I tried following the internet’s advice to grow my mobile app transcript

Do that app that makes over 18K a month. >> products that we've gone from zero >> eventually pay off. >> That magical first 10,000 [music] users. >> Until >> I know that our possible marketing system that >> 10,000 >> 1 million downloads. >> [sighs] >> The internet makes it seem so simple. Post content and your app will make 10K a month. Well, I'm going to put that to the test. >> higher than it's been in a couple Switter will make you feel just like inadequate, like >> Over the next 90 days, I'm going to be scripting, filming, editing, and posting three videos every single day.

And by the end of this video, you should know whether this is a viable path to grow your mobile app or whether this is just a bunch of internet witchcraft. And most of it is coming right now from First up, we have to start creating all of the different social accounts so that we can post across all of the different platforms that we need to. Our app BlockWalk does one simple thing. Choose the steps you want to hit each day, pick the apps that you want to block, then >> [music] >> all your apps get locked.

And the only way you can open them is to get up off your ass and go for a walk. So, I'm thinking we target people that know they're on their phone too much and they want to move a little bit more. During the first few weeks, we were making anything and everything in terms of videos. We were just trying to get something to stick and see what kind of content could potentially resonate and drive downloads. We were trying varying the opening hooks, the opening visuals, leveraging a female face instead of my own, the types of videos, comparison videos versus not, straight-up copying. >> two for a lifetime >> The dots on this screen represent an adult life in months, assuming a life expectancy of 90. >> And some borderline questionable ones. >> Come on, we're almost there.

Oh. >> I was lying in bed playing with a pillow completely unaware that my younger brother had pushed open the >> Hey, what you looking at there? >> Needless to say, my wife was not a fan. And then finally, we had one hit. >> [music] >> So, interestingly enough, we just had a video that got about 30,000 views on one of our YouTube shorts, and it got about 35 downloads. So, should be interesting to see if we keep going down that path, and really just focus on the nostalgia content, if we can drive more and more downloads, um because that one seemed to do good.

So, something that I'm going to keep on going down on the path to see if that works. To really put this theory to the test, over the next few weeks, [music] I did nothing but post nostalgia content, where we were literally showing clips of found footage of nostalgia in a time before smartphones versus time today, and trying a bunch of different angles and clips and styles to see if that one video was an anomaly, or if it'll actually produce long-term [music] results.

And it was working. The views were going up and up and up. But, after looking at the data, it all resulted in >> [music] >> So, it seems as though we're getting a few downloads every single day, but we really don't know where they're coming from. It's really tough to pinpoint it. We're kind of just getting scattered downloads, and I don't really know right now which videos are working and which ones aren't. Um if I'm going just based on views, it doesn't really work that well.

Um so, it's like really challenging to figure out where this stuff is coming from. I thought it was going to be a little bit easier, um but there's just not enough data or enough downloads to be able to actually correlate downloads to what platforms are coming from. Because none of this is really working, we have to pivot our approach to make sure we now target two different personas with our content to make sure we're getting the most leverage.

The first one that we are targeting is the self-improvement girl. She is this one that is on her self-help, self-improvement journey, trying to [music] move more, be more active, maybe she's meal prepping, trying to stay off her phone, and is trying to build better habits. Next up, we got the work-from-home guy. Usually spends 8 hours behind a computer [music] screen, hunched over at a desk. He know he wants to move more and notices that he spends too much time on social media doom scrolling.

He feels like crap, so he needs a little extra nudge, and he knows that everything starts with his morning routine and how that sets the tone for the day. Then, I created two more TikTok accounts targeting each persona. So, since pivoting the content and the actual direction of the personas, it seems like the content is resonating with people a little bit better. It's getting comments, it's getting shares, and it's actually getting a few trial starts, which previous content seemed to not work.

I think one of the biggest learnings of this is that I'm talking about actual pain points and relatable things and stories and things that people relate to. So, it's creating organic, just like connection and reach and things like that. And because it's relatable, it's showing people the reason that this product, BlockWon, actually should exist and why it exists and how it can help them in their day. But the worst part about all this, after all of this energy, three times [music] a day posting, we have 65 downloads. >> [screaming] >> So, I'm not going to lie.

We're going on a little over 60 days here and I'm pretty tired. I'm exhausted posting content. I don't really know what's resonating. So, I'm going to take a few steps back and we're going to see if I start doing more quality of content instead of just crazy volume uh because up to this point we've been obviously doing it like five times a day or more across multiple accounts and um it's getting pretty results so far.

So, and the most ridiculous part of this whole thing is that there's majority of our downloads are coming from TikTok from females uh that are in that like 18 to 35 40 range, which we did not know prior to about 4 weeks ago because we forgot on launch on our onboarding screen and experience to ask them where they found us. So, we tried some higher production [laughter] quality stuff. Does it ever feel like your phone has become your lifeline?

Well, if you head over to some skits, you could potentially have a worse day. Oh. Uh why would I want to have a [music] worse day? Some educational stuff. And props. >> [music] >> And well, that was the plan, but somewhere along the way I started posting stuff like this at like 11:00 p.m. at night just to get a video up. Man, I will tell you what. I am tired. I am tired of posting videos. I'm tired of getting no results.

It's all I think about. It's this obsession of nothing is working and I don't know how to fix it. It started to suck all of the fun out of posting videos and this product and everything that I've been doing. And it makes me overthink everything else in my life because when this is the only thing that I'm working on, when it's not working, I don't know what to do with myself. Um Yeah, I think that this narrative online is way different that I thought when I first started this 90-day challenge.

And I honestly thought there'd be different results, if I'm being completely honest with myself. But we got about 10 days left on this journey of the 90-day challenge. And so hopefully we will have traction by the end of this more than we're having today, but we will see. And after 90 days of posting content, here's the final results. 127 downloads, 18 trial starts, 30 in-app purchases, and 11 paying users. Totaling $526 in sales.

What that doesn't tell you is that half was family and friends. So we reached the end of our 90-day journey and my final thoughts in this whole thing is that all of the advice that you read online and you see a lot of the times is so oversimplified and the results that you're going to get are probably significantly lower, if not completely from what you think you will get. What I realized throughout this journey is that you cannot just take somebody's playbook or another mobile app's playbook and think that you can plug and play and that it's going to work for yours.

There's so much nuance that goes into this whole thing and [music] a lot of times those channels, those blogs, all the Twitter posts and things like that that you see, they are selling the dream outcome and that is what their business is built around. And so, it makes for a better story, it makes for a better narrative, it's easier for them to sell and create content around that because that is what people are trying to achieve.

You also don't see all of the prior attempts that these people took. They could have done 40 mobile apps before their 41 finally hit or they could have tried 15 businesses and those ones failed and then this is finally the one that's doing successful. Or they were the one in one million person that caught lightning in a bottle and the timing was right and everything. So, you don't actually know the true story behind all of the advice you see online.

So, next steps for me is going to be I'm going for Block Walk down more of the B2B angle because I think there's more opportunity and there is higher leverage points for my mobile app to grow in that space. And so, this is not the end of the road for Block Walk, but it is a really good representation of probably what most of the people that are watching this video will go through. Do some research, figure out who you're targeting and figure out like is the advice you see online really the most accurate advice for the product or mobile app or thing that you are working on.

So, if you made it to the end of the video, I really appreciate you being here. Drop comments in if you have anything that you've tried that worked really well for you. Would love to know. So, hit the like and subscribe button. We'll see you later.