Marketing Tips: Understanding Your Marketing Channels and How to Use Them to Market Your No Code App

You might’ve thought all the hard work was behind you after building your app on Thunkable’s drag and drop app builder, but we promise the fun has just begun! The Thunkable team is back with our next installment of Marketing Tips. (Be sure to check out our first two about Competitor Analysis and Search Engine Marketing if you need a refresher!)

This time, we’re taking a step back and highlighting where and how you can market your no code app.

Low/No Cost Marketing Channels

The following marketing channels have minimal or zero costs to set up and maintain. These channels offer a great way to directly interact with your app users. 

Social Media

One of the easiest ways to begin marketing your app is by creating social media channels or utilizing your personal following to share information about your app. Social media is a great way to connect directly with your audience, show app features, and receive feedback. 

Social media is a no cost way to begin marketing your app and growing your user base. 

Examples:

• Instagram - create reels to show how to use your app, answer user questions, and share background on various features.
• Twitter - promote your app, share release updates, and more while interacting with other members of the no code community. 
• TikTok - a great place to share short video tutorials or sneak peaks of what’s to come in your no code mobile app. 
• Facebook - share events, history of making your app, user stories, and general updates.

You can even create custom stickers to share your social handles and spread awareness about your mobile app in a fun and creative way.

Email Marketing 

Connecting directly with your user base is easy with email marketing. In emails, you can send updates, special offers, and other information directly to your app users’ inboxes. 

If your app collects email addresses, email marketing could be an easy and efficient marketing channel to use. 

A few free/low cost email marketing tools include: Mailchimp, Sendinblue, Hubspot, and MailerLite.

Low/Medium Spend Marketing Channels

In this section, we’ll cover Digital, PPC, Display, and Social Ads. With the following channels you can spend a little (>$100) or more. These channels — unlike those in the prior section — also provide some serious data about who is clicking and interacting with your ads. 

Digital Ads

Many marketers utilize digital ads (like PPC ads or Display ads)ads to find new customers, and it’s easy to see why.

PPC Ads

With PPC, you pay per click made by your potential audience. Typically run through a search engine, these text based ads only appear when someone is already looking for information related to your app. You typically see PPC ads at the top of search results on Google. They have a small, bolded “Ad” notation on the left hand side. With PPC you can spend a lot or a little and bid on terms related to your app. 

Display Ads

Another type of paid ad is a display ad. Display ads are primarily utilized to raise brand awareness. Display ads tend to be very eye-catching and graphic in nature. Most bright, splashy ads you see are display ads. If you’ve ever had an ad follow you around the internet, those are retargeted display ads.

Similarly to PPC ads, with display ads, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. 

(For more information on digital ads and how they fit into your marketing efforts, refer to our previous blog.)

Social Ads

If utilizing PPC or display ads seems overwhelming, social media ads might be right for you! 

With social media ads, you use the social media paid platform and can target by location, age, interests, and more. You control how much you want to spend and, again, only pay when someone clicks or interacts with your ad. 

(Pssst. Word has it we’ll be sharing upcoming tips about social ads and how to make the most of them! Stay tuned.) 

Medium/High Spend Marketing Channels

In this section, we’ll cover the various traditional marketing channels. This route is pretty costly because you not only pay for your ad to run, but creating an ad (either by doing it yourself or hiring freelancers) is an additional cost. 

Traditional Marketing 

If you’ve got some money to spend, exploring traditional marketing might be right for you. 

Though it can be pricey (like, thousands-of-dollars pricey), traditional marketing is a great option for raising brand awareness, converting new users, and getting your brand new app in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and you have a variety of ads you can utilize.

Video Ads

Traditional marketing includes traditional TV (broadcast or cable) and OTT (Hulu or streamers).

Radio Ads

Traditional marketing also includes broadcast radio that you might listen to on your daily commute and digital radio (Spotify, Pandora).

Oftentimes, brands will work with media buyers to place these ads, which can cost even more money, but, when done well, it can really pay off when it comes to brand awareness. ​​

Final Thoughts

Don’t forget! You are no longer only a no code app builder; now you’re a marketer as well! Many app creators don’t know where to start when it comes to marketing their apps and can be overwhelmed by the various marketing channels, so we hope this blog (and the next few to come!) provide some clarity. 

Need More Help?

We have a ton of resources for you in our Docs or leverage our Community for any other support you may need! Don’t hesitate to utilize these resources as you continue on your no code journey.

And, don’t forget: we have additional marketing tips coming your way in future blogs, so keep checking back for more guidance!