

Ask HN: How Should I Market This Thing? - bayonetz

Finished my labor of love:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blanqd.com<p>...but don&#x27;t have experience with promotion or &quot;growth hacking&quot;. Any tips, tricks, or ideas you can share?
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MalcolmDiggs
Downloaded. Already addicted. Well done, well done indeed. I'm not gonna get
shit done today thanks to you :)

I doubt if you'll need to market it at all. I'm sharing with friends now, I
would expect this to grow virally if others have the same experience.

~~~
sharemywin
I'd like to see how this ends up. please follow up in a few months.

~~~
bayonetz
Well of course these are the responses you hope for! Will follow up indeed.

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jimkri
I don't know if anyone has said this but if you have any friends who are high
school teachers tell them about it. I think it would really be engaging for
high schoolers to use it, its fun and they also can keep up with current
events. I remember back in high school a lot of my teachers in certain classes
asked about current events and stuff in the news, it would be perfect for them
now since they are always on their phone and teachers can make sure they are
reading or doing the quizzes based on their scores.

Really cool app by the way, downloaded it and love it.

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kamphey
You have a twitter account!
[https://twitter.com/blanqd](https://twitter.com/blanqd) I growth hack twitter
accounts. Let me know if you're interested in my services. You can see some of
my work at:
[http://www.twitter.com/kampheyapproved](http://www.twitter.com/kampheyapproved)
and
[http://www.twitter.com/sports_father](http://www.twitter.com/sports_father)

I really like the look of the game, already tweeted about it. hope you get
this out there!

~~~
bayonetz
Tweeted at you but no reply

~~~
kamphey
Hey there! thanks for letting me know. DM me on Twitter and I'll spill my
email (better immediate contact)

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wirddin
It really looks good.

As kamphey said, you can make use of twitter to get users on board, given it's
a place where you'll find people actually interested in blanqd.

Friends : Just make some of your friends use it and see if they push it
forward to others or not. That's a great way to start, and also validate if it
will work that way or not.

Product Hunt, HN, others: Either you go to blogs directly, or you make them
notice you on these websites. Have you posted it on ProductHunt yet? If not,
do it and see what people have to say about it.

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johnsonmkj
I'm not your target audience, but here are my two cents:

Initially, I had no idea what this app did, and the details are a little
vague... From the sound of it, if users download the app, it all makes sense
and is an awesome experience. What you need is a tested call to action that
makes users want to drop everything to download the app.

There are tons of ways to find potential users, and feel free to email me at
johnsonmkj at gmail if you want to talk a little more in depth, I'm happy to
provide some insight.

~~~
Ologn
Yes.

I know more about Google Play than the others.

You underestimate how much attention people will give you. Let's say you find
the perfect user - someone who types "news game" into Google Play. Well, you
don't show up for that which is one problem. Imagine if you did though. What
do I see with you among the competitor apps? I see Blanqd (what does that
mean?) and a big letter B.

The first sentence of your description is key. It says "Blanqd makes a game
out of getting your daily news fix"

Frankly, people don't care what Blanqd does. You're presuming they do.
Something like "Get your daily news fix while playing this awesome game" would
be better.

A better icon might say "BLANK to City: Drop Dead" or "BLANK defeats Truman"
or something like that. Maybe that would be too detailed for an icon, but a
giant B isn't that great.

You care about Blanqd but other people don't. They don't care what Blanqd
does, or what Blanqd wants to make a game. You should put the "BLANK to City:
Drop dead" screenshots and promotional graphics up front. Don't wait to show
people what it does. "Fill in the blanks - engage with your news" means
nothing to me and I'm not going to wait to see what it means. Just show people
up front what your app does.

Also for the app - tapping anywhere but back on the popup should move forward.
Don't make people on small phone click a tiny little arrow.

~~~
bayonetz
I feel like you are maybe saying something interesting with the "BLANK to
City: Drop Dead" stuff but I'll admit I am not totally sure what exactly. Care
to rephrase?

~~~
shutupalready
> "BLANK to City: Drop Dead"

He means fill in the blank here:

"_________ to City: Drop Dead"

Older news junkies would know the answer to be:

"Ford to City: Drop Dead"[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford#Budget](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford#Budget)

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jsonne
This screams paid app installs for me. You'd be surprised how cheap they can
be too.

Ping me if you want some free help. I run a small digital agency, and we
helped take one of our clients to #1 in education for both itunes and google
play store. More than happy to help out a fellow entrepreneur. :)

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rajington
It sounds scummy but honestly increase the price, then say it's free for the
next week in honor of <insert holiday>. After that leave it free. There's a
bunch of sites that advertise apps that are "temporarily free" and then a
bunch of people who subscribe to those apps who want to get paid apps for
free.

Also just wondering, what technologies did you use for this?

~~~
bayonetz
Ha, nice trick. I've heard of far worse so would actually be open to
experimenting.

Cordova front end, hodge podge of appropriate tools on the back end such as
Python/NLTK for quiz generation and re-implemented my own "readability view"
for when reading the articles.

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bayonetz
One thought I had was to try offering a white label version to news outlets.
For example, sell a white label version to New York Times so it would be the
same quizzing but just using the Times' branding, categories, and content. How
the heck to get an in at a media org to do this deal is the question???

~~~
jimbobob
This seems like a smart way to go. You could start by looking for business
development people at these publishers on LinkedIn.

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zmeden
Maybe market it to journalists/writers. Either to novice ones (students) so
they get more aware about what good article title might be. Or to the
experienced ones so they become more aware how everyone else is making up
titles. Analytics from other users could also be interesting for journalists.

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frakkingcylons
You can post your app to the Android subreddit[0] as long as your reddit
account is more than 3 months old and you respond to any questions people
have.

[0]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Android](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android)

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650REDHAIR
Raise money as fast as you can so that you can turn around and pour money back
into paid installs.

I'm not normally one to advocate raising money as the only way to do things,
but the app store is ridiculously hard and you're going to need help.

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jayleno
You can check out [https://growthhackers.com/](https://growthhackers.com/).
It's individual stories of what/how they market their company and little
nuggets of actionable items for you.

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fananta
Not really a hack, but you can try buying a few FB ads for people that like
trivia games. It might be interested to add a "tweet your score" type thing or
"challenge a friend" which would grow virally.

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ridingthespine
A nice growth hack tip for that would be to find targeted influential
instagram profiles and get them to post an image/video advert on their
account.

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ohyeshedid
I would potentially contact NPR about this, cross-branding an on-demand mobile
version of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! could be interesting.

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zumtar
Are you interested in any feedback for the app itself? If so, where should I
send it?

~~~
bayonetz
I am, for sure! Either mr.manager@blanqd.com or inline here.

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pearjuice
Needs multiplayer and time based games.

