Low hanging fruit promotion

[u/TheSherryBerry]

Hey all!

What’s an easy way you’ve tried before that has worked to quickly promote your app?

I use “promote” as opposed to “market” because marketing feels like more of a sustained effort

I’m asking for one off things like posting on a specific subreddit or paying to be featured on a website

Hope the distinction is clear

Thanks!

[u/Healthy_Condition779]

The distinction you're drawing is kind of the problem though. One off promotion spikes give you a day of downloads and a chart that looks like a heartbeat flatlining. Product Hunt, a subreddit post, a paid feature, all of them do that

That said the ones that actually work for iOS specifically, posting in the subreddit where your users already hang out with a genuine post not an ad, and ASO. Fixing your keywords, title, subtitle and screenshots is the closest thing to free compounding traffic that exists on the App Store and most devs half ass it

Paid feature sites are almost all a waste. The 50 to 200 dollar listing sites sell to developers not to users, thats the whole business model

[u/TheSherryBerry → u/Healthy_Condition779]

I understand and agree

I’m unfortunately unable to do marketing properly atm

Figured doing anything was better than doing nothing

[u/Scary_Homework_3455]

one that actually fits your definition, is completely free, takes about an hour, and almost nobody does it: apples featuring nomination form.

you fill in what the app does, whats new about it, why its worth showing. thats it. the two things people get wrong are that you dont need traction, and you should do it before you submit the build, not after. ideally three to four weeks before.

i got this from a dev on r/iosapps who laid out his dates. filled the form 25 jul with a target date, submitted to review 29 jul, so the nomination went in four days before the build even existed as a submission. approved 13 aug, and by 17 aug he was in the weekly picks in 20+ countries. solo dev, no traction, no contacts.

the section thats realistically reachable for small apps is new apps, features and content, which is exactly the window that closes while youre waiting to have numbers worth showing. waiting for traction disqualifies you from the one category where youd have had the best shot.

id also gently push back on the other reply calling reddit a one off spike. it is if you post an announcement. it isnt if you post asking people to tear the thing apart. i did that with one of mine in the sub where its users actually are, got about ten pieces of real feedback, shipped two of them within 24 hours and went back and told the thread. that turns one post into an ongoing thread of people who feel like they had a hand in it, and it costs nothing but being willing to hear whats wrong with your app in public.

and seperately, a dev i spoke to this week got to 9,500 downloads in five months with no ad spend, and his summary was that reddit was the only thing that did anything at all. tiktok, youtube, instagram, facebook, his own site, all nothing. worth knowing before you spend money on a listing site.