Ask HN: How to find a marketer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to find a marketer?

6 pointsdanenania4 comments

I see a lot of posts on HN about how a non-technical marketer or domain expert should go about finding a programmer to help them build a product. I'm in the reverse situation. I've built what I think is a solid niche product, but I need help developing a promotion strategy to get the word out to my target market.

My product is an iOS app called Pro Golf Scout. It provides results, stats, player performance trends, and detailed player comparisons for the PGA and European tours. It's targeted at fantasy golfers, sports bettors, sports journalists/bloggers, and other serious fans.

Due to its focus and the value I believe it can provide to people in this niche, I've priced it relatively high at $4.99. So far sales have been lackluster, hovering around 1-3 per day after 3 weeks. Given that so far my promotion efforts have fallen mostly flat, it means the majority of these sales have come from either organic app store traffic or word of mouth.

My strategy so far has consisted of emailing bloggers in the space to try to get them to review the app and trying to participate in relevant forums/discussions, but this hasn't gotten me much response or attention.

I've also done some targeted facebook mobile advertising, but I haven't seen a reasonable ROI. My click through rates are decent (2-3%), but install rates are extremely low (1% at most).

I don't have a lot of cash to spend, but I do have a small budget for advertising if I can find an approach that's +EV, and I'm willing to share a significant portion of revenues with a partner (either an individual or organization) who can help. I don't think this app is going to make millions, but I do believe that it's a solid app that offers good value to a decent-sized niche and that there's a good potential revenue stream there if it can get enough exposure to get the ball rolling.

So, any thoughts on how to find marketing help?

The type of marketer you are looking for is not interested in the small dollar opportunity your app could provide. However, there is still a lot of low hanging fruit that you can pick yourself even if you are "not a marketer."

1. Do you have good product / market fit? Are you currently engaging with your users and potential users? What do they say about your app? Does it do what they think it should? Interview them with questions from survey.io. Listen to their feedback based on the "very disappointed" framework by Sean Ellis. Iterate the development and feedback cycle as needed. Now that you have a good product, go to step 2.

2. Get your app out there. Who are your niche market influencers? Identify top forums, bloggers, tweeters and offer them FREE app downloads. Make sure to ping them multiple times over several months (hey, this is a problem and I developed this app. update: I have these users that love this feature. update #2: You can track all golfers for the Masters tournament coming up. etc etc). Identify who your top competitors are, and find out if you can advertise with them. Since this is a niche product, mass marketing is not an option. Facebook ads (and paid advertising in general) usually doesn't start out profitably. It takes a lot of time, trial and error, and advertising spend to figure it out. Golden Nugget: use Google Alert and specific key phrases that identify new users / influencers. So for instance, if you set up an alert for 'Phil Mickerson', add the blogger/tweeter to your drip email campaign, and leave a relevant comment.

3. If you are serious, keep going and learn along the way. At your current phase, consistent drips to influencers are probably your best bet.

One final note, you may be better off approaching this as a learning experience rather than a business.

Thank you for the great advice. I really the like the Google Alerts idea.

I'm definitely treating this more as a learning experience. It started out as a project for learning iOS development and has become a project for learning to market a niche app. But I'm also wondering if I can turn it into a project for learning how to delegate the marketing side of things to someone who understands and enjoys it, since even though I thoroughly grasp its importance, I find it tedious compared to development work and have a hard time motivating myself to put in the time required vs. say starting to build another app.

In your case, I would try content marketing. Create a blog with short, but smart analysis made using your app.

Kissmetrics' blog style: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/

Two or three posts a week, several tweets a day always re-announcing all your posts; posts not dated, looking like a library of expert essays; post with lists and "definitive guides".

I am studying to become a growth hacker, if you want to talk, contact me.

Thanks, this sounds like a great idea. I'm going to start on this right away.

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