GTM Sauce

Journable · B2C · AI calorie counter app

Raise ad budgets only as paywall and price tests lift conversion

~$500K spent on Google ads for about the same attributed revenue

Workedpaid-searchpaywallpricing

What they did

Step 5-6: scale budgets over time following Google's best practices, and keep improving the subscription conversion rate (paywall, business model, price tests). As conversion rises, raise budgets. Bootstrapped, they need campaigns to be profitable, so they run near break-even on attributed revenue rather than buying more volume at a lower return.

What happened

Just under $500K all-time Google Ads spend with almost the same attributed revenue; app grew to ~$100K/month
Stage
Scale (Scaling)
Effort
Just under $500K spend

This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.

13:22
“As your conversion rate increases, increase your budgets of your campaigns, and the flywheel continues.”
Steve Hoyek
7:08
“Ideally, we would have a way lower return on ad spend and a way higher volume, but because we're bootstrapped, we're constrained by the performance of these campaigns. We need them to be profitable.”
Steve Hoyek

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