Reflective Apps · B2C · app portfolio studio
Recruit creators with 2K-20K followers by DM, send them to a creator page, then test them
2,000+ creators on the books; ~10% became regulars, 1-2% of those went viral
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Ryan Thorpe - Meet The Guy Dominating The App Store
Joseph ChoiMhm.
Ryan ThorpeUm, because the big thing we we we kind of coined here was we don't want to work with influencers. Uh, we want to work with content creators. We hire you to make an ad for us or a video for us. We're not paying for your, you know, influence uh that you have in terms of follower count. And that really helped with positioning this as like a a business relationship to make content and videos for us.
Joseph ChoiYeah, interesting. What What range of like follower count is would you would you look at?
Ryan ThorpeYeah, optimal was like 2,000 followers to like 15, 20,000 followers, um because that's where they've showed enough, you know, craft, uh skill for their trade that they have made a following or they know how the TikTok algorithm works in some capacity, or they've just been disciplined and committed to making content over a longer period of time.
Ryan ThorpeUm, and seeing that is is like a great green flag. Um, the next layers is just, once you early work with them, you give them a effectively like a test task, a probation or task to make you, you know, a basic day-in-the-life-of video. And can you follow these guidelines? And then the third stage is like, can they deliver it on time? And if you find someone who does all three of those, you found someone you can probably work with for a couple of months, at least.
Ryan ThorpeUm, maybe years. Some of some some content creators we worked with for years, and eventually they end up getting full-time jobs at the company and everything. So, it really can be like a great gateway to to to doing a lot more with with the company just by showing up and following the instructions.
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More from this episode
- Pay small creators in each country to read a script, then run it as Facebook adsDrove ~$3-4M ARR, but ad spend matched revenue
- Buy under-monetized apps and fix their paywalls instead of spending more on adsFirst deal paid back in 12-18 months; 30-35 apps bought over 5 years
- Run your own creator team: train them, brief them, and automate hiring through payment~250 regular creators, thousands of videos; drove tens of millions of downloads
- Post every video on your own TikTok first; put ad money behind the ones that take offCheaper testing off-peak; breakouts pushed four or five ways
- Test each video with $10-20, move winners to bigger campaigns, let the best 1-2 take 90%1-2 evergreen videos took 90% of spend; run by one media buyer
- Once a video holds a few hundred dollars a day of ads, have creators remake itSometimes compounded; the top viral video failed to copy across 20-40 creators
- Spend about 75% of the year's ad budget in January, when installs cost halfDone hit #1 free app in the US on Jan 2-3, two years running
- Test ads Dec 26-28, raise spend Dec 28-30, and 10x it on January's first SundayGuest's playbook from his ad accounts; no separate numbers
- Put a famous person's voice behind the video as the hookOne video hit 50-60M views, then a cease and desist; AI-voice copies partly worked
- Give creators strict briefs: 10-15 second videos, 25-27 cuts, POV phone shots, trending soundsSet a quality floor across ~250 creators; results still varied
- Pay creators $30-40 a video, raise to $100 for reliable ones, and add bonuses for hitsKept creators loyal long-term vs pure performance pay
- Hire agencies to produce creator contentDidn't work across many agencies; replaced with an in-house team
- Sell the app to employers, using stress tests to prove it lowers staff stress
Tags: tiktok, creator-sourcing, outreach, micro-creators, test-task, landing-page