Stop Reinventing The Wheel

I have been developing apps since I was 12 years old. I started with simple games, as many do, but quickly decided that I really suck at making games. Turns out I was only good at playing them. I shifted my focus to developing more useful apps such as photo editors and document scanners. This was back in the days where you had to fight for your life to just get a single customer willing to pay $0.99 for your app. Things have changed a lot since then and people are now paying serious money (on a subscription basis mostly) for access to many of the apps they use. It has almost gotten to the point of “subscription fatigue” where consumers are getting tired of having so many subscriptions offered to them all the time. However, on the other hand, this has enabled us developers to spend more money and time on making better apps. It has been a great thing for the industry overall. And this is truly something that has changed the app industry fundamentally. It is now starting to take over the gaming categories more and more as well, although consumable offers and advertising still generate the majority of the income there.

The Importance of Marketing

One of the major lessons I’ve learnt over the past decade in this industry is the importance of marketing your apps. In the first few years, it was possible to simply launch your app and start getting thousands of organic downloads every day. I launched a photo editing app called AURA when I was 15 years old. The day after launching it, I woke up and saw that it had gotten 2500 downloads. I was shocked since I had only developed some games before this that had not been successful. Apparently, people seem to care about editing their photos to look better than they actually do. Who would’ve thought?

Nowadays, this is essentially impossible to achieve organically. You will need to reach your potential customers somewhere, whether it’s via Google & Facebook ads, paying influencers to talk about your product, affiliate marketing or succumbing to dancing on TikTok while begging people to download your app.

Meeting Consumer Expectations

One of the major lessons I’ve learnt over the last decade in this industry is that consumers will always expect more every day. This is the nature of technology. Nothing is static, everything is moving forward, all the time, and so should you. You need to constantly be slightly ahead of the curve (not too much, but just enough) by being able to offer a better user experience than any of your competitors. If you’re too far ahead, the market may not be ready yet. And as they say, being right at the wrong time, is the same as being wrong.

Competing for Customers

In marketing, you are always competing for customers. In many cases, you are directly bidding for customers via platforms like Google & Facebook ads. How do you make sure you win this bid? By being able to bid the most. It’s really that simple. Whoever has the most money (and the best ad) wins. It is not whoever has the best product. If your product is amazing, but the CAC is too high, well that’s just too damn bad. You will need to figure out a way to acquire customers as cheaply as possible. This is easier said than done. And most likely, you will always be competing against some major established companies with deep pockets, so you need to get creative in your customer acquisition strategy. If you happen to know a couple of popular influencers who are willing to mention your product, that can certainly help out. Although, if you’re trying to sell your CRM to the audience of a YouTube makeup artist channel, that probably wouldn’t work out too well. You gotta find the most relevant channels and influencers within your specific niche.

Market Selection

This is one of the reasons why it’s always such a dilemma whether or not you should go into a more narrow market or a larger one. The answer is that it depends on 3 things. Your CAC, ARPU, and size of the market. You may find that you’re able to get a few hundred downloads per day at an acceptable CAC. However, once you try scaling up your advertising, you might see the average CAC rise, because of the fact you’re trying to outbid more competitors (usually via multiple marketing channels, such as Facebook/Google/Twitter Ads and more). You might feel like you reach a sort of “invisible ceiling” where you can no longer increase your spending further, without making the CAC too expensive compared to your ARPU, and thereby making it unprofitable for you to increase your advertising bids.

The Infinite Game of Marketing

This is why marketing is essentially an infinite game of trying to figure out where you can find as many leads, as cheaply as possible. You will need to constantly experiment with different channels, ad creatives and audience targets to figure out what performs best. This is a must.

But what if your ARPU is too low and you simply cannot even get a single user at a profitable ROI? Well, I hate to say it, but your product (probably) sucks and you’re gonna need to improve it. The cliché advice of “listen to your users” is absolutely correct. You need to fully understand the problem your users have and how to solve it for them. A way to speed up the understanding of this is to read the reviews of your competitors. This can be extremely helpful. Figure out the good & bad, what people love and what they hate about their products. Make a simple plan on the features your product should and shouldn’t have. I cannot overstate the importance of keeping it simple.

Building Your MVP

When you’re building your MVP, it should never have more than a few critical features. If you start adding too many features, you might be slowly lowering your product into the grave. People usually come to your product with a couple of major problems in mind they want solved. This is where your focus should be. Don’t start adding more features until you have proven that users already like the first features. Don’t fall for the “next feature fallacy”. Your next feature won’t make a difference if the other features didn’t already. Believe me, it won’t. You need to get at least a few customers before adding any new features.

I could keep writing about this forever but I gotta get back to building. And so should you. After all, it doesn't matter what you think. The world will never see that. It only matters what you do. If it wasn't for my fingers typing this right now, you wouldn't be reading it. I brought it into the world through action, not thought. No matter how productive you feel you are when you're thinking, you're really only imagining. If you don't bring your thought into reality through action, it will remain an imagination.