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Product Market Fit: The Simple Way to Find It

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App Masters15:17Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Product market fit means solving a real need for a narrow, chosen group, and you find it by asking users and tracking whether they stay. It matters because fit produces retention, and retention is what makes an app last.

Key takeaways

  • Fit starts with a narrow group of people who have a clear need and will give you an easy yes. 2:33
    • Spotify meets the needs of discovering new music, sorting it into playlists, sharing it and listening offline.
    • Hopper targets people not tied to one airline, who just want the best flight deal without searching daily.
  • Asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product is the clearest test of fit. 4:42
    • If most would be disappointed, the product has fit. Other questions: who would benefit most, what the main benefit is, and how to improve it.
    • These questions come from the Superhuman article on how they found product market fit.
  • Feedback is most honest when it comes from paying users and people who match your target persona. 6:01
    • The Adapty CEO's tip: a new app can launch with a hard paywall, because paying users care most about being heard.
    • Hired beta testers who fit your persona give tougher, more honest feedback than family and friends.
  • After launch, in-app feedback shows where fit is off. 7:48
    • Common confusion means you are reaching the wrong users or your features are unclear.
    • Asking users during onboarding what they came for helps them stick around instead of deleting the app.
  • Retention proves fit but arrives late, so daily and monthly active users are the earlier signal. 10:29
    • Retention is a lagging indicator, and high retention can take months or even years to show.
    • A tighter ratio of daily to monthly active users means a stickier product. The right ratio depends on the app: a travel app is used monthly, Instagram daily.

The more that you can listen to your audience, collect feedback from them, maybe read reviews, respond to reviews, and then iterate your product based on that, that's how people are going to want to spread the word.

Christine Dart, Helpshift

Chapter summaries

0:00 What product market fit means

Fit is a match between a solution and the market it targets, so both the audience and the features count.

  • Fit means the product fills a need in the market you chose 1:08
    • Demographics and features both matter, though features come first.
    • Right market plus right solution to that market's challenges.
    • Asked where to start, Dart picks features, then says it is "a little of both".
    • Know what problem you solve and what value the app gives.
  • Form a fit hypothesis before you build 1:35
    • Even a best guess shows whether you fill a gap.
    • Fit can also emerge later, as unplanned features take over.
    • A throwaway feature can become the main one, as with Instagram.
    • Entrepreneurs who say the app is "for everybody" skip this step.

3:16 Know the persona and ask direct questions

Persona traits and direct conversations show what delights your users and why they prefer you.

  • Persona research comes down to a few traits and one delighting function 3:19
    • Look for common interests, job types and economic bracket.
    • Then find the challenge your app solves best.
    • Dart could fill a whole episode on persona research and tools.
    • The aim is the one function that "absolutely delights" them.
  • Back-to-back customer calls sharpen your pitch 3:54
    • Test your wording on one prospect, then apply what you learned to the next.
    • Steve runs these calls through his agency.
    • Questions can be asked in a survey, or collected through in-app feedback.
  • Ask users why they prefer you and what to improve 5:15
    • "It's cool" is not enough. You want the reason it beats alternatives.
    • Core users know which feature might send them to a competitor.
    • Suggestions from them matter most.

5:40 Getting honest feedback before launch

Early feedback is only useful when it comes from people who truly match the target user.

  • Tough feedback from real personas moves an app toward fit 6:52
    • Beta testers can be hired through several organizations.
    • Testers in your persona say what failed, what is missing and what they want.
    • Steve's own app uses a hard sell: pay or leave, with no free features.
    • Fit leads to retention, meaning long-term users who do not churn 7:14.

7:39 Collecting feedback after launch

Feedback gathered inside the app keeps complaints private and shows what to fix.

  • In-app feedback catches problems before they turn into public reviews. 7:50
    • Users can rate the app, say what they like or dislike, and suggest features.
    • They can also report bugs and crashes from the same place.
    • Device and app version come attached to each report, so bugs are easier to trace.
    • FAQ articles can pop up in the app to guide users who seem confused.
  • Onboarding is the first chance to ask what users want. 9:35
    • Asking what are you here for during the welcome flow gives feedback from the very first session.
    • Those answers can feed a paywall, an advanced step.
    • Sorting and filtering the feedback shows which complaints repeat.
    • Repeated confusion points to a fit problem, not a one-off complaint.

10:10 Knowing when you have fit

Retention is the gold-standard proof of fit, and stickiness measures give an earlier read.

  • Fit matters because it builds long-term users who keep using the app and spread the word. 10:29
    • Keeping existing customers is easier than buying new ones.
    • That is why retention is the metric to focus on for lasting success.
    • Acquiring new customers means pumping money into ads.
    • Long-term users are the payoff of fit, not a side effect.
  • A sticky app is one people use often and get value from. 11:47
    • The tighter the daily to monthly active ratio, the stickier the product.
    • Users who get value keep coming back, so you likely keep them long term.
    • The ideal ratio depends on what the app does.
    • These are the numbers to keep watching.

12:01 From fit to virality

People share a product they love, and that love comes from listening to them.

  • Listening to users builds the product they spread by word of mouth. 12:17
    • Good listening works like good selling: you predict users' problems before they hit them.
    • Read and answer reviews, then iterate on what you learn.
    • Happy users tell friends to download it.
    • They also ask why anyone still uses the old legacy app.
  • A feedback tool can find likely sharers and show where users come from. 13:10
    • Asking would you recommend this product tags users who may share it.
    • Asking how users found the app shows whether TikTok, Facebook or Instagram converts better.
    • Those tagged users are the ones to ask for a favor.
    • Feedback also tests whether customers want the feature you think they want.

In the growth library

Christine Dart (with host Steve P Young), Head of Marketing at Helpshift; host is founder of App Masters. Finding product market fit comes down to knowing which people you serve, which problem you solve, and asking users a few direct questions, both before and after launch. In-app feedback, early indicators like the DAU to MAU ratio, and retention tell you whether you have it.

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

Transcript480 lines
0:00

what is up app nation it is steve p young founder of vapmasters.com the place you go when you want action-packed content related to helping you grow your app downloads and more importantly those revenues feels funny if i don't say that intro but today we're going to talk all about product market fit the simple way to do it it's so important and something you should probably know before you launch but it's something that you can actually find along the way because maybe you have a vision maybe the features that you thought were going to be handy are not so handy and the features that you thought were just kind of like a throwaway become the main feature aka instagram type of thing here to break it down all with me is christine dart who is the head of marketing at help shift you gotta check them out it is healthshift.com they got a free feedback sdk that is linked up into the youtube description so go check

0:47

that out but christine welcome to the show hi thanks for having me happy to be here hey christina i want to ask you this like when we're trying to find product market fit should we be focusing on the demographics or should we be focusing on an apps feature where do you like to start i think feature would be the closer one of the two so i think maybe we should define product market fit first a little bit and basically what that means is that the product that you've created fills a need within the market that you're targeting so you want to basically be targeting the right market and then have the right solution for whatever that markets challenges might be i would say it's little of both right it's understanding the demographic and what they need and the solution you're providing them so how are your features actually going to help provide that solution you really want to figure out product market fit or at least have the

1:39

best hypothesis you can before you even start building so that you know you're actually filling a gap or you know meeting a need and you want to know what problem you're solving and or what value your app is going to provide so if you think of some you know some heavy hitters out there like spotify for example so my problem might be that i really want to be able to discover new music that i actually like and i want to be able to sort it out easily into like playlists and everything share it with people and also have the capability to listen to it offline so that way if i'm like out in the mountains and i don't have service i can listen to it or if i'm on a plane those are all the needs that spotify fills another example would be hopper so that's that one where like it'll show you when like cheap flights come up say that i'm somebody that's not committed to a specific airline i'm just looking

2:25

for the best deal hopper solving that need for me without me having to like be searching every day on my own that's how you kind of figure out if you're you're feeling a need or not i love what you said about the demographics because i think sometimes you know i talk to entrepreneurs they're like hey i'm this for everybody you know this is going to be for everybody and it's like you know you kind of have to just find i know i don't know if this is the right term but beachheads like here are the core demographics that i really want to focus on so for example it's hopper like people who are maybe nomads or like people who aren't like associated with an airline who can travel on a dime just move around love that remote adventure type of thing and so i feel like when you're trying in that early stage you just need to buckle down and stop saying it to everybody and just pick some people that you think are gonna say an easy yes

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that's how i like to frame it christine is like hey who's gonna get me an easy yes and let's go talk to those people first and foremost yeah i love it so i could do probably a whole episode on persona research and understanding your personas and tools to do that and everything but really it's gonna come down to a few major things at least in the beginning before you're really fine-tuning it so it's understanding like is there kind of a demographic and which specific people within that demographic do they have common interests common job types maybe are they in a certain economic bracket and then most importantly what challenges do they have that your app can solve and what function of your app will actually like absolutely delight them one of the things i love doing is the phone calls with my target market so obviously we run an agency i get to talk to a lot of people and christine one of the things

3:59

i've said was i like to do back-to-back calls because then i can talk to one person a potential customer see the language i use see how they react to that language and then literally apply that same principle to that next customer that i'm about to talk to so i think that's a great way but i think another great way that helps you will help you do too is asking the right questions within your app you want to break down some of those questions for us you know there's different ways to do this so some of the questions you might want to get an answer from and this wouldn't be necessarily what you're you're doing like right in the app unless you build kind of like a survey or something like that we'll talk about the questions first then i'll talk about the the other method afterward which is about actually collecting feedback from the app so you want to identify a few things from your users like how would

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you feel if you could no longer use this product are they going to be disappointed or maybe somewhat disappointed neutral or they not really care and if they're going to be disappointed that they can't use your product anymore then that means like you've you've nailed down the product market fit right like they they really like using your product you might also want to find out what type of people you think would most benefit from the product so maybe they they have other people in mind like friends or co-workers or something that would also really like to use the app what's the main benefit that you receive from the products so you want to know why they love you so not just like yeah i like this app it's cool gets the job done but like why why is it better than other alternatives and then finally how can we improve the product for you you want to get suggestions from especially your core audience people that are actually

5:30

using your app because they're going to know best what kind of things they wish they could do or something that they might actually turn to a competitive app to go do instead looking at this article that superhuman wrote about how they were able to find product market fit and i love this article so i'll link this up into the show notes or the description below but we kind of break down and you can read the full article it's these questions that really resonate and christine one of the things i just recently learned from the ceo of adapti was hey you know when you're a new app you can launch as a hard paywall because people who pay you want to get their user feedback more importantly than those free users and kind of superhuman talks about this you want to talk to those who would be very disappointed that if your product never existed and you know maybe the you know talk to those that are not going to be

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not as disappointed if your product didn't exist at all so i i thought that was a great insight because i've actually seen that work with one of the apps that we we have of our own where we're doing a hard sell like there's no features you have to either pay us or get the heck out right right for those that are still you know early in their app development cycle you can actually hire beta testers there's a few different organizations out there that you can do that through the nice thing about doing that versus just kind of like asking family and friends to test it out and give you feedback is if you can you know get the people they're actually in what you think is going to be your user persona that would actually be using the app in real life and get their feedback you're going to get honest feedback and understand like okay this didn't cut it this needs to be improved you're missing this we really

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want that it's gonna be that kind of the tough love that you need to really get your app to a point where it does have product market fit with the demographic you're going after and you know more importantly you're going to get retention right people are going to keep using it which is why we want product market fit in the first place you want to have long-term users that aren't going to churn all right the next thing i want to talk about too is what happens if we've already launched christine i know if you think about the early days of instagram it was supposed to i forget what the the whole thing was supposed to be but he found out that the camera filters were the one that were used the most and then made that the ultimate feature and the ultimate product but when we're already launched what are some steps that we can take to tweak some of the features that we might be thinking about building you can have

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in-app feedback collect it right there in the app that way you don't have to wait until people are kind of blasting negative reviews or something because they're not liking certain features or having glitches or they don't maybe they don't even like get what your app is for ideally you can save them from doing that in a public space and have them do it right to you right in the app so you can learn from it so that help shift we recently started offering a free product called feedback plus it's an sdk you can integrate right into your app and basically it allows users to submit feedback so like five stars and here's what i like about it or three stars here's what i don't like about it they can actually enter suggestions for improvements like hey be really cool if you had this feature would be really helpful and they can also report bugs and crashes and then there's metadata attached to all of it so that way you

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know what kind of device they're on and what version they're on and all of that so you can kind of make iterations based on that especially if there are bugs or something it also allows you to do faq so basically those articles that pop up like um you know are you looking for this one of these might help you and that can help people navigate the app so if you you know you're finding that people are leaving reviews like they're a little bit confused with your app and not quite sure what to do you might want to have some good faqs in there to help kind of guide them through the process and help them understand it better taking all of that feedback after the fact and kind of sorting it filtering it reading through it understanding if there's a lot of commonalities things like that especially if you're seeing a lot of people kind of not really understanding how they should be using the app or what it's for that's when

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you're going to understand that your product market fit might be off a little bit so either you're targeting the wrong users the wrong people are using it you're not really appealing to the right people or people just aren't really clear how to use it so maybe you might need to improve your features a bit to make sure you're fitting the market better i know one of the things that we've seen work really well too christine is doing the onboarding process like trying to engage with the user as much as possible asking them for feedback what are you here for you know what are you looking to get out of this particular app and then you know if you want to get really advanced using what they tell you in a paywall or so forth and so it's that critical feedback that i think you could even do while it's that first time user experience that welcome flow that onboarding process yeah absolutely onboarding is is really

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important especially if you want to make sure people stick around and don't just kind of like log in the app once then delete it or just never come back yeah so yeah are there any other questions or anything that i missed that you want to make sure we hit on for product market fit i was thinking we should talk about how do people know if they got product market fit yeah that'd be great that's a great one yeah so um there's a couple different answers to this question and there are different metrics you can measure so kind of the gold star metric is retention rates right so the idea of having really good product market fit in the first place is so that you know you're building something where people are going to stick around um keep using it ideally spread the word and be a long term user or customer of your app you know as they always say it's much easier to get more money and retain your

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existing customers than it is to try to acquire new customers and pump money into that so you really do want to focus on retention if you want long-lasting success in your app however retention is what they call a lagging indicator right so if you have super high retention then you know that you do have product market fit but you might not find that out for months or even years sometimes because it's just one of those factors where it takes time to kind of collect that information and find out if people are sticking around and when they're turning if they are to have some kind of earlier indicators especially in the app world you want to focus more on your monthly active users and also your daily active users which you know how you prioritize those might depend on what type of app you have do you know something like a travel app you might be only popping into that like once or twice a month depending on how

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frequently you travel but something like an instagram right you're in there every day probably so you're gonna have high daily active use so your ratio of daily active to monthly active users is is going to really depend on your functionality but the um tighter knit that ratio is kind of the most product stickiness you have so if if something sticky that means people are kind of using it frequently and they're getting value from it so they're gonna stick around and keep using it and you know you'll probably have them for the long term those are some of the metrics you really wanna keep an eye on i wanna ask you this christine but i know a lot of people talk about virality and like how do i get more people to share and i'm like look you to get people to love you first before they will share your product so anything you want to touch on in terms of people talking about virality too after you find product

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market fit yeah i mean i i think it's still kind of coming back to that feedback loop right and building that great product that people love that's how you create a product that people love you really have to be able to listen just like anything that's how you become a good salesperson right you learn the art of listening and kind of identifying and being able to almost predict what their challenges are maybe before they even experience them so that you can have a solution for that or you know hopefully prevent them from running into that problem in the first place so the more that you can listen to your audience collect feedback from them maybe read reviews respond to reviews and then iterate your product based on that to continue to enhance it and just make it better and better that's how people are going to want to spread the word because they're going to be like this app's freaking awesome you need to

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download it or like why are you still using xyz legacy app like this new one's out and it's so much better you should totally be using this that's how you get that virality and people spreading the word and chatting your phrases from the rooftops that's something that we can do within feedback right like the feedback plus sdk is kind of ask people hey are you enjoying this product would you recommend this product than sort of tagging them as potential people who might be willing to share the product too yeah that's a good point um i think we probably weren't even thinking about that as much since we're usually focused on things more from a customer uh support perspective but yeah that's right like those are the people you could reach out to and kind of ask for a favor well guys look it is an easy simple sdk to get developed i'm going to show it right here it's got a lot of great features from

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bug crashing to getting real-time feedback and you can use that feedback not just for features but like how the heck did you hear us from i know it's a popular question that people like to ask but it is one that can tell you and help you with some of the attribution if you want to see hey are people from tiktok versus facebook versus instagram are they converting better so there's lots of things that you can do with just having a feedback tool beyond just helping you build the right features and i think that's so key is a lot of people think i need to add this feature are you building that right feature because you think in your head you're doing it but do your customers actually want it as well so once again it is helpshift.com look for the feedback sdk it is also linked up into the youtube description as well christine if the audience wants to connect with you in any other word you want to send

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them anywhere else you can find me on linkedin um i think it's linkedin.com christinebdart maybe i don't know just google christine dart help shift um you should find me on on that and come say hello well i'll will linked up link up christine's linkedin to the youtube description as well and so you guys can just click on the link say hi tell her you enjoyed the actual show and podcast where however you're consuming this content but christine thank you so much for coming on doing this yeah thanks so much for having me steve it was a lot of fun thank you guys for watching and i'll see you on the next video