
Ask HN: How do you market your software startup/app? - palerdot
Also, if possible, please throw some light on the marketing tactic which has benefited your startup&#x2F;app the most.
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MalcolmDiggs
In my experience, there's usually two parts to this:

1\. Initial external paid marketing (in the form of Adwords campaigns, email
blasts, facebook ads, affiliate programs, etc).

2\. Reworking the product until the "viral coefficient" is higher than 1.0.
The viral coefficient(aka "k-factor" or "k value"), is basically just the
likelyhood that one existing customer will refer another customer. So if your
k-factor is above 1.1 for a given period, your initial userbase will grow over
each period with no additional marketing needed.

In practice however, few startups ever reach a k-value of 1, so many rely on a
combination of virality and traditional paid marketing in perpetuity.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-factor_(marketing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-factor_\(marketing\))

~~~
pesfandiar
At the risk of sounding pedantic, K-factor is the expected value of new
customers referred by an existing one; probability of 1 would be too good.

Also, for external marketing, it doesn't have to be paid. It could be in the
form of time investment in content marketing and other forms of inbound (of
course that's if you don't pay someone else to do it).

~~~
MalcolmDiggs
1\. Read the link in my original comment. There's no reason values above 1
would be "too good", many people achieve it. If you're going to be pedantic,
you should get your facts straight.

2\. Nobody said it "has to be" paid. The OP asked how "you" market your
startups, and I told him what the companies I've worked with have done, in my
experience.

~~~
pesfandiar
I have no intention of starting an argument, but to add value to the thread. I
take the bait though:

1\. "likelyhood [sic] of 1" means 100% probability. Any likelihood over 1 is
by definition impossible.

2\. I assumed by "there's usually two parts" and "external paid marketing",
you meant people have to pay for marketing. I added my personal experience to
the conversation that it's not necessarily the only option.

~~~
MalcolmDiggs
Again, you're wrong. And yes, you clearly have every intention of starting an
argument.

1\. If you'd simply read the link (which you clearly have not done), you'd
understand that a k-value of 2.0 means that each customer referred an average
of 2 new customers. I never said "probability". You did. Yes, probability
above 1 is impossible, which is why I never used that word. You clearly
conflated the two, which is your error, not mine.

Here's why I said "likelyhood" (likelihood) instead of "probability":
[http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/2645](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/2645)

"...the likelihood function does not obey the laws of probability (for
example, it's not bound to the [0, 1] interval). "

2\. Reading-comprehension. It's not that hard.

------
danm07
Specifics tactics vary widely depending on the sector, but the general
principle is this:

(x)^n

x being # of people you're able to reach (sorry for the nondescript language),
and n being how many people each of those persons will share that tool.

Obviously, whatever endeavor you undertake should seek to maximize n. And it
would also be good to aim for low cycle time.

------
brudgers
The YC elevator pitch might be "build something people love and do things that
don't scale".

It's implication is that the first step to marketing the app begins with
getting a first iteration of the product in front of people and then taking
their feedback and then improving the product and repeating the process.

Good luck.

~~~
ruler88
how do you know that you've 'built something people love' vs 'built something
you think people will love if I spend enough on marketing'

~~~
danm07
attrition rate > rate of acquisition

