Opal · B2C · screen time app
Hire one person to make ads with creators who already love the app
Works better than the agencies tried before; no numbers
Workedugc-creatorscreator-opspaid-social
What they did
Tried fully outsourced creative agencies that make and run ads for a percentage of spend, and concept-only creative agencies. Moved to in-house: a single creative partnerships manager plus some contractors, finding creators in the space who care about the mission and ideally use and love the app, and producing ads with them. About 80% of paid marketing work is creative. Planning to hire a separate technical UA/campaign person.
What happened
In-house creator work is what currently works.
- Effort
- Several agencies tried before moving in-house
“We have tried several agencies where, including like fully outsourced creative agencies that basically like make ads, will run it for you, and you pay a percentage of spend.”
“What we're finding works right now is finding creators in our space that like care about what we're doing, ideally, they're using the app and they love it, and then producing stuff with them.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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- Hire a user who posted about you to run her own educational channel for you0 to ~700K followers and millions of views in a few months
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More from this episode
- Opal: Judge everything by 8-day ad return; raise spend weekly while above 100%Near zero to $5M ARR in about a year, no separate marketing budget
- Opal: Ask new users where they heard about you, and split results by answerFounder calls it the most reliable attribution, beating paid tools
- Opal: Ship a new app version every Monday, without exceptionSet the rhythm behind 121 A/B tests
- Opal: Charge about $100 a year from the start, after launching at $69Credited with reaching 100% 8-day ad return quickly
- Opal: Pay a creator to run their existing video about your cause as an adTook over all campaigns; mission-led ads keep working
- Opal: Hide or shrink the close button on the onboarding paywallA winning test when optimizing for 8-day ad return
- Opal: Make the first paywall easier to skip so more people use the free appMore people activated; ARPU fell but stayed manageable, net positive
- Opal: Show the paywall right after a report on the years lost to phonesDownload-to-trial rose from 7% to 17% across iterations
- Opal: Show a trial timeline on the paywall: reminder on day 6, charge on day 7Dozens of challenger paywalls never beat it
- Opal: Set up a 9-to-5 weekday app block automatically during onboardingA huge win in tests; no numbers given
- Opal: Let new users choose how they want to block apps during setupFailed every time; one simple default won
- Opal: Try to bring people back after their first dayMost tests failed, except the offer to trial cancellers
- Opal: Give a free year for 5 invites and lifetime access for 2080% more users sent at least one invite
- Opal: Ask people's age and show a different setup or paywall by age
- Opal: When someone cancels their trial, send a 50% off offer by pushWorks quite well; the one re-engagement test that won
- Opal: Let users see their friends' screen time, with phone number sign-inSlight uplift in tests; some users invite friends
- Opal: Build for iPhone only and hold off on Android and MacReached $5M ARR without an Android app
- Opal: Split users with Firebase and compare groups in AmplitudeAnswers in about 8 days; ran 121 tests with a team of 7