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Reserving a marketing budget and choosing the first channel

Why new apps fail without an earmarked marketing budget, and Steve P. Young's default first channels (ASO + Apple Ads), with the warning that viral social views often don't convert to downloads.

Updated 2026-10-23·3 sources·product-strategymarketing-budgetdistributionchannel-strategycommon-mistakes

Reserving a marketing budget and choosing the first channel

TL;DR

  • Mistake #7: spending everything on development — without marketing you own “a very expensive piece of software for yourself”.1
  • Earmark part of the budget for marketing before building; AI-cheap development makes this easier.2
  • Distribution first: if Steve can’t get distribution, he doesn’t invest in building the app further.3
  • Don’t know marketing? Start with ASO + Apple Ads — best ROI and easiest to set up.34
  • Know social? Start there — but viral views don’t guarantee installs (one founder: 2M views → ~20 downloads).3
  • You need only one or two channels — Steve has seen apps reach $5M MRR on one or two.5

Details

Budget logic (Jaime, B7 Dev, May 2026). The best tech, design and development fail if nobody knows the app exists; he claims good marketing is “like 90% of success”, having seen weaker products win on marketing.12

Channel choice (Steve). ASO (organic keyword rankings) and Apple Ads are pull channels where people already search, so they convert well and need little budget.36 Social virality is high-variance: for every “7M views, 1M downloads” story he hears from people with millions of views and a handful of installs.3

Sizing a paid test (Meta, Oct 2026). $1,000 at ~$2 CPI ≈ 500 installs; at a 7% trial rate that’s only ~35 trials — below the ~50 weekly events Meta needs to optimise. Know these numbers before committing budget.7

Sequence: validate with ASO/Apple Ads → confirm conversion → scale on Meta (How much to rely on ASO, and how it fits with Apple Ads and Meta).6

Disagreements / caveats

  • Both speakers sell services (marketing vs development) and cross-refer to each other.
  • “90% of success” is a rhetorical estimate, not a measured figure.2
  • Categories without search demand (e.g. a new social network) can’t start with ASO/ASA.8

See also

Footnotes

  1. Why Most Apps Are Failing in 2026: 7 Mistakes Killing Your App Success @ 18:05 — Jaime (B7 Dev) ↩ ↩2

  2. Why Most Apps Are Failing in 2026: 7 Mistakes Killing Your App Success @ 19:11 — Jaime (B7 Dev) ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Why Most Apps Are Failing in 2026: 7 Mistakes Killing Your App Success @ 19:11 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Why Most Apps Are Failing in 2026: 7 Mistakes Killing Your App Success @ 20:43 — Steve P. Young ↩

  5. Copy Our $85,000/Month Apple Ads Strategy @ 01:09 — Steve P. Young ↩

  6. Before You Spend $1 on Meta Ads, Watch This @ 05:48 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩2

  7. Before You Spend $1 on Meta Ads, Watch This @ 17:00 — Steve P. Young ↩

  8. Before You Spend $1 on Meta Ads, Watch This @ 06:37 — Steve P. Young ↩