A workout tracking app · Stronger competitor
Copy a rival's viral video format and post it from 10 accounts
Downloads visibly ramped up; out-scaled the team that invented it
What they did
What happened
In their words
Peter Gillan - My App Makes $600k/Year Using This Easy Growth Strategy (copy me)
Peter… start. We discovered quite a few different formats which worked super well, you know, TikTok slideshows, the fade-ins. And at first, we just posted a few times, and we thought, "No, we don't want to, you know, spam everyone's feeds with stuff like this. Just do it a few times." And we thought that it wouldn't work to have, you know, five accounts posting the exact same content. But it was actually one of our competitors opened our eyes to it.
PeterI don't like them, but I really respect them. But they really scaled their revenue just by copying this format. And whereas we had, you know, one, two accounts posting, these guys were ripping like maybe 10 accounts, and 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 …
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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 winning video across many accounts, changing a few words or colors each timeAdopted after a rival did it with ~10 accounts; no separate numbers
- 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, copycat