Practitioner pattern · Patrick Falzon (Co-founder of The App Shop, a consultancy/agency selling marketing, monetization and product help to app companies)
Launch one ad channel at a time and change one bid per month
Guest's post-ATT method; new channels almost always underperform early forecasts
Unknownanalytics-attributionpaid-social
What they did
Don't launch Google, Meta and TikTok together: launch one, let it reach steady state, then add the next against a new baseline. Once live, change one bid or budget, wait about a month, then the next. Ramp new channels conservatively because the first users are the cheapest and retention usually comes in worse than predicted. Measure several ways and look at them together: MMP channel reports at face value, blended CAC, paid vs. organic, and channel-specific CAC; pick one primary cost metric matching the model (CPI for ad-funded, cost per trial if using trials, cost per subscriber otherwise). Ground everything in blended performance, since that is the P&L.
What happened
Guest says actual performance almost always contracts from initial predictions on a new channel.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Why Most Apps Hit a Revenue Ceiling (and How to Plan for It) — Patrick Falzon, The App Shop“don't do all three at once. Just launch on Google, and then understand, okay, like all we've changed is we're now spending on Google, what's the impact of that? Get Google to a steady state, and then say, "Okay, now I'm going to launch on Meta."”
“My experience is actual performance almost always contracts from that initial predicted performance when you're doing a new channel.”
“change like one bid, give it a month, see what happens, then change another bid”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Mosaic Group: Only buy or build apps that could reach tens of millions without outspending giantsBuilt one of the leading app portfolios; sold to Bending Spoons
- Mosaic Group: Build several $30M apps instead of pushing one app past its ceilingGuest's answer to the $10-30M ceiling; three $30M apps can beat one $90M app
- Mosaic Group: Launch a new app for a new use case instead of piling features into oneGuest says slim apps segment users better and can earn more; no numbers
- RoboKiller: After the base subscription, offer data broker removal as a paid add-onReally successful; a good way to raise revenue per user (no numbers)
- Mosaic Group: Estimate lifetime value as a range of weighted guesses, then narrow it monthlyLets new products act on LTV before years of data exist; no numbers
- Mosaic Group: Count only 2-4 years of revenue per user and require fast payback early onConservative at worst; high LTV:CAC shows how much more spend cash could unlock
- Mosaic Group: Before rolling out a price test winner, check it still wins if retention drops 10-50%Annual-heavy price calls sometimes proved wrong a year later; this guards against it
- Mosaic Group: Raise prices about 10%; retention usually drops only a couple of percentNet LTV wins most of the time across the portfolio, if conversion holds
- Mosaic Group: Use early subscription cancellations to predict who will churnDidn't work: few cancel early; most cancel near the renewal reminder
- RoboKiller: Track whether each user is getting the core value, and step in when you fail themA wrongly handled call was highly correlated with churn, triggering fixes
- RoboKiller: Tell users how many millions of spam calls you blocked for everyone this month
- RoboKiller: Publish your own spam call data so reporters and regulators cite youRepeated WSJ, FT and cable news mentions; a brand halo that drove many organic installs
- Mosaic Group: Move ad designers to a different app every couple of monthsMore varied creatives, so winning styles became clear; no numbers
- Apalon: Switch apps from one-time paid downloads to in-app subscriptionsPhenomenal growth after the switch (no numbers)