How do you market a social/competitive app when the core feature is dead until users have friends on it?
Full disclosure up front: I built a gym app (competitive, friends compete on leaderboards and head to head rivalries). So this is my real problem, not hypothetical, and I'm here for the marketing angle, not to pitch.
The issue: the whole hook is competing with your friends. But a brand new user with no friends on the app lands in an empty version of the exact feature that's supposed to sell it. Empty leaderboard, no one to challenge. Classic cold-start / network-effect problem, but I'm a solo dev with basically no budget, so I can't buy my way to critical mass.
Stuff I'm weighing:
- Shifting acquisition from "one user" to "one small group" (recruit whole gym crews at once so the leaderboard's populated day one)
- Adding a global/public weekly challenge so solo users have something to compete in immediately, even with zero friends
- Leaning harder on solo value (ranks, streaks, goals) to retain people until friends join
For anyone who's marketed a social or multiplayer-type app: how did you get past the empty-room problem early on? Did you focus on group acquisition, fake-it-till-critical-mass, lean on single-player value, something else? Genuinely trying to learn what actually worked, not looking for a plug.