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Ask HN: Do Google ads work for user acquisition?

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Re: Ask HN: Do Google ads work for user acquisition?

#21
Absolutely it works. I've been doing acquisition marketing for close to 10 years with 200+ million downloads/sign-ups/purchases etc to my name. If it didn't work I wouldn't have much of a job.

Before going down this process you should know how much a developer sign-up worth to you. You can always buy growth, but you need to know if you can buy growth profitably. Generally look to get a short term value plus a life-time value calculate ROMI. It wont be accurate but do the best you can.

Between Google and FB, I've found Google search is the regular winner but the ROI gap is narrowing these days. There's some good hacks you can use to access your audience cheaply if you get creative. I would recommend you trial display as if done well this could provide better results than search (where most companies go first).

There's a pertinent quote for new products: "A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster."

Make sure your monitoring not just sign-ups, but how long people stick around etc.

Best of luck.

Re: Ask HN: Do Google ads work for user acquisition?

#22

Once upon a time I tried to use Google ads to promote the parent site for my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/devfactor I spent $100 on ads, which resulted in around 25 new subscribers. The next week, I wrote a really in depth Arduino Morse code tutorial which ended up on some social networks and netted me ~100 subs. I'd say that Google adds for me where NOT worth the price. Generating more organic conte…

Your economics are unique compared to typical SASS, for example. The LTV of a Youtube channel subscriber is basically $0.

Re: Ask HN: Do Google ads work for user acquisition?

#23
Thank you all for your answers. This was really insightful and I will incorporate some of your suggestion into our digital marketing efforts going forward.

I'm not sure about stack overflow ads. Hackerearth also helps developers find jobs and that might a conflict of interest for stack overflow careers.

I will personally reach out to some of you folks. This has been really useful!

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