You can build the app, and the marketing is what decides whether anyone finds and keeps it. Compass helps you win the downloads that matter, turns installs into active users, and teaches you the marketing craft so each launch lands better than the last. Try Compass today with a free 90 day growth plan.
It's launch week and the app is live, and the downloads are a trickle. The store listing is up but buried, the few installs you get churn within days, and you cannot tell whether the problem is the store page, the onboarding, or that nobody knows the app exists. A competitor with a thinner app ranks above you and gets the press, your launch post reached your own followers and stopped there, and the app marketing advice online is a maze of acronyms and paid-install tactics that assume a budget. You know the app deserves users, but the marketing that would find and keep them is the work you keep putting off. What do you do?
Most app marketing advice was written for funded studios with a user-acquisition budget and a growth team, all paid installs and dashboards an indie developer cannot run. You have read the ASO threads and ended up with a list of tactics and no plan, and the installs that churn in days are the thing that frustrates you. The advice assumes money to buy installs and a team to test, and it rarely tells you which move matters at your stage. It ends in chasing downloads that do not stick, launching to your own followers, and watching a thinner app with better marketing take the users who should have been yours.
Most AI tools would generate your marketing and hand you the same paid-install playbook everyone runs, when knowing which few actions matter for your app and stage is the whole game. Compass works the other way. It pairs the speed of AI with coaching and a feel for how an app finds and keeps users, so your judgement grows and you learn the marketing as you build.
Compass starts with the store listing and the users who stick, because downloads that churn cost more than they earn and the listing is where most installs are won or lost. It surfaces the store-optimisation, launch, and distribution actions that fit your app against what your category typically does, and it names the reason behind each one so the craft stays with you. It sets your channel mix to fit an indie developer, calibrated to where your users are, like the communities, search, and content that suit your app, rather than a paid-install model you cannot fund. It teaches you to build the launch and retention rhythm that turns an install into an active user and a one-off download into a habit.
You stay the developer who builds the app, you learn why each one finds and keeps users, and you have a senior marketing executive's judgement beside you.
Twenty minutes to get started. You answer a handful of quick questions about your app: what it does, who it is for, where your users come from, where you already show up. While you answer, Compass researches your market and surfaces what it finds for you to confirm or correct. Then a short guided conversation captures the rest: your best early user, what success looks like for the next quarter, what marketing you have tried, and how much time you can put behind it.
The free 90 Day Growth Plan lands first: a single on-screen plan personalised to your app, with the truth about your market, the user profiles most worth pursuing, the moments that turn an install into an active user, and a 90 day roadmap of the actions that matter most. Your Pro subscription turns that into a full 12 month marketing strategy with deeper research, five user profiles instead of two, and a monthly cadence that adapts as the app grows.
A short daily task list, sized to the time you have, anything from one task to a few, organised by user profile and channel. Some tasks Compass handles in the background, such as mention tracking and listings monitoring. The rest are short and clear, designed to fit around the build, with the marketing science behind each explained in plain English so you learn the craft as you go.
App marketing has its own canon of science: how a user finds and decides to install, the store-listing mechanics that win or lose most installs, the launch and distribution that decide whether a release is heard, and the activation and retention maths that turn an install into an active user. Compass applies the science to your app and names the reason behind every task in plain English, so you learn your marketing craft every day until one day you won't need Compass anymore.
Pro Plan subscription £19 per month for as long as you stay.