Here's the honest truth about building apps in 2026:
Building is the easy part.
I can vibe code a SaaS in a weekend. You probably can too. The AI tools are that good now.
But getting users? That's where every indie builder I know (including me) completely falls apart.
I'm building 3 apps right now:
PayPerQR — a pay-per-scan QR code platform (no subscriptions)
Toast Photos — an event photo sharing app for weddings and parties
Distribution OS — an AI tool that automates marketing for indie hackers
Three completely different products. Three completely different customers. Three completely different distribution channels.
I knew roughly who each product was for. But "roughly" doesn't cut it when you're deciding where to spend your limited time and money on marketing.
So I did something that changed my entire approach: I asked AI to help me figure it out.
The "I Sort Of Know My Customer" Problem
Most builders have a vague sense of who their product is for. I was no different.
PayPerQR? "Small businesses that use QR codes." Toast Photos? "People getting married." Distribution OS? "Indie hackers, I guess?"
Those aren't ICPs. Those are guesses. And when you market based on guesses, you end up doing a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing.
I needed to answer three specific questions for each app:
Who exactly is my customer? Not demographics. Psychographics. What are they frustrated about? What have they tried? What would make them switch?
Where do they hang out? Not "the internet." Which specific platforms, communities, forums, and content types reach them?
What are competitors doing to reach them? Not what competitors say they do. What they actually do. Their SEO keywords. Their ad copy. Their content strategy.
Answering these questions manually would take weeks of research. With AI, it took an afternoon.
Step 1: Reverse-Engineering The Competition
I started with the competitors.
For each of my 3 apps, I identified the top 5-10 competitors and pointed Claude Code at their websites. Using Firecrawl (a web scraping tool that converts pages to clean markdown), I pulled their entire site structure.
What I was looking for:
Their pricing pages (who are they pricing for?)
Their blog content (what keywords are they targeting?)
Their landing page copy (what pain points do they emphasize?)
Their feature pages (what do they think matters most?)
Their testimonials (who are their happiest customers?)
For PayPerQR, I scraped QR Tiger, Beaconstac, QR Code Generator, and a bunch of others. The patterns jumped out immediately.
Every single competitor uses subscriptions. Monthly plans ranging from $7 to $75. And buried in their review pages? Complaint after complaint about being locked into annual contracts for a tool they use twice a year.
That's a positioning opportunity that I'm doubling down on.
Step 2: Finding The Real ICP
Here's what the competitive research revealed about who I should actually be targeting:
PayPerQR's real ICP:
Not "small businesses." It's businesses that naturally refresh their materials on a seasonal cycle. Restaurants updating seasonal menus. Real estate agents printing new listing flyers. Event organizers running one-time conferences.
These people don't want a monthly subscription for something they need 4 times a year. They want to pay for what they use and move on.
The target keywords practically wrote themselves: "QR code generator no subscription," "pay per QR code scan," "QR codes for seasonal menus," "QR codes for one-time events."
Toast Photos' real ICP:
Not "people getting married." It's the person organizing the photo experience at an event. Sometimes that's the couple. Sometimes it's a wedding planner. Sometimes it's a maid of honor who saw a disposable camera idea on TikTok.
The distribution channel? Completely different from PayPerQR. These people aren't Googling "photo sharing app." They're scrolling Pinterest boards and IG, watching TikTok wedding content, and reading wedding planning blogs. SEO matters here, but it's discovery-based, not search-intent-based.
The competitor I studied most closely was once.film — a digital disposable camera app charging $0-$69.99 by guest count. iOS only. No video. No Android. The gaps were obvious.
This helped me decide that I will stick to a web app where users and guests don't need to download another app on their phone!
Distribution OS's real ICP:
This one was the most interesting because I'm building it for people like me. Vibe coders and indie hackers who can build anything but can't market anything.
The distribution channel is also completely different: indie hacker communities, build-in-public Twitter, Product Hunt, Indie Hackers forum, and newsletters (like this one).
No paid ads. No SEO play (at first). Pure community and content.
Step 3: Mapping Distribution Channels
This is where it got really interesting. Each app needs a totally different distribution approach.
I had Claude Code create a "strategy doc" for each app that maps:
The problem the app solves
The ideal customer and their psychographics
The pricing model and competitive differentiators
The top 3 distribution channels, ranked by effort vs. impact
Here's what came out:
PayPerQR Distribution Strategy:
Programmatic SEO — Generate hundreds of landing pages targeting niche keywords like "QR code for restaurant menu" and "QR code for real estate listing." Using DataForSEO for keyword research (pay-as-you-go, not $100/month Ahrefs). Claude Code generates the pages.
Free tool as marketing — Build a "QR Code ROI Calculator" that shows businesses how much they're overpaying on subscriptions. The tool captures emails and upsells to PayPerQR.
Directory submissions — Product Hunt, AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, and niche directories where businesses look for tools.
Toast Photos Distribution Strategy:
Social/visual discovery — TikTok and IG content showing the product in action at real weddings. This is where the ICP browses for ideas.
Wedding blog SEO — Content targeting "wedding photo sharing app," "guest photo sharing," and "digital disposable camera alternative." These are high-intent searches.
Planner partnerships — Wedding planners who recommend tools to clients. One planner = dozens of events.
Distribution OS Distribution Strategy:
Build in public — This newsletter, X posts, and sharing every experiment. The product IS the content.
Community seeding — Indie Hackers, r/SideProject, Build in Public communities. Be helpful first, product second.
Product Hunt launch — When the product is ready, not before.
App | Real ICP | Primary Channel |
|---|---|---|
PayPerQR | Seasonal businesses (restaurants, real estate, events) | Programmatic SEO |
Toast Photos | Event organizers (planners, brides, maids of honor) | Social discovery (TikTok, Pinterest) |
Distribution OS | Vibe coders & indie hackers | Build in public + community |
The Framework: Same AI, Different Inputs, Different Outputs
Here's the insight that tied it all together.
I don't need three different marketing strategies. I need one AI-powered framework that takes different inputs and produces different outputs.
The framework looks like this:
Feed the strategy doc — Problem, ICP, pricing, differentiators
Scrape competitors — Firecrawl pulls their sites, Claude Code analyzes patterns
Extract keywords and positioning — What are they ranking for? What gaps exist?
Generate distribution plan — Channels ranked by effort/impact for this specific product
Execute — Claude Code generates the actual content, landing pages, and outreach
Same agent. Same tools. Totally different output depending on the app.
This is exactly what Distribution OS will automate. But right now, I'm doing it manually with Claude Code — and it already works.
What I Learned
"I kind of know my customer" is not good enough. Vague ICPs lead to vague marketing that reaches nobody. Spend the time to get specific. AI makes this fast.
Your competitors already did the research for you. Their pricing pages, blog topics, and ad copy reveal who they're targeting and what messaging works. Scrape it. Analyze it. Find the gaps.
Different products need different channels. Obvious in hindsight, but I was trying to use the same playbook for all 3 apps. PayPerQR needs SEO. Toast Photos needs social discovery. Distribution OS needs community. Stop treating distribution as one-size-fits-all.
AI is better at research than execution. Claude Code was incredible at analyzing competitors, extracting patterns, and mapping strategies. The actual writing and publishing still needs a human touch. Use AI for the 80% that's research and analysis, not the 20% that needs your voice.
The framework is more valuable than any single strategy. Once I had the "strategy doc → competitor scrape → distribution plan" framework, I could apply it to any new product in an afternoon. That's the real unlock.
Try This For Your App
You can do this today. Seriously. Here's the quick version:
List your top 5 competitors. Don't just pick the biggest ones. Find the ones targeting the same niche you want.
Scrape their sites with Firecrawl. Pull pricing pages, landing pages, and blog content. Feed it to Claude.
Ask Claude to extract their ICP. Who are they writing for? What pain points do they emphasize? What objections do they address?
Find the gap. What are they NOT doing? What complaints do their customers have? That's your positioning.
Map your top 3 channels. Based on where your ICP actually hangs out, not where you think they should be.
The whole process takes 2-3 hours with AI. Without AI, it's weeks of manual research.
Don't skip this step. I almost did. It would have been the most expensive mistake I made all year.
Next week: I'll show you the exact AI content pipeline I built to turn brainstorms into published posts — including the style mimicry system that makes AI-generated content actually sound human.
See you Tuesday,
Hey
P.S. Have you figured out your ICP yet? Or are you still in the "I sort of know" phase? Reply and tell me — I'm curious where everyone is at.