[Entrepreneurship Talk] I took over APP operation and promotion with zero experience. Let me tell you how I survived these two months!

Editor's note: This article is an anonymous contribution from an entrepreneur (repeatedly emphasizing not to disclose his identity). He tells about his quitting his job to start a business, promoting an app from scratch, the various promotion methods he experienced, and evaluating the effects of various channels based on his own situation. Starting a business is easy, but promoting is not. Cherish every opportunity you have...

I have also been promoting APP for 2 months and feel that I have failed miserably. I would like to make some anonymous complaints. Please help analyze and see where I did not do well.

Before that, I was mainly engaged in website SEO and Weibo promotion , and had never done APP promotion. In April, a friend made an APP and invited me to join the business, mainly responsible for the promotion of the APP. I had no experience and was unsure about how to push this thing, but since he was an old friend, it was hard to refuse, so I had to agree to help. It was also a good opportunity for me to learn at the same time.

This APP of my friend was tested and launched in April, and officially launched in mid-May. As of now, less than 2 months later, it has 100,000 downloaded users. Every time I open various technology media, I see that almost all of them have 1 million users in 3 months, 2 million users in half a year, and 5 million users in one year. I am so scared...

In the past two months, test promotions were carried out in five places: Weibo, Douban, WeChat, Android App Market , and APP Store. Due to insufficient budget, these promotions cost little money, which are roughly as follows:

Weibo promotion

The total number of real fans on my Weibo and several of my friends' Weibo accounts is about 300,000. In the past two months, I have frequently advertised this APP. Three of my Weibo posts have been forwarded over 10,000 times, and 60 of them have been forwarded over 100 times. The conversion rate of downloads brought by Weibo is about 10%. A Weibo post that was forwarded 10,000 times brought about 1,000 APP downloads, which was a huge gap compared to the disappointment I felt. Later I asked a lot of fans, since most of them were students. Some of them answered that there was no WiFi, and some answered that there was no strong demand. Later I concentrated on posting on Weibo after 9 o'clock in the evening. The effect was better and the download volume was immediate, but the conversion rate was only about 20%.

Douban Promotion

I have written several shameless novels on Douban. The most replies to one of my soft articles exceeded 10,000, and several others exceeded 3,000 replies. The conversion rate was poor, with about 500 more downloads than usual. Then I did a survey on those who replied to the post. Many people replied that the soft copy was too long. After reading the name of the APP, they didn’t realize that this was the key point, so they didn’t download it. At most, they just remembered the name. It seems that my embedded soft copy was too poorly written. Later, I directly posted screenshots of the APP in the soft article, and the number of downloads increased a little, but only a little.

WeChat Moments Promotion

I don’t have a WeChat public platform , because I don’t even follow any WeChat public platforms and I feel that this thing is unreliable to promote. But I have a private WeChat account, and I have 8,000 friends on this private account. Later, WeChat banned big WeChat accounts, and I was blocked and could no longer add friends. I mainly promoted it on WeChat Moments. After posting one message on WeChat Moments, the number of downloads of the APP could increase by about 500 within an hour. So I insisted on posting it every day. After 2 months, almost all 8,000 people downloaded the APP. It seems that you still have to keep selling to a user more than three times before the user will accept it...

Android App Market

First release - I saw App Store saying that a certain app had 600,000 downloads after its first release, so I applied for an App Store first release. I spent the whole day in front of Umeng on the first release day. After watching Umeng for a day, I found that the number of Android downloads was more than the usual day... 300... I really didn't lie, it was just 300 more, not a single more...

With disappointment in Tencent, I applied for the first release on Xiaomi App Store . This one was a little bit reliable. I was given 4 days of advertising space for the first release, and the total Android downloads in 4 days were 8,000. Later, I applied for the first release on 360 and Lenovo Le Store . The results were no different from those on App Store. It was terrible. I will never believe in first release again. I have made a list of the first releases on the app market for your reference.

Gift package lottery - this requires money to buy prizes. I finally convinced the company to spend 15,000 to sell prizes, and held a lottery with 3 app stores , but the result was almost the same as the free first release. I guess the company will never give me money for promotion again. I have also made a list of App Store gift pack draws for your reference.

Inflating the volume - Open various Android app markets, and you will see that the top-ranked apps have tens of millions or millions of downloads, which are basically inflated volume. Except for Xiaomi and UC App Store, all domestic app markets can inflate the volume. The current price for inflating the volume is basically 40 yuan for 10,000 apps. You need to reach at least 1 million views to have a ranking in the category.

Of course, there are also chart manipulations on Android - 400 yuan/day, 7 days minimum, if you don't make it to the overall rankings, it counts as being on the hot list or the rising list, and both the volume and the ranking need to be paid. I paid 500 yuan myself to increase the number of downloads in Baidu App to 200,000... Haha... I guess it can deceive many laymen...

Add a suffix - At first, my application name was just two words, without even a suffix. Later, I added a suffix word after the name. Of course, this word must be a popular keyword. After adding the suffix, the number of downloads increased rapidly by 50% starting from the next day. From then until now, I have been studying suffixes, but the four app markets of 360, Baidu, Wandoujia , and App Store do not allow adding suffixes, so they can only be added in other app markets.

APP Store Promotion

Find a category - I first put the APP in the social category, and promoted it hard on Weibo and Douban for a few days. It finally stabilized at around 160 in the category. Later, Apple's category only showed the top 150. I worked on it for a few more days and months but still couldn't stabilize it at 150. So I simply changed it to the travel category, and it immediately stabilized in the top 150. It is currently firmly in the top 120 in the travel category. It is estimated that it can bring a little bit of downloads every day. If it can get into the top 50, it should bring a lot of downloads.

Naming - I studied the top 100 social networking apps. Many of the top-ranked apps have one thing in common: their names are followed by a string of vulgar words, such as: lonely, single, dating, stranger, marriage, love, sexy, passion, blind date, girls, beauties, and other words that stimulate male hormones. So I also added "picking up girls" after the name of the app, and the ranking immediately rose by 20 places. You know what, it really works...

Apple’s chart manipulation - Due to the company’s tight budget, I have never paid for chart manipulation, but I have learned that the top 20 apps in the three categories of games , social networking, and travel are almost all manipulated. After entering the list, you need to maintain it. The cost of rushing into the top 20 of the category list is at least 50,000 yuan, and the cost of maintaining the list is at least 20,000 yuan per day. To get into the top 100 on the free list, the fees will increase several times. Nowadays, points walls are used to manipulate and maintain the rankings. I think Duomeng Youmi is making a fortune in silence.

After these two months, I personally feel that the best promotion method is to focus on application market promotion . Weibo, Douban and WeChat are good for brand promotion, but the download conversion rate is too low. My biggest personal realization is that you must make a good product and let users actively share the product on Weibo and WeChat Moments. Then it will be easy to promote it. This is also the real way to bring in downloads for free and in the long term. I also think that a promoter who doesn’t brag or manipulate the rankings is definitely not a good employee.

It is easy to start a business but difficult to promote it. Cherish every moment you have...

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