Published
Nov 13, 2025
Linh Nguyen
Welcome to part two of this four-part playbook on building and launching a successful consumer mobile app. Here’s where we’re at:
Step 2 - How to reach your first 1000 users (←You're here)
Step 3 - How to get your first 100 paying customers (coming soon)
Step 4 - How to build your app growth engine (coming soon)
Let's get into it.
Oftentimes when consumer mobile founders think about go-to-market, the most common strategies are app store optimization (ASO) and paid advertising. Advertising on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be an incredibly powerful strategy to scale your app growth once you've reached a baseline of product-market fit. I've seen this firsthand at Blinkist, where paid social ads helped us scale from 100 to 1 million users.
However, if you're a bootstrapped founder with limited budget, paid advertising might not be the ideal strategy for you in the early days. In this article, I'll help you think through a framework to determine the best marketing strategy and channel for your app, in order to help you get to those first 1,000 users. This framework is based on insights from the biggest consumer mobile app founders – Calm, Blinkist, Duolingo, Headspace, Etsy, Uber, DoorDash, OpenTable, Airbnb, Ladder, Rootd, Mumego.
Let's start with the first question:
1. What's your business model?
Understanding your business model matters because it determines how you should think about how much money to spend on marketing. If you're planning to invest in paid advertising, you need to model your return on ad spend (ROAS). Each business model has different implications for how you can calculate your ROAS.
Subscriptions are the most straightforward. Customers pay you a recurring amount every month, and based on your retention rate, you can predict revenue over 90 days or a year. This predictability makes it easier to calculate how much you can afford to spend on customer acquisition. This is why subscriptions are the most prominent business model on the app stores today.
Transactions and Marketplaces are trickier because revenue depends on facilitating exchanges between users or between users and businesses. Whether it's ride-sharing (Uber), payments (Venmo), resale (Vinted), or services (TaskRabbit), you earn a percentage of each transaction.
The challenges for marketplaces specifically is that you need both sides of the equation: supply and demand. You can't have a ride-sharing app with only drivers and no passengers. This creates what's called the "cold-start problem." You need to build up both supply and demand simultaneously, which makes revenue modeling more complex and unpredictable.
Ads are the most challenging model for early-stage companies because you only generate revenue at scale. The average ad revenue an app earns is roughly $2 per 1,000 impressions, which means you'd need millions of impressions to reach any kinds of meaningful revenue. Your first 1,000 users won't directly make you money, but they're critical for validating that you can create strong user engagement and network effects.
While these models cover the vast majority of consumer mobile apps, there are other monetization approaches worth mentioning. In-app purchases, where users buy specific features, content, or one-time boosts rather than subscribing, are more common in gaming apps. Paid upfront apps, where users pay before downloading, have become increasingly rare due to the high friction they create, though they still exist in specialized niches.
For the purposes of this framework, I'm focusing on subscriptions, transactions and marketplaces, as well as ads since these represent the core strategic approaches for most consumer mobile apps.
2. What's your objective for the first 1,000 users?
Your first 1,000 users is your opportunity to test your growth strategy. What you're testing depends on your business model:
Subscriptions: Can you grow profitably?
Transactions & Marketplaces: Can you solve the cold-start problem?
Ads: Can you achieve organic word-of-mouth growth and strong user engagement?
Let's break down what each of these objectives actually means in practice.
Subscriptions
For subscription apps, you generally want to see that you can pay to acquire users profitably. This means achieving a ROAS above 100% – for every dollar you spend on ads, you earn back more than a dollar over time. A 200% ROAS means you earn $2 for every $1 spent.
How high your ROAS needs to be depends on your constraints and strategy. For a small, bootstrapped team, you need a higher ROAS (around 200%) because burning through cash means rapidly running out of runway. But if you're a startup with more capital and your app needs strong network effects for your business model to be viable, you might accept a lower ROAS initially.
The other critical metric closely related to ROAS is your payback period, which basically means how long it takes to recover your customer acquisition cost. A 30-day payback period means you recover your acquisition cost within the first month of a user's subscription. A 90-day payback is more typical for many apps, especially those with lower monthly prices.
With your first 1,000 users, you're testing whether these numbers work. Can you acquire users at a cost that makes sense given how much they'll pay you over time? If yes, you have a foundation for scale.
Marketplaces
For marketplace apps, you're not necessarily aiming for profitability with your first 1,000 users. Instead, you're testing whether you can kickstart the flywheel: Can you get enough supply to attract demand? Does demand attract more supply?
The biggest marketplace companies succeeded by constraining their initial geography or category to reach critical mass faster. Uber started by recruiting drivers in San Francisco. Airbnb focused first on New York. DoorDash started in Palo Alto. By limiting scope, they could achieve enough supply in one area to provide reliable service, which attracted demand.
The question of whether to focus on supply or demand first has a clear answer from most successful marketplaces: focus on supply. Supply tends to drive demand.
"In the early days there was a huge focus on sellers. The marketplace needed sellers and their listings to build enough supply to attract buyers. Also, the sellers were also the buyers early on. Supply directly created demand. They were literally all the same people."
– Nickey Skarstad and Dan McKinley, Etsy via Lenny's Newsletter
Getting enough supply is so challenging in the early days that many companies subsidized their early users. Uber guaranteed drivers $40/hour with the condition that they maintain a 70% acceptance rate and keep the app running. PayPal paid users $20 to open an account and $20 to refer a friend.
With your first 1,000 users, you're proving that the flywheel can spin. You're not worried about ROAS yet, you're worried about whether the marketplace functions at all.
Ads
For apps that rely on advertising revenue, you're betting on high user engagement and word-of-mouth. With your first 1,000 users, you want to create a growth flywheel where each user who installs your app becomes engaged enough to refer it to others.
For ad-supported models, paid advertising in the early days is usually not about ROAS, but about kickstarting the algorithm and creating network effects. The famous example is TikTok: ByteDance spent over $1 billion on advertising in the early days. This seemed like a ridiculous strategy at the time, but it worked because they already had profitable apps (Douyin, Toutiao) funding this growth. The massive user influx trained their recommendation algorithm and created network effects – more users meant more content and smarter algorithms, which attracted even more users.
The TikTok example shows the power of scale, but it's not replicable for most startups. Unless you have deep pockets like ByteDance, focus on organic viral growth for your first 1,000 users rather than paid acquisition. Prove that people love your product enough to tell their friends about it before you pour money into ads.
3. How do you acquire your first 1,000 users?
Now that you understand your business model and objectives, it's time to get tactical. How do you actually find those first 1,000 users?
You don't need to master every marketing channel. The channels that work depend entirely on your business model and target user.
Before we dive into specific tactics, here's the key principle that separates successful launches from failed ones: your first 1,000 users should almost never come from paid advertising alone. Why? Because paid ads require three things most early-stage apps don't have:
Capital – You need budget to test and iterate, which burns through runway quickly
Data – Ad algorithms need hundreds of conversions to optimize effectively. With a small budget, you won't generate enough conversions for the algorithms to learn what works.
Product-market fit – If your app isn't sticky yet, you're just paying to acquire users who will churn
Instead, successful founders get their first users through scrappy, manual tactics that don't scale, then layer in paid advertising once they have proof that their product retains users.
Here's how to think about the 7 main channel categories and when to use each:
In the next sections, I'll show you exactly how to execute on each channel.
1. Direct Outreach
Direct outreach is the most underrated channel for early-stage apps. It doesn't scale, it's time-intensive, and it feels inefficient, which is exactly why most founders skip it. However, for some of the biggest consumer apps (Instagram, Etsy, OpenTable, Airbnb) this strategy was critical to getting them off the ground.
In the early days of Instagram, Kevin Systrom would personally cold-email the most influential people in the tech community to get them to use the app.
"I have a screenshot somewhere in my drafts box in Gmail and I literally had like 30 emails queued up that say 'hello from Instagram' in the subject and it's tailored to everyone in tech, like literally everyone. We had a one-pager and a PDF that explained what we did."
"I emailed each and every one of them thinking maybe we could get them on our beta or something. And surprisingly to us, about half of the people wrote back," Systrom recalls. The response was overwhelmingly positive. "Once we sent it to them, everyone loved it. They were like, 'This is awesome. I'm having so much fun.'"
— Kevin Systrom, Instagram (Z Fellows)
Direct outreach is critical when your app requires network effects to deliver value. If your product only works when multiple users are on the platform, whether that's both sides of a marketplace or a critical mass of social connections, you can't wait for users to come to you. Here's how some of the biggest apps bootstrapped their networks:
Uber: Manually recruited black car drivers in San Francisco and offered free rides to create initial demand.
DoorDash: Focused on one geographic area (Palo Alto) and manually recruited restaurants while using their own team as initial delivery drivers.
OpenTable: Went door-to-door pitching directly to restaurants, carrying the software to show restaurant owners how it worked.
Airbnb: Scraped Craigslist to extract contact info of property owners, then sent them pitches to list on Airbnb.
Etsy: Scoured craft fairs across the country to identify the best vendors at each fair, then pitched them on opening an online store on the site.
Tinder: Visited college sororities to have women install the app, then went to fraternities where men would see profiles of women they knew.
Snapchat: Went to shopping malls handing out flyers and personally showing people the app.
The pattern across all these examples is the same: identify where your target users already hang out (online or offline), go there personally, and manually onboard them one by one.
Direct outreach is less critical for subscription apps where users can get value independently, like meditation apps, fitness trackers, or productivity tools. These apps can rely more heavily on content marketing, ASO, and communities. But even for these apps, direct outreach to influencers or community leaders can accelerate growth.
2. Search
Search captures high-intent users who are actively looking for solutions. The two most popular channels in this category are ASO and SEO.
App Store Optimization (ASO)
App Store Optimization (ASO) target users on app stores based on their search intents. When someone searches "meditation" or "food delivery" in the App Store or Google Play Store, you want to appear in the top results.
The key factors that affect your ranking include your app name, keywords in your description, reviews and ratings, and download velocity. Your app icon and screenshots don't directly impact ranking, but they significantly affect whether someone actually downloads your app once they see it.
For Ania Wysocka, the founder of Rootd, an app for panic attack relief, ASO was the perfect growth channel in the early days. Ania saw that people experiencing panic attacks were already actively searching for help. She obsessed over every word in her listing, every screenshot, every metadata tag, and the app title and subtitle. This strategy paid off: her app now has over 4 million downloads and $1 million in revenue.
John McEvoy, the founder of Momego (a bus and train tracking app), followed a similar strategy. Over several years, relying solely on ASO, he grew Momego to 5.2 million downloads, 400,000 monthly active users, and $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
ASO works best when your app solves a problem people actively search for (not brand new or novel concepts), you're in a category with clear search intent (productivity, utilities, health), and you're willing to iterate on metadata, screenshots, and copy over time.
Here's how Ania and John systematically optimized their ASO to acquire their first users:
Start with low-competition keywords, even if volume is low: Ania used tools like Sensor Tower or AppFigures for keyword research. She found that "panic attack" had low competition but also low search volume, while "anxiety" had more volume but much more competition. She chose "panic attack" because even though fewer people searched for it, those who did were exactly her target users, and she could actually rank for it.
Use location-specific keywords for local apps: John discovered that adding location-specific keywords like "MTA subway" for New York or "CTA L Trains" for Chicago dramatically increased downloads. People searching for transit apps often include their city or transit system in the query, and these keywords have far less competition than generic terms like "subway tracker." He also updated his screenshots to be location-specific.
Test keywords before committing: John used Apple Search Ads to test keywords in small batches, seeing which ones actually converted to downloads. He also used the app store's autocomplete feature by typing the first few characters of relevant terms to see what the algorithm suggests people are searching for.
Leverage secondary localizations for extra keyword slots: John discovered a powerful hack: keywords added to Mexican Spanish localization are also indexed in the US App Store with the same weight as English keywords. This effectively doubles your keyword opportunities without keyword stuffing your primary listing. The same principle applies to other secondary localizations like Canadian French or UK English.
Build a consistent flow of ratings and reviews: Once you're ranking in the top 10 for your target keywords, ratings become critical to reaching #1. Apps with higher ratings and recent reviews get ranking boosts. John recommended implementing in-app prompts asking for ratings at key moments, after a user completes a core action or achieves a milestone.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
While ASO captures people already searching in app stores, SEO drives traffic from Google and other search engines to your website, where you can then convert visitors into app downloads. There are two main approaches to SEO for mobile apps: editorial SEO (creating high-quality written content) and programmatic SEO (automatically generating thousands of keyword-targeted pages at scale).
Editorial SEO works best for apps that address problems people actively search for online. Headspace, the meditation app, built a stellar SEO strategy that drives over 400,000 organic visitors per month to their website. They rank for more than 80,000 keywords through their "Orange Dot" blog, resources, and research content.
Headspace uses a hub-and-spoke content approach, creating comprehensive resources around core topics like "meditation basics" and then building out more specific articles on related subjects like "transcendental meditation." This helps them build topical authority and rank for highly competitive keywords.
Programmatic SEO uses data and automation tools to produce pages at scale. Transit, a public transit app, accelerated their content production using programmatic SEO in 2023. Their landing page count skyrocketed from under 300 to 10,000-21,000. These new landing pages highlight specific commutes using regional transportation methods, like buses, subways, and trains.
For example, Transit has a page for "NYC Subway Q Train" and another for "Dublin Bus 27". This means thousands of pages, all following the same template but with unique, valuable information for each specific route.
For your first 1,000 users, SEO is a slower burn than ASO or direct outreach. Content-driven growth is a long game that takes time to see results. But it has compounding returns: a well-ranking article or programmatic page continues driving traffic for months or years without ongoing cost.
3. Communities & Events
Communities and events let you build relationships and trust with potential users before asking them to download your app. Whether through in-person gatherings or online forums, these channels work when your app requires explanation, targets a specific niche, or benefits from word-of-mouth within tight-knit groups.
Events
Events are one of the most underrated growth strategies, especially in the early days when you're still figuring out product-market fit. Unlike digital channels where you're competing for attention, events give you undivided face-time with potential users who are genuinely interested in your space.
Here are how some of the biggest consumer apps get started using this strategy:
Airbnb: Used events as a core strategy to launch new cities. They would organize meetups with local hosts, do outreach encouraging targeted guests to try hosting, and run on-the-ground host referral campaigns
Headspace: Started by doing guided meditation events around the UK, where they would talk about the benefits of meditation and lead group meditation sessions.
Pinterest: The platform's early growth was fueled by a blogger's community programme called 'Pin It Forward'. The founder started focusing on bloggers once they realized that these users are the most passionate early adopters of Pinterest.
Tinder: Hosted exclusive parties at colleges where the 'entry ticket' was showing the app installed on your phone.
Online Communities
Beyond physical events, online communities offer a way to build relationships at scale without geographic constraints. The key is identifying where your target users already congregate and becoming a valuable member of those communities long before you ask for anything:
Reddit: Subreddits exist for nearly every interest. If you're building a fitness app, communities like r/fitness, r/bodyweightfitness, or r/running are goldmines. Search for keywords related to your app's problem space and find the most active subreddits.
Facebook Groups: More personal and relationship-driven than Reddit. Great for apps targeting specific demographics (parents, entrepreneurs, hobbyists). Search Facebook for groups related to your category and join the ones with active daily discussions.
Discord Servers: Increasingly popular for tech, gaming, and creator-focused apps. Discord communities tend to be tighter-knit with more real-time conversation. Look for servers related to your niche.
The biggest mistake founders make is joining communities only when they need something. Instead, invest 2-3 months becoming a valuable member before mentioning your app. Spend 15-30 minutes daily answering questions, sharing insights (not your own content), and building credibility. When you finally share your app, frame it as asking for feedback from a community that taught you about the problem, not as a promotion.
Product Hunt, along with communities like r/sideprojects, r/startups, and similar subreddits, have become popular launch platforms for new apps. These can drive meaningful traffic in the first 24-48 hours after launch. However, these channels tend to attract a specific demographic — tech enthusiasts and early adopters — so they work best if that's your target audience. If you're building a mainstream consumer app for non-tech users, you'll get downloads and feedback, but these users may not represent your actual market.
Whether through physical events or online communities, the key is providing genuine value before asking for anything in return. These channels take longer than paid ads but create a foundation of engaged, loyal users who become your best advocates.
4. Press & App Store Features
Press coverage and app store features can drive thousands of downloads in a single day, but journalists and editors receive hundreds of pitches daily. To break through, you need a story that's timely, newsworthy, and tied to something bigger than just "I built an app."
Press
When Ania Wysocka first launched Rootd, she knew that she has a compelling story. So she focused on getting coverage from the press, starting from the local journalists and then worked her way to the global publications.
"So I think at the very beginning I knew that without an advertising budget, what I could do is write a great story, tie it back to a specific date, because press really do love having a story that ties back to a world event.
So I launched on World Mental Health Day and my strategy there—since Rootd had no background yet, no traction or validation—I sent it to local folks and journalists, and typically, I think that works almost anywhere you are in the world. Folks really do want to promote their local business stories. So that helped in getting that first few hundred.
And then later on, Rootd started making these different lists on Healthline and an article came out in Glamour Magazine and stuff. So then I would basically amp that up and send it to even more press in the States, even in Europe, to get more stories behind it."
— Ania Wysocka, Rootd via Sub Club
Traditional press pitches aren't the only way to generate media attention. Sometimes the best stories come from creating something viral that introduces people to your brand. Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith, the founders of Calm, generated over 100,000 email signups before their app even launched by creating a simple website called DoNothingFor2Minutes.com. The concept went viral on social media and tech blogs, and at the bottom of the page was a simple call-to-action to sign up for updates about Calm.
Press works best when you have a compelling personal story (founder overcoming adversity), you're addressing a timely social issue, or you've built something genuinely novel. Skip press outreach if your app is similar to many others, you don't have a unique angle, or your target users don't consume traditional media. For many apps, micro-influencers and community word-of-mouth will be more effective than chasing major publications.
App Store Features
Getting featured in the App Store or Google Play can be even more impactful than press coverage. Features appear at the top of the app store homepage or in curated collections, driving massive organic downloads. Apple and Google are selective about which apps they feature, prioritizing apps with beautiful design, novel features, and cultural relevance. However, your persistence can pay off, as Ania Wysocka discovered:
"So starting out, I had no idea how to get them right. I was just submitting submission after submission after submission, and I would try to connect with other app founders who have been featured, and I just didn't have much luck. And unfortunately I don't have any magic sauce here, I just kept doing the submission, submission, submission until finally one day I heard back, and this was probably 15 submissions later being like, 'Hey, prepare some artwork because you might be featured.' And that was a huge deal and I was so excited and that sort of how that started."
— Ania Wysocka, Rootd via Sub Club
Both press coverage and app store features are inherently unpredictable: you can't force a journalist to write about you or Apple to feature you. That's why these channels should be viewed as bonuses, not your primary growth strategy. Submit for features, pitch relevant journalists, and create share-worthy moments, but don't wait for coverage to start acquiring users through more controllable channels.
5. Content Marketing
Content is your long-term growth investment. Unlike paid ads where you stop getting results the moment you stop spending, content continues working for you months or even years after you create it. However, it takes time to build momentum, you won't see massive results in your first month.
Building an audience before launch
Some apps have a massive advantage at launch: a founder who already has an audience. Waking Up by Sam Harris is the perfect example. Before launching his meditation app, Sam Harris was already a best-selling author, neuroscientist, and podcast host with millions of followers. When he announced Waking Up, he had a built-in audience of people who trusted him and were interested in his perspective on mindfulness and meditation.
The takeaway here is that building an audience before you build a product can dramatically reduce your customer acquisition cost. If you're still early in your journey, consider starting with content creation now, even if your app is months or years away from launching.
Where to build your audience:
YouTube: Long-form educational content that establishes expertise
Podcast: Build intimacy and trust through regular audio conversations
Newsletter: Direct access to engaged readers you can convert at launch
Blog/SEO: Content that ranks and drives traffic for years (as discussed in the Search section)
The key is consistency over a long period. Most successful founder-led launches involve 1-2 years of content creation before the app even exists.
Creating viral short-form contents
While building a long-term audience is powerful, TikTok offers a different path: the ability to reach millions of people organically without an existing following. TikTok's algorithm is uniquely democratic: it doesn't care how many followers you have. If your content is engaging, it will get pushed to massive audiences.
Greg Stewart, the CEO and co-founder of strength training app Ladder, learned how to double down on TikTok as a growth channel after initially struggling to translate their Instagram success to the platform. Here's what they discovered:
Understand that TikTok is fundamentally different from Instagram: On Instagram, you build a following and then monetize that same audience over time. TikTok is the exact opposite. "Most videos that we learned are an entirely different audience every time," Greg explained. "You can assume it's a different auditorium of people every video." Each video reaches new people through the For You Page who have no context about your previous content. This means each piece of content needs to stand alone and provide value to someone seeing you for the first time.
Create platform-native content, not polished productions: "It's not high production, it's not stuff that's working on Facebook or Instagram. It's raw and shot with an iPhone. And even editing in TikTok made the difference of it working or not versus using something that you had created in Instagram." Shoot with your phone, edit in the TikTok app, and make it look native to the platform.
Deeply understand your customer before creating anything: Greg's team analyzed all App Store reviews manually, extracting the exact words customers used to describe their problems and solutions. "I don't think anybody in the world understands their customers better than we do." You can't create compelling content without knowing exactly what your users care about, how they talk about their problems, and what outcomes they're seeking.
Focus on teaching or entertaining: "Value in TikTok is you're either teaching them or they're entertained, and that's it. And if you nail those then they're willing to learn more and purchase from you." Ladder's content focuses providing genuine value through workout tips, form corrections, and fitness education. Only after establishing that value could they convert viewers into users.
Nail organic content before spending on paid ads: "If you're not nailing [organic content] before spending a dollar on paid marketing, you're going to give up pretty quickly," Greg warned. Ladder focused entirely on creating content that worked organically first: getting views, engagement, and conversions without spending money. Only after proving the content resonated did they amplify it with TikTok ads. Paid advertising can scale what works, but it can't save bad creative.
6. Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is where most founders want to start because it feels like the fastest path to growth. But as we covered earlier, it's usually the wrong move for your first 1,000 users. The exception is if you have deep pockets and a proven product from another market (like ByteDance with TikTok), or if you're a marketplace that needs to jumpstart supply and demand simultaneously.
Once you've validated product-market fit and understand your unit economics through the organic channels we've discussed, paid ads become a powerful growth lever to scale what's already working. The key is having enough budget to give the algorithms time to learn, and enough data to know what good performance looks like.
Social Ads
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok have become the dominant platforms for mobile app advertising. The challenge with social ads is that success requires sustained testing. Be prepared to invest significant time and budget into testing your creatives, app store pages, and onboarding funnel until you find a combination that works. Most apps need to test 20-30 creative variations before finding consistent winners.
Here are the core levers you should focus on to improve your ROAS:
Targeting: The way platforms like Meta and TikTok target users has become increasingly powerful through machine learning. In the past, you needed extremely precise interest-based audiences to succeed. Now, the advantage comes from creative quality, and targeting is less critical. Start with broad targeting (age + gender + location) and let the algorithm find your audience.
Creatives: Your creative is the biggest driver of performance. Use tools like the Facebook Ad Library, TikTok Ad Library, and the Google Ad Transparency Center to see what similar apps in your space are running. This helps you identify patterns in creatives that already work (problem-focused hooks, demonstration videos, testimonials) and create your own versions. Plan to test 20–30 creative variations in your first month. The best performing ads often look native to the platform: iPhone recordings, user testimonials, screen recordings with voiceover. Free or cheap tools like CapCut or Canva can handle most creative production.
Budget: Budget matters critically for the algorithm's learning phase. If you spread $5,000 over two months across multiple ad sets, your ads won't generate enough conversion events for the algorithm to optimize effectively. For Meta, a minimum of $50-60 per day per ad set is generally recommended to give the algorithm enough data.
Conversion events: When you set up your campaigns, you tell the platform which event you want to optimize for: app installs, registrations, trial starts, purchases, or some other action. The platform will then show your ads to users most likely to complete that event. Start by optimizing for installs to build data volume, then shift to registration or subscription events once you have 50+ conversions per week. The algorithm needs volume to optimize effectively.
Plan to refresh creatives every 2-4 weeks as performance degrades from audience fatigue. The platform keeps showing your ads to the same users, and eventually everyone who was going to convert has already seen your ad.
Search Ads
Search ads are fundamentally different from social ads because you're capturing intent. If someone is actively searching for "meditation app" or "meal planning app," they already know they have a problem and are looking for a solution. Search ads work best when you've already validated demand through ASO: if people are finding you organically through search, paid search can amplify that traffic.
Apple Search Ads lets you appear at the top of App Store search results. The advantage is high intent: these users are actively searching for apps like yours and are ready to download. The downside is limited scale compared to Meta or TikTok. You're only reaching people who are already searching in the App Store.
ASA works on an auction model where you bid on keywords. Start with your core keywords (what your app actually does) rather than competitor names. While bidding on competitor keywords can work, it's usually more expensive and converts at lower rates because users have a specific app in mind already.
Google Ads can drive downloads through multiple formats: search ads that appear on Google, YouTube ads, and display ads across Google's network. Google Search ads work similarly to ASA, where you're bidding on keywords related to your app's function or category. YouTube ads can be powerful for apps that need explanation or demonstration, though they require video creative production. Display ads offer the broadest reach but often deliver lower-quality users who stumbled upon your ad rather than actively seeking a solution.
Search ads tend to have better conversion rates than social ads because of intent, but the volume is lower. You can only reach people who are actively searching, which limits your scale. Most apps use search ads as part of their mix but don't rely on them as their primary growth channel.
6. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is when you partner with creators to promote your app to their audience. The power of influencer marketing is trust and authenticity: people trust recommendations from creators they follow more than traditional ads.
Greg Stewart and the Ladder team used this strategy to go from zero to $1 million in annual recurring revenue in the early days. Here's their growth playbook:
Focus on micro-creators with hyper-relevant audiences: Ladder partnered with fitness coaches who had built loyal followings on Instagram – anywhere between 15,000 and 100,000 followers. These creators weren't mega-influencers, but their audiences were exactly Ladder's target users: people already invested in fitness who trusted their coach's recommendations.
Do things that don't scale early on: The team would get on the phone with coaches and create custom presentations featuring each coach's face, brand, and name. "We made it in that first moment all about them and how we thought about the coach and how important that role was to even the early innings of the business. That led to some really exciting coach partners that, most of them are still with us today," Greg explained.
Structure partnerships for perfect alignment: Ladder split revenue 50/50 with coaches after Apple's commission. This generous split reduced Ladder's margins short-term but created strong incentives for coaches to promote the app genuinely and consistently.
Build clear attribution from the start: Ladder set up unique UTM tracking for each coach's Instagram link-in-bio, allowing them to see exactly which users came from which creator. Users clicked through to a custom landing page featuring their specific coach before entering the app. This clear attribution allowed Ladder to measure which coaches drove the most valuable users.
Invest in helping creators tell the right story: Ladder provided creators with messaging frameworks, content ideas, and support to ensure their promotions felt authentic while hitting key value propositions. "We got pretty crafty at helping our coaches tell the right story to their audiences about Ladder, about their program on Ladder, the positioning, talking to the right users."
Influencer marketing worked exceptionally well for Ladder because the personal connection with coaches was core to their product strategy. Users weren't just downloading a fitness app; they were joining their coach's program. If your app's success depends on trusted experts, community leaders, or creators vouching for it and being part of the experience, influencer partnerships can be your primary growth engine.
Common failure modes
Don't launch multiple platforms simultaneously. Start with one platform, learn what works, then expand. Spreading a small budget across Meta, TikTok, Google, and influencers means you won't have enough data to optimize any of them.
Don't change campaigns daily. Algorithms need 3-7 days to learn and optimize. Constant changes reset the learning phase and prevent optimization.
Don't ignore creative fatigue. Even winning ads lose effectiveness after 2-4 weeks as audiences become saturated. Have a pipeline of new creatives ready to replace fatigued ones.
Don't start paid ads if retention is poor. If users churn quickly, you're just paying to acquire users who'll never be profitable. Fix retention first, then scale acquisition.
Don't forget attribution challenges. iOS privacy changes have made attribution less precise. Expect 20-30% of your conversions to show as "unmeasured" in your analytics. This is normal, so factor it into your ROAS calculations.
Paid advertising can accelerate growth once you've proven your app works organically, but it's an amplifier, not a substitute for product-market fit. Use organic channels to reach your first 1,000 users, learn what messaging works, and validate your unit economics. Then use paid ads to scale what's already working.
Putting it all together
You now understand the 7 main channels for acquiring your first 1,000 users. But knowing the channels isn't enough; you also need a strategy for which ones to use and when.
Know your business model. Subscriptions, marketplaces, and ad-supported apps each require fundamentally different approaches to growth. Your business model determines your objectives, your timeline, and which metrics actually matter.
Start scrappy. Almost every successful app began with direct outreach, community building, and doing things that don't scale. Cold emails, events, and genuine relationship-building might feel slow, but they give you the feedback and momentum you need in the early days.
Resist the temptation to spend early. Paid advertising is powerful, but only after you've validated product-market fit and optimized your funnel. Pouring money into ads before you're ready is the fastest way to burn through runway.
Focus your efforts. Spreading yourself thin across every possible channel means you won't do anything well enough to learn from it. Pick your channels based on where your users are and give each one enough time and resources to generate real signal.
Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm, put it perfectly:
"And this is an important lesson that I always say to entrepreneurs: don't pour gasoline on the fire until the fire is going. You know, the gasoline is the marketing. Get to product–market fit first. Don't turn on those afterburners until you really understand your business."
– Michael Acton Smith, Calm via The Diary of a CEO.
With that in mind, let's go out there and get your first 1,000 users.
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Huge thanks to Sandra Wu (Senior Growth Manager, Wealthsimple), Sara El-Bachri (CMO, Warpzone AI) and Rachael Hibbert (Founder, Edge) for sharing your tactical insights for this article.
Next up: How to get your first 100 paying customers
In the next article, we'll dive deep into what happens after someone installs your app. We'll cover:
How to design an onboarding experience that gets users to their "aha moment" as quickly as possible
The psychology behind trial offers and pricing strategies that actually convert
Conversion funnel optimization: where users drop off and how to fix it
Testing frameworks that helped Blinkist achieve a 300% increase in conversion rates
See you in part three.