PhotoRoom · AI photo editing app
Make ads for small-business owners fun and consumer-style, not businesslike
What they did
In their words
How To Repurpose Offline Events Into Millions Of Online Impressions – Larissa Morimoto, PhotoRoom
David BarnardSo that's such a great example. And then there was another one you did in Japan. Tell me about that one.
Larissa MorimotoYeah. I mean, just to follow up on the ICP, on targeting your ideal customer profile, I try not to use acronyms, so it's so hard. But our ICPs are essentially small businesses, so anybody who's trying to sell online. And for us, I mean, we also kind of go into with the mentality that yes, you're a business owner, but you're also consumer first. Because you're likely already on Instagram, you're likely already on TikTok, you're likely already existing in these spaces. And that's also why whenever we run paid acquisition, we don't even try to optimize our creatives fully for businesses. We try to have a fun twist to it, because ultimately consumers can also be businesses.
Larissa MorimotoAnd when we tried applying that mentality to a campaign that we ran in Japan, it actually ended up backfiring in the most interesting way possible. So Japan is also a pretty big market for PhotoRoom. And what we ended up doing is we secured a partnership with Tamiya, specifically because a lot of our user base in Japan are also collectors. So that's a huge market. If anybody has an app in the collector industry, Japan is definitely where you …
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More from this episode
- Grow mainly through paid ads once the product clearly worksReached ~300M downloads and $50M+ ARR; later hit ad fatigue and rising CPAs
- Rent giant street screens where passersby try the app and see their photos15,000 people reached, 4M+ online views, 18% more branded search, trade press coverage
- Bring your ad makers to live events and reuse the footage in ads and posts4M+ views; TikTok-style clips did better than expected on LinkedIn
- Judge brand campaigns by brand-name searches and surveys, not cost per installFreed the team to try new channels; claim only
- Host a press-only store event with a famous comedian and a hobby brandNo branded search uplift, vs 18% in London; an expensive lesson
- Partner with a sports superstar to promote a sleep appMost expensive and worst-performing campaign, per a former employee
- Run a TikTok ambassador programWorked for a while, then stalled as everyone copied it
- Team up with a hit movie so users can put themselves on its set
Tags: creative, b2b-as-consumer