Pep AI · B2C · peptide and GLP-1 tracker
Run top creator videos as Meta ads and raise the budget every week
~$2.50 per download; profitable by the guest's math
What they did
What happened
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
In their words
Cedric Roberge - I speedran an ai app to $100k in 70 days.
… different purposes, which gives us more to market, if that makes sense. You know, what I did was I looked at all these successful GLP apps. None of them are doing influencer marketing. They're only running ads. And so I didn't want to start running ads until we had winners. So what I did is I did a lot of research on a lot of successful apps that came out this year, like CalAI, Quitter, and all of them really focus on their influencer marketing.
So I went and found pretty much every peptide creator in the space. I mean, there's not pretty much everyone who's making like consistent videos about peptides works for PepAI or works with us. And so I went and got every single one of them to post about PepAI. And then that just blew up. First month, we did $30,000 in revenue. Second month, we did $50,000. And this month, we're on pace for $80,000. The influencer marketing has been key. And we just started running our ads this month. And all I've done is taken our winners, so all the ones that performed really well on TikTok and Instagram, put it on meta ads.
… You know, there was some trial and error at the beginning. Some of them we tried like giving scripts to people, trying to kind of copy what worked for some of these GLP apps. And those ones failed. So what we did is, you know, we lost some money on that. But then once we took our winners, those ones performed really well. From what I've heard is if your cost per download is under $5, you're usually doing pretty good. And ours is around $2.50.
We just keep increasing our budget every week and pushing those ones that are winners. And it's been paying off. $2.50 per download. Yeah, that does sound really good. And then what is the like spend per day on that? In total, probably right now, we're probably spending $400 in total a day right now. And that's not even including Apple search ads. We probably spend another $150 with Apple search ads. For Meta though, I mean, we want to up the budget. You know, we've got a ton of more creatives being made right now that we're getting set up for Meta. We've also just started testing with like AI, like generated pictures of our app.
And those have been performing really well also. So our goal is to have about anywhere from 50 to 100 campaigns running by sometime next month. Just have a decent budget on all of them because I mean, it's proven to work. And as long as it stays under that like $5 per download, we'll see how it goes. But it is fairly new for us. So the $2.50 per download, is that profitable for you guys? Like do you have like the numbers on conversion rates and …
… And we also have a bunch of like ads from like our creators as well that are I think are way better. But for some reason, these static ones are they're doing pretty well. So we're about to try out a bunch more and see how these do. But yeah, it's super interesting. Like I would never expect this to be our number one ad creator. Two dollars per install. That's that's and that's like less than the than the than the 250 that you're going for
earlier. Are you just doing static ads or are you doing like video ads, too? We do a lot of video ads, too. Like I said, we take our top performing videos and do those video ads. Yeah, we just want to try a static ad. And so, like I said, our ads guy, it wasn't even my idea. He was just like, I want to try this. I was like, all right, cool. And now that it worked, I was like, oh, my God. All right. I'm going to make a bunch of these. So so when you do the video ads, is it is it like partnership ads through the influencers account? No, we just we just take them and then just post them.
Oh, OK. Interesting. Same with TikTok. You don't do like spark ads. So spark ads were setting up. The thing about spark ads, it's really tricky is TikTok keeps rejecting them because it is like peptides, you know, like some of those videos get taken down. It comes off as too much like giving people medical advice or influencing the use of something like that. So like it is really like a gray area. And so we've tried like doing that with some of …
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
- Sign nearly every creator in your niche before running paid ads$30K then $50K revenue in months 1-2; ~$100K in 70 days
- Pay new creators ~$200 for a trial month; sign the winners for 3 monthsCore of the creator program behind most revenue
- Pay creators a one-time 20% of each sale on top of their feeCreators post more than agreed and put in more effort
- Give every creator a tracked link and discount codeShows who to keep and whose rates to cut
- Make creators keep your app link in their bio for the whole deal'A ton of downloads' in two weeks with no posts
- Send creators past winning videos as ideas, then let them make anythingFounder says creators love working with them; content performs
- Post educational slideshows that end with the app as the tracking toolBeat talking-head videos, per the guest; no numbers
- Give creators scripts copied from competitors' ads and run them as adsLost money; replaced by organic winners
- Test a cluttered AI-made image ad listing ~8 featuresBest ad at under $2 per download, beating video
- Run peptide creator videos as TikTok adsTikTok kept rejecting them as medical advice; moved to Meta
- Give under-25s a short onboarding and older users a longer oneLonger flow works well for 25+, per founder; no numbers
- Show 'try it free' slides before a paywall with $40/year and $10/month plans
- Build the most-requested features, like a dose calculator, after legal reviewCalculator 'drove a ton of traffic'
- Remove or simplify features nobody uses
- Collect feedback everywhere, including creator calls, and ship 2-3 updates a week
- Tell creators about each new feature as a reason to postCreators all want to post about new features
- DM 1,000+ creators a week with one message, then get them on a callSigns many creators every week; delegating made it scale
- Skip creators with no real comments or few niche videos to avoid bought viewsEarly signings with bought views brought zero signups
- Review each new creator's first video before it goes liveA few redos; most videos were fine
- Give creators lifetime access and text them almost daily instead of view bonusesCreators do more than the contract, including TikTok Lives
- Repost as many creator videos as possible on the brand account
- Raise a small angel check for marketing; pay developers in equityFunded the creator program from launch
- Enter a trending niche where existing apps do no marketingFounder claims the app helped start the peptide-tracker trend
Tags: meta, creative, organic-to-paid, budget-scaling