Let me tell you a story of Nerd Fitness.

In a space that's fiercely contested, where anyone can get an exercise routine for free from YouTube, and where there's a plethora of apps and courses available, Nerd Fitness has positioned itself as a fitness resource for, you guessed it, nerds.

People who are office workers.

People who sit at desks, lead sedentary lifestyles and have never really been the athletic type.

And their whole marketing and product positioning is around that group.

So you can expect to see content around food prep tips for office workers, workout strategies for the hassled and always on the run 9-5iver and apps for tracking your fitness.

They have a thriving business, vocal fans, and what I would imagine healthy profits.

I know another fitness brand who targets only seniors.

That's a great thing about going into a crowded market- the demand is already proven, but the bigger players try to be everything for everyone and fall short.

So if you are in the hosting market, position your product for a particular subset of users, like freelancers.

Package your products in such a way that it makes sense only for them. Offer specific add-ons, tie up with other companies who are targeting only freelancers, offer discounts on products or services that they will use.

That's how you break into a crowded market.

Go for niche, but be open to pivoting and appealing to a broader audience.

Ideally, when planning your product roadmap you should build it around the needs of a specific group of users.

But there comes a time when you have conquered the TAM (unless it's a blue ocean market like health, fashion, fitness etc) and you would want to branch out into adjacent or adjoining markets.

But if you have built too deep, it might be extremely hard for you to expand and grow.

So, go vertical right now, but also account for horizontal expansion.

A few more things to account for when determining your target market:

- the interest in the type of product over time. (you don't want to build around a fad).
- whether you are solving for a bleeding neck or for a sprain. If you have demonstrated expertise, people will line up for the former.
- whether you are solving for convenience or cost. Some markets care about convenience, and others are cost-sensitive.

Get any of these wrong (these are just few of the many factors) and your product will not appeal to your target market at all.

Niche down!

Find a way to appeal to a certain demographic. You can't compete with Messenger or Whatsapp when it comes to their reach.

But you can compete on features or how you position your product.

Add features to your product that the bigger products don't have. it could be something like better tools for managing a group chat, or tighter integration with a software product that your target demographic would use.

The choice of the platform, as well the launch strategy would then hinge on the user demographic you are targeting.

I would be able to advise you better if I saw your website or knew what your niche was but there are two broad principles you should follow:

1) Optimize what you are already doing
You are already getting leads. So, it's not a traffic problem as much as it is a conversion problem.

Keeping this in mind here are some of the things you can do to improve lead quality:

a) Improve the copy on your website. Your positioning and your USP should be such that the right people are attracted and more importantly, the wrong people are turned off. Focus on what your ideal clients look like, and then write the copy around their pain points.

b) Nurture your leads better
Do you have a lead nurturing system in place? If the lead asks for a price, do you ask them to submit a form where you attempt to get more context and insight into their business challenges? Do you run an autoresponder campaign where you highlight the issues your potential customers might face if they dawdle over the transaction?

Sometimes, people might have the budget but they might not have the talking points to sell you to their bosses. It's your job to give them that ammo.

2) Once you have optimized your current processes, you will need to find out new ways to get leads.

You can target a number of channels depending on how much your customer acquisition costs are and the projected customer life time value is.

I would be glad to work out a lead acquisition strategy for you and help you execute it if you can give me some more details.

I suggest creating a paid Facebook group and charging members a monthly membership fee.

You don't even need it to be too many people- target a membership of around 300 when you get started.

Create great content and offer inside info around your core topic. Interview experts, set up AMAs on the private Facebook group, have weekly accountability threads- basically any information that will improve the members' skills. Often you won't even have to rack your brain- your members will tell you what they want the most.

Keep engagements level high and slowly open the gates as you see people getting value out of the group.

To ease your admin burdens you can appoint a few managers in the paid group, and give them a share of the revenue.

Such low conversion rates are typically because there is a disconnect between the ad and the product.

Without specifically knowing what your app is about, there can be multiple reasons why people are not downloading the app

1. The ad promises something, but on the app description, that promise is not reinforced or highlighted.

2. You have bad reviews and low ratings.

3. The app page doesn't have well written descriptions or are lacking in screenshots.

To address this situation you can do a few things:

1. If it's bad reviews/ratings then address them. Improve the user experience.This is the most likely reason why people are skipping the download button.

2. Improve the description etc on the app page. Give users more information. Align the ad with the app.

3. Run a re-marketing campaign. Run a different ad reiterating your USP and show it to those 25k people who have visited your app page.

I hope I have given you some ideas, and I would be happy to take a look at your ad and your app. if you want me to be more specific.

You could also use social signups. While this, like other sign in methods will need testing (on some tests conversion rates have zoomed when social sign in was removed) social sign up buttons (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google) give people the comfort of familiarity.

And in case you need extra information (like address or telephone number) that the social sign up data does not provide you could always prompt users to complete their profile, the same manner that LinkedIn or PayPal does