MVP Stage: Should I drive influencer marketing traffic to landing page or download app? (B2C Social app)

[danieljs97]

Hi guys,

So my friend and I have been working on an Events discovery/Social app—aiming to compete with BumbleBFF & Meetup. Target demographic: College kids & young adults looking for fun activities to do and/or wanting to grow their social circle.

Some key features:

• Unique party system. Parties are a simpler way to organise events without the hassle of growing & managing a group. Simply, choose a party size (3-8 people), pick a time & place, add a description, and we'll place it in front of people interested in joining.
• Party chat. Upon joining a party, you'll enter a shared chatroom with other members. With party chat, you can stress less about keeping convos afloat. Skip the small talk & vibe with party members before meeting.
• Meet like-minded people. It's natural to be drawn to people who are similar to us. Express yourself by adding from a long list of interest to your profile. We'll rank certain parties higher on your Discover feed the more mutual interests you share with party members inside. That way, you can be sure to have at least a couple things in common to chat about.
• Age & gender preferences. Let's say you're a female student looking to make some girl friends around the same age. With age & gender preferences, you can restrict who can view & join your party. Note: Party admin must fall within set preferences—i.e. You cannot be a 50 y.o man & set the party to 'Women aged 18-25' (you creepo ._.)

Here's the problem...

With many "chicken & egg" apps, it's always tricky acquiring users on both ends.

In our case, we have Organisers & Attendees.

We initially thought, maybe we could growth hack via posting on Reddit for some free early traffic. But that quickly got shut down as many Mods declined our posts even if it were related to the sub. Violated the 'no self-promo rule'.

I saw this dating app in Vietnam, called Fika, who generated 1,000 downloads within 3 hours at a uni campus during Orientation Day. We're looking at doing the same but Semester 1 is 3 months away.

In the meantime, we're thinking of using social media influencers within our city to promote our app. I think this would yield a better ROI compared to standard paid FB/IG ads.

We're weeks away from finishing our MVP.

We also have a website that we've quickly whipped up.

But we're unsure if we should drive traffic to:

Option 1) Download the App

Option 2) Landing page > Pre-signups.

One concern we had was people downloading the app & there's no users around.

The other concern is, people naturally want things now. So, I'm afraid of people finding pre-signups a hassle or they may forget to download the app when it's ready (email gets lost in their inbox).

I'd love to get your thoughts! Thanks

 

[donat]

@danieljs97 Both! A/B testing

 

[icashoutapp]

@danieljs97 I'd go with Pre-signups, just to validate the idea & let 1000s of people that signed up know at the same time they can connect to 1000s of people that signed up. Therefore you've provided value to each one ("You can find friends & groups") instead of users downloading the app, just to find it empty.

You can also use the signup list and say to your Organizers that you have 35k people signed up and they've expressed interest in meeting at your venue. Sometimes you have to fake it till you make it!

Using influencers is a great way to spread the word, but be sure you're coordinated, ie. you're inviting people to the same event VIA your app

 

[xjasonsteelex]

@icashoutapp I would also recommend going with the pre-sign-up option. I have to be very committed to downloading an app, and creating an account/sign up, ...