Q&A: How Do You Attract Users Without Wasting Budget?
What makes you want to download an app?
In a recent office hours session, we dove into one of the most pressing questions for entrepreneurs and marketers: how do you attract users, especially when the rules keep changing?
For dating apps, advertising on platforms like TikTok, Meta, and Google can be a black box. Policies change unpredictably and are applied unequally to different companies. Ads often get rejected with vague explanations. When I was at TMG, for instance, ads for Growlr, a gay dating app, were rejected when similar (and equally vanilla) ads featuring man-woman couples were accepted. One office hours attendee even shared how they’d applied multiple times to get their app whitelisted as a dating app so they could run ads—only to keep hearing “no” without a clear reason why.
It’s frustrating, but this isn’t just about ads. Whether you’re struggling to run campaigns or exploring organic alternatives, it all comes back to the same question: How do you attract the right users and make them stick around?
When advertising platforms shift policies or algorithms change, suddenly, what worked a month ago doesn’t anymore. Even worse, rejection reasons can be unclear or inconsistent, leaving businesses scrambling. It’s easy then to make the assumption that once you figure out how to advertise the product, it will work and all will be successful, but ads are just one tactic in your playbook. Ads alone won’t grow your business sustainably. Instead, keep these three strategies in mind while you build your product and attract new members:
Focus on Your Product First
Before you consider marketing, evaluate your product. Are people who try it staying? If not, that’s where your energy should go. Fixing retention metrics is infinitely more important than tweaking ad campaigns. Otherwise, you’re just pouring money into a leaky bucket. Use business intelligence tools to look at the benchmarks for your category and industry. How do your retention metrics compare?
These tools are also helpful because they can prevent you from focusing your energy on items where only incremental gains are possible. For instance, if our apps scored similarly to industry leaders from Match Group for ASO, then further optimizing keywords was unlikely to yield drastically better results. The time would be better spent focusing on a lagging area.
At myYearbook, we didn’t focus on paid marketing in any real way for our first six years. When we started experimenting with ads, we already had millions of members, good retention, and we knew our LTV. Ads aren’t the only way to grow, and they shouldn’t be the first way you grow.
Ask yourself: Is your app solving a real problem? Are your users excited enough to tell their friends about it? These questions matter more than any ad copy ever will.
Explore Other Growth Channels
We had great paid marketing performance, but not every user needs to come from an ad. As we grew, we leaned into other tactics and strategies to attract members including:
Press Coverage: We were sold on the importance of media early on in my company’s journey. When I appeared in CosmoGirl, our website crashed because of the additional new registrations. Press coverage is fantastic because it is not the brand talking about themselves, which makes any claims in the article significantly more credible. Additionally, press coverage was valuable to have when we were raising funding. Though we would later have an in-house PR person or work with agencies, we started small. I secured early press by cold-emailing journalists in the space. If you want to get more press, I recommend listening to this episode of Lenny’s Podcast with Jason Feifer.
Referrals: Incentivize users to invite their friends. At one point, we ran a campaign offering free t-shirts and thongs (😜) to users who referred five or more friends who signed up. People loved it, and the bonus was that users who came in through a friend referral were more likely to retain.
Virality Built Into the Product: We engineered virality using user-generated quizzes like “What Friends character are you?” to attract new users. We also built a layout site in the heyday of MySpace layouts. People would come to us for that content and stay for the people.
Organic growth might seem slower than paid campaigns, but it delivers higher-quality users—and it doesn’t get as easily derailed by algorithm changes. It’s the most critical piece of the funnel.
3) Be Personal
Even when you run ads, the message should feel personal, not like it’s coming from a brand. Our best-performing ads featured real users who loved our apps and wanted to share their stories.
We got their permission to use their photos and quotes, and the results spoke for themselves. Why? Because authenticity resonates.
People are tired of being sold to. Ads that feel more like a friend’s recommendation are more effective than flashy, overproduced campaigns.
Attracting users is about more than just cracking the latest ad platform algorithm. It’s about solving your audience's core problems—and creating something they want to use and share.
Retention is your first priority. If you do it right, growth will follow through referrals, press, or paid campaigns.
So, next time you’re stressing over ad rejections, take a step back and ask: is this really where my focus should be?
Other resources to check out:
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth (Thanks for recommending, Benjamin Boehlke!)
Designing Success: Lessons from 20 Years as a Female Tech Entrepreneur (I had to.)
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