Surfline · B2C · surf forecast and cam app
Cut market research down using your own free users' data and surveys
Unknownmarket-selectionpricinganalytics-attribution
What they did
Start top-down with market research for the rough market size, then use on-platform analytics of the large free audience to find which segments matter (geography, demographics, commitment) and cut it down to a serviceable addressable market. Analyze how purchasing power and price sensitivity affect conversion and how that changes as the product improves; quantify the cohort that will never pay via surveys and on-product analysis and feed it into models. A small SAM means weighting investment toward ARPU, adjacent audiences or new geographies. Market research found surfers more affluent than expected.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How to Succeed with Freemium and Hybrid Monetization — Paul Ganev, Surfline“the way that we go about it is we have a pretty large free audience, and we can do quite a bit of analysis and understanding how much purchasing power, price sensitivity affects people's conversion rates, and how that changes over time as our product gets better.”
“And so you just do your best to quantify how large that cohort is, either through surveying, through on-product analysis, and then you factor that into your models”
“So another example is if your TAM is really small or your serviceable addressable market is really small, you might want to weight your investment in ARPU more than you do subscription growth.”
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
- Surfline: Give surfers free daily forecasts, then sell the full version to the keen onesGrows with zero paid ads; free-to-paid conversion up a lot over five years
- Surfline: Publish a surf report page for every beach so searchers land on youSEO is the biggest channel after word of mouth; no numbers
- Surfline: Let free users use a few features without limits instead of capping visitsTested both; guest prefers unlimited use of free features, no numbers
- Surfline: Keep adding paid features and new surf cams for free users to upgrade toShort spike from early adopters, then a higher baseline conversion
- Surfline: Play a short video ad before free users can watch the surf camEarns from free users; host remembers an ad years later
- Surfline: Get brands to give subscribers exclusive discounts instead of showing them adsWell received; outperforms banner ads for brands, no numbers
- Surfline: Aim the paid plan at surfers who go often; leave casual ones to free apps