[newaccount74]

I cold emailed a blogger that I learnt a lot from and showed him my app. He liked it, mentioned it, asked a friend with lots of followers to link it. Then it spread by word of mouth, and a few weeks later I had 1000 beta testers.

Converting beta testers to paid users took a long time, but eventually it became a profitable business.

If you make something people want, it's easy and you need very little marketing.

[jainvivek]

Good that it worked relatively easy for you, but it is more of an exception than norm.

In my industry, there is a clear want for a better product but that isn't sufficient for them to switch due to natural resistance to change. Hence significant marketing is needed through trusted channels to remove that fear-of-unknown from their minds.