BetterMe · B2C · fitness and weight-loss app
Keep testing new ads until one sharply cuts costs, even if current ads work
What they did
- Stage
- early paid
In their words
Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)
Yuliya Lennox… this is not looking for the stability in their performance marketing. They're performance marketing-heavy obviously. So when you're going into the business, what I would recommend to you if, for example, you launch your traffic, you're spending some money, you are spending 100, $500 per day, and then you see same CPMs, same CTAs, you see that, "Oh, one user costs me $30, I'm getting $50. Yes, I have my margin. I will scale. I will go further."
Yuliya LennoxThis is bad for you actually because you stop trying and you think, oh, my LTV RI, whatever, it looks great. I'm doing everything fine. You are not doing fine. You are doing very, very badly. Because your first tries, your first creatives, your first results shouldn't be good in any way. They will not be very good. What do you need to see in your performance market? Has there ever been a moment when you thought, wow, this is so much better than everything that I've done before where your CPAs went down, doubled down, when your amount of purchases tripled in one day.
Yuliya LennoxThis is the moment when you know that this is actually happening for you. If it's just happening, it's not okay. But when it's happening all of a sudden with one creative and it will happen with one creative, one concept, one something, that's when you think, oh, I kind of made it. I understand what it's about now. So never settle for mediocracy and always, always be looking for those creatives that will move the needle to the points where you never expect it. You never expect it, but when it happens, you're like, "Ah, that's what Yuliya talked about.
David BarnardI love the framing you started off with that all along the way from 10 years ago till today, there's always been change. App tracking transparency was a huge change. People got really good at UGC in the last couple of years. It was new. You had to write the playbook. And really it seems like that's where the outside returns are is not in the safe, this is what everybody's doing. It's actually writing your own playbook and figuring out the new …
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More from this episode
- Run ugly ads that show the product and the pain in the first secondOne ran for years; called 'the best ad ever'; no numbers
- Run a trendy AI 'fruit babies' ad for a doctor-backed baby feeding brandBacklash: parents questioned whether to trust the brand
- Have the founder join every marketing meeting and write the ads himselfApp reached #2 after Duolingo; link to this is loose
- Win your home market first, then add languages one by oneLiked locally, then expanded; later #2 after Duolingo
- Test new ads at $10/day in Indonesia, not $1,000/day in the USSame test signal at ~1% of the cost
- Fully translate and adapt an app for Japan with a Japanese speakerDidn't work at all; harder than expected
- Run paid ads from the start alongside organic growthOrganic-only apps plateau; paid added late often ate into organic
- Share test results across apps and with a weekly peer group
- Make the paywall's continue button blinkRaised conversion, secondhand; no numbers
- Sign a celebrity like Hilary Duff for brand adsBig influx almost at once, secondhand; ROI hard to measure
- Hire people obsessed with the problemCredited for product quality; no numbers
- Have the core team work ~17-hour days, six days a weekSaid to lead the field now; no numbers
- Translate the app into many languages with AI and test nearby marketsHer biggest win of the year; Turkey converts well; no numbers
- Sell a $1 plan after a 60-question quiz, then stack add-ons to ~$350Buyer got half back after demanding a refund; invites regulation
- Run three apps at once with one teamBiggest fail of the year: attention spread too thin
Tags: creative, breakout-creative, scaling