App promotion ideas generator

Pick your stage and budget and get a ranked list of promotion tactics with the effort each one takes, what it's realistically good for, and what it demands. No paid-channel advice you can't act on, and no tactics that need a team.

How to use it

1. Choose your stage (pre-launch, just launched, or growing) and your monthly budget.
2. Generate the tactic list. The ranking is by effort-to-return for a small team, not by budget spent.
3. Pick two tactics to run this month and ignore the rest. Adding four at once is how none of them happen.

The interactive tool runs in your browser. Enable JavaScript to generate results, then copy them into your own planner. Nothing you type is sent to us.

Worked examples

Stage: just launched · budget: $0/month

Ranked list leads with a daily short-form cadence, then your own channels (changelog, Discord, email), then two specific community posts. Paid ads and influencer outreach are listed as not-yet-appropriate with the reason.

Stage: growing · budget: about $200/month

Adds a tool subscription for production/automation, a listing experiment budget, and a small test of a creator partnership — each with the precondition (a working store page, retention data) spelled out.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best free ways to promote an app?

A daily short-form content cadence, your own channels (changelog, community, email), and a small number of genuinely participative community posts. They cost time rather than money, and they compound rather than spike.

Should I run paid ads for my app?

Only after your store page converts and you know your retention. Ads scale a working funnel; without conversion and retention data they produce an expensive, unreadable result.

How many promotion tactics should I run at once?

Two. One channel and one supporting activity. A solo developer running four tactics generally does all four badly and abandons them within a month.

When should I start promoting before launch?

Two to three weeks out for social content, earlier for a waitlist. That gives the algorithm time to categorise your account and means launch week is spent responding rather than producing.

Related reading

• App promotion
  The full tactic checklist this generator draws from.
• App launch marketing plan
  Sequence the tactics around a launch date.
• Indie app marketing
  What to skip when you're a team of one.
• App marketing
  Why these tactics work, and the funnel behind them.

Appsurge does this continuously — niche research, a generated weekly plan, an approval queue, and publishing through the official APIs for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, and Threads.

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