How to market an app: get your first users and keep them

What should be true before you market an app?

Marketing multiplies what the app already does. If ten people try it and nobody returns, sending a thousand people will give you a thousand who do not return. So check three things first.

• A few people use it twice without being asked. Five is enough to start. If none do, go back to the problem. The guide to validating an app idea covers the interviews.
• You can say who it is for in one sentence. “A calorie app” is not one. “A fridge photo that turns leftovers into three dinners” is. Vague positioning is the most common reason marketing fails.
• You can see what happens. Install some analytics, even a simple privacy-friendly one, so that you can tell which channel sent which user. Without that you are guessing.

If the product is not built yet, marketing can still start: a landing page that describes the app and collects emails tests demand before you write code. Landing page ideas has layouts to copy.

Which channel should you pick first?

Pick one. A new app with no audience cannot do search ads, content, social media, partnerships and public relations all at once. The right first channel depends on how people will find the kind of app you built.

Run the chosen channel for a month before judging it. Write down how many people you reached, how many tried the app, and how many returned. The launch guide for people with no audience goes through communities, directories and cold outreach in detail, and building in public covers sharing progress as a channel of its own. This page covers what happens around them.

How do you make your store page convert?

If your app lives in a store, the store page is your landing page. Most people who land on it decide in seconds. Treat each element as a claim about who the app is for.

• Name and subtitle. Apple’s App Store Connect reference sets the app name at 30 characters or fewer and the subtitle at 30 characters or fewer. Put the plain description of the job in the subtitle, such as “Fridge photo to dinner ideas”.
• Screenshots. The first two should show the main result, not a login screen. Add a short caption above each that states a benefit.
• First line of the description. Say who it is for and what it does. Skip the history of the project.
• Reviews. Ask satisfied users for a rating once, after they have succeeded at the main task, never on first launch.

Both stores let you test alternatives once you have traffic. Apple describes product page optimization as trying alternate versions of your icon, screenshots and app previews, shown to randomly chosen users with results in App Analytics, and custom product pages as extra versions of your page reachable through unique URLs you share. That second feature is useful for marketing: send each channel to a page that matches it. Google Play offers store listing experiments for icon, feature graphic and screenshots, and custom store listings. With a handful of installs a week, tests take too long to be meaningful, so fix the obvious problems first.

A good name helps too, since it appears everywhere. See how to name an app before you commit to one.

How do you get found by search?

People search for problems, not products. A page that answers one specific question can bring a steady trickle of visitors who already want what you built. For a web app, this is also the cheapest way to get users without paying for them.

1. List ten questions your users type. Use autocomplete in a search engine, and read the wording in forum threads.
2. Write one page per question. Answer in the first sentence, then show how your app does it, with a screenshot.
3. Give each page a unique title and description. Google’s SEO starter guide explains how titles and snippets work and how to help Google find your pages.
4. Add your site to Google Search Console so that you can see which queries bring people.
5. Link between your pages, and link to the app from every one.

Expect it to be slow. New sites often take weeks to months to be indexed and ranked, so start early and treat it as a long game rather than a launch-day tactic.

How do you get users without a budget?

Ask directly. This beats any tactic for a first hundred users.

• Ask the people you interviewed. Show them the app and ask whether they would use it and who else should.
• Join the places your users already are, and be useful first. Answer questions for a few weeks before mentioning your app, and read each community’s rules on self-promotion.
• Offer to solve one person’s problem by hand, then show them the app version. It gives you a story and a testimonial you can quote with permission.
• Ask for introductions. One sentence to a user: “Who is the one other person who would find this useful?”
• Share what you built where makers look. If your app started from an idea on the board, attach it under “Built this?” on that idea so people who liked the idea can find the result.

Subject: Quick question about [the problem, in their words]

Hi [first name],

I saw your post about [specific thing they wrote]. I am building a small app that [does one job] for [type of person].

I am not selling anything yet. Would you try it for five minutes and tell me what is confusing? Here is the link: [link]

If it is not useful to you, a one-line reply saying why helps me more than a yes.

Thanks,
[name]

Keep each message specific to the person. Mass messages are easy to spot, and many communities and platforms treat them as spam.

What should you measure?

Installs are easy to count and tell you little. Track the steps after them.

Activation and return matter most. If people install but do not finish the main job, no amount of marketing will fix that. Talk to five of them. Product-market fit is the point where return and referral stop needing effort, and the product-market fit guide explains how to recognise it.

Use tagged links for every channel so that your analytics can tell them apart. The free launch directory traffic calculator turns visits and sign-ups from different sources into comparable conversion rates.

Should you pay for ads?

Not at the start. Paid ads buy attention, but they do not tell you what to say to it. Run unpaid for a month until you know which sentence makes people try the app and what share come back. Then a small paid test has a baseline to beat.

When you do test, set a fixed total budget you can afford to lose, send traffic to a matching custom store page or landing page, and compare the cost of an activated user with what that user is worth to you. If you do not yet have revenue per user, read how to make money from an app first. Paying to acquire users you cannot afford to serve is a common way to lose money.

What does a 30-day marketing plan look like?

1. Week 1: position. Write the one-sentence description. Fix the landing page or store listing. Install analytics and tag your links.
2. Week 2: first twenty users. Ask the people you interviewed and ten more who match. Watch two of them use the app on a call.
3. Week 3: one channel. Pick the row in the channel table that fits. Post or message every day. Log reach, visits and activation.
4. Week 4: review. Compare return rates. Keep what worked, drop what did not, and decide whether the product or the message needs the next change.

The free launch copy generator drafts a tagline and description you can edit for week 1.