How do you market a product that's designed to be used less?
Here's a marketing problem no one prepares you for: what happens when your product's success means people stop using it?
At Murror, our best outcome is when someone works through what's been weighing on them and doesn't need to come back for a while. They journal, they process, they gain clarity — and then they go live their life. That's the whole point.
But try explaining that to a growth marketer. Or an investor. Or even your own team.
Every playbook we studied was built around maximizing daily active users, increasing session length, driving habit loops. The entire vocabulary of product growth assumes that more usage = more value. For social media, that might be true. For a wellness product? It's the opposite.
We had to throw out the playbook and start from scratch.
Here's what we've learned so far:
We stopped marketing what the product does and started marketing what it helps people become. Nobody shares "I used an AI journaling app today." But they do share "I finally understood why that conversation with my mom always goes sideways."
Our best acquisition channel turned out to be word-of-mouth from people who barely use the app anymore. They recommend Murror precisely because it helped them move forward — and that story is more compelling than any ad.
We had to redefine our north star metric. Instead of DAU, we track what we call "resolution moments" — instances where a user's journaling pattern around a specific issue shifts from repetitive to exploratory to resolved. That's our real growth number.
We learned to be honest in our marketing. We actually tell people: "We hope you won't need us forever." Counterintuitively, that honesty is what makes people trust us enough to start.
The hardest part? Patience. This kind of growth is slower. It doesn't spike in a launch week. But the users who come through word-of-mouth stay longer, engage more meaningfully, and genuinely get value from the product.
We're still figuring this out. Curious if anyone else is building something where success looks like less usage, not more. How are you telling that story?
Replies
The word of mouth point is interesting. The people recommending it aren't necessarily the people using it every week anymore.
'We hope you won't need us forever' is probably the strongest line in the whole post.
I never thought about how awkward wellness products fit into engagement metrics. DAU suddenly sounds like the wrong thing to optimize for.
The example about finally understanding a pattern with your mom is actually more memorable than any feature description.
I can see why this would be a tough story to tell with traditional growth expectations.
The trust piece resonates. Saying you don't want people dependent on the product feels refreshing.
That shift from repetitive to exploratory thinking sounds like a small thing on paper, but it's probably a huge signal in practice.
Funny enough, some of the products I've recommended most are ones I barely use anymore.
I think the "resolution moments" metric is really smart framing. Most wellness products just copy social app metrics because that's what investors understand, and then everyone ends up optimizing for the wrong thing. The word-of-mouth angle makes total sense to me. People don't talk about tools they use every day out of habit, they talk about tools that changed something.
A product that helped someone figure out a pattern in their relationships is way more shareable than one they opened 47 times this week. I'm curious though, when you're in those early conversations with investors, do you lead with the "resolution moments" metric upfront, or is there still a version of DAU you have to show alongside it to get them comfortable?
Murror
@nolan_vu Great question. Honestly, we do both. We lead with resolution moments because that's the story that makes people lean in — it's specific, it's measurable, and it shows we understand our users deeply. But we also show a version of engagement that maps to retention: how many users come back after their first resolution moment, and how quickly new users reach one. That gives investors something familiar to anchor on while we reframe what "healthy usage" looks like. The trick is framing DAU not as the goal, but as a trailing indicator of whether people trust the product enough to return when they need it.
@monatruong_murror Awesome, I think you guys are doing it the right way though.
That "trailing indicator of trust" reframing is really sharp. I think that's the part most founders struggle to articulate. Everyone knows DAU isn't the right metric for this kind of product, but nobody has a clean answer when an investor asks "so what do you track instead?"
The combo of resolution moments + return rate after first resolution gives them something concrete to hold onto without falling back into the daily usage trap. Appreciate you sharing that, genuinely useful framing I'll probably steal for our own conversations.
@monatruong_murror @nolan_vu Useful framing. I would measure whether the user reached a clear decision boundary, not whether they stayed longer: did they enter the minimum inputs, get a concrete range or checklist, and leave knowing what to measure or compare next? For tools like calculators/checklists, clarity after a short session is the product doing its job.
Murror
@nolan_vu Really appreciate that, Nolan. And please do steal it -- that framing took us months of awkward investor conversations to land on. The more founders normalizing non-DAU metrics for wellness/mental health products, the better it gets for all of us.
liked the framing, but I'd push back slightly. I don't think the goal is less usage, it's more intentional usage. a user who opens Murror three times a year during genuinely difficult moments is more valuable than one who journals daily out of habit without getting anywhere. the metric shift from DAU to "resolution moments" captures this. you're not optimising for frequency, you're optimising for impact. that's not a harder story to tell. it's actually a more honest one than most consumer apps are willing to admit.
Murror
@riya_pariyar You're right, and I think "intentional usage" is actually the better framing. We've been saying "less" as shorthand, but what we really mean is: the product should serve you when you need it and get out of the way when you don't. The users who come back three times a year during real moments — those are the ones who tell their friends about us. That's the pattern we're designing for. Thanks for the pushback, it's sharpening how we talk about this.