A sad tale of a man who can't do marketing

Hi folks,

I was in conversation with one of the contributors who suggested I relay my tale to the wider group to see if anyone can help. This is a long post but it should at least provide some educational value in terms of what NOT to do when it comes to marketing a product.

I am self-taught independent developer with an app to sell. The app is called 'Buck The Critics'. It's basically a social version of IMDB. So it's a comprehensive movie and TV database app with a twist. You can invite friends and collaboratively build a reviews database together. The idea is that there is too much choice across all the streaming services nowadays so wouldn't it be great if you had an app where you could see all the best stuff rated by your friends and family! It's got notifications & chat functionality and is totally free to use! (The advanced social functions are a paid upgrade at a paltry £20 a year).

Now, the nature of this app is such that it SHOULD be primed for a viral spread. The app is more useful to you, the more of your friends and family that you invite because it makes your reviews database richer! Thus i'm assuming that if I can get a reasonable number of downloads... say 1000, then I might expect it to start growing organically through word of mouth... At the very least I could start acquiring user feedback to start a cycle of improvements to ENSURE it gets a good as i already think it is.

Today I have about 12 users... Most of these people are my friends... But we use it all the time and find loads of cool stuff to watch as a result.

What I need is some sort of advice on how to drive traffic to an app. Marketing is NOT my wheelhouse so part of the reason I joined this group is to discover ways that I can deploy AI to automate some sort of funnel to my app page... I'm basically trying to 'code' my way out of having to do marketing which i know i'm terrible at! Lol.

Here is the string of failures on my marketing journey so far...

VIRAL X ACCOUNT STRATEGY:

I set up an X account (with that handle) and spent the first month of this year doing a bunch of quirky posts i hoped might go viral. For example i would use MidJourney to recreate famous scenes from movies in Lego and challenge people to guess the movie in the comments... That sort of stuff. After about a month i only had 30 followers... I even paid a few hundred dollars to promote some of these posts and nothing... There were SO many accounts i was following that was putting out much lazier posts (likely bot generated) that had hundreds of thousands of followers and i simply couldn't understand how they got that audience. I gave up on 'viral account on X' as a strategy. I've attached a screenshot with examples of what i was facing...

DEVELPER BLOG STRATEGY:

I entered an 'app of the year' competition and lost to a guy with an app which while good was honestly just not remotely as good or ambitious as mine... He launched and got about 100,000 downloads in his first week. I asked him how he managed this and he told me he built an audience by blogging his development process and posting to an X channel called 'build in public'. I tried to copy this by developing an entirely NEW app called 'Bushy Bingo' and blogging the dev process from start to finish. The blog is called '52 Weeks of App'... I think it's funny and filled with useful practical information. After 9 weeks i had barely any subscribers and never even got a single like or a comment... I abandoned it as a complete waste of time

PRESS RELEASE STRATEGY:

I paid a couple hundred quid to publish a 'press release' for Bushy Bingo on 'pressat' - You can read it here

https://pressat.co.uk/releases/new-bushy-bingo-app-launches-to-inspire-young-nature-explorers-across-the-uk-7cc7b98cdd4836a8d9436129bdf64c83/

The result? Zero downloads... I did have an agency approach me having seen that press release trying to charge me £500 to release their own press release of my press release across their platforms which i rejected given i'm now of the view that press releases are just another way to relieve indie developers of their money

FLYERS STRATEGY:

I printed off a couple dozen A6 fliers with a QR code on it and walked around various shops and kid friendly establishments in my local town to advertise Bushy Bingo. The app is highly relevant to people in my town because it's inspired by 'Bushy Park' which is right on our doorstep. I even went to the reference library for the borough to ask if they would allow me to put posters up across the county given it is a free to play educational app for young kids in the area of particular local interest... They reject me... zero downloads

So I'm about £800 of marketing expense down with no users to show for it and i'm out of money...

My CURRENT idea is to create a YouTube channel which will do a thematic analysis of sci-fi books to a background of MidJourney generated images of scenes from the books! It's taking a lot longer than I'd hoped but I think it's a good idea.. The plan would be to grow a following so I could advertise my apps to that following...

If i've learnt anything in this process it's that good ideas DON'T COUNT! The app was a good idea and nobody downloaded it, i have every expectation that nobody will watch my YouTube channel also.

So i'm basically asking if anyone else has perhaps been in a similar position, or perhaps just knows some time efficient AI fuelled flows that can help me drive traffic to my products. Any and all advice would be be gratefully received... I'm not used to asking for help, but it's clearly time... Nursery bills are like £2000 a month in the UK and i'm out of savings! lol

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