GTM Sauce

Cal AI · B2C · photo calorie tracking app

Agree with a creator's view boast, then guarantee 700-800K views when they claim 1M

Guaranteed a profitable CPM on every deal; creators couldn't back down

Workedinfluencercreator-ops

What they did

When a creator says they can 'easily get a million views', agree and add a minimum view clause a couple hundred thousand below that (e.g. 800K, or 700K after checking their page), framed as 'just for our safety' and 'so it's not stressful for you'. Payment is tied to hitting the floor each month. Check their actual numbers first so the floor is realistic and hit every month.

What happened

Acted as a safety net that kept deals at a profitable CPM; creators usually agreed because the floor was below their own claim.

In their words

Alfie Dickens - Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI

Play from 10:10

Alfie Dickens… hear anyone talk about them, and I think Zach, on all of his podcasts and and stuff like that, has talked about it a lot, and um he's kind of shown the world what a minimum view clause is and how it works. But really, it was just like minimizing risk for us. Creators always would say, "Oh, I can easily get a million views. Oh, I can easily get 2 million views." And we can look at their, you know, the numbers that they get, and it's like, "Uh,

10:10

Alfie Dickensit's actually only if the videos perform really, really well that you're going to get this amount of views." What we would love to do, "Let's maybe just put a minimum view clause on it of 800,000, because you can easily get a million. We just add that for our safety, really." Um, we wouldn't say that necessarily, but we would just be like, "Oh, all right, perfect. We'll just add a minimum view clause, and you'll hit a million views easily, so you don't even need to worry about the minimum view clause." And it was like a safety net for us that we knew the deal was going to be really good and at a profitable CPM. And then the influencers told us themselves that they could hit more than those views, so they can't really back down then.

10:46

Alfie DickensWe would make the minimum view clauses realistic. Like I would look at their pages, and if they said they could hit a million views, I'd probably be like, "Ah, you know, I I'd rather put the minimum view clause at 700,000 just so we know you're you're going to hit it every month without fail, and it's not stressful for you." And then usually people were like, "Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Let's Let's make it make sure we can do it every month consistently."

11:08

JosephThat's very good negotiation. But it just makes sense, cuz I feel like creators have big egos. [laughter] Like, when your face is on camera all all day and like everyone's uh, you know, glazing you all the time, like when you hit a viral video, like you just kind of feel like, you know, "I deserve I deserve to get paid." But you just ask them like how like how many views can you get? And then it becomes like, "Oh, I'm proud to tell you, like, oh, …

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

Tags: tiktok, instagram, minimum-view-clause, creator-comp, negotiation