HN Explorer

Ask HN: How Should I Market This Thing?

17 points by bayonetz ↗ HN
Finished my labor of love:

http://blanqd.com

...but don't have experience with promotion or "growth hacking". Any tips, tricks, or ideas you can share?

28 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 57.6 ms ] thread
MalcolmDiggs
Downloaded. Already addicted. Well done, well done indeed. I'm not gonna get shit done today thanks to you :)

I doubt if you'll need to market it at all. I'm sharing with friends now, I would expect this to grow virally if others have the same experience.

sharemywin
I'd like to see how this ends up. please follow up in a few months.
bayonetz
Well of course these are the responses you hope for! Will follow up indeed.
bbody
Thanks for the warning! For my own productivity I stayed clear!

To OP: The app looks pretty fun and I could see myself getting hooked. As for growth, there are app review sites which you can contact to get coverage. Not sure how well they work though.

fananta
Not really a hack, but you can try buying a few FB ads for people that like trivia games. It might be interested to add a "tweet your score" type thing or "challenge a friend" which would grow virally.
pearjuice
Needs multiplayer and time based games.
jayleno
You can check out https://growthhackers.com/. It's individual stories of what/how they market their company and little nuggets of actionable items for you.
johnsonmkj
I'm not your target audience, but here are my two cents:

Initially, I had no idea what this app did, and the details are a little vague... From the sound of it, if users download the app, it all makes sense and is an awesome experience. What you need is a tested call to action that makes users want to drop everything to download the app.

There are tons of ways to find potential users, and feel free to email me at johnsonmkj at gmail if you want to talk a little more in depth, I'm happy to provide some insight.

Ologn
Yes.

I know more about Google Play than the others.

You underestimate how much attention people will give you. Let's say you find the perfect user - someone who types "news game" into Google Play. Well, you don't show up for that which is one problem. Imagine if you did though. What do I see with you among the competitor apps? I see Blanqd (what does that mean?) and a big letter B.

The first sentence of your description is key. It says "Blanqd makes a game out of getting your daily news fix"

Frankly, people don't care what Blanqd does. You're presuming they do. Something like "Get your daily news fix while playing this awesome game" would be better.

A better icon might say "BLANK to City: Drop Dead" or "BLANK defeats Truman" or something like that. Maybe that would be too detailed for an icon, but a giant B isn't that great.

You care about Blanqd but other people don't. They don't care what Blanqd does, or what Blanqd wants to make a game. You should put the "BLANK to City: Drop dead" screenshots and promotional graphics up front. Don't wait to show people what it does. "Fill in the blanks - engage with your news" means nothing to me and I'm not going to wait to see what it means. Just show people up front what your app does.

Also for the app - tapping anywhere but back on the popup should move forward. Don't make people on small phone click a tiny little arrow.

bayonetz
I feel like you are maybe saying something interesting with the "BLANK to City: Drop Dead" stuff but I'll admit I am not totally sure what exactly. Care to rephrase?
650REDHAIR
Raise money as fast as you can so that you can turn around and pour money back into paid installs.

I'm not normally one to advocate raising money as the only way to do things, but the app store is ridiculously hard and you're going to need help.

zmeden
Maybe market it to journalists/writers. Either to novice ones (students) so they get more aware about what good article title might be. Or to the experienced ones so they become more aware how everyone else is making up titles. Analytics from other users could also be interesting for journalists.
rajington
It sounds scummy but honestly increase the price, then say it's free for the next week in honor of <insert holiday>. After that leave it free. There's a bunch of sites that advertise apps that are "temporarily free" and then a bunch of people who subscribe to those apps who want to get paid apps for free.

Also just wondering, what technologies did you use for this?

bayonetz
Ha, nice trick. I've heard of far worse so would actually be open to experimenting.

Cordova front end, hodge podge of appropriate tools on the back end such as Python/NLTK for quiz generation and re-implemented my own "readability view" for when reading the articles.

zumtar
Are you interested in any feedback for the app itself? If so, where should I send it?
bayonetz
I am, for sure! Either mr.manager@blanqd.com or inline here.
bayonetz
One thought I had was to try offering a white label version to news outlets. For example, sell a white label version to New York Times so it would be the same quizzing but just using the Times' branding, categories, and content. How the heck to get an in at a media org to do this deal is the question???
jimbobob
This seems like a smart way to go. You could start by looking for business development people at these publishers on LinkedIn.
ohyeshedid
I would potentially contact NPR about this, cross-branding an on-demand mobile version of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! could be interesting.
kamphey
You have a twitter account! https://twitter.com/blanqd I growth hack twitter accounts. Let me know if you're interested in my services. You can see some of my work at: http://www.twitter.com/kampheyapproved and http://www.twitter.com/sports_father

I really like the look of the game, already tweeted about it. hope you get this out there!

bayonetz
Tweeted at you but no reply
kamphey
Hey there! thanks for letting me know. DM me on Twitter and I'll spill my email (better immediate contact)
ridingthespine
A nice growth hack tip for that would be to find targeted influential instagram profiles and get them to post an image/video advert on their account.
wirddin
It really looks good.

As kamphey said, you can make use of twitter to get users on board, given it's a place where you'll find people actually interested in blanqd.

Friends : Just make some of your friends use it and see if they push it forward to others or not. That's a great way to start, and also validate if it will work that way or not.

Product Hunt, HN, others: Either you go to blogs directly, or you make them notice you on these websites. Have you posted it on ProductHunt yet? If not, do it and see what people have to say about it.

jimkri
I don't know if anyone has said this but if you have any friends who are high school teachers tell them about it. I think it would really be engaging for high schoolers to use it, its fun and they also can keep up with current events. I remember back in high school a lot of my teachers in certain classes asked about current events and stuff in the news, it would be perfect for them now since they are always on their phone and teachers can make sure they are reading or doing the quizzes based on their scores.

Really cool app by the way, downloaded it and love it.

jsonne
This screams paid app installs for me. You'd be surprised how cheap they can be too.

Ping me if you want some free help. I run a small digital agency, and we helped take one of our clients to #1 in education for both itunes and google play store. More than happy to help out a fellow entrepreneur. :)