Built With Science · B2C · science-based fitness coaching app
Mention the app softly mid-video, and tell user transformation stories
Story videos bring more trials than broad educational ones; old videos give steady monthly trials
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What they did
Content-first: most long-form YouTube videos include a smooth, soft transition to the app in the middle or near the end rather than a hard pitch (hard pitches only on Instagram shorts). Every click from the video and description link is tracked per video, which showed that stories about a user who transformed their body on the app drive more trial starts than broad educational videos (a diet or a workout program) that reach more people. New videos are now planned around stories that tie into the product pitch.
What happened
Spikes on release plus a steady baseline of trials each month from the back catalog; story-led videos convert better to trials.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science“if it's more of a educational broad type of content where maybe we're sharing a specific diet or a workout program, a program that reaches a higher audience, larger audience, then that might not necessarily get the same amount of trial activations as to a video that where maybe we're telling a story about someone who started on the app”
“for most of the time, it's very soft CTAs throughout the video, but we never really fully pitch a video unless it's maybe something on Instagram”
“we've built a pretty solid bank of videos where we have a consistent number of trials coming in every single month”
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- Built With Science: 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
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- Built With Science: 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
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- Built With Science: 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
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- Built With Science: Team up with researchers and run studies with your own app usersFounder says it adds credibility; no numbers
- Built With Science: 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
- Built With Science: Add more explanation to the pricing page to make the value clearerHurt conversion; extra text overwhelmed buyers who were ready to start
- Built With Science: 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
- Built With Science: 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
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