Stronger · B2C · gamified workout tracker
Copy a winning video across many accounts, changing a few words or colors each time
Adopted after a rival did it with ~10 accounts; no separate numbers
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Peter Gillan - My App Makes $600k/Year Using This Easy Growth Strategy (copy me)
Peter… quite quickly, I've seen their download volume starting to really ratchet up. And that was a bit of an eye-opener for me because, one, I felt like we were being more creative and coming up with, you know, the cool ideas. But at the end of the day, that doesn't matter to the market. Like if someone else can find a way to get that seen, you know, to do to take whatever you come up with and do 10 iterations of it, they're ultimately going to win.
PeterSo that was a bit of an eye-opener for us, and we started to think about, "Okay, once we've got a winning format, how can we make this replicable? How can we A/B test it to optimize it and get it better? You know, how can we get that average watch time up from say 6 seconds to 9 seconds through a very scientific testing process? And then build out internal tooling to allow us to do so, and then also your distribution, so whether that's talking to reposters, doing it yourselves, having burner phones, whatever."
HostSo when you say 10 accounts, are you literally posting the same exact video on all the different accounts? Like is that what your competitor did? Or you're tweaking the video a little bit each time? Because I feel like if you post the same exact video, some people have said that that kind of hurts the engagement if TikTok sees it's like literally the same thing.
PeterNo, I think the key is to do micro-adjustments. But AI makes that very easy to do. You can find one hook and you can just change a couple of words from it. You could change, for example, with this image here, you could change it to light mode background. It's a fully new video, AI won't detect that at all. There's lots of different ways you can twi- do a similar video without it being exactly the same. And I think that's where tools like Figma come into place. You know, you can have different iterations where maybe you change the legend, maybe you change the background, you change a few different words in the hook, and it then becomes a new video. And the algorithm won't categorize it as spam.
HostInteresting. And do you think you should use the same sound for all of these or are you like following trending sounds, too, and using them to like pick up on trends?
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More from this episode
- Post the same 6-second fade-in app screenshot Reel over and overEst. 150-300M views, a 100M-view month; low conversion and now fading
- Copy a rival's viral video format and post it from 10 accountsDownloads visibly ramped up; out-scaled the team that invented it
- Design every feature to look great as a screenshot for social postsScreenshots are the main money-maker; founder claim, no numbers
- Post 2-3 slide TikTok carousels of real, unpolished app screensHistorically their best-converting channel; weaker in the past year as 20 rivals copied
- Post a rough founder video of a fun app feature before launch~15K followers in week one; then hit #3 in Health & Fitness at launch
- Reply to comments with videos showing their lift as random objects in the appA series of viral videos; likely most of the account's 4.9M likes
- Make everyone start a free trial first; free version only after they cancel~25% boost, their biggest ever; few complaints, but less sharing
- Test when and how often the paywall shows before testing its wordingFounder says they now monetize per user among the best workout trackers; no numbers
- Turn workout numbers into a strength rank users can show off12 months with no copycat; became the main marketing asset
- Adapt viral video formats from other app niches, then test hooks by watch timeHow they find each new format; no numbers given
- Keep content in-house; hire agencies only to scale a proven formatTwo founders make almost all content; few affiliates
- Fund the app with government grants instead of investorsStayed bootstrapped; no amounts given
- Copy a rival's strength score and add game-style ranks for each musclePerformed 'brilliantly' per the guest; Stronger later added ranks too
- Give each running influencer their own workout plan in the appGuest says it built a strong brand and rocketed up the charts; no numbers
- Build the new app as a tile-based game that AI tools can't copy yet
Tags: instagram, tiktok, multi-account, variants, hooks, ai