Ep 02: How To Get Your First 10,000 Users
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Transcript of Ep 02: How To Get Your First 10,000 Users
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Hey guys, Logan Merrick here and you’re listening to episode 2 of The Buzinga Podcast: The number 1 resource for startups building and growing their business in the tech space.
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Logan Merrick:I’m the co-founder and director of Buzinga.
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Customer Acquisition Strategies - how you can pull customers in to get a steady stream of app downloads.
I want to talk about some of the biggest and most successful apps in the world, with millions of active users. But I’m going to focus on
how they got their first 10,000 users.
Intro to what we’re covering today
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• Angry Birds• Uber• Tinder• Yo• Snapchat• Instagram • Candy Crush• Fruit Ninja
Businesses we’re going to look at
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Most businesses have humble beginningsWe’re going to start with how they got their first 10,000 app
downloads
Why I chose this topic for our 2nd episode
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• Initially it was a total flop - or at least for the first 3 months
• Where they went wrong: Focused on the most competitive and (traditionally perceived as lucrative) English speaking markets
1. Angry Birds
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Founder Matt Wilson started targeting smaller nations
• Suddenly they started seeing results - #1 on Finnish App Store
• Then 30-40,000 downloads from hitting #1 in Sweden
• Then Denmark, Greece, Czech Republic…
1. Angry Birds
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• Then the founders linked up with app publisher, Chillingo to push into US and UK territories (90% of market)
• In 2010 Chillingo got Apple to feature Angry Birds on front page of UK App Store - game of the week
The rest is history!
1. Angry Birds
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(Summary) What workedTargeted smaller nations first - low hanging fruit. Then pushed into
bigger nations through publishing partnership.
1. Angry Birds
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• Initially launched in 2010 - Silicon Valley, Uber Black only. Built on $200,000 seed capital.
• Released UberX to open up to larger audience
2. Uber
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• 2013 aggressively leveraging tech networks to get first drivers onboard
• Started offering free rides to students during Boston bus worker strike
• End of 2013 Uber had expanded from 12 cities to 35 cities. Revenues growing by 18% per month.
2. Uber
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(Summary) What worked Co-founders leveraged their networks in the startup tech scene to spread the word around San Francisco. - Offered free rides. Raised
$1.25m
2. Uber
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3. Tinder
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3. Tinder
Leveraged network effect (hyper-local viral growth)
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3. Tinder
They targeted American college sorority girls as early adopters.
Why? Because the more girls that would come the more boys would be drawn to it.
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3. Tinder
Viral growth = imminent.
100% growth year on year
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3. Tinder
How? Free events and parties. Incentives!
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3. Tinder
(Summary) What worked: Identified their early adopters. Attracted them with special
incentives.
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4. Yo
• Yo is stupidly simple.And not necessarily a successful business…
• Raised $1.5m at $10m evaluation… not sure if it eventuated into anything.
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4. Yo
• Created in 8 hours at Israeli Tech Company – Mobli
• Founders Hogeg and Arbel were so embarassed they didnt tell anyone about it and wouldn’t publish it under their names.
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4. Yo
• Launched quietly on April Fools Day.
• BUT… it was rejected by Apple.
• Arbel and Hogeg fought back and eventually got it through into the App Store.
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4. Yo
Founders eventually shared the app with wife’s and assistant. Then made it available to all Mobli employees - emplored them not
to share with friends…
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4. Yo
But the app was impossible to contain. People became addicted.
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4. Yo
Within a month, 20,000 downloads iwthin Tel Aviv..
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4. Yo
(Summary) What workedSimple, simple, simple. Launched through the company they
worked for.
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5. SnapChat
• Nearly everyone knows SnapChat.
• Viral marketing - Word Of Mouth
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5. SnapChat
• They noticed spikes of traffic between 8am and 3pm.
• Turns out the activity was centered around a high school in Orange County.
• Evan Spiegel (founder) had told his cousin who was a student at the school…
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5. SnapChat
Other high schools caught on to it. Daily active users climbed from 3,000-30,000 in a
month.
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5. SnapChat
Snapchat wasn’t exclusive to iPhones. Also available on iPod touch which is popular
among younger generations with hand-me-downs.
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5. SnapChat
Rapid growth through schools gave SnapChat a platform for expansion
• We all know what the kids were sending each other.
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5. SnapChat
(Summary) What workedReviewed their data to better understand where their customers were coming from. Luckily they were exposed to the high school.
Exposing your business/service/app to different demographics can quickly tell you where to focus your time.
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6. Instagram
Famed for becoming #1 photo sharing app within 8 hours of
launch
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6. Instagram
In first week Instagram had been downloaded 100,0000 times
• Another week passed and another 100,000 downloads
• in 551 days Instagram userbase had grown to 30,000,000 users.
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6. Instagram
Attributes their fast growth to linking in with other social networks, like Facebook, Twitter
and Foursquare
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6. Instagram
This allowed Instagram to be exposed to thousands of people who wouldn’t normally
have seen it - 100% organically.
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6. Instagram
Check out our Case-study in the show notes
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6. Instagram
(Summary) What worked: Leveraging other networks and platforms. Essentially, partnerships.
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7. Candy Crush
Built in virality...
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7. Candy Crush
Remember Virality is not a strategy - but ‘encouraged social sharing’ most
certainly is
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7. Candy Crush
Cleverly integrated with Facebook to drive user adoption
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7. Candy Crush
Players progress in the game - Candy Crush would post updates to FB on their behalf
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7. Candy Crush
They also show user progression with friends. This fostered competition among
friends resulting in sharing of achievements, friendly banter outside of the game, and of
course pushed them to play the game harder.
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7. Candy Crush
Lastly, if players run out of lives they can either wait for 20 minutes...or they can invite
friends to the game. What do you think people did?
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7. Candy Crush
(Summary) What worked: Social sharing and social competition drove
the virality loop.
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8. Fruit Ninja
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8. Fruit Ninja
Developed by Independant Australian Game Studio - Half Brick House
• Also responsible for Jet Pack Joy Ride, Monster Dash, Radical Rappelling, Age of Zombies and Colossatron...and many more.• Fruit Ninja was the game that put the company on the radar
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8. Fruit Ninja
How did they get the game off the ground?
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8. Fruit Ninja
Pushed the game to the developer community - developer community is an extremely engaged
community. Incredibly helpful and look after their own. Many developers do work for free to contribute to the
community.
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8. Fruit Ninja
First launch video was the Lead in a banana suit fighting a ninja
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8. Fruit Ninja
Pretty amateur. Not for mainstream - but worked for developer community
• This was very unusual for a game development company at this time...but it worked
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8. Fruit Ninja
(Summary) What worked: They targeted the developer community as their launching
platform. Created a video to stir some laughter among their peers.
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Hope you take something out of this
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Remember There are plenty of ways to market your product, and these are 8
really great ways that have been proven to work.
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If you’re going to use these strategies & tactics make sure to
adapt them to 2016.
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If you want to learn more about marketing and user acquisition then check out our blog, i’ve included 3 relevant blogs in the show notes for this episode, which you can find on our blog at buzinga.com.au/buzz.
Launch Hack: How To Get 100,000 downloads in a monthCustomer Acquisition: How to reel in your first 10,000 usersHow To Build An App Born To Go Viral Like Candy Crush
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For more of this please subscribe on iTunes, on Youtube or on our
blog.
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See you on the next episode