Ask HN: How to market a utility app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to market a utility app?

4 pointsum3042 comments

Hi folks,

I, along with a few friends, have created a small app "Contacts to Excel & Email" which exports your contacts straight to your inbox with only one tap of a button. We wanted to make something so simple that even a grandma could use it without help from a techie.

The app is available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Despite the fact it has been featured several times on WP platform, we're unable to generate any sustainable revenue out of it. Marketing the app is a challenge because of its very simple and isolated nature.

So I was wondering if I could get ideas/feedback from folks on HN, particularly those who have developed similar utility apps. How would you have marketed the app if you had developed it?

Thank you.

Link: http://c2x.eastros.com

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As a marketeer, I'm sorry to say IMO this app is going to be hard to monitise in any serious way.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the main user cases I can see;

1) To transfer contacts across platforms. The main traffic I guess would be iOS <-->Android. Given there is already an easy way to do this via a gmail account you're not in a great place to take much market share.

2) To do a back-up. Again this can be done in real-time via Gmail or via their csv download.

Both of these have free alternatives with relatively easy user experience. You will find it difficult to win organic traffic as your business is within popular keywords with established brands. You could buy sales via advertising but I expect you would be paying $4-$10 per download. So without ongoing revenue in the model (I hope you're not monitising the contacts downloaded...) you can afford to advertise. And even if you could I don't see people people paying for this app in any significant volume.

I find products like this interesting and a good example of where tech / marketing and accounts people should have a chat before building a product. I had a chat with a person recently where he was building an ad revenue driven app. I pointed out if he changed his audience slightly to a in-demand audience cohort the click revenue per ad would go from about $0.75 to $10.00.

Anyway - if you building another app feel free to ping me for a marketers view. It's all opinion and I could well be wrong. For the success of your product hope I am.

Thanks for feedback, @Gustomaximus, it's certainly helpful. Yes, I understand it can't become a big hit, but I'm just hoping to bring it to a point where it is generating revenue to some good level of its total potential.

Thank you for offering your opinion for next ideas, I'll certainly get your view on one another thing we're building.

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