely talked about banking itself. Instead, they discussed features that helped them manage and understand their finances, such as spending pots, budgeting tools, savings challenges, payment notifications and spending insights. 

This suggests that users do not simply view Monzo as a bank. They see it as a tool that helps them stay in control of their money. 
 
How to use this insight 

• ASO: Test messaging focused on outcomes rather than features, such as“Stay in control of your spending” or“See where every pound goes” rather than“Bank account with budgeting tools.” 

Loyalty is built through experiences, not products 

Users frequently celebrated features such as Bills Back, savings challenges and referral rewards. These discussions were often emotional rather than transactional. People talked about “winning”, receiving a surprise reward or feeling rewarded for good financial habits. 

This reveals that engagement is not always driven by functionality alone. Positive experiences and small moments of delight can play an important role in retention. 

How to use this insight 

• ASO: Feature savings challenges, rewards and achievements prominently in screenshots and app descriptions. 

• User Acquisition: Create campaigns around outcomes and wins rather than product mechanics. For example, focus on“Get rewarded for building better money habits” rather than explaining how a feature works. 

Support failures have an outsized impact 

Another recurring theme involved account reviews, fraud investigations, missing payments and support interactions. Many users were understanding when issues occurred but became frustrated when they lacked visibility, communication or clear next steps. 

How to use this insight 

Product: Focus on communication during service issues. Even when problems cannot be resolved immediately, transparency can preserve trust. 

Key takeaway 

The most valuable insight from this analysis was not a feature request or bug report. It was understanding why people value the product in the first place. 
Without community intelligence, this broader narrative would have been difficult to uncover from analytics alone. 

Where Reddit insights can improve your app growth 

Improve ASO with the language users actually use

Traditional ASO research often begins with search volume, keyword rankings and competitor performance. These remain important, but they do not always explain why someone is searching or how they naturally describe the problem they are trying to solve. 

Community research adds that missing context. 

A product team might describe an app as a “personal finance platform,” while prospective users use different terms, such as:  

• Budgeting apps 

• Expense trackers 

• Spending trackers 

These differences can reveal keyword opportunities and help marketers understand which language is most likely to resonate with prospective users. 

And you can use those findings to feed into many elements of your ASO strategy, such as your metadata and keyword targeting, screenshot messaging and feature callouts, Custom Product Pages.Google Play Custom Store Listings, In-App Events and many more. 

The objective is not to replace keyword data with Reddit conversations. It is to combine quantitative search data with qualitative evidence about what users mean, need and expect. 

Strengthen creative and App Store messaging 

Community discussions can also reveal the emotional and practical drivers behind user decisions. Depending on the app category, users may be motivated by saving time, money, protecting their privacy, improving productivity, etc. 

These motivations can shape how an app is presented across App Store screenshots, video previews, Apple Ads strategy and landing pages. 

For example, suppose prospective users regularly complain that competitor apps require a complicated setup process. If your app offers a faster and simpler experience, that insight could become an App Store screenshot focused on quick setup or a paid campaign built around simplicity. 

This also makes creative testing more purposeful. Instead of producing concepts based only on internal assumptions, teams can test messages grounded in the language and motivations of real users. 

Build more relevant paid user acquisition campaigns 

Reddit threads often resemble informal customer research sessions. People openly explain the problems they want to solve, the products they are considering and the reasons they rejected an alternative. 

Recurring themes can become: 

• Advertising hooks 

• Headlines 

• Value propositions 

• Creative concepts 

• Audience hypotheses 

If hundreds of people complain about complicated onboarding across competitor apps, you have identified a potential creative angle. However, the message should only be used in if your app can genuinely deliver a simpler experience. 

Improve activation and retention 

Reddit conversations can also provide context around the moments that affect activation, satisfaction and long-term use.  To use the example above, if campaign messaging promises simplicity but users describe the onboarding process as confusing, that may indicate a disconnect between acquisition and activation. If a feature generates strong advocacy but is difficult to discover, the opportunity may be to improve onboarding and feature education rather than build something new. 

The goal is to identify the reasons behind user behaviour, not only the behaviour itself. 

Find competitive positioning gaps 

One of Reddit’s biggest advantages is that users rarely discuss one product in isolation. They naturally compare alternatives; explain why they switched and identify the differences that matter to them. You may learn  

• Which competitors are gaining attention,  

• Why users move from one product to another, or 

• Which features influence their decisions 

This provides a level of context that traditional competitor monitoring may miss. That distinction helps marketers move from monitoring competitor activity to understanding competitor perception.  

Look beyond the review and see the whole journey

App Store reviews will always be valuable, but they capture only one part of the journey. Reddit shows you conversations happening before they download the app and helps you understand the motivations of a real audience.   

Bring those conversations together with App Store reviews, product analytics, campaign performance and customer research, and the picture becomes much richer.  

The real opportunity is not collecting more feedback for the sake of it. It is turning thousands of conversations into a small number of focused decisions. Used well, Reddit for app growth can help your App Store listings, campaigns, onboarding and product experience reflect what users genuinely care about. 

Ready to strengthen your app growth strategy?

Reddit can reveal valuable opportunities, but the real impact comes from knowing which insights to prioritise and how to turn them into action.  

Need help strengthening your app growth strategy? Contact our team to turn audience insights into a focused plan for sustainable app growth.