How do I market my app?

Written by Dante, who built Prep66, PrepAMT and Ancestorii

Marketing your product means getting it in front of the people who already have the problem, in the words they use, in the place they already are. Do it in this order. Make the page say what the product does, who it is for and what it costs. Pick the one place where your buyers gather or search, and work only that one. Tell them your real story there and ask for feedback, not money. Count every signup and every payment by where it came from. Pay for ads last, as a small test with a line set before it starts. Ancestorii did all of it at once, spent about £4,000 across its life, and never had a paying customer. Prep66 did one thing at a time, spent about £25, and had its first paying customer nine days after one free post.

Step one: the page, before any marketing

Every visitor you bring lands on the page, so the page comes first. It has to say what the product does, who it is for and what it costs, in the words your buyers type. PrepAMT was written around "AMT", the term the trade uses, and buyers search for "FAA A&P". When ChatGPT was asked for A&P prep sites it listed 29 of them and PrepAMT was not among them. Every page had to be rewritten in the buyers' words.

Put the price on the page. Nobody signs up just to find out what something costs. Where the price really depends on the customer, say where it starts. Nobody signing up has the four checks to run on the page before you spend anything.

Step two: one place, not every place

Distribution is the place and the way your product reaches its buyers. For a product bought on its own page, that is the one community or the one search phrase where people with the problem already are. For a phone product it is the store listing. For something companies buy it starts with your own network. Pick the one that fits who pays, and work it alone.

Ancestorii is what the other way looks like. In its first two months it ran ads on Meta, Reddit, Google and YouTube, paid for a podcast slot and a magazine post, started a podcast of its own, wrote pages for search and messaged creators five a day, all at the same time. more than £500 went on Meta alone. After two months it had four signups. Five channels at once give five weak signals and no answer.

If the one place you picked brings nobody, do not go looking for a second place. Once a channel really reaches the people who pay, the channel is almost never the problem. Look at the product and the page. Choosing where to advertise goes through the places by kind of business.

Step three: your story, not a pitch

Prep66's launch post in r/AircraftMechanics on 14 August 2026 was not an advert. It said what the founder had studied, what annoyed everyone about the existing prep sites, and that he had built something about it. It offered 25 free accounts for honest feedback, and the link went in the comments only when someone asked. It got about 3,200 views and brought the first real users. Posting on Reddit has the rules it followed.

It worked because the founder was one of the people the post was written for. If you have never been your own buyer, do not pretend to be one. Tell the story you really have and say plainly who you are. People told Ancestorii's founder that his posts sounded like ChatGPT wrote them, and on a product about family memories that alone cost him trust.

Step four: count every signup and payment by source

From the day you launch, record where each signup and each payment came from: the site that sent them or the tag in the link they clicked. Put what each source cost you beside both. Prep66 started on 27 August 2026, and by 3 September 2026 it had recorded 13 signups: 6 from ChatGPT, 5 from Google search, one from a paid Reddit ad and one direct. That count is what showed where the founder's hour a day should go.

Search engines and AI assistants are a channel only when your buyers search for what you sell. When they do, pages written in their words bring them for free, week after week. Getting named by ChatGPT explains the setup, and it is the same pages that Google reads.

Step five: pay only to test, and set the line first

Paid traffic only tells you faster whether strangers want the product. It does not make anyone need it. So pay last, and pay to test. Set aside a small slice of the money you have for marketing, around 5% of it, for one channel and one week if your product is bought on the page. Decide before it starts what result stops it. Prep66's one ad ran at £5 a day from 27 August to 1 September 2026, brought one signup and no payment, and was stopped after about five days, because the free post and the pages beat it in the same days.

Shops and phone games are the exception. They are sold through paid ads from day one, and the test there is whether each sale pays back what the ad cost. Ads before your first customer says how big a test should be.

What marketing cannot do

None of this sells a product nobody needs today. Prep66 sold because someone with an exam booked has a deadline and a problem right now. Ancestorii was nice to have, and what Reddit told its founder was that nobody needed it that day. A better post, a better channel and a bigger budget do not change that. Will it sell is where to check it before the marketing starts.

Questions people ask

How do I distribute my app?

Take it to the people who already have the problem, where they already are. For a product bought on its own page that is one community or one search phrase. For a phone product it is the store listing, its name, subtitle and keywords. For something companies buy it starts with your own network and then a short list of companies and job titles. Pick the one that fits who pays, and work it alone before you touch a second.

I need help marketing my app. Where do I start?

With the page, not the channel. Make it say what the product does, who it is for and what it costs, in the words your buyers type. Then name the one place where those buyers already gather. If you cannot name one, that is the first problem to solve, before any post or any ad.

How do I get my app in front of people?

Go where they already are and use their words. Prep66's buyers were aircraft engineers asking how to study for their exams in a few subreddits, so one honest post there was enough to bring the first users. A page written in the words buyers search for brought the rest: most of Prep66's recorded signups came from ChatGPT and Google search.

How much should I spend on marketing my app?

Nothing until a stranger has used the product for free on their own, if it is the kind of product people can try or buy on the page. After that, one test at a time, each around 5% of the money you have set aside for marketing. Prep66 spent about £25 in all. Ancestorii spent about £4,000 across its life on marketing and printing and never had a paying customer.

How long does marketing take to work?

For a product bought on the spot, one fair test tells you within a week, as long as it brings enough visitors for a sale to show. Prep66's first payment came nine days after its launch post. Ancestorii's founder could see in the first week that it was not working and kept going for months on hope. Decide the line before you start, and act when it is crossed.