Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_t1gYkvZkI Channel: Steven Cravotta (steven.builds)

If you’ve clicked on this video, chances are you’ve already launched your mobile app or you’re about to and you’re now asking, “How do I get users to actually care about this thing?” And more importantly, how do I get them to pay? And you don’t just want any downloads. You want highquality downloads with real users who are going to give you feedback, who are going to engage and use your product and eventually pay for it. That magical first 10,000 users. And I know how impossible it feels to hit those first 10,000 users when you’re first starting out. I’ve been there, grinding out the early days, launching apps that got zero traction until I figured out a repeatable marketing system that helped me scale to over 1 million users and 44,000inmonthlyrecurringrevenue.AndI′vedonethistimeandtimeagain.Inthisvideo,I′mgoingtowalkyouthroughmyexactfour−stepstrategythatIusedtogetmyfirst10,000users.Andifyouwatchthisvideountiltheend,youwillwalkawaywitharealnofluffgrowthplanthatyoucanapplytoday,evenifyou′restartingatzero.Let′sgetintoit.Allright,ladiesandgentlemen,hereitis.theblueprinttogetyourfirst10,000usersandevenifyou′rebeyond10,000users,thisblueprintcanworkforever.Eventoyourfirstmillion,10millionusers,right?Ifyoucanjustgetoneusertoyourapp,ifyoucanjustget10userstoyourapp,youcanscaletoamillion.Thehardestdownloads,thehardestuserstogetarethefirstfew.Sowhetheryou′reabeginnerorwhetheryou′reaseasonedveteranintheappgame,thisblueprintwillhelpyoubecausewe′regoingtogoallthewayfromidentifyingyourviralmarketingmessage,marketresearch,hiringandfindingcontentcreators,allthewaytoscalingwithpaidads.AndI′mgoingtobreakitdownassimplyaspossible.Butfirst,thankyousomuchtoeveryonewhohasbeensubscribingtothechannel.Wejusthit39,000subscribers.ItmeanstheworldthatyouareallenjoyingthecontentandthevaluethatIdropforabsolutelyfree.So,ifyougetanyvaluefrommeorthisvideoormychannelingeneral,Iwoulddefinitelyappreciateifyousubscribetothechannelandalsodropacomment,dropalikeonthevideo.Ifyoudothat,itwilltelltheYouTubealgorithmthatyouwanttowatchmorecontentlikethis.Contentthatactuallyteachesyousomethinginsteadoftheboring,lame,brainrotvideosthatweallwatchonYouTube,right?Showthealgorithmthatyouwanttolearnanditwillshowyoumorecontentlikethis.So,let′sgetintotheblueprint.Okay,sowe′regoingtostartoffbyidentifyingyourviralmarketingmessage.Actually,beforewedothat,I′mgoingtoshowyouanabsolutecheatcode,whichissharingyourproductonsubreddits.Andthisissomethingthatyoucandointhenexthour.Itwilldefinitelydriveyousomevaluableusers.Ifyoudidn′tknow,Redditisoneofthemostviewedsitesontheinternet.Ithinkit′sliketop10mostviewedsitesworldwideeverysingleyear.Andthereareabunchofsubredditsthatarededicatedtostartupfounderslikeyourself.Forexample,SASorsideprojectorprogramming,right?Theseareallsubredditsthathavethousandsifnothundredsofthousandsofusersineachoneofthem.Right?Sideprojecthas43,000members.SAShas300Kmembers.Programming6.8millionmembers.Playgroundproduct1.3Kmembers.Theseareallsubredditsthatyouasafoundercanpostintodayandyoucanshareyourprojectinthesesubreddits.Right?Sowhatyoudoisyoudropapostinthesesubredditsandsomeofthemcangoinsanelyviral.Likewe′llsortbyalltime,topperforming.Boom.Thesegetthousandsandthousandsandthousandsofviewsandengagementsandyoucanlookatthecommentshereandpeoplearegivingrealfeedbacktoalloftheseposts,right?SodefinitelyleverageRedditandshareyourproductthere.Butdon′tjustspamyourproductlink.Behelpful,bereal,engage,andshareyourexperienceasafounder.Drivevalue.ProvidevaluetothecommunityonReddit.Andpeoplewillrespectthatandthey′llengagewithyourproductandthey′lltryyourproductout.Someofthemmightevenpayforit.Someofthemmightevenuseitforalongtime,right?Thisisaneasywayforyoutogetthefirstcoupleusersintoyourproject.AndifyourpostonRedditgoesviral,itcanhitthehomepageanditcandriveyouinsaneresults.IhavesomefriendsinthespacewhoonlyuseReddittogotheirproducts.IspoketoafounderfriendtheotherdaywhogeneratedhundredsofthousandsofdollarsallstrictlythroughReddit.Don′tsleeponReddit.It′saneasywaytogetyourproductoutthere,getyourfirstcoupleusers,andtheseuserswillgiveyouactualfeedbackonyourproduct.So,littlecheatcodeforthestartofthevideothere.postyourproductsonReddit.Ifyouwanttodownloadthisentireblueprintdocument,Iwillshareitwithyouinthedescription.So,goaheadandclickthelinkinthedescription.Butlet′sgetintoit.Identifyingyourviralmarketingmessage.WhereIseefoundersgowrongtimeandtimeagainiswhenthey′remakingcontentabouttheirproduct.Thecontentisabouttheirproduct,right?Andthatmightsoundcounterintuitive,butinreality,nooneonsocialmediacaresaboutyourproduct.Andifyou′reonlytalkingaboutyourproductandyou′reonlytalkingaboutthefeatures,it′sgoingtobeaboringpieceofcontentandit′snotgoingtogetviews.Andifyoucan′tgetviews,itdoesn′tmatterhowwellyourvideoconverts,you′renotgoingtogetanyusersfromthat,right?Yourproductisnotwhatpeoplecareabout.Peoplecareaboutwhatyourproductcandoforthem.So,youdon′twanttosellthefeatures.Youwanttosellthetransformation.Themostimportantpartofcreatingcontentismakingitfeelnaturaltothealgorithm.Ifanyonewatchingyourvideofeelslikeit′sanad,automatically,youlosethem.So,I′mgoingtoshowyoutwoexamplesofthis.OneisforPuffCount.Thiswasoneofmybestperformingvideosintermsofgettingdownloadstotheapp.IwantyoutolookatthisvideoandtellmewherethecalltoactionhappensandtellmehowhardIsoldtheproductinthisvideo.Crazythatpeoplewillsmokethesewithoutknowingwhat′sinside.So,I′mgoingtoshowyou.[Music]Ontheoutside,wehavethecolorfulmetalcasing,a3.7volt500milliampbattery,andacoilwrappedinsoakedcotton.Checkoutthisappifyouneedtoquit.It′skindofcrazy.Ionlyshowedtheproductfor2secondsinthatvideo.I′mgoingtoshowyouanotherexamplefromCali.Thisappdoes44,000 in monthly recurring revenue. And I've done this time and time again. In this video, I'm going to walk you through my exact four-step strategy that I used to get my first 10,000 users. And if you watch this video until the end, you will walk away with a real nofluff growth plan that you can apply today, even if you're starting at zero. Let's get into it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, here it is. the blueprint to get your first 10,000 users and even if you're beyond 10,000 users, this blueprint can work forever. Even to your first million, 10 million users, right? If you can just get one user to your app, if you can just get 10 users to your app, you can scale to a million. The hardest downloads, the hardest users to get are the first few. So whether you're a beginner or whether you're a seasoned veteran in the app game, this blueprint will help you because we're going to go all the way from identifying your viral marketing message, market research, hiring and finding content creators, all the way to scaling with paid ads. And I'm going to break it down as simply as possible. But first, thank you so much to everyone who has been subscribing to the channel. We just hit 39,000 subscribers. It means the world that you are all enjoying the content and the value that I drop for absolutely free. So, if you get any value from me or this video or my channel in general, I would definitely appreciate if you subscribe to the channel and also drop a comment, drop a like on the video. If you do that, it will tell the YouTube algorithm that you want to watch more content like this. Content that actually teaches you something instead of the boring, lame, brain rot videos that we all watch on YouTube, right? Show the algorithm that you want to learn and it will show you more content like this. So, let's get into the blueprint. Okay, so we're going to start off by identifying your viral marketing message. Actually, before we do that, I'm going to show you an absolute cheat code, which is sharing your product on subreddits. And this is something that you can do in the next hour. It will definitely drive you some valuable users. If you didn't know, Reddit is one of the most viewed sites on the internet. I think it's like top 10 most viewed sites worldwide every single year. And there are a bunch of subreddits that are dedicated to startup founders like yourself. For example, SAS or side project or programming, right? These are all subreddits that have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users in each one of them. Right? Side project has 43,000 members. SAS has 300K members. Programming 6.8 million members. Playground product 1.3K members. These are all subreddits that you as a founder can post in today and you can share your project in these subreddits. Right? So what you do is you drop a post in these subreddits and some of them can go insanely viral. Like we'll sort by all time, top performing. Boom. These get thousands and thousands and thousands of views and engagements and you can look at the comments here and people are giving real feedback to all of these posts, right? So definitely leverage Reddit and share your product there. But don't just spam your product link. Be helpful, be real, engage, and share your experience as a founder. Drive value. Provide value to the community on Reddit. And people will respect that and they'll engage with your product and they'll try your product out. Some of them might even pay for it. Some of them might even use it for a long time, right? This is an easy way for you to get the first couple users into your project. And if your post on Reddit goes viral, it can hit the homepage and it can drive you insane results. I have some friends in the space who only use Reddit to go their products. I spoke to a founder friend the other day who generated hundreds of thousands of dollars all strictly through Reddit. Don't sleep on Reddit. It's an easy way to get your product out there, get your first couple users, and these users will give you actual feedback on your product. So, little cheat code for the start of the video there. post your products on Reddit. If you want to download this entire blueprint document, I will share it with you in the description. So, go ahead and click the link in the description. But let's get into it. Identifying your viral marketing message. Where I see founders go wrong time and time again is when they're making content about their product. The content is about their product, right? And that might sound counterintuitive, but in reality, no one on social media cares about your product. And if you're only talking about your product and you're only talking about the features, it's going to be a boring piece of content and it's not going to get views. And if you can't get views, it doesn't matter how well your video converts, you're not going to get any users from that, right? Your product is not what people care about. People care about what your product can do for them. So, you don't want to sell the features. You want to sell the transformation. The most important part of creating content is making it feel natural to the algorithm. If anyone watching your video feels like it's an ad, automatically, you lose them. So, I'm going to show you two examples of this. One is for Puff Count. This was one of my best performing videos in terms of getting downloads to the app. I want you to look at this video and tell me where the call to action happens and tell me how hard I sold the product in this video. Crazy that people will smoke these without knowing what's inside. So, I'm going to show you. [Music] On the outside, we have the colorful metal casing, a 3.7 volt 500 milliamp battery, and a coil wrapped in soaked cotton. Check out this app if you need to quit. It's kind of crazy. I only showed the product for 2 seconds in that video. I'm going to show you another example from Cali. This app does3 million per month in monthly recurring revenue. Watch this ad. This ad got 55,000 likes. Mine got 476,000 likes. That should show you that you don’t need to sell the product for that long in your video. I think the reason that people struggle to create content like that is number one, they don’t do market research, but number two, you’re trying to do everything in one step of the funnel, right? Your marketing is a funnel. And this is how you should look at it, right? There are different steps that each one of your user needs to take to get to the ultimate the ultimate goal, which is them purchasing your product, right? So each one of these is a different step in your funnel. And the only goal of the step above is to get to the next step. The only goal of getting a view on Tik Tok or any short form content is to get them to check out the app on the app store. We’re not trying to get them to download it. We’re not trying to explain the entire app like the onboarding should. We’re not trying to get them to buy our inapp purchases on the Tik Tok. The only step is to get them interested in the app. Interested enough to go to the app store, right? You don’t have to do all of it because these next steps should do the rest of the work for you, right? Your app store listing should encourage them to download. After they download, the onboarding should encourage them to purchase. So, you don’t have to do it all from your marketing, from your ad or your video. You don’t have to do it all. You’re only trying to get them to take action and do the next step. That’s why these videos make so much sense, right? We’re not trying to sell the entire product because that’s going to feel like an ad. It’s not going to perform on social media. We’re trying to engage our ideal target customer in our video and present our product in front of them. Get them interested enough and sell the transformation. This guy’s jacked. This one we’re talking about how crappy vapes are for you, right? We’re selling the transformation. What general problem does your app solve and how can we present that in a video? And the easiest way to get familiar with this type of content, the content that actually performs is to do market research within your niche. So transparently, I saw a video where someone was taking apart a vape and showing how bad it was. And I knew that piece of content would convert well for my brand. So if I was building a another quit vaping app, I would go on TikTok and I would type in quit vaping. And you can sort these videos by most popular of all time. So boom, I would go through and see that this this girl has 3.7 million. I just quit vaping like an hour. 3.7 million likes and on your video right within 30 seconds. So this is clearly years and this is very concept that is going to crush right you can take this concept and you can run with it or if I’m a calorie tracking app I go and look up tracking calories. So boom this is an easy concept. This this video is 14 seconds long. It’s text on the screen show. Oh here and here we go. It’s for a calorie tracking app. There we go. Right? Like that’s it. Doing market research and understanding that you don’t need to sell the product super hard in your content is what is going to work. So once you have identified your viral marketing message and you’ve done enough market research to understand what winning content looks like for your product, for your brand, then you can start to scale it. Then you can start to hire creators. Then you can start to make one, two, three videos every single day. And another thing that you should be doing is capitalizing on trends for lowhanging fruit views. Right? Every day there is a new Tik Tok sound that is trending or an Instagram real sound that is trending. Use those sounds, use those trends to create winning videos for your product. For example, we can go back to Puff Count. Where’s the win is a win. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don’t care what y’all say. That was a viral sound. That was a viral trend happening. A win is a win sound. And I use that sound to promote my product. And that video got 33,000 views just because I capitalized on the sound. because this sound and this trend was doing very well on TikTok. This is an easy way. If you can identify trends and integrate your products in a sly way into these videos, you’ll crush it. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don’t care. That was it. A win is a win, right? This trend is going crazy. 121,000 videos within this trend. All you have to do is watch one of these videos within this trend. A win is a win. I don’t care what yall say. And you get the you get the idea, right? You just need to use these trends to your advantage when you’re promoting your product. Okay. Once you’ve identified winning trends and you’ve put together enough market research, now you can create the content or hire a team of creators. And this is the ultimate hack right now because creator marketing is still undervalued. There are so many creators out there, creators who are willing to work for you and create content for your brand at a very, very low cost. And again, if you want to stay at 0ofspend,youcancreatethecontentyourself,right?Youcandothemarketresearchandyoucanmakevideoslikeyouhavefoundwithinthemarketresearch.ButI′mgoingtoshowyouhowtohirecreatorsonaresultsonlybasisandyoucandothatallthroughpostedapp.com.Nowonpostedyouhaveacoupledifferentoptions.Youcanlaunchacontestbutwearegoingtobetalkingaboutthedealsfeature.Sowithdealsyoucanactuallygetcontentrisk−free.Sowearecurrentlyusingthedealsfeaturetopromotetheappitself.AndI′llshowyouhowmanydownloadswe′vegotteninthepastweek.So,inthepastweek,usingthedealsfeature,we′vegotten4,000downloads.Mightnotseemlikealot,butwearetargetingasmallnicheofpeople,UGCcontentcreatorsorcontentcreatorsingeneralwhowanttousetheappandgetpaid.It′smoreofanicheapp.So,thisisactuallykillerforusandwearegettingalloftheinstallsthroughthedealsfeature.So,whatyou′regoingtodoistakeallofyourlearningsfromthepreviousparthere,right?Identifyingyourviralmarketingmessageandyourmarketresearch,andyouaregoingtobuildabrief.So,you′regoingtobuildaprojectoverview,somerules,choosewhereyouwantthecreatorstobefrom,andthenyou′regoingtouploadthoseviralvideosthatyoufoundfromyourmarketresearchintotopostithere.Andwhat′sgoingtohappeniscreatorsaregoingtomakevideosforyouthatyoucanwatchforfree.So,boom,wehave30videosthatarewaitingforourreview.They′reloadedinhere.So,boom.Allofthesecreatorshavecreatedpiecesofcontentandtheyhaveputabidhere.So,wecanwatchanyoneofthesevideos,right?Man,I′mgoingtogofigureouthowtogetthisvideomadeextracash.Postit.Iliterallymadealmost0 of spend, you can create the content yourself, right? You can do the market research and you can make videos like you have found within the market research. But I'm going to show you how to hire creators on a resultsonly basis and you can do that all through postedapp.com. Now on posted you have a couple different options. You can launch a contest but we are going to be talking about the deals feature. So with deals you can actually get content risk-free. So we are currently using the deals feature to promote the app itself. And I'll show you how many downloads we've gotten in the past week. So, in the past week, using the deals feature, we've gotten 4,000 downloads. Might not seem like a lot, but we are targeting a small niche of people, UGC content creators or content creators in general who want to use the app and get paid. It's more of a niche app. So, this is actually killer for us and we are getting all of the installs through the deals feature. So, what you're going to do is take all of your learnings from the previous part here, right? Identifying your viral marketing message and your market research, and you are going to build a brief. So, you're going to build a project overview, some rules, choose where you want the creators to be from, and then you're going to upload those viral videos that you found from your market research into to post it here. And what's going to happen is creators are going to make videos for you that you can watch for free. So, boom, we have 30 videos that are waiting for our review. They're loaded in here. So, boom. All of these creators have created pieces of content and they have put a bid here. So, we can watch any one of these videos, right? Man, I'm going to go figure out how to get this video made extra cash. Post it. I literally made almost500 in three separate days. Here’s the proof if you don’t believe me. This This So, these creators have all created content for us and they’ve put a bid here, right? So, this is how much this creator wants to get paid. This creator has 769 followers. So, that seems a bit overpriced, but actually the last video that she did for us hit 40,000 views, which is insane. That’s one of our better performing videos. And you can see, you know, this creator here has 529,000followersandtheyonlywantthecontentfor529,000 followers and they only want the content for110. I want to emphasize I’ve paid 0forallthiscontent.AndnowIcansimplywatchthevideosandifIlovethevideoandIthinkthebidisfair,thenIcanacceptthese.Sothisisarisk−freewayforyoutogetalotofcontentfromalotofdifferentcreators.Asyoucansee,we′veaccepted17differentvideos.Wespentaround0 for all this content. And now I can simply watch the videos and if I love the video and I think the bid is fair, then I can accept these. So this is a risk-free way for you to get a lot of content from a lot of different creators. As you can see, we've accepted 17 different videos. We spent around1,500 generating 4,000 views. So that’s 37 cents per download. Not bad. So you can use the deals feature to get content riskfree for your product. And we also have a new feature that is called CPM. So very similar except for this time you’re only paying creators on a CPM basis. Meaning you can choose how much you want to pay the creator per 1,000 views they get you. If you want to go seriously risk-f free, this is the way to do it because again, you can review the videos and you can approve whatever you’re comfortable with approving and then the creators will only be paid on a rate per 1,000 views that they generate. So, you can try Postit Out completely for free. It is the easiest headache way free to get content and start working with creators today. And the beautiful thing about working with creators on Postit is you own all the winning content for life. So, you’re actually going to own all this content that you’ve approved forever. You’re going to own the MP4 file itself. You can download the video and you can post it anywhere across different social medias like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook. You can post it anywhere you’d like. And we’ll also give you the ad code so that you can run spark ads on Tik Tok. And as you can see, this video got 22,000 views. This video got 47,000 views. And there are some here that, you know, didn’t hit, but that’s okay. That’s part of the game, right? Whenever you’re creating content or paying creators to create content, some of it’s not going to work. You’re never going to get a 100% hit rate on your content, whether you’re creating it or someone else is. Right now once we have identified what content is getting the most views for us and more importantly what content is driving the most results the most installs for the app that is when we can take that winning content and scale it with paid ads. And this is going to sound very simple but that’s it. What’s getting the most views for your product and which videos are driving the most results in terms of app store downloads right? And don’t get discouraged if the organic videos aren’t driving millions and millions of downloads. They they won’t, right? And that’s why we leverage paid ads. Because with paid ads, there will actually be a call to action on your video. Just an organic video itself has to be very powerful and very good for someone to swipe out of Tik Tok and then go to the app store and search in your product. If you take this content and put it on paid ads, the conversion rate of that content will be so much higher. And a lot of people sleep on paid ads because, you know, organic marketing is all the rage right now. And that’s where everyone’s head is at and everyone’s trying to, you know, hack their way to getting free installs without running paid ads. Don’t sleep on paid ads. Take your winners. Do all of this. Post organically. Keep your spend at zero. Great. But when you have a winner, leverage it with paid ads. And the math problem is very simple. How much are your users earning your app? And how much can you spend to acquire them? And you might be thinking, how do I calculate my LTV? How do I figure out what each install is generating in terms of revenue in my app? And that’s why you should have revenue cap integrated into your app because you can pull up this chart here on the left side. Realized LTV per customer. And this is going to be your realized LTV per download. You can also do realized LTV per paying customer which will be attached only to your paying customers, right? Because a certain percentage of your downloads will pay and a certain percent won’t. But this will include every single download in your app. So what you’re going to want to do is go to customer lifetime, set that to unbounded, and then boom, here is your LTV per download. Right? This one fluctuated a little bit. Let’s let’s go to the monthly here. There we go. So, we can tell that each one of our installs for PuffCount was generating about a dollar, let’s call it. So, I now know that as long as I can get installs for less than a dollar, my app is making money. It’s a simple math problem. My LTV is a dollar, $110, let’s call it. As long as I can get installs for less than that, our app is making money. So, boom. That’s it. That’s the entire fourstep process to finding your first 10,000 users through organic content and then scaling with paid ads. And I want to emphasize that this whole process is never ending. You’re always going to be able to optimize your marketing, your message, your videos, your content, your ads. This four-step process should continue going throughout the entire lifetime of your app. You’re always looking for new viral marketing messages. As a founder, you should always be doing market research and always identifying new trends and new content formats that you can be leveraging for your product. You should always be hiring and testing out new content creators, and you can definitely do that through Posted, and you should always be testing and scaling your different paid ads. If you want a detailed guide on each one of these, I have dropped multiple videos on market research, on hiring creators, on running paid ads, on finding your viral marketing message. I’ve dropped videos in detail on all of this. But this is the entire four-step process right here. Don’t give up on your products. Don’t give up on your marketing. Keep grinding. And I hope you enjoyed the video. If you stuck around this far, I would appreciate a like on the video and a subscribe to the channel because I’m going to be dropping new videos like this and dropping value every single day. Real quick, by the way, I’ve put together a group of app founders and we meet twice a week and chat about all things apps and all things marketing. We’re all grinding together looking to find the new marketing strategies for all of our mobile apps. So, if you want to be a part of that group, you can shoot me a DM on Instagram, stephven.builds. send me a message and I’ll add you into the group if you want to join.