9.How to market your app after launch

In this chapter: how to run small, honest distribution experiments in places where your future users already talk — Reddit and other forums, X, Facebook groups — without spamming anyone. You will learn to fit each community's rules, lead with useful work, disclose your interest, and measure the result well enough to decide whether to continue.

The problem

When store traffic is flat, "post it somewhere" is the obvious next idea. It often goes badly. A launch link dropped into five communities on the same day gets removed, downvoted or ignored, and the developer concludes that "Reddit doesn't work" or "X is dead" — from a sample of one badly fitted post per place.

The opposite mistake is quieter: spending weeks crafting content for a community without any way to tell whether a single user arrived because of it.

What is going on

Communities are not channels; they are places with rules

Each platform has platform-wide rules, and most communities add their own:

• Reddit. Reddit's rules say that each community's culture is shaped by rules its moderators enforce, ask you to abide by those rules, to participate where you have a personal interest, not to spam or manipulate content, and not to mislead others about who you are [S20]. Many subreddits add specific rules on self-promotion, link posts or designated promotion threads — read them before posting.
• X. X's authenticity policy prohibits bulk, duplicative, irrelevant or unsolicited content and inauthentic use of engagement features; automation must follow X's Developer Policy and may not be used aggressively to manipulate traffic or engagement [S21]. Mass-replying the same link under strangers' posts is exactly the kind of activity to avoid.
• Facebook groups. Read the current platform policy and each group's own rules, usually in the group's About section; the group's admins enforce those local rules.
• Forums and Discord/Slack communities. Usually have pinned rules and a promotion channel. The same principles apply.

If a community does not allow self-promotion, the honest options are: participate without links, ask a moderator, or choose another community. Evading a rule with a "friend's" account or a disguised post is both against platform rules [S20] [S21] and bad evidence — you would learn nothing you could repeat.

Lead with useful work

A post earns its place when a reader who never installs your app still leaves with something useful. Examples of useful work you can show:

• A how-to that solves the problem your app solves, done manually: "How I plan a 3-day hike with offline maps on any phone" (with a paper checklist).
• A teardown of your own data or decision: "We tested two first screenshots for three weeks; here is why the result was inconclusive".
• A free resource: a template, a checklist, a small tool that works without your app.
• An honest build log: what you shipped, what broke, what you learned.

The app link comes after the value, clearly labelled as yours.

Disclose your interest, every time

Say plainly that you made the app. "I built this" in the first or last line is enough. Disclosure is a Reddit rule in spirit (be authentic, don't mislead [S20]) and a trust issue everywhere else. Never post as a "happy user" of your own app, never ask friends to upvote or reply, and never send unsolicited direct messages to people who commented. X's rules prohibit bulk, aggressive, high-volume unsolicited replies, mentions or DMs, and prohibit automation or coordinated engagement used to manipulate traffic or metrics [S21]; compliant automation is governed by the Developer Policy, but avoid it for this experiment.

Make the experiment measurable before you post

Small communities send small numbers, so you need a clean way to see them:

• App Store: a custom product page has its own URL, and App Store Connect reports impressions, downloads and conversion per page [S03]. App Store Connect also shows web referrers and supports campaign links [S23]. Look under the right source: taps on a link inside another app — the Reddit or X app, for example — count as app referrers, and on iOS so do taps from non-Safari browsers such as Chrome; only Safari taps count as web referrers [S23]. A dedicated custom page per community lets you see that community's arrivals separately.
• Google Play: a custom store listing can be reached through its own URL [S11], and Play's acquisition report can break down visits by UTM source and campaign for ads-and-referrals traffic [S12]. (UTM tags are the utm_source and utm_campaign parameters you add to a link, for example &utm_source=walkingforum, so reports can tell which link a visit came from.)
• Your site: if you link to a landing page first, count clicks there — but be aware that each extra step loses people.

Decide in advance what would make the channel worth a second post: for example, "at least 20 unique-user Install Clicks from the custom listing within 7 days, and at least a few trials" — numbers chosen for your app and goal, not a benchmark. Use the exact metric the store reports: on Google Play choose Install Clicks, Open Clicks or Pre-registration Clicks; these are intent measures and may include returning users depending on the report configuration [S12]. On the App Store it is downloads per custom product page [S03]. With counts that small, one post tells you little; 20 is an editorial threshold, not a statistical validity threshold (chapter 8's count approximation is unreliable for very small counts). Plan for two or three posts in comparable communities before you judge a channel.

Worked example

Fictional example · E9 · Fernpath · tags: android, distribution, small-sample

Situation. Fernpath (the hiking app from chapter 3) wants more UK installs before winter. The developer decides to try two places: a UK hiking subreddit whose rules allow self-promotion only in a weekly thread, and a long-running UK walking forum with a "Gear and apps" board that allows each developer one post about their own app, with disclosure.

Preparation (about 90 minutes).

• Read both communities' rules and the last month of posts in the relevant thread/board.
• Wrote one useful piece: "Preparing offline maps for a winter walk: a 10-minute checklist that works with any app", including a printable list. The Fernpath link appears at the end, after "Disclosure: I build Fernpath, an offline hiking map app for Android. It does step 4 for you, but the checklist works without it."
• Created a Play custom store listing with a unique URL for each community [S11], with the same assets as the default listing, so any difference in clicks comes from the audience, not the page.
• Wrote a channel experiment card: continue if either community brings at least 20 unique-user Install Clicks in 7 days and the post is not removed; stop otherwise.

Observations after 7 days.

Interpretation. The counts are small; the difference between the two is large enough to notice but it rests on one post each. The forum post's value came mostly from the checklist being pinned — a sign the content was useful to that community, which is repeatable. Nothing here says the app would do well in other forums.

Decision: Continue with forums, pause the subreddit, repeat before scaling. The walking forum allows one post per developer, and that post is used: in that forum, the developer only replies in the existing thread. The second useful piece (a different topic, same disclosure) goes to a different, comparable walking forum whose rules allow it, with its own custom listing URL; a third follows in another in four weeks. Do not post in the subreddit's weekly thread again until there is a genuinely new resource to share. No DMs to commenters; reply in public only. Judge the channel after the third forum post.

Do this now

1. List five communities where people with the problem your app solves already talk. For each, write the platform, the community's own rules on self-promotion, and whether links are allowed.
2. Drop any community where honest participation with a link is not allowed, unless you are willing to participate without a link.
3. Write one piece of useful work that stands on its own without the app.
4. Write your disclosure line and put it in the post, not in a comment.
5. Create a measurable path: one custom product page [S03] or custom store listing [S11] per community, or a link with UTM tags [S12].
6. Fill the channel experiment card: the continue/stop rule in numbers you chose, the date you will judge, and how many posts you will make before judging.
7. Post by hand, once per community. Reply to comments in public. No automation, no DMs, no vote requests.

Don't change anything yet when…

• A community's rules forbid your post; choose another community instead of rewording to slip past them.
• You cannot measure arrivals from the post separately; set up the custom page or link first.
• The post only works if readers install the app; make it useful on its own first.
• You have judged a channel on a single post; plan at least two or three comparable posts.
• A post was removed; read the removal reason and the rules before posting anywhere similar.
• Your store listing is mid-test (chapter 4); a traffic spike from a post can disturb the test's traffic mix.

Worksheet

Channel experiment card — community, rules, useful work, disclosure, tracking link, continue/stop rule, and results per post.

Optional: ready-to-adapt post drafts for Reddit and forums, X and Facebook groups are in this book's distribution kit. Each gives value before the link, discloses the author's product, and has a slot for the specific community's rules.

Sources

• S03 — Custom product pages (Apple Developer) — https://developer.apple.com/app-store/custom-product-pages/
• S11 — Custom store listings, Play Console Help — https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9867158
• S12 — Acquisition reports, Play Console Help — https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859173
• S20 — Reddit Rules (Reddit Inc.) — https://redditinc.com/policies/reddit-rules
• S21 — Authenticity policy (X Help Center) — https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/authenticity
• S23 — Acquisition, App Store Connect Analytics (Apple Developer Help) — https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect-analytics/acquisition/acquisition/