MySwimPro · B2C · swim coaching app
Try paid ads before you can track what the spend produced
First two rounds failed; third round in progress with better analytics
Failedpaid-socialanalytics-attribution
What they did
Three rounds of paid acquisition at different stages, in-house and with agencies, at different prices and download conversion rates. The first two lacked analytics to know what spend (e.g. $1,500) produced and did not iterate on creatives fast enough, so money burned before winners were found. Small budgets are also disadvantaged by ad algorithms. The third round has the best analytics infrastructure so far.
What happened
Earlier rounds had to stop; lessons: have attribution in place and act on it quickly. Third attempt is ongoing.
- Stage
- growth
- Effort
- Three rounds over several years, small budgets
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building a Content Marketing Flywheel — Fares Ksebati, MySwimPro“I think we've done three different rounds of paid acquisition at different points of the company lifecycle. We're sort of in the middle of that third one right now.”
“The biggest mistake you can make is not having the right analytics in place. So, if you don't know, okay, you spend $1,500, what happened?”
“if it takes you a long time to figure out which ones are your winners and which ones are your poor-performing ads, then you're just going to end up spending more and more money”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- MySwimPro: Send swimmers found on Twitter to a mockup page that collects emails200 email sign-ups in a couple of weeks for an app that didn't exist
- MySwimPro: Write one article a week answering common swimming questions people search forHundreds of articles over 3 years; traction compounded slowly, no sudden spike
- MySwimPro: Answer the questions users email you in a weekly whiteboard videoEarly videos got 75-4,000 views; years later some have millions
- MySwimPro: Cut each long video into short clips and post them everywhere~500K Instagram and 300K+ TikTok followers; TikTok hits didn't drive many downloads
- MySwimPro: Earn from your YouTube videos with ads and sponsor shout-outsContent pays for itself even ignoring app installs; funds two full-time editors
- MySwimPro: Hand off blog, email, then editing so the founder only films5-person in-house team now; paid for by ad and sponsor income
- MySwimPro: Film yourself training with the app on screen instead of pitching it~30% of videos feature the app for 60+ seconds; no conversion numbers
- MySwimPro: Post videos of customers' big swimming wins on the company channel
- MySwimPro: Give each social channel its own App Store link to track revenueCan now tie revenue to each channel; only set up in the last few months
- MySwimPro: Host in-person swim camps to reach new swimmersWorks but doesn't scale; limited by how many people can attend
- MySwimPro: Keep raising the yearly price, from $100 to $180, while conversion holdsConversion barely changed at each step (the app kept improving too)
- MySwimPro: Ask free and paying users four price questions to find what they'd payAverage matched current price (~$100-120/year); a segment would pay $200-300/year
- MySwimPro: Move free features behind the paywall as the app shifts to paidBuilt user entitlement and complaint reviews; guest would package it differently
- MySwimPro: Join a university startup accelerator for first funding and pitch practiceRaised $50K; learned customer discovery, built a network and a tight pitch
- MySwimPro: Raise money from your community through equity crowdfunding roundsAbout $1.2M raised in total, mostly from crowdfunding
- MySwimPro: Test in-app invites with rewards for your most active usersStill being tested; no results yet