Practitioner pattern · Steve P. Young (Sells App Masters agency services (including Meta Ads management); Web2Wave and MaxFusion are episode sponsors)
Set Meta to find trial starts, and budget for 50 a week
$1,000 at $2 installs gives ~35 trials, short of 50; ~$95 per subscriber
Unknownpaid-social
What they did
Meta delivers whatever you optimize for: optimizing for installs gives $1-2 installs but few payers, so optimize for the trial (as far down-funnel as possible). Meta needs at least 50 events a week. Math: $1,000 over a week or two at $2/install = 500 installs; at 7% trial activation = 35 trials (not enough for a week); at 30% trial-to-paid = 10-11 subscribers, ~$95 each. A first $1,000 mostly shows which creative works; you need a bigger weekly budget to reach 50 trials a week. Detailed campaign setup is deferred to part 2.
“Meta's good at getting you whatever you optimize for, so if you optimize for installs, you might get a cheap install, maybe a dollar to $2, but nobody pays, so you're going to try to optimize for the trial.”
“Eventually, you're going to need a bigger weekly budget to get that 50 trials per week.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Wait to run Meta ads until 5-10% of installs start a trialHost's agency rule of thumb; 30%+ trial-to-paid and ~2% install-to-paid also required
- Prove strangers will pay using ASO and Apple Search Ads before MetaHost's standard process; no numbers given
- Run Meta ads only once each install is worth at least $3Host's minimum; Meta installs are expensive
- Check that Meta's install and trial counts match App Store Connect before launching312 trials in App Store Connect vs 276 in Meta; close enough to launch
- Copy ideas from competitor ads that have run for months in Meta's Ad LibraryResearch step; no results reported
- Cal AI: Run a short ad with a one-line hook, the app in use, then the store linkAd has run about four months, which the host reads as a winner
- Test 3-5 very different ad ideas first, small tweaks laterHost's launch practice; no results reported
- Send each audience's ad to its own App Store page with matching screenshots
- Show Meta ad users a hard paywall during onboarding