Top startup mistakes part 2

Launch without a promotion budget

It would seem that this is obvious. Law of the film industry: half of the budget is allocated to the creation of the film, the rest - to promotion. The fees did not cover the creation and promotion - the film failed at the box office.

Gone are the 2010s when app stores promoted new products. As of July 2020, there were 4.37 million apps published on the Apple App Store. After publication, yours will be 4,370,001 and on the lowest shelf of the store. This is huge competition. And it needs the means to break through to the surface.

For any software product, be it a B2B service or a B2C application for a healthy lifestyle, you need a lot of expensive experiments with promotion channels, target audience, subscription costs, application screens.

Well, what to do, we all love a rake. In our case, the mistake was that we had a very modest budget for development. Therefore, 90% went to "shooting".

So, the product is there, there is no money for promotion. What to do? He comes to the rescue ... *drum roll *

Guerrilla Marketing!

The dream and sweet dream of any young app developer is organic from the App Store. We were lucky, I wrote to Apple, filled out an application on their website and they began to promote us as Favorite Apps of the Week.

It was like magic. I completely forgot about the application, woke up in the morning, went to App Store Connect, and we have hundreds of downloads in a couple of days! At the end of the month there were already several thousand. Together with Telegram and Litres we are in one collection. Miracle and more.

A month later, we were almost in the top 100 Health apps. If I had a fatter promotion budget left, we would be higher in keyword searches and, as a result, get more organic downloads and profits.

Allocate half of the budget for promotion. Throw out everything superfluous from the product and check everything that can be checked. The resulting data and growth will be more important to investors than the implemented features.

Okay, we've got the organics sorted out. But you won't get far with it. Most of the downloaders were students. Sales conversion is small. So it's time to launch Facebook! There is no money, but you hold on. Where to find an advertising budget when there is no budget?

Did I mention that I have a degree in Computer Science? Not? So, he is (cheers). And this means that I have many smart classmates and good comrades, whom the hardship has thrown to different parts of the planet. For example, Sasha, my classmate and part-time Software Engineer at Facebook in Seattle, USA. For this, he is given $250 free of charge for advertising campaigns for his friends. Thanks Sasha!

So, together with Tanya, the best digital marketer in the world (according to Igor Tsybin), we launched Facebook ads using Facebook money.

We are waiting, sir.