How to Get Your First 100,000 Monthly App Users From Start to Finish
One of the most sought-after milestones is the first 100,000 monthly users if you are planning to launch a new app. How to get there isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. To get your following to six figures, you need a lot more than just a well-designed app. Today I’ll use my own experience growing Zutobi, an e-learning driver’s education app, and distill the lessons.
Plan Ahead
Your app’s trajectory for success begins well before your actual launch date. Plan and begin marketing your app well before your launch date to build your audience. This way, when you go to launch, you will be prepared with contact information and people who are anticipating your release, which puts your app higher in searches and makes it more likely to get featured in app stores. Using this principle helped get our app to be featured twice by the Apple store.
Structure Your Launch
Don’t launch your app without a plan for how you will progress and market your app as your launch takes off – or doesn’t. You should quickly adapt and implement options on the fly, depending on how people are reacting to your release. Influencer marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach a large audience in a way that is viewed as trustworthy.
Listen to Your Audience
Always include interactions and engagement with your audience as part of your marketing plan. You should listen to what their issues are with your product, as well as with competitor’s products, and be able to anticipate their needs and engage with them in a way that makes them feel heard, encouraging trust in your company, as well as helping you determine what updates, content, and tweaks would be best received. To illustrate this, we can use Zutobi’s growth in the U.S market. Teens and users from the U.S. needed a module about hand signals; despite the lack of hand signals in day to day driving, our users needed to learn it for their permit tests.
Understand How You Will Scale
If you want to get to a six-figure following, you need to have a plan to scale quickly. Make sure that you have all the necessary frameworks in place to meet demands quickly. Not being able to scale quickly enough can cause your app to fail, as users will quickly lose interest, and you will not only experience a loss of activity, but you will also damage your brand’s reputation and ratings.
Marketing Matters
It cannot be stressed enough how much marketing matters. The difference between a successful app and one that never gains traction is usually in the marketing plan. While you may have spent an immense amount of time designing and coding your app, the launch day (and even before) is when the work really begins when it comes to making your product successful.
Getting to 100,000 active users a month can only be done intentionally. Develop an action plan that includes well-researched marketing and advertising strategy. Understand your users on a personal level, and consider their input. Decide how you will handle scaling up and plan for doing so should your app take off. If you can gain traction, increase your marketing and advertising on all platforms so that you will be able to capitalize on the organic growth.
Author Bio: Tim Waldenback
Tim Waldenback is the co-founder of Zutobi Drivers Ed, a gamified e-learning platform focused on online drivers education to help teens get their license. Tim founded Zutobi to make world-class driver’s education fun, affordable and easily accessible for all.
