CaddieOpen in CaddieDownload for Mac

5 Juicy App Marketing Strategies With No Budget

Shared by Caddie Library · Updated
App Masters12:12Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

An app with no marketing budget can still grow downloads by paying in effort through influencers, bold content, press exclusives, market research and persistence. Sweat equity replaces cash, and what you learn carries into every app you launch.

Key takeaways

  • Working with influencers gives a new app a free distribution channel. 0:47
    • One founder gave influencers a beta and a free premium version before launch, then made over $10,000 in sales of a paid app.
    • In a sticker app deal, you split revenue 50/50 with the influencer, who brings the followers.
  • A bold piece of content can bring in an audience for free. 3:19
    • The post "Hey Apple I just fixed your camera app" drew 10,000 views in its first days.
    • It collected over 100 email addresses for the launch, and naming a big company in the title helped.
  • Offering a reporter an exclusive makes press coverage far more likely. 5:20
    • Putting "exclusive" in the subject line makes the reporter almost certain to open the email.
    • The strategy won coverage on TechCrunch, Huffington Post and The Next Web, one publication at a time.
  • Market research shows where a small app can still win in a crowded store. 6:40
    • Google Play has over 2 million apps and Apple is close, so just being listed no longer counts for anything.
    • Study the top-grossing apps and add a unique spin. A bootstrapped app can aim for $8,000 to $25,000 a month through organic search.
  • Making many simple apps is what finally produces a hit. 8:24
    • Color Switch passed a quarter of a billion downloads and was its creator's 41st app.
    • Users want an app that does one or two things very well, so simple apps teach you fast.

If you don't have real equity in terms of coins, then you need sweat equity.

Steve Young, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 Influencers as a distribution channel

Influencers and licensors bring organic downloads when you treat them as partners.

  • Influencers respond to a pitch that offers them value. 1:15
    • The ask is "check out my app, tell us what you'd like to see."
    • It is not "please promote my app."
    • The founder started talking with influencers at the very start of building the app.
    • Their feedback shaped the app before launch.
  • Licensing deals are influencer deals too. 2:33
    • PewDiePie and Harry Potter deals work the same way, except you pay the licensor.
    • Either way you get organic downloads.
    • The store is no longer just a distribution channel, so you borrow the partner's followers.
    • A past guest covers how to win sports licenses in a separate episode.

3:19 Content and exclusives that earn attention

Provocative content and a reporter exclusive earn attention without a budget.

  • Content that provokes can pay off even when people attack it. 3:19
    • The post came out in 2014 for the camera app Oh Snap.
    • Apple later added many of its suggestions to the default camera.
    • A design Reddit blog picked it up, and critics called the idea dumb.
    • Each signup was emailed straight to the founder, who imported them into MailChimp by hand.
  • An exclusive makes the reporter the original source. 5:20
    • Later articles link back to the first post.
    • It feels special to a reporter to be first.
    • Writing "exclusive to" plus the reporter's name raises the open rate further.
    • Reporters see many stories, so first access stands out.

6:06 Pitching one outlet, then finding a spin

A small app wins by pitching one outlet at a time and putting a fresh twist on what already sells.

  • An exclusive pitch tells the reporter the story is theirs alone. 6:06
    • The email ends with the pitch: this is exclusive to you.
    • The follow-up steps with the reporter are in a separate video linked above.
    • Because it is exclusive, each pitch can go to only one publication at a time.
  • A smart reskin mixes features from several apps into one. 7:02
    • Check which apps are top-grossing, because that shows what people actually pay for.
    • A solo bootstrapped developer does not need to be the biggest player.
    • App Store Optimization (ASO) then turns the idea into downloads from organic search.
    • The research tells you in advance how many downloads you need to hit your monthly target.

7:54 Keep launching, and keep it simple

Persistence is the final test, because each launch teaches something the next one can use.

  • A weak first app is normal, and the real test is making another. 7:54
    • Everyone expects a million downloads at launch, and almost nobody gets them.
    • His first app in 2011 got thousands of downloads, which didn't lead to anything.
    • The stores were not crowded then, so he expected thousands or millions anyway.
    • Someone who makes one app and calls the store too hard was never passionate about the space.
  • Simple apps teach you something new with every launch. 9:17
    • People want an app that does one or two things very well, not an all-in-one.
    • Market research, ASO, influencers and press all come together over many launches.
    • The hit may come from a marketing strategy or from a product idea.
    • If you lose the drive to keep making apps, the app space may not be for you.

In the growth library

Steve Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency and podcast host. Five low-cost ways to grow app downloads without a marketing budget: influencer partnerships, provocative content, reporter exclusives, market research and persistence across many simple apps. The examples include a paid app that made over $10,000 in sales at launch via influencers and press hits on TechCrunch, Huffington Post and The Next Web.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript325 lines
0:00

what is a bap nation it is the young founder of a master's dot-com the place you go when you want action-packed content in the app business today I want to give you five actionable juicy campaigns that you can run when you don't have any money for marketing look we've all been there maybe we're bootstrapping or maybe we spent all our money on development and have very little left for actual marketing and you're like Steve I've got no money for you sorry can't hire you but please provide me with some actionable advice that I can use to grow my downloads so I'm gonna give you some clever ones not the basics that you might have already heard about but these are clever juicy campaigns that you can use to grow your downloads number one work with an influencer now I'm going to put a card up here to one of my favorite videos in a kind of outlines one of my previous podcasts guess the strategy that she

1:01

used to work with influencers from the very start of her app she was interacting with them really trying to engage with them and give them a beta version of the app so that when it finally launched she had a very successful launch she drove over ten thousand dollars of actual sales as a paid app it was a great example of somebody who's actually working with influencers and engaging them not necessarily saying hey will you please put on my app but hey will you please check out my app we think it's gonna add real value to you let us know what you'd like to see in the app and obviously we'll give you a free premium version of the app and I love this story because shows the hustle the grit that you need when you don't have any money if you don't have money equity real equity in terms of coins then you need sweat equity and that's what you need to do to really promote your app so it's a great

1:54

story check out that story the other thing that you can do when you're working with an influencer is create the app with the influencer meaning you have a sticker app this is very popular a couple of years ago when Apple first released their stickers feature and what it allows you to do is say hey big influencer I'd love to create-a-sticker app for you would you promote it to your audience and we'd go 5050 or whatever that revenues chair is gonna be you split it with the influencer because you need a distribution channel and the app store is no longer just a distribution channel you're going to rely on that influencers followers to be your distribution channel so there's a lot of ways you can do it you notice that PewDiePie if you even think about Harry Potter and those licensing deals those are working with an influencer it's a licensor you're paying with it but it gives you organic downloads so that's how you work with it

2:46

I have a great episode that I'll link up into the show notes as well with a past podcast guest where he talks just about how to get licenses from major sports that's what he's been able to do but if you think about licenses from any title from Harry Potter to a big influencer of PewDiePie these are all types of influencer deals so that I'm sort of lumping them all into one but that's one way from the very start that you can start leveraging that network and get some tremendous organic downloads number two look create juicy content I wrote this blog post back in the days when I was launching one of my camera apps called oh snap still out there it's not the best app so don't check it out but at the same time I wrote this article called hey Apple I just fixed your camera app and if you read that article you'll notice that the Apple camera that you currently have right now is very similar to all the features that I said

3:46

was wrong with the Apple camera app back in the days when I first launched it in 2014 so you'll see that I'm very proud of the fact that I've been able to fix the camera app and literally did fix the camera app because they took a lot of my suggestions into the default camera app that you currently see on your iPhone but did tremendously well drove ten thousand views within the first couple of days it was picked up by this design reddit blog I forgot what the name was but people were creaming me killing me saying like this is such a dumb idea I can't believe this guy did this app but that drove a hundred email addresses to the website at the bottom of the post I said hey guys if you agree or disagree and one when this app comes out go to this website and entering your email address and at that time I made it so simple that every time somebody entered an email address what it would do is literally email me instead of going into

4:39

mil champ or some email service provider it just emailed me the person's email so I had a hundred plus email addresses coming in from that website that I had to import into MailChimp but that's one way you can do it now you think about all the like clickbait type of articles that you can create and start thinking through how you can leverage that article now obviously what really worked well for me was one I really believed in the product and it was wrong with the product and to calling out a big name company in the title really helps to so create that content if you don't got any money be creative in the content that you can create because with social media these days it can go pretty viral number three this is a strategy that I'll link up into the card as well it's one of my favorite strategies is called giving a reporter an exclusive on your app launch now what you're doing to the reporter is

5:31

they're gonna more likely to cover that story because it's exclusive to them meaning that they're the first people who get the write about the story with reporters and news so many stories coming out it real it feels really special to a reporter if they're the only ones that are able to first report it because all these subsequent articles that will come from it will link to that particular post so if you put exclusive in the subject line you're almost 99% sure that the reporter will open it so if you put exclusive to Steve or exclusive to the reporter's name they're more likely to open that email and then you hit them with the pitch and you say look this is exclusive to you now go check out that video if you want to learn more about it but essentially I'll tell you exactly how it works and how you follow up with the reporter and the fact is you can only go to one publication at a time when you're

6:22

utilizing this particular strategy but I've been able to get on TechCrunch Huffington Post The Next Web using this exclusive strategy number four and they know you probably don't want to hear about it but yes there is another video that is in the card above as well but its market research look guys the app stores are flooded with over 2 million on Google Play and on Apple getting close to that 2 million mark the app stores are flooded no it's no longer a novel ideas no longer just cool just to have the app in the App Store so do market research figure out what's really working in the app space and how you can make it a little different now mix and match different things I record another video about how to reskin the smart way these days and it's about mixing and matching different features that you like about different apps and so figure out which apps are the top-grossing what people are actually

7:16

paying for and figure out if there's a unique spin that you can put on those types of apps that you can bring into the market sometimes you don't need to be the biggest player anymore especially if you're gonna be Indian really bootstrap all you really need to do is do enough market research then you understand hey I can make eight to twelve thousand to twenty thousand to twenty five thousand dollars a month creating this type of app if I can get this many downloads through organic search right and so it's really figuring out what apps are working and how you can put your unique spin on it and then leverage ASO to get those downloads and lastly guys I just did an interview with my friend David I shelf for a new show that I'm gonna be announcing pretty soon but he was telling us that color switch which blow up right over half a billion a quarter of a billion downloads and he said it was his 41st app that he created

8:13

he was creating Rhys kins he was creating dumb apps he was just creating a lot of different games and if you think about Angry Birds being the fifty-first game will color switch the forty-first games the last tip is keep creating apps if you are really passionate about creating apps well you're still gonna have that passion when your first app doesn't go as well as you would have theirs everybody has the same story I thought my first app was gonna get a million downloads right on launch we've all had that sorry I still talk to people who still despite the fact that the App Store is crowded still have that story for me look when I first launched my app in 2011 the app stores were not crowded so I had this perception that hold my first apps gonna get thousands of downloads and millions of downloads yeah it didn't happen I got thousands of downloads but didn't lead to anything and so this last

9:09

tip will test you one if you're passionate about the app space you're gonna keep creating apps and you're gonna figure it out so you're gonna learn one new thing every single time you launch and the next thing I should tell you is create simple apps look these days I feel like the App Store is fragmented that we're not looking for an all-in-one solution we're looking for an app to help us do one or two things very very well and so if you do that market research and if you create simple apps you're gonna learn a lot along the way and then you're gonna finally hit on one whether it's a marketing strategy whatever there it's a product idea you're gonna finally hit on one that's really gonna take off and it's gonna test your resolve it's gonna test whether you're really passionate about the app space because if you're not you're gonna create one up and you're gonna be done with it and be like oh the

9:56

app store is too hard it's too difficult but those who are really serious about the app stuff they're gonna create a ton more apps and they're gonna continually create them until they figured it all out you're gonna learn a lot more whether it's through market research whether it's through ASO whether it's working with the right influencer whether it's getting the right press you're gonna combine all these tips into one and finally you'll find that success all right guys that's it five super simple tips juicy tips it you can use to grow your downloads without spending any money on marketing so let's just recap one last time number one work with an influencer number two create some juicy content number three use that exclusive strategy to get reporters to pay attention number four it's the hard work but you gotta put in the hard work it's do market research and lastly number five keep going keep creating apps if

10:55

you don't feel like it anymore maybe the app space was not for you all right guys that's it for now appreciate you so much let me know what kind of content that you want me to create I've created a ton videos I would really love your feedback on what type of content to create and also stay tuned for an announcement in the beginning of the year so 2020 I got a brand new YouTube channel and a brand new podcast I'm super excited about and so stay tuned for that I'm going to talk a lot about more of the business how to manage a team out of hire people how to schedule meetings how to actually sell yourself I'm gonna be talking a lot more about the business side of things not just the app marketing side of things masters still going strong so we're gonna keep doing it but again I want to share more of the business side of things but I've learned from my seven years of business running this business

11:43

being on my own and it's been a dream come true for me so I just want to share some of the lessons learn along the way so stay tuned for that I hope you subscribe make sure you hit subscribe leave a comment below let me know what kind of content you want to see in the future until next time I'll see you on the next video you