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9 Comments

Need advice for marketing a consumer mobile app

Looking for feedback from marketers on the strategies I'm considering or suggestions for other ones

Where I'm at
I shipped paid mobile app ThinkCool - Make better decisions ( https://thinkcool.app ) with a free initial promo to get app store reviews. Reviews largely failed to materialize but I did get a Product Hunt feature and some users. The free promo recently expired and the app has gotten its first few real sales without any new marketing.

Marketing options I'm considering
Ads
What channels would you recommend and which ones are overpriced? I suspect search ads may be challenging (see below)

Content Marketing/PR
If I produce content, how do I reach a relevant audience?

SEO
I guess this would involve producing content, as above, and optimizing it for search? Both for SEO and search ads, I believe this field may be heavily contested as the app is about making decisions and every category of decisions has companies trying to influence the decision.

Anything I missed?
Thanks!

  1. 6

    I hope everything goes well for ThinkCool!

    Here i'd love to share an article on promoting your app in the most cost-effective way possible.

    https://metrikal.io/blog/how-to-promote-an-app/

    Best.

  2. 2

    A mobile app isn't really too much different than any other business. I would recommend trying out all those channels you mentioned and continue with the ones that work.

  3. 2

    Have you looked into ASO (App Store Optimization) at all yet? Just by testing different keywords and images for your app you can really improve organic downloads from the App Store.

    I use App Annie for keeping track of my keyword rankings because it has a robust free tier. But there are a lot of other helpful tools and blog posts out there. An hour or two of Googling and reading top posts should get you to the point where you can start making meaningful changes.

    1. 2

      Thanks, didn't know about that! I don't have enough traffic or sales yet to get detailed analytics from Apple yet so hard to track changes, will keep it in mind though

  4. 1

    Freemium works better than premium/paid apps.
    Regarding the ads, focus on such markets where the CPC is very low.

  5. 1

    Hi @conceptosaur! I made this ASO guide with a bunch of great overview & ideas for app store optimization based on my personal experiences: asochecklist.com.

    Hope that helps for some optimization ideas that you can control with simple changes. Also I noticed your apps are both paid apps, have you considered doing freemium so you can grow & improve your product with user feedback? Then you can build extra features people can pay for with an IAP.

    1. 1

      Thanks, will look into your checklist. I don't think freemium is a great model for apps that are only used infrequently and I'm also doubtful the revenue would pay for the extra work needed to continuously improve the app.

  6. 1

    Blog. You need to take each topic and explain the value by either giving an example of those topics like a walkthrough, or by creating real world experience and documenting why it helped. You should try some way to hand out free subscriptions for people to review the app. Don't underestimate channels on platforms like discord and slack . Seeing if devs will give feedback on UX and UI can spark discussion if it brings value

    1. 1

      Curious, what's the purpose of getting feedback from devs? They're not really my target customer...

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