Question on marketing / growth strategy for my sports app

Question on marketing / growth strategy for my sports app (http://www.850sportsapp.com). I’m about to take on investment so let’s say I had £30k to spend on growth but have a target of 30k installs, what would you do? Would you optimise CPC ads to try and get a £1 CPA (installs) or would you go for something less measureable, more risky but with the potential to hit that number with that money? If so which channels would you try?

When it’s 10 to nine and you just want to know what happened in the sports before you get into the office, 8:50 will give you a summary of everything you need written by sports journalists within a simple, beautiful app.
850SPORTSAPP.COM


  • Alex Moss Digital and sport based publication outreach is always good. Reddit is also useful if you have the right users sharing it. Incentives is you have a premium model. Have you thought of connecting it to betting apps and being an affiliate to make the cpa come down?
  • Jon M Bishop Thanks Alex, all good points. Outreach is definitely one of the channels we should look at. On the product side, we are obsessed by the user experience so wouldn’t want to link it to betting ads at this stage and are keeping it as a free to download and use app so we need to be supported by investors until we come up with a smart monetisation model (well, we have one but it only works at scale!)
  • Stuart Hall I wonder if for the sake of growth planning it would be worth looking to grow the 850 app in a way that would connect with your smart monetisation model?
  • Alex Pomery £1 CPI’s are achievable with Facebook app ads – key is to do a lot of image testing
    3 hrs · Like · 1
  • Jon M Bishop Not entirely sure what you mean there Stuart but there’s no need to over complicate the model. We need as many engaged MAUs as possible for the monetisation model to work so we need to grow a targeted user base aggressively, simple as
    3 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Jon M Bishop Thanks Alex, yeah I think it is possible as well. But would you throw the full wack of the budget at FB ads or would you hedge your bets and split the budget between that and outreach type activities?
  • Stuart Hall My reading of the growth challenge is that whatever method/channel it’s got to first find users who want to use the app, so initially you are testing out where the demand is for the app; and when you’ve found where the demand is, the challenge is to find the most cost effective way to acquire users. And whatever that acquisition method is its got to inform your strategy for retention too.
    2 hrs · Like · 1
  • Jon M Bishop I think we’re saying the same thing in different words. What I need right now is to find those relevant and cost effective channels
    2 hrs · Like · 1
  • Alex Pomery Jon It’d think it’s best to spend eg £1000 / £2000 testing different options where possible until you get to a point where you’re happy with retention as Stuart says. From there I would say look for a company who can get you high in the App Store via a large awareness campaign (eg SocialChain) and use the remaining money on eg Facebook ads in order to maintain your high App Store position for as long as possible. Ultimately retention is the key element to it all, and is the hardest to crack. Best of luck!
    2 hrs · Like · 1
  • Jon M Bishop Thanks Alex Pomery sound advice. I am already speaking to social chain, they’re a very interesting proposition. Retention we hope will come from relevant, timely top quality content and notifications
    1 hr · Edited · Like · 1
  • Jonathan Dewey Hi Jon – first off well done on shipping on ios/droid! I’ve downloaded the app to have a look see – seems 8:50 is like a Summly for sports? (* just for others to have an idea if they haven’t downloaded.tried it). Am wondering how volume of end users will help on monetisation…are you thinking freemium or % of paying to kill pain (ie no ads)…? For end user acquisition – make sure you have some worthwhile KPI’s to measure how worthwhile the users are that you acquire ie do some small-ish tests as Alexsuggests (take your time – don’t blow the stack). Then once you’ve found a decent aq channel “milk till it there is none” – happy days (on that front at least)
  • Vincent Dignan Spending money to acquire 100% of users (i.e. through Facebook installs) is drug addiction. Experiment with different channels until you find one that works then pour more resources in. Read this:http://pando.com/2013/06/09/startup-drugs/

    Startups can be a vice grip of stress. At first you don’t have money, and so when you finally do, it’s feels like…
    PANDO.COM
    5 mins · Like · 1