you are on the right track mate,

i have been working with apps for over 4 years, and only recently been working with paid advertising - there is a lot you can do for free marketing - just google it, and keep trying and learning - this is great learning tool for understanding the entire App market place

dont let the lack of funds stop you - i built everything with nothing myself also.

Just focus on this

Your app is your business - your product.

Your active users are your customers - when a customer uninstalls your app you have done something wrong - and have lost a customer.

Focus on the quality and service of your app.

Once this is perfect then you can worry about marketing - u dont want to market a product that doesn't work well.

Start a blog - talk about your experiences, what you are working on the app, get people involved, have a beta test group for testing out new versions, work on your play store keywords.

Analytic are good for dissecting each parts of your app - just like any business - treat your customers well and with respect and you will get it back.

All the best - the app game is not an easy one but as long as you take it seriously, you will outperform most apps by a mile. As really most are just devs trying to make a living by flooding the market with cheap apps, so quality always outperforms

Here are couple of things I would suggest (most are FREE, just time commitment)
- Add your app to startup launch sites (like product hunt)
- Create educational / fun content and link to app
- Add blogs on FB groups
- Add blogs on LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn native publishing & medium (content repurposing)
- See if you can find guest blog opportunity
best
ali

If you don't have much budget, start writing.

What problem do you solve with your app? Start writing guest posts for sites that are visited by your target audience, and make those posts about something related to your app's value proposition.

Give away lots of helpful content, and readers will learn to trust you — when you're trying to sell a service, that trust is worth its weight in gold.

Test the conversions from your posts, too: did a post about X create a huge influx of sign-ups, but a post about Y didn't do much at all? Try writing more about X to find out if it's a hot-button for your customers, or if that first article was just a fluke.

You may also want to look at your acquisition funnel to make sure you've got the best chance of capturing and converting new leads.

I've helped a lot of people launch companies on shoestring budgets, so if you'd like a hand with building your strategy, let me know. I'd be happy to share what I know.

Good luck!

Seek out your target audience and aggressively collect reviews in the app store of your choice. This has shown to be a highly effective way of rising to the top of long, long list of apps available.

Further, many industry news websites are hurting for content. Approach them with how your app can solve a problem for their readership and you'll likely get some good press from it.

Best of luck and feel free to reserve a time here on Clarity for more.
-Shaun

There's a lot of ways you can do this.
You didn't mention what kind of app it is and what operating system it runs on. This could yield some specific ways of marketing.

If your app is sold on itunes, consider contacting the yahoo writer who releases "free today apps" on their columns.

Get an invite to producthunt.com

Leverage personas through instagram with pictures

build an audience through facebook groups for possible users of your app...

There's a ton you can do. Especially for free.

You should experiment with 3 different user acquisition channels every month unntil you can eliminate the ones that don't work and basically double down on the channels that's bringing you users. (I have a worksheet for this)

That's what I did for my startups (LawTrades and myFBcoverPhoto) and eventually grew the first to profitability and the latter to 10M hits/month without ever hiring anyone else or paying for users.

I know a lot of people will tell you about content marketing but that's just one peice of the puzzle.

I can't spell out everything for you in this answer but here's a high level overview of some of things we can discuss in a phone call:
- viral marketing (creating an app feedback loop)
- unconventional PR
- meetup.com / community building
- piggy backing exising platforms
- biz dev
- affiliate programs

That's already plenty to keep you busy for the next 6 months but there's more.

I'm a maker on Product Hunt so happy to submit your app there if the fit is right.

I have some free time this week to dig a little deeper if you want to hop on a call.

Either way, don't give up. It won't be busy but if you do the right things consistently it'll defiantly pay off.

Best of luck,
Raad