Built With Science · B2C · science-based fitness coaching app
Build free calorie and macro calculators that rank in AI search and lead to the quiz
Working well, founder says; tools convert slightly better than blog posts
What they did
What happened
In their words
Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science
Ethan EthierIt's been good. It's an investment that we decided to do earlier this year as another channel for us to expand on. The reason why is because traditionally, we've had really strong traffic coming in from SEO from all our old blog posts. So about 30 to 40% of our traffic coming in was from SEO, but ever since the rise of AI and people using AI search a lot more, we slowly started seeing that decrease.
Ethan EthierSo we decided to invest in hiring an external consultant to help us with some of this AI search. And basically what it is we just optimize a lot of our existing content, but also we double down on creating online tools. So for example, a calorie calculator, a macro calculator, a bunch of these tools that users could use in the web that not only added value, for example, they're able to figure out what calories they need to eat per day to lose fat, but also seamlessly transition into the quiz.
Ethan EthierSo that's been working really well for us. And also tools just tend to rank quite well with AI search. So that's something we're going to continue to double down on, although it does take a bit more time to actually see results just like SEO, it's something that we are going to keep on investing in.
David BarnardAnd do you see a difference in intent and conversion from the tools versus the blog posts, or is it fairly similar or dependent on the blog post?
Ethan EthierI would say it's dependent on the tool and the blog post, but for the most part, the tools have a slightly higher conversion.
David BarnardInteresting. We've talked a bit about your thoughts on experimentation, but I did want to dig a little bit deeper into how you think about experimenting, what kind of experiments you've run, and what kind of results you've seen. So how do you think about experimentation?
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More from this episode
- Spend a year fixing trial-to-paid and retention before buying any adsFounder says it lifted the floor for every channel; paid traffic later converted at 25%
- Hype the app launch to your YouTube viewers, course members and email listA launch spike, then a steady trickle; not a growth engine on its own
- Mention the app softly mid-video, and tell user transformation storiesStory videos bring more trials than broad educational ones; old videos give steady monthly trials
- Hire clippers to post long-video clips on Reels and TikTok, then reuse winning hooksSome clips go viral; their hooks now shape new long videos
- Scale Meta ads without the famous founder: B-roll, testimonials and AI image adsScaled from zero to ~$100K/month (host figure); 25% trial-to-paid
- Spend the first month of ads just learning your paid trial-to-paid rateTook about a month to get a baseline to set the allowed cost per customer
- Judge ads by how many trials pay, not by how cheap the trials areClickbait ads brought cheap trials but a huge drop in trial-to-paid
- Build a dashboard that confirms which trials came from Meta, and send Meta your best users
- Send ad clicks to a long personal quiz on your website, not the App StoreQuiz beat direct-to-store; now gets ~90% of traffic; same quiz in the iOS app did worse
- Sell the app as a trainer in your pocket, not a tracker, at $189 a yearKept $189/year since launch; 35-40% organic and ~25% Meta trial-to-paid
- Offer 15% off each if users add a workout buddy to their plan15% of trial starts add a buddy; higher order value and better retention
- List every reason a page fails before brainstorming fixes, and write each test down~70% of tests fail first time; written notes turn failures into later winners
- Release new features quietly, and announce only once usage proves themFounder says it gives cleaner reads than email-hyped launches; no numbers
- Build an AI coach trained on the creator's videos that reads each user's own dataOne of customers' favorite features, founder says; no numbers
- Team up with researchers and run studies with your own app usersFounder says it adds credibility; no numbers
- Show only the yearly plan first, with a day-by-day trial timeline and reminder promiseAnnual picks rose from ~60% to 75-80%, with no price change
- Add more explanation to the pricing page to make the value clearerHurt conversion; extra text overwhelmed buyers who were ready to start
- Offer 20% off to pay now, with a toggle back to the 14-day free trialQuite negative, even with a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Make both the free trial and the pay-now discount sound goodVery strong lift after a few weeks, vs the version that shamed the trial
- Film a months-long science experiment video with real people in a rented studioOne of the year's top videos; decent but not major app conversion
Tags: google, chatgpt, aeo, free-tools, calculators, consultant