Audience-Building Playbooks
Building an audience before, during, and after launch — the platforms that compounded, the posting cadences that worked, and how founders turned followers into first customers.
198 tactics · page 3 of 7
“The number one project is a to-do list app but there are 2 million to-do list apps out there. So I thought I'd do something similar and that was a wish list app because back then I was still using an Excel sheet for my own wish list because I thought there was no nice and pretty wish list app out there.”
Build A Prettier Version Of A Boring Tool You Already Use In Excel
Chris was managing his own wishlist in an Excel sheet because no app on the market looked nice enough. Rather than chase a crowded category like to-do lists, he picked a related, underserved niche where he was already the target user.
“Imagine you're on campus at student orientation and you see a daughter and her mom. I would like you to go offer a notetaker that's going to help improve your grades and it's $130 to do it. Who are you going to ask? The obvious answer is you're going to ask the mom. So early on we were very keen on marketing to moms.”
Market to the buyer (mom), not the user (student)
Coconote's early viral 'my mom just changed my life' videos weren't aimed at students — they were aimed at other moms scrolling Instagram. Identifying the actual decision-maker (the parent with the wallet, not the kid with the problem) unlocked willingness-to-pay other launch campaigns missed.
“This might be a Gen Z trend but I think you know Gen Z cares a lot about mental health. They kind of describe ADHD more as a personality trait than an actual diagnosis. 42% of Gen Z have a diagnosed mental health condition.”
Gen Z treats ADHD as a personality trait — 42% have a diagnosed mental health condition
The reason ADHD-coded content works on TikTok: Gen Z frames mental health as identity, not medical diagnosis, and 42% report a diagnosed condition. App founders building habit-trackers, focus tools, or anything mental-health-adjacent should mirror that identity framing in creative — not clinical or self-improvement language.
“You have a place your users are going every day, which isn't always the case for all apps. There's no meditation store people are going to every day. I wonder if fitness apps have tried partnering with gyms. Find the adjacencies.”
Look for adjacent high-velocity venues your users already pass through
The retail QR play only works when your users already pass through a physical or digital venue with high frequency. Generalize: hunt for the high-frequency adjacent place your category already funnels through — gyms for fitness apps, headphones for music apps — and that's your partnership target.
“We have a good amount of acceptable churn due to students aging out, but the challenge is that one-third of those 'no longer need' users are just done with that more pressing test — not actually done with college or high school. So that's still a group we should be targeting.”
One-third of "no longer need" churners are actually still in your ICP
Caroline's data shows roughly a third of self-selected 'no longer need' Quizlet churners are mislabeling themselves — they finished one exam, not their academic career. That sub-segment becomes a dedicated win-back audience focused on ongoing test prep rather than a written-off cohort. Always re-segment self-reported categories.
“Price sensitivity has three components: first is purchasing power, the other two are commitment — how committed are they, how passionate are they — and the last is how strong is your value proposition. It's really the relationship between those three things and you have to assess where the gaps are.”
Price sensitivity has three components — purchasing power × commitment × value prop
'Are they cheap?' is the wrong question. Decompose willingness to pay into purchasing power, commitment to the activity, and strength of your value prop — then attack whichever is the binding constraint. Surfers seem cheap on the surface but coastal demographics are affluent and commitment is sky-high; the binding constraint is usually value-prop strength.
“There's a huge pool being built in Munich for example — these might bring in cohorts of surfers who couldn't traditionally afford to go surfing. It's a good example of widening your serviceable addressable market.”
Munich surf parks expand a coastal-only audience — physical-world shifts widen your SAM
Artificial surf parks in landlocked cities like Munich are expanding Surfline's addressable audience to demographics that never had coastal access. Paul frames this as widening the SAM from the top down — and Surfline's camera technology becomes the B2B angle for those parks. Adjacent expansion can come from changes in physical infrastructure, not just adjacent verticals.
“If you look at top 10 apps by saturation for every age group — 18 to 25, 35 to 40 — ChatGPT is the only AI app that cracks the top 10 for any age groups, which is crazy. All of the top ones are ChatGPT, Claude — these very general LLM assistants. We're going to see a big and exciting expansion in the types of AI products delivered via phone.”
ChatGPT is the only AI app in any age group's top-10 saturation — headroom is huge
Despite the AI hype, ChatGPT is the only AI app cracking top-10 saturation in any demographic. The vertical/opinionated AI app wave hasn't hit mobile yet — for female users ChatGPT doesn't even make the top 10. The audience opportunity for category-specific AI apps is wide open.
“Look at with survey data working out who are the ones who are staying the longest. So who's been subscribed for a while who's actively using your app — they're not basically have a subscription they've forgotten about but they're actively using your app, they're making the most of it. Asking them through a survey — that's a really good technique if you have a big database to make sure that your interviews are more focused.”
Filter your subscriber base before booking interviews — long-tenured AND active
Random user interviews waste slots on passive subscribers who forgot to cancel. First segment via survey to find subscribers who are both long-tenured AND actively engaged, then run deeper interviews against that narrowed list. Every interview slot now skews toward your high-LTV future, not noise.
“We never saw Apple release scanning and our growth stalls or we lose customers. Apple covers the basic needs and when you want to go deeper you will find a more specialized app. They will also make people aware that oh you can do scanning with your device.”
Apple's native scanner didn't dent growth — it educated the market
When platforms ship a native version of your feature, it can actually expand your market by educating users that the capability exists. The defense isn't being first — it's being deeper, with workflows like auto-export-to-folder-by-document-name that prosumers need but platform basics ignore.
“That's how I learned that ChatGPT was telling people to use RevenueCat when they asked how to do in-app purchases. All of a sudden I saw Claude, ChatGPT, like all the LLMs. I was like oh I wouldn't have even thought to ask about that.”
Open-text attribution survey caught ChatGPT as a referral source
A simple post-signup 'How did you hear about us?' survey with three preset buttons plus a free-form field is enough to discover non-obvious acquisition channels — including LLMs actively recommending your product. Worth a small UX sacrifice on a percentage of users to capture directional signal you'd never have guessed to track.
“With influencer marketing for example is easier because you know the audience, you know more or less how old they are what they're interested in. In other platform like Facebook where you go with broad targeting, you need to go with what sells.”
Influencer ads can sell to segments paid social's broad targeting can't reach
For broad audiences like Paired's (1-year couples to 10-year marriages), Facebook's broad targeting forces lowest-common-denominator messaging. Influencer marketing flips this — you inherit a known sub-audience and can sell the specific motivation that fits them, even if it would never win on Meta.
“Almost all new VC funded startups are using React Native versus building native, and huge apps — Spotify, Discord, NFL — you know tons of the biggest apps that people interact with on a daily basis are built in React Native.”
New VC-funded startups have flipped to React Native as the default
The framing that React Native is a compromise is outdated. The default for new venture-backed mobile apps has flipped, and the marquee logos (Spotify, Discord, NFL) prove it can carry products at scale. Native-first is now the unusual choice that needs justification.
“We don't have that many app subscribers... a lot of people who are engaging with the content that are maybe not interested in the app because the app has a very specific use case... whereas YouTube — oh, you want to go swimming? Like anyone who wants to improve.”
Wide-funnel YouTube > narrow app persona — and that mismatch is fine
The app targets a narrow persona; the YouTube audience is anyone who swims. Fares is fine with the mismatch — the wider audience funds the content engine (AdSense + brand deals) and feeds future product expansion. Don't constrain top-of-funnel content to your exact ICP; let the channel be bigger than the product.
“Femtech was one we think Family Management is a huge category... Sports is another big one... private wealth and Tax Advisor, right? A lot of this data is out there — your tax code is very publicly written every day, it's just impossible to read.”
Underbuilt category-killer opportunities: femtech, family, sports, private wealth
Crowley names four categories that lack a duopoly winner and are ripe for a category killer: femtech, family management (the 'chief household officer'), youth sports coordination, and personal wealth/tax advisory for the $100K-$1M asset tier. The diagnostic — 'who's the Apple of X?' — should have an obvious answer in a mature category. When it doesn't, that's the gap.
“It's like, oh, so hot right now... well, it seems to have already been kind of rounding the curve. He's better off chasing [the adjacent sport] instead. That's the new one.”
Don't enter a niche that's already rounding the curve — find the next-curve trend
Bernard's heuristic for picking an audience: don't enter a niche past its growth peak — find the next-curve trend. By the time a trend is consensus-hot, TAM expansion has slowed; the better bet is the adjacent emerging niche gaining momentum. Validate the trend curve is still rising, not flattening, before building.
“look at your high LTV users like why do they stick around what do they use the most what messaging resonates with them and then because our goal in performance marketing is to find more of those high LTV users”
Use high-LTV in-app behavior as the brief for your next ad concept
First-party in-app analytics are an underused creative signal. The feature your best-retaining users engage with most is likely the hook that will resonate in ads, because UA's goal is replicating high-LTV cohorts. Most teams only look at ad-platform output to brief new creatives; layering in-app behavior data sharpens hypothesis quality significantly.
“hey you're going to pay $499 a month for subscription and then when you come to Tinder you see people you might be able to see even just use a platinum subscription now you might think like okay I don't feel that special here”
$499/mo Tinder Select failed because the environment couldn't match the price signal
Tinder Select at $499/month tested whether a luxury tier would capture whales. It did not — because users who paid for exclusivity still saw the same pool as Platinum subscribers. The lesson: a premium tier needs the product environment to signal the status, not just the listed perks and the price. Exclusivity must be felt in the experience, not only promised on the paywall.
“the trial conversion rate is much higher on the web than it is in the app so that made up for the lower trial start rate more trials did convert even though fewer trials were started”
Web trials: far fewer users start them, but those who do convert at a much higher rate
Dipsy's web-only variant saw a dramatic drop in trial starts compared to IAP — users are reluctant to leave the app even with Apple Pay available. But those who did start a web trial converted to paid at a significantly higher rate. These two effects partially cancel: fewer starters, higher converters, near-equal aggregate conversion to paying.
“with a younger audience compared to an older audience who are more aware of the fact that you know these things usually go through the app store that younger audience... it could even come across as like a bit spammy or um disingenuous in in in some in some ways”
Younger users see non-App Store checkout as spammy or disingenuous
Younger users are conditioned to pay through the App Store, so web checkout flows that bypass it can feel spammy or disingenuous — lowering trust and conversion. RevenueCat's own 4-variant $40k experiment returned 'mixed' results for app-to-web checkout; results depend heavily on audience demographics and product category. Know your audience before adopting web-first payment flows, and measure long-term retention rather than conversion rate alone.
“I don't really mind because we have almost no competition which is weird... people almost uh only bad parents and bad families use location sharing It's creepy I think that was more of the attitude”
Stigmatized categories attract almost zero competition
Life360 reached 80M+ active users in the family-location category with almost no direct competition for 15+ years — because VCs and tech press wrote the category off as 'spying on kids.' Cultural stigma around a real use case is not a red flag; it is a moat. Founders should hunt for categories that are genuinely large but culturally uncomfortable, because stigma repels well-funded competition more reliably than patents.
“I also have this other channel that we didn't talk about so I was building my apps in public and I have actually grown a following on X and nowadays LinkedIn... I got this email list thing on my to-do list”
Build in public, but also build an email list
Sebastian's X/LinkedIn audience is his insurance policy: if HabitKit's ASO ranking drops, he can announce a new app to followers and get a launch boost. But without an email list, he has no way to re-engage existing users directly. Building in public creates a community safety net; building an email list converts that community into an owned channel that survives platform algorithm shifts, shutdowns, and store policy changes.
“A woman posted a TikTok we have no affiliation with just talking to her tolen about her favorite WWE wrestler that's like picked up like 30-40,000 views.”
UGC Starts Happening Naturally Once You Have Enough Brand Affinity — You Cannot Buy That
Portola hit 800K+ downloads partly through a creator network — but the signal Ajay values most is unaffiliated UGC: users posting about their Tolen with zero financial incentive. A woman talking to her alien about WWE wrestling picked up 40K views. This organic content is both validation of real product love and the beginning of a brand moat that money can't replicate directly.
“every single man of a certain age that i've spoken to from the united states in the last six months who is even remotely interested in like this industry has heard that ad 50 times”
Offline channels reach audiences that digital ads never touch
Fishbrain's target market — older male anglers in rural US — skews heavily toward radio, ESPN, and out-of-home. Running ESPN radio and satellite radio ads reached saturated frequency with the right demographic at a fraction of the cost of competing for them on Facebook. When the audience doesn't self-identify on digital platforms, offline channels aren't nostalgia — they're the primary reach vehicle.
“it's more or less like 10 of the sort of performance acquisition budget we think about is going towards awareness activities... this money is an investment because if we get that awareness and branding stuff out now it's going to make the customer acquisition cost for the performance cheaper later”
Allocate ~10% of acquisition budget to brand awareness before it is needed
Fishbrain rings-fenced approximately 10% of its acquisition budget for brand and awareness activities, treated as investment rather than performance spend. The thesis: brand-warmed audiences convert cheaper on performance channels later. This requires internal education for finance and investors who default to measuring dollar-in-user-out.
“the important thing to do is to run the lift studies within the platform which actually doing AB tests with hold out groups to tell you because for a brand like 11 Labs where lots of people already know you you'll often end up with lots of people would have converted anyway and particularly as you start doing stuff like retargeting ads”
Run lift studies with holdout groups — not attribution reports — to know real ad impact
At scale, reported conversions are wildly inflated by people who would have converted without seeing an ad. ElevenLabs runs platform-level lift studies with holdout groups to measure true incrementality, then applies a quarterly adjustment to all channel attribution before making budget decisions. Any app spending into retargeting or branded keywords needs this discipline or it will dramatically overestimate paid channel ROI.
“when I think about scaling creative in order to get unlocked what you actually want to do is more segmentation so you're maybe using AI to help before maybe if you just had a general like here's how to make images and videos with AI but now you can go that one level deeper like here's how podcasters or here's how people making apps can create with image and video”
Segment creatives by persona to scale paid spend beyond a general message ceiling
Generic ads hit a ceiling quickly. The unlock at scale is persona-level creative: the same product feature gets a different hook for podcasters, a different one for app developers, a different one for musicians. AI makes producing these variants cheap; the strategic move is doing the segmentation work first, then commissioning the variants. This principle scales down — it applies even before reaching significant ad spend.
“what was really impactful was using the answers on the quiz as conversion events for Tik Tok so Tik Tok isn't seeing basically anything happening in the app they're learning who our user is based on the answers that they're giving us and then learning off what a good user looks like off of those conversions which are just answering the question in the way that we know it indicates a white hot user”
Use quiz-answer events as TikTok conversion signals instead of in-app events
TikTok's algorithm struggles to optimize toward in-app subscription events — there's too little signal and too long a lag. Ladder solved this by treating every quiz answer as a conversion event with a Pixel. TikTok learns what a high-intent user looks like from quiz signals before the person even opens the app. The quiz-to-App-Store correlation proved so tight that Greg could manage all spend decisions from quiz metrics alone without checking downstream app events.
“Opt-in rates itself it can be anywhere from somewhere below 10% to 50 to 60% depending on app we have seen really high acceptance rates on certain apps. We would still recommend prompting and ultimately it's another data point that you are able to capture and possibly reuse for re-engagement.”
ATT Opt-In Rates Range from 10% to 60% — Prompting Is Still Worth It
ATT opt-in rates vary wildly — below 10% for some apps, above 60% for others — but Shane's universal recommendation is to prompt regardless. Even a 15% opt-in gives you a deterministic audience to measure against and, importantly, a first-party signal you can pass back to ad networks for re-engagement campaigns later. The users who opt in are typically higher-intent, making the sample more actionable than its size suggests.
“Short, simple, straight to the point subject lines, a couple of lines of body copy, don't inundate because most of that stuff won't get read... a couple of simple sentences from you about why your thing is unique, why it's interesting.”
Write Two To Three Sentences And One Screenshot — The Press Pitch Format That Gets Read
Panzarino's mechanical pitch format: short subject line, two to three sentences of body copy explaining what's unique, one sharp screenshot embedded in the email. Everything else goes in an attached press kit. A pasted wall of text signals a bulk campaign and gets skipped. Keep the body as a genuine personal message — the press kit handles all the detail a writer needs to produce the story.