Ask HN: “If you build it, they will come” doesn't work. How do we market our app?
Hi,
My friend and I have been building an app (at http://getlooksgood.com/) in our spare time for more than a year, but we're clueless on how to get users to the page.
The app is fashion oriented and we think has potential, but that is not our area of expertise at all. Does anybody who has been in a similar situation have any advice? Do you think we should pursue it further or give up? It has been a great learning experience and a fun project to work on, so it's not all bad.
Thanks for your time!
75 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadGo to Meetups and talk about it whenever possible.
Move your location to the epicenter of whatever industry you want to build traction in. Fashion oriented -- try New York.
I know of people that have raised money (read $50 investors) for the sole purpose of getting peoples attention.
I'm sure these are not new, but they are routinely passed over.
To be frank, getting eyeballs is by far THE HARDEST PART to launching a business, so explore all avenues.
So, you'd recommend trying more person-to-person or "guerilla" marketing tactics?
Like GoFundMe or KickStarter --or the thousand other sites that have copied their business model.
Some people use fundraising in really small amounts as a way to get early adopters or crusaders for their mission.
It's okay to fail after you've tried everything, but if you quit now to build something new you're just aspiring to get back to this point equally unprepared to take your idea from launch to success.
We've tried running some ad campaigns, but those things are terribly expensive and inefficient, around $5 per user gained, which is around the industry standard.
On a side note, be sure that your questionnaire is balanced and doesn't lead respondents to answer in the way that you want them to. Remember: The goal is to improve your product, not to pat yourself on the back. Don't let your ego get the better of you.
Coming to your site, it was pretty clear how I could interact with the site, but not why I should bother. It might be obvious to you, since you've worked on it, but it's not to a casual browser. Compare to https://www.gotinder.com/ which works hard to clearly sell the benefit of the service.
Personally, I wouldn't download a style app that wasn't itself stylish. It'd be hard to recommend to my stylish friends. And something like this will take off via word of mouth and community building.
Right now, afaik, the leader in this space is Pinterest. You could do the same sort of thing Instagram did to Facebook--be the indie alternative that the cool kids use. But IMO you need more of that cool kid mojo. I'm not quite sure how to get it... brilliant designers and product people are hard to find. Maybe you are brilliant, but haven't put enough time and polish into the product yet.
One suggestion I have is to interface the app with Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. For example, once you take and post a selfie in the app, it can post a message on your Facebook/Twitter profile letting that user's friend's know that, not only can they rate their friend's attire, but also help spread the word of your app.
If you already have this feature, you should definitely display it on your site.
I'm not so sure I agree with the approach of treating your users as somebody that has the attention span of 2 seconds and after that mindlessly wanders off somewhere else, but that seems to be the general advice.
That being said, we got into the business because an app the company had invented was too hard to market, so we started marketing apps. There are a lot of techniques in this space -- some low budget, some high(er) budget. Happy to chat if you like. Feel free to dm me @jtm on twitter.
Your earliest users are most likely to be ones who are already doing activities with regards to fashion -- perhaps check out /r/malefashionadvice on reddit and search for other online interest communities. I would bet there are instagram, pinterest and twitter communities around fashion.
Measure the success of your campaigns across channels, and the retention of users across each. You should decide if you plan to grow users by being 'viral' (fast growth, but user's don't stay long) or 'sticky' (slower growth, longer usage).
Any users you get and keep are likely to be the best advocates and already know similar users, so empower/incentivize them to invite the friends they think would be interested -- ideally in some way that is natural to the product. In the ideal case, the product is so good, they will immediately want to tell their friends who would be interested.
Finding an effective and repeatable marketing strategy can require as much thought and effort as the product itself.
Marketing is easy.
1: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
We don't have a category for mobile apps yet, but I suspect a lot of our users would love this product. We could find a way to make it fit.
Contact me at me@derekscruggs.com if you're interested in learning more
Name:Thechicnatural with 833,449 subscribers
Name:Wendyslookbook with 633,000 subscribers
Name: Beautybyjj with 506,000 subscribers and many more..
In their profile, they have business email addresses to contact them. They will charge you a small fee and will mention your app and also include a link to your site for their subscribers to check out.
Tip: Often times, they give away a prize to their subscribers after reaching x amount of subscribers. So find a way to spin that to get their subscribers to your app and maybe get the prize through your site when the time comes?. For the example, the subscribers can sign up on your site, show their fashion sense and then win the prize of that youtuber that has reached their milestone?. Figure it out and it should help. All the best.
Your problem here is your going after a rather broad group of people. That's usually pretty nigh impossible unless you got megabucks behinds you. I'd narrow it somewhat and tackle them first. I don't know anything about fashion so I can't help you there.
But if it were, say, an app for people who were buying motorobikes I might first create an app that helped people of a particular brand (indeed, model within a brand) of motorbike as they often congregate and chat amongst themselves quite nicely. Once I completely killed with that brand, I might consider building the same tool for another other brand of motorcycle. After killing a bunch of brands only then would I try to go after the motorcycle market in general.
1. Why did you create this app and how is it different than your competitors? Do you know what your competitors metrics are?
Taking a quick look at your app, it looks very similar to The Hunt. So I would research who the hunts customers are and go after them. I would also research (i.e. App Annie) The Hunts downloads and revenue numbers and keywords.
2. App Store is very difficult for discovery. How do you envision users finding your app? Is it intent driven or not?
This will help you refine the marketing channel. If you want to buy ads, be very precise and use it to learn more. For example, spend $1-$3 per day and use it to figure out search terms, demographics, intent or not, etc. At this stage you are doing customer research and not performance marketing.
3. Seeding content.
You're going to have to do a lot of work to make it not seem like a dead zone. So invest tons of time on content creation.
4. Once you have the content, expose it. Look into deep links, referrals, etc. You can connect SEO efforts but it will take time to start ranking and you'll have to have a plan and think long term.
I agree with all the points listed. Knowing your competition is a very big deal. And knowing how they market (even if it's not how you would) is very smart. There are various services out there that can help you with competitive analysis from competitors ads (What Runs Where) to backlinks (Ahrefs) to other seo aspects (Sem Rush). They're all not cheap for a reason, but usually provide a free test drive.
As for the App Store, you really need to look into ASO. Probably the majority (or a good chunk) of apps on the App Store do not do any sort of optimization or planning. Check out Sensor Tower or App Annie for more on this.
Content. This is a must. You can drive traffic to your site if you can be perceived as an authority. (Well, that, and you actually are into what you talk about - you have to be genuine in this regard.) Check out Brian Dean's Backlinko for tons of great strategies that you can use to boost your content marketing. Start blogging/posting and creating content your users will find interesting and will keep them coming back.
You're going to have to tie all this into social as well. The two biggies (of course) are FB and Twitter. G+ also probably won't hurt. You'll have to spend time engaging on this level if you want to drive users to your site.
Ads can work too, but are a little tougher since they will require money up front. But, despite what some people may say, you can drive traffic to your site for a few dollars a day. I have been doing this on google for a long time. Set your daily budget to $2/$3 and see what keywords perform. Tweak these and keep adjusting. It is not a ton of traffic, but once you can get cheap click throughs and then some conversions, then you can grasp how it all works and scale up. $10 a day. $25, etc. Mix all your ad copy too and see which of those performs best as well. I don't usually recommend ads because it's the hardest, but it can also be pretty fun too. YMMV.
Others have also mentioned influencers. My current company has done well with this, but it's a constant process. You don't just get one or two and it's all good. You have to keep pulling in new influencers who can keep the momentum going.
I saw a post earlier and just want to say whatever you do DO NOT DRIVE TRAFFIC FROM FIVERR. This is shit and Google knows. Amazon knows. They all know. Fiverr is ok for logos, voice overs, translation, things like that. But never buy likes or follows or tweets or traffic. It's all junk and will get you no where. I've tested it and Google has never bumped my sites up in rankings using crap traffic.
Lastly, you have to be serious and engaged. Marketing is not luck and it's not just set it and forget. It's dynamic and requires time. Face to face if need be. You need to be clever and resourceful on getting your message out there. It's been said in other posts, but quality traffic and attention (that converts) are the hardest parts to making a product & company successful. You will not figure this out overnight, but you need to stick with it. Measure everything.
Good luck!
2) Content. If your app is about fashion, make sure you have gorgeous fashion on your website. I see two half-assed selfies on your website. Get professional photos that make me think: YES I want to look like this. YES I want to look at photos of people like this. And don't fill your blog with SEO crap. If you can't write well, post pretty photos instead.
3) No ads. Ignore all advise about buying ads or hiring an SEO agency. Doing that stuff right is really hard, and if you can't do it yourself you won't be able to afford the people who can do it right. It's really easy to spend all your money on ineffective advertisement. You can advertise after you have some initial traction, but advertising wont help you get a broken product off the ground.
The main problem with starting an app like this is that it basically doesn't work without having a substantial number of users. Even with a dozen people onboard, it will still feel very empty. We need a way to gain a larger following quickly to get the ball rolling, and for the user interaction with it to even make sense.
As for the selfies on the website, we had the idea of using real photos that you might find on the app, instead of some obviously professionally made photos, but, yes, that might be the wrong approach.
And yes, I really feel that the "No ads" is the way to gain a real following, and if the app is good, it will spread organically.
I think the traditional advice is "fake it 'til you make it".
Is your concern that you will have too many photos and not enough people rating? Rate them yourselves.
Not enough photos for raters to feel engaged? Send every photo to everyone, tune it down when you can.
To get technical, since this is HN, the photo distribution part is done by a Lua script running inside of redis instance which does just that, distributing images based on current demand and skewed towards recent ones. But if the number of images is small, every image will try to be distributed.
Concerning the selfies on the website: I guess they should look like you'd find them on the app. But you can still pick properly lit shots where the model looks into the camera with a nicely decorated apartment in the background.
We'll look into the website selfies to make them nicer, thanks!
Personally, I wouldn't use it because, based off of your site, it looks like I either get yays or nays on my outfit. A nay on its own will only make me feel bad about myself, but it won't help me improve.
I'd be more into an app where I could get, "No!! Try a different tie. Bright orange looks horrible with that suit."
Of course, the downside is that then I'd be less tempted to rate others - just judging my behaviour on this site, I'd usually rather just up/down vote than explain why!
Maybe we should make the fact that you can post comments known on the site. Thanks!
Congratulations on getting this far and good luck in the future!!
Working backwards from Sam's thesis, it seems the most logical first step would be to get your app in front of as many "real" people as possible. Show it to your friends, family, coworkers, your mailman, your mechanic, the dude sitting beside you at Starbucks. My 2 cents anyways...
The backbone of all effective marketing is product. Period. Your first goal is to identify who, exactly, wants your product, and who wants it the most. You do this by getting the product in the hands of as many objective, unaffiliated users as you can -- ideally without spending too much money doing so.
Not everyone will dig it, and that's fine. If you find yourself in a situation where everyone tells you they love it, something is either ridiculously right (highly unlikely) or nobody is really, really telling you the truth.
You'll want to have a hypothesis in mind as to whom you're targeting -- start by identifying and sampling among these people. But don't be afraid to consult total randoms. The key is to seek objective feedback and observe actual usage.
Also, think of your hypothesis testing the way a scientist would. In some respects you are seeking disconfirming evidence, not confirming evidence. If you seek feedback with a conscious bias towards confirming your preconceived beliefs, you risk "leading the witness" and nudging people down the path you want them to. You also risk overcounting the positive feedback and emotionally discounting the negative feedback.
Once you believe you've found evidence of a core user group, stick to that group and overservice it. Be the absolute best solution for that group. Kill it with that group. Just be...absurdly, undeniably awesome for it. Then play around with referral hooks, mechanics, and incentives. This is how you sew the seeds of word of mouth.
A word on gauging positive user feedback: when someone really loves your product, you'll know. They will be begging you to let them know when and how they can get it. Genuinely positive feedback is usually very enthusiastic. Beware of "meh" feedback disguised as positive feedback. Remember: you are seeking awesome.
We've tried feeling the water with with /r/femalefashionadvice and the feedback was rather positive, that's what keeps us going still.
I have a feeling that feedback from total randoms might even be more beneficial, as feedback from your friends will probably be heavily biased, and, simply because they're your friends you share a lot of things in common, the sample will be much better.
Also, sometimes you just have to power through it and do it better than others. If we take Instagram as example, I have a feeling that a lot of their friends would have told them "why do that, there's already Hipstamatic that does the same thing" (at least that was my experience often), but they found their following online.
Word of mouth is rarely authentic in the beginning. The key is to be able to plausibly manufacture it without being accused of spamming to any significant degree. AirbBnB, for example, got their start by spamming anyone that posted a listing for a rental property on Craigslist [1]. Flappy Bird was very likely "growth hacked" with fake downloads and reviews until it went viral [2]. Facebook's success essentially boils down to a contact importer that, especially in early incarnations, made it far to easy to accidentally spam hundreds of friends with invites to the service.
The reality is that while a good product is a prerequisite for something eventually having viral success, every tech success that I am aware of (except for Google perhaps), up to and including Facebook, has built their empire on spam and TOS violations. If you want to be successful, build something that plausibly fits into these kinds of tactics and spam away.
[1] http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...
[2] http://nativex.com/blog/the-story-behind-why-flappy-bird-was...
Having built and launched a successful go to market strategy here are my tips for you. Ultimately because it seems like you're bootstrapping and have limited funds since it's a side project, you want to aim for a scalable strategy that will give you a CPI that makes sense for your monetization path (ROI).
Note: I'm not even sure you're ready to go to market so ill assume you are.
1) Influencer Marketing: Do manual reach out and negotiations or hire someone with the network/connections who can help you with this. Since you're in the fashion niche there are tons of instgram/youtube influencers that would promote your app for a fee.
2) Content distribution: Get bloggers or guest posts up about your app on sites/blogs that have massive traffic and engagement.
3) PR: If you're running this as a business then there beeds to be a need in the market for your product that you must reach out to journalists and tell...ie your story. You can use HARO as well.
4) Viral coefficient: Make sure this is engineered into your funnel otherwise you're missing out on reaching critical mass and will steuggle to acquire users sustainably.
If you have questions let me know!
Hope this helps.
We've been thinking of going the route of approaching the route of Content creators/Influencers, that intuitively seems like the correct way. Have you done something like this, do you have any rough figures how much could a small-scale campaign like that cost, as I can't even guess the order of magnitude?
Also, the HARO resource seems great, I had no idea about it, thanks!
(Not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious to know what I'm missing.)