GTM Sauce

Cal AI · B2C · photo calorie tracking app

Pay recipe, cooking and mukbang creators to promote a calorie tracker

Didn't convert; cut early. Healthy-meal videos only okay

Failedinfluencerpositioning-niche

What they did

Worked with recipe, normal cooking and mukbang creators on the assumption that food viewers think about calories. Cut them early; healthy-meal creators were kept but converted only moderately.

What happened

Food videos really didn't do well; guest's theory is viewers watch food content to relax, not to think about calories.
Stage
early

In their words

Alfie Dickens - Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI

Play from 19:31
19:26

JosephWas it like low margin for for that, because you're getting like so many views that are like lower intent?

19:31

Alfie DickensYeah. Like the CPM would be great, uh, because like some of the videos would blow up, but it's just not a hyper-focused niche. You know, people that watch those videos aren't necessarily thinking about um tracking their calories. One really interesting thing for us that we realized like quite early on, but maybe a bit too late, is that the you know, like the recipe videos that people make, um like cool recipes or just normal cooking videos, they really didn't do well for us.

20:01

Alfie DickensAnd to me, that was super interesting, because you'd think like calorie tracking would be great, you know, food videos. Like everyone watching food videos is probably also thinking about calories. A lot of them, like mukbangs or anything to do with just normal meals, really didn't do well. And and we kind of realized that, you know, they might not be doing well cuz people just want to sit there on the couch watching these really good, good-looking food videos, and not have to worry about what how many calories are in that mac and cheese or something.

20:32

Alfie DickensAnd so we we kind of cut cut that off pretty early. Now, some of the some of like the the healthy meal videos did okay, but still didn't convert like incredibly well, um, which was, yeah, to me that was super interesting.

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Tags: niche-testing, food-creators