Growth strategy
A framework for where ASO sits among your channels. Intelligent, well presented, and billed at the senior rate. It does not choose a keyword or write a subtitle.
Strategy is not a deliverableASO agency review · September 2026
Kurve review: growth consultancy first, ASO second. Avoid paying a strategy tax on a listing.
Kurve is a London growth agency led by Oren Greenberg, around since 2013 and named App Marketing Agency of the Year in 2023. It is a consultancy at heart: strategy, fractional leadership, growth analytics, with paid social and ASO as channels underneath. That shape is fine for a company that needs a growth lead. It is expensive for a company that needs a subtitle rewritten.
Thinking about hiring Kurve for ASO? Avoid. Here is the consultancy problem.
Gabriel Machuret · September 2026Kurve is a good agency with a clear identity, and the identity is the reason I would steer most people away from hiring it for App Store Optimization specifically. Kurve is a growth consultancy. Its founder writes about growth strategy, its best work is fractional leadership and channel mix for scale-ups, and it picked up an agency-of-the-year award in 2023 on the strength of that. ASO is one of the channels it runs. It is not what the company is for.
Why does that matter? Because consultancies bill for thinking, and thinking is priced by the senior hour. When a consultancy does ASO, the engagement starts with a growth audit, a strategy phase, a channel-mix recommendation, and a workshop. All of that is billed, all of it is genuinely intelligent, and none of it changes a word of your store listing. By the time the actual metadata rewrite happens, you have paid for a quarter of consulting to arrive at a piece of work that a specialist would have started on day one.
There is a structural reason this happens. A consultancy’s margin lives in senior time. Execution is lower-margin, so it gets pushed to junior staff or partners while the senior people move to the next strategic engagement. Your ASO, once the strategy deck is signed off, becomes execution. It goes to whoever is available. The person who impressed you with the growth framework is not the person choosing your keywords, and the framework does not choose them either.
Consider what ASO actually needs. Someone who understands your category to rewrite the title, subtitle and keyword field properly, once. One clear screenshot hypothesis tested against another. Patience while the stores respond, then the next change. It is craft, not strategy. It needs a practitioner who has done it a thousand times, not a growth lead who has overseen it as one line in a channel plan.
Compare that with hiring one consultant whose entire practice is the listing. No growth audit, no channel-mix deck, no workshop. The teardown on day one, the rewrite in week two, the test in week three, the handover at the end. You talk to the person doing the work throughout, the scope and the fee are fixed, and when it ends your team can run it. The cost is a fraction of a year at a consultancy, because you are paying for craft hours, not strategy hours, and nothing in the invoice is a framework.
In fairness: if you are a scale-up that genuinely lacks a growth lead and needs someone to set channel strategy, own the paid mix and put ASO in its place among other levers, Kurve is exactly that kind of partner and the award was earned. If your growth strategy is fine and your store listing is the problem, you do not need a consultancy. You need the listing fixed. Send me their proposal and I will show you which lines are strategy and which are the work.
02 — Where a growth-consultancy retainer actually goes
Typical agency economics · illustrative, not their books$78,000a year at a typical $6,500/month retainer$57,720of it never touches your app store listing
24%
Senior strategy time
Audits, frameworks, workshops and channel-mix decks. Billed at partner rates, before any listing change.
14%
Sales & thought leadership
The content, talks and awards programme that make the consultancy the safe choice.
18%
Account & project management
Running the engagement, the recaps and the roadmap.
18%
London office & margin
Overhead, tools, and the owners’ return.
26%
Hands on your listing
The execution: metadata, creative, tests. Pushed down the org chart once the strategy is signed.
03 — What the growth framework says vs what your listing gets
Three things to translate before you signFractional growth lead
The person who impressed you on the call. Once the strategy is signed, they move to the next strategic engagement and your ASO becomes execution for whoever is free.
Seniority leaves after the deckAgency of the year
Won for growth work across paid, influencer and creative. A fair signal of a good consultancy. It says nothing about ASO craft, which was one line in the winning plan.
Awards are for the plan04 — Kurve vs one consultant
Same goal: more installs from searchKurveGabriel, direct
What they areGrowth consultancy with ASO as a channelASO practitioner, only
Month oneGrowth audit, strategy phase, workshopThe teardown of your listing and five competitors
Who does the workSenior strategy up front, execution handed downGabriel, on every deliverable
ContractMonthly retainerFixed scope, fixed fee
12-month cost≈ $78,000 at a typical $6.5k/mo$9,500, one engagement
Also for salePaid social, influencer, creative, analyticsNothing. One category, one strategy.
When it endsRenewal, or the growth lead leavesYour team runs ASO without me
05 — Red flags in a consultancy proposal
If you see three, send it to meA strategy phase billed at full rate before any metadata change
Workshops listed as deliverables
The founder on the call, an associate on the delivery plan
ASO folded into a channel-mix retainer you did not ask for
Growth analytics dashboards counted as output
A minimum term set by the consulting roadmap, not by the stores
06 — Fair play — what Kurve genuinely does well
Credit where it is due- If you actually need a growth lead, a fractional one from a proven consultancy is a sensible hire
- Their thinking on channel mix and scale-up growth is genuinely good
- The 2023 award reflects real results across paid and creative
07 — Should you avoid Kurve?
Honest answer: depends who you areAvoid if
Your growth strategy is fine and your listing is the problemYou do not want to pay for a strategy phase before the rewriteYour ASO budget is under $50k a yearYou want your own team to learn the craftHire them if
You are a scale-up with no growth lead and need one, fractionallyYou want paid, influencer, creative and ASO set in one planYou value strategy more than execution speed right now07 — Before you sign
Send me
Kurve’s
proposal.
I will mark which lines are strategy, which are execution, and what the listing work costs on its own as a fixed fee. If you genuinely need a growth consultancy, I will tell you that.
08 — Objections
“Surely strategy before execution is the right order.” +
For a channel plan, yes. For a store listing, the strategy is the teardown, and it takes a week, not a quarter. Paying senior rates to arrive at ‘rewrite the metadata’ is the tax.
“Isn’t a consultancy more rigorous than one person?” +
A consultancy is more documented. Rigour in ASO is one variable at a time, measured on installs. That is a practitioner’s habit, not a framework’s.
“Can you set our growth strategy?” +
No, and I will not pretend to. I do the listing, the keywords, the creative testing and the training. If you need a growth lead, Kurve is a real option.
“Is this review biased?” +
Yes. I compete for ASO work. That is why the criticism is about consultancy economics, not competence, and why I have been clear about who should hire them.
Kurve quoted you? Skip the strategy tax. Fix the listing.Send their proposal