Acquiring early adopters for your mobile app can be a challenging task for early stage startup companies.
Here are some of the most popular challenges that early stage startups face when trying to acquire users:
- Lack of brand recognition: Early stage startups often have little to no brand recognition, which can make it difficult to attract new users.
- Limited budget: Early stage startups often have limited resources, including budget, which can make it difficult to run effective marketing campaigns.
- High competition: The app market is highly competitive, with thousands of new apps being released every day. This makes it difficult for early stage startups to stand out and attract new users.
- Difficulty in identifying the target audience: Early stage startups may find it difficult to identify their target audience, which can make it difficult to create effective marketing campaigns and acquire new users.
- Difficulty in creating a viral loop: Early stage startups may find it difficult to create a viral loop that will attract new users.
However, with the right frameworks and strategies in place, it’s possible to overcome these challenges too. Like for limited budget and lack of brand recognition, one can start with very targeted users (niche users) to have a trial on their app. This is how a community can be build too.
One of the best strategy involves going to user directly (online and offline). This revolves around the ‘Do things that dont Scale’
The idea is that, in the early days of a startup, it’s more important to focus on acquiring a small number of highly-engaged users, rather than trying to acquire a large number of users quickly.
This can help startups to build a strong community of loyal users who can help to drive viral growth.
Here are a few examples of how early stage startups have applied this concept:
- Airbnb
In the early days of Airbnb, the company’s founders went door-to-door in New York City, taking photos of apartments and listing them on the platform. This helped to build a strong community of users and helped the company to quickly acquire a sizable user base. - Uber
In the early days of Uber, the company’s founders personally recruited drivers to join the platform and trained them on how to use the app. This helped to quickly acquire a large number of drivers and set the stage for rapid growth. - Stripe
In the early days of stripe, Collison brothers actually went to the clients and asked them to setup the stripe integration themselves. As at that time the integration was not really smooth, so they decided to roll up their sleeves and acquire users on their own.
After acquiring these early stage users, the next thing is to ask about the product. And based on their feedback and your own creative minds (if they are), start improving the product and add new features.
Creating a referral program is also a good start. One of industry’s famous referral program is of dropbox (i see this example in every blog)….So don’t want to miss out.
Dropbox: Dropbox launched its referral program in 2009. It offered users an additional 250MB of storage space for every user they referred, up to a maximum of 16GB. This helped Dropbox to acquire 4 million users in just 15 months, with 60% of new users coming from referrals.
Instacart: Instacart launched its referral program in 2012, offering users $20 credit for every user they referred. This helped Instacart to acquire 50,000 users in just 3 months, with 25% of new users coming from referrals.
Referral program is a must-to-have for every tech company. You wont find any famous tech company not having a referral program. Its your own choice when you want to launch these programs.
There are other famous and succesful strategies to acquire early adopters.
For digging deeper: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-biggest-consumer-apps-got
On a lighter note : Why did the startup company’s mobile app go on a trip? To explore new markets for user acquisition!
In conclusion, acquiring early adopters for your mobile app is critical to the success of your startup. By leveraging strategies such as social media, influencer marketing, and referral programs, you can quickly acquire a sizable user base and set your startup on the path to success.