Thanks Jayasurya, very nice to hear about the journey you are undertaking. I can see why that market is such a huge attraction, esp for educational arenas in India. One of my friends started a website for IAS coaching and is now amongst the top rated websites in the country for that. The approach he followed was very interesting – it was a lot to do with free content and getting people to engage. It picked up remarkably well to get over a million visitors per month and I am sure now it has gone much beyond that.

* I suppose it is very hard to get that initial attraction to be recognised by google with free apps and so much out there to compete. The hardest part I believe is the initial traction and getting noticed on the first few pages of google play or app store. There are options of sponsored listing but they can very easily get expensive. I suppose content marketing plays a huge role in this one.

* Something I have seen certain businesses do is spread the app to known circle and get them to review these apps. That adds to the number of donloads and some initial traction. But this certainly depends on the spread of your circle and how many real feedback you can get. There are agents who do this, but I am of a certain doubt of these agencies though. Always a very hard choice to make to find the real and authentic ones who can actually be useful

* Marketing should be inbuilt in the product – that is a very interesting angle. I think Canva does it quite well, there are also some other products which do it reasonably well such as Jira. Some of them end up crossing the line and over advertising. I suppose it is a faint balance between the two so that the consumer doesn’t really get discouraged.

I am quite eager to make that post on invisible funnel, I will certainly let you know as soon as that is up :).

Hey Vinay, It’s always nice to read about new things that could help businesses grow!!

Coming to what i’m doing right now, first you need to understand that “App for English Vocabulary” market is overcrowded, with a few big players too. Of course, each one of them have their own uniqueness (good or bad) and are trying to capture a chunk of the total market.

Entering such a market, my current strategy is pretty much straightforward – “Spend on generating that inital buzz and then depend on word of mouth”. Of course, to my understanding the prerequisite to implementing any strategy is building a “unique product that addresses pains of the customer” . According One entrepreneur cum professor , “Marketing should be inbuilt in the product”, meaning the product should speak for itself. Building such a product that is not just useful for the customer but is also simple and fun to use, has been my motto. Word of mouth and Organic marketing (such as blogs, Quora posts, etc..) are the most value generating avenues but I’m also trying to hit more number of downloads and customer reviews through Google Ads and promotions.

You’re right, i myself am baffled how some products are making money by offering free services. At least some of the apps do have ads or offer in-app or complimentary purchases or some are built for brand promotion. While of course some do it out of sheer passion, although rare.

Looking forward to know more about the “invisible funnel”!

As you said, it’s very important to maintain that balance the cost of acquiring customers and generating actual “value” out of them.

I myself grapple with such strategies when i try to market my Vocabulary App. Well, we are new to the market (with lots of competition) so there’s quite a bit of road to cover in terms of “breaking even”. But, we’re confident that what we are offering is something unique and are working to deliver a product that is actually useful for our customers.

Thanks Jayasurya – it is very nice to hear from you. I’m very curious about this strategy. You’re absolutely right – there’s so much of free competition out there . I often wondered how people can actually make money off this and the type of added pressures in maintaining the free services.

I’ve recently been reading about a marketing funnel called invisible funnel . I’ll make a post on it after research is complete. I’m very curious to know how you’re using your strategy. I can appreciate that a lot of it would be trade secret, but it there’s anything you can share, that would be fascinating 👌