How to market an iOS app in 2026?

[Casino_john]

Hello guys,

I have built a quit smoking app but have trouble marketing it.
I have tried fixing keywords to improve my ASO but so far i have not see any increase in downloads from that.


I post mostly on youtube but my shorts get 1k views max. I try to post everyday both on youtube and on tik tok.

Past 2 weeks i only got 3 downloads

tik tok gives garbage audience from east europe. Youtube gives good audience from tier 1 english speaking countries.


I dont have money for paid marketing right now.


I tried posting on reddit and quit smoking sub reddits but all of them ban self promo.

Marketing an app is harder than building it.

Please help any help is appreciated it.

 

[Casino_john]

Ngl marketing a B2C utility like a quit smoking app with a grand total of zero budget in 2026 is an absolute psychological war because traditional ASO metadata tricks do absolutely nothing without an initial velocity of downloads to signal the algorithm, so you should completely pivot your short-form video strategy away from generic features and instead deploy a hyper-targeted "Build in Public" storytelling angle where you post raw screen recordings of yourself coding the app as a solo developer trying to solve a real human crisis—while simultaneously bypassing strict Reddit self-promo bans by executing stealth community marketing, meaning you never drop your raw App Store link in the main post body of r/stopsmoking or r/leaves, but instead share an emotional text-only milestone or a visual "craving-timer screen recording" that naturally hooks desperate users into practically begging you for the download link directly in the comment section

Thank you for the tip about reddit, its a good advice, but build in public idk about that one because wont you just attract developers who are also building?

 

[wolfofdevstreet]

1st of all, what the first comment said is easier said than done, no one will "beg" you for the download link, ai makes things sound like a hollywood movie.

Anyways, try to find discord servers in your niche, start chatting and implementing yourself as someone who is trying to quit smoking, and after a while you should be able to say yeah i used this app to help me quit smoking, i think same can be done on reddit but its harder, facebook is also good for these kinds of things

 

[Casino_john]

1st of all, what the first comment said is easier said than done, no one will "beg" you for the download link, ai makes things sound like a hollywood movie.

Anyways, try to find discord servers in your niche, start chatting and implementing yourself as someone who is trying to quit smoking, and after a while you should be able to say yeah i used this app to help me quit smoking, i think same can be done on reddit but its harder, facebook is also good for these kinds of things

This is actually a good advice thank you ill try that

 

[ActiveRevenue]

if budget is limited, i'd focus heavily on understanding where your existing users are coming from before trying every marketing channel available.

sometimes a small amount of traction contains clues about the audience that responds best to the product.

the goal early on isn't necessarily massive scale. it's finding a repeatable acquisition channel that can be expanded later with confidence.

 

[ricketycricket]

For quit smoking niche I wouldnt lead with “download my app” at all, people smell that from miles away. Make content around cravings, money saved, day 3/day 7 symptoms, what happens after 24h etc and put the app as the thing in the background, not the main character.

Also try making 1 simple free tool on a webpage like “how much money will I save if I quit” or “nicotine recovery timeline” and link the app from there. Those can rank way easier than the app store page and you can post the tool in places without it looking like straight self promo.

And yeah build in public will mostly attract devs unless you frame it as “I’m quitting and building this for myself”. Smokers don’t care about your code, they care about not folding at 11pm when cravings hit.