Cal AI · B2C · photo calorie tracking app
Sign a second creator in the same niche as your best one
Didn't work at all; the first creator made $100K profit in a month
What they did
What happened
- Effort
- one creator
In their words
Alfie Dickens - Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI
Alfie Dickens… plus per month. I think a goal for a long time was like, sign 100 influencers in a month, which like some I think on a few months we did sign 100 influencers, so it's uh it's like three a day, which is which is pretty cool, more than. But we did have like normal business strategy. An example was like we worked with a creator, did like 100,000 in profit for us, basically. We paid them like 20,000 for the month, and they did 120,000 of signups,
Alfie Dickensum, just in that month. And then we tried to sign another creator that was in the same niche as them, and they didn't do well at all. And so like diving into that and seeing why it didn't work well. And it kind of goes back to what you were saying before, and, you know, sometimes doing more in a niche means that your ROI goes down, because people have already seen it. Um, I think, thankfully, the fitness niche is big enough to be able to go at different different spaces, whereas some of the niches we found, you know, didn't. We weren't able to do that, and having one influencer in that niche was enough, and we we didn't need to expand on that much more.
JosephWhat were the other niches? Like you guys definitely were huge in fitness, but then were there other content niches that Cal app Cal AI like applies to that you also did influencer marketing?
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More from this episode
- Agree with a creator's view boast, then guarantee 700-800K views when they claim 1MGuaranteed a profitable CPM on every deal; creators couldn't back down
- Have 25 hired assistants each email 100 creators a day~220K creators contacted, 2-3K signed; roughly 1 signed per 1,000 emailed
- Let AI answer creators' email replies and hand warm ones to a managerAssistants' job ends at the first email; no results reported
- Pitch 'keep making your normal videos, just sneak us in', then ask for a callCalls ~10x the chance of signing; the pitch often lowered creators' prices
- Have creators show the photo-scan naturally in the first 15 seconds, with no scriptCalled one of the biggest rules; no numbers
- Pay big lifestyle creators to scan their breakfast in day-in-the-life vlogs, 4 times a monthMost profitable content; one video drove hundreds to thousands of promo code uses
- Schedule a reality-TV star's posts just before and after her new season airsVery low CPM for a famous creator; no exact figure
- Buy only very cheap views at first, then pay more per deal once people know youDeals got more profitable over time, not less
- Test creators beyond fitness: moms, comedy, and fitness sub-nichesMixed: some moms profitable at $10 CPM; comedy got views but low intent
- Pay recipe, cooking and mukbang creators to promote a calorie trackerDidn't convert; cut early. Healthy-meal videos only okay
- Pay a Love Island contestant for day-in-the-life videosStarted well but underperformed; viewers mostly came for his partner
- Pay creators $100-200 when a friend they refer signs a dealReally helped; got direct numbers and deals around talent agents
- Give outreach assistants monthly prizes for most creators contacted or signedKept assistants motivated; no numbers
- Befriend creators' managers, then ask to add the creator to the group chatLanded deals with a TV star; guest calls relationships the key
- Have a UGC creator post on the brand's own page, and restart as influencers get pricierPaused while influencer CPMs were cheap; now restarting for cheaper views
Tags: niche-saturation, lookalike-creators