TikTok as a Growth Loop for Ladder: How the Fitness App Pivoted from Instagram to TikTok

0:03Greg Stewart: We had to have complete focus on one thing at a time. And one of the growth loops that was part of that process was TikTok. And we obviously had experience on Instagram now a couple of years of learning how to be effective with our coaches to tell the right story to their audience.

0:22And we could see that that was getting harder and harder over time. Forget the paid side, even on the organic side, it was just getting harder to get the same reach as we went. And TikTok as consumers, we could see that the consumer was moving. To tech doc. This was 2020. I started messing around a little bit with one of our coaches who was super

0:41smart and been with us from the beginning. And I said, Hey, I think this is worth trying and seeing what we can learn. It feels like our consumer is moving here. And we have some interesting advantages and it doesn't cost us anything to learn on the organic side. So we spent time together really dissecting.

1:00We created a handle for her as coach Lauren Kansky. And we started creating content and dissecting what was working, what was not working and trying to find repeatable outcomes on organic views. But we learned pretty quickly that. Yes, the relevant consumer is here. The engagement was high. Once we got to a thousand followers, we had LinkedIn bio.

1:21It was generating some trials as we were going. So there was enough of a path that it came back into our minds in the first quarter of 2022. And we started an account for one of our new coaches who had zero experience on TikTok. We were like, Hey, this will be your account, but we're going to act as

1:39you for the first couple of months. We're going to take all your raw video that you've ever created. And these are fitness influencers. So they have a lot of raw video on their phone and we're going to see what we can do. And we started creating content with no new video, but we got a 250,

1:54000 followers, like 45 days later. And we're like, all right, so like that worked. And like, we're generating million plus view outcomes and we're. Doing it on a weekly basis. There's something there, but it gave us a really strong understanding of the creative and how to iterate and the differences versus Instagram and just enough confidence to keep going.

2:15Like we felt like there was a playbook, there was a playbook here. So it all started with organic and that was February, March, 45 days later. We're like, all right, we've seen enough to maybe start putting some dollars to work. And seeing what that turns into and how far off are we and very quickly started to turn into trials and to paid members and it was infinitely more exciting than

2:36our first couple of weeks of Facebook. It gave us real conviction to keep learning, but it all started with kneeling. The organic and then starting to put some capital behind it and iterating on the paid side. So David Barnard: what did that early motion look like? Would you see what landed organically and then put money

2:55Greg Stewart: behind it? We tried everything and everything was documented and we had a thesis and a reason to believe different things would work. But there are a couple of different ways to spend money on TikTok. And what we've learned over time that is that organic is the best. Indication of winning content. We were creating brand ads, featuring coaches that were winning on TikTok, but really using the organic insights, the hooks, the messaging, the copy, the coach that were the outlier coaches that started to inform the type of content

3:28that we would create on the brand side. And then we learned Spark, which is just whitelisting and TikTok, but taking the coaches, organic content. And then turning that into an ad and pointing that in a direction that we sat in, that was also explosive very, very quickly for us. And we worked with TikTok, the company at that point, who we'd gotten to

3:51know a couple of folks to figure out how do we connect ads manager. I'm the only guy pushing buttons in there. How do we connect ads manager to all of these organic accounts that we're building with our coaches? Because we were just doing codes, which was not fast enough. The amount of volume that it takes to win on TikTok is very high. So you need a really high level of volume and speed of iteration

4:15to keep fueling the machine. And so we connected all these accounts so that I could look every day to see what was high performing or outlier organic content. Related to ladder or their program. And I could turn those into an ad in seconds. And that became a big piece of our paid acquisition strategy that would

4:36live alongside the brand strategy. So David Barnard: what kind of content did perform? And then the thing I've always, and talking to folks who've tried TikTok ads, one of the challenging things is like turning something that's engaging as content itself into. A call to action. So what did the call to actions look like?

4:56And how did you work a call to action into what looked like organic content? Greg Stewart: Step one, which is just marketing. One on one was understanding our customer and understanding them at a really, really deep level and the words that they use. And I've done a lot of work, take roles, feedback. That's come through us through our own team, but also dissecting the app store.

5:20We have. Almost 16, 000 reviews in the app store. And I've taken all that and very manually gone through and created value propositions and problem solution statements using the words that are coming out of our user's mouth and how they were explaining the product and what they were getting. And so like we really, really understand our customer as a plumber. I don't think anybody in the world understands this

5:43customer better than we do. And that obviously is then filtered through any sort of creative. But especially on TikTok, but for TikTok, we had to learn how to create for TikTok. On Instagram, the motion is very, very different, especially on organic on Instagram, you are rewarded for building up a following. And then over time you spend your time trying to extract

6:05value and try and monetize that audience that you've acquired. So you build this million person following and you try to sell them relevant. Goods and services. And sometimes those are your products and sometimes they're a brand partners that's working with you as an influencer. So the motion is build up a following, put up great content and constantly speak to that following tech dog is the exact opposite, where most of the content that's being consumed is through the for you page and the for you page is tech talk, feeding

6:32you content that it thinks you will like. Based on your prior user behavior and the content that you are consuming and where you're stopping. And so it's saying you like startups and you like subscription and you like baseball and it's feeding you that back to you, but you have no idea who the creators are.

6:50For the most part. So most videos that we learned are an entirely different audience every time. So we had to spend time with our coaches to basically unlearn all of the behaviors that made them successful on Instagram. And they would have notions of, I wore this in the post yesterday, or I haven't given them a behind the scenes in a couple of weeks and with

7:11TikToks, like it just doesn't matter. You can assume it's a different auditorium of people. Every video. So it's a new auditorium of people. There's no frequency of notions coming in. There's no anchoring to what you did yesterday. They're not going to your profile and consuming it linearly. They're finding you through the for you page because TikTok thinks that your

7:29content is valuable to that user based on what it knows about that user's behavior. And that just completely changes how you think about the creative and the type of creative that you're building. I think what we learned with our coaches, and then we have. TikTok creators that are incredible in our team that are not coaches. We learn the importance of first understanding the platform and how it's

7:51used, understanding the free page, which was just spending time using the product. Second was what is the type of content that worked? It's not high production. It's not stuff that's working on Facebook and Instagram. It's raw and shot with an iPhone and even editing in TikTok. Made the difference of it working or not versus using something

8:09that you had created in Instagram. And then it's nailing the content and nailing the content for us has been different with each creator. They're all obviously under the fitness umbrella, but they all represent a different genre. Of training style, but really a different genre of white hot user that care about different things. And so we had to work with each of our coaches through this iteration period, because for the most part, we're starting from zero on figuring

8:35out what is the niche and the content type that gets to repeatable outcomes. That's getting to the right user that then becomes trialers, but it was all focused on the content to start not on any sort of. Acquisition or monetization, it was all on can we create great content that is providing value and value on TikTok is you're either teaching them

8:55or they're entertained and that's it. And if you nail those, then they're willing to learn more and purchase from you. But you've got to understand the fundamentals of what works for you, the creator. And we just learned a ton. And so we have this portfolio of coaches and we're learning across them, which is

9:10just 10Xing our speed because we're doing it so quickly across multiple people. But can't stress that enough that versus Instagram or anything else. It is the creative that you are winning or losing on right now. And it is creative for Tik TOK and really understanding what that is. Can make or break a strategy. And if you're not nailing that before spending a dollar on paid marketing,

9:31you're going to give up pretty quickly. When David Barnard: you start putting money behind a creative, are you letting the algorithm figure that out or are there specific targeting or is there anything else you're doing behind the scenes to help the money you put behind it? Be more effective. Greg Stewart: There's a lot of hacky things that we're doing in

9:49TikTok that we have figured out just through having to figure it out. I'll give you one example is that everybody goes to our web quiz off at TikTok app, every single person, and they're filling out those 15 questions. So again, a million people have come through that funnel and we're learning a lot about who they are, but we know their persona very, very

10:09quickly based on their questions. And we spent. A lot of time getting that quiz dialed in to make sure that people were actually filling it out and not dropping off, but the right user was filling it out. And we built an entire suite of software tools so that I could iterate without an engineer and I can move questions around and change media

10:28without having to disrupt our roadmap. And that was a incredible product that still exists. It could be a commercialized product that fuels all this. But for us, what was really impactful was using the answers on the quiz. As conversion events for Tiktok, so Tiktok isn't seeing basically anything happening in the app. They're learning who our user is based on the answers that they're giving us and then learning off what a good user looks like off of those conversions, which are

10:57just answering the question in the way that we know it indicates a white user. Facebook experience. We had to be really good and scrappy at getting to the right user. And right now that's somebody for the most part, who's already working out. And the most expensive lead to acquire is casual fitness. And everybody in the world is advertising to that person.

11:22They're telling a story about motivation and getting started. And they're talking about the size of the workout library, how many coaches they have, and it's going to be fun. All of that is great, but it's a really expensive lead that doesn't really convert very well in our product. So if I'm attracting a lot of folks with that persona, they're not going to convert

11:39and the economics are going to break. So we had to figure out how do we get dialed in, in terms of getting to the right user and not getting to. more casual focus folks, folks who have never lifted a weight before, never tried strength training. We've got big visions on how to help those people.

11:55But at that moment in time, we didn't have a product for it. And using the quiz and mixtures of the answers on the quiz instantly got TikTok dialed in. And there was a week where we were iterating because I'm reading the answers, right? I had this spitting out into amplitude and then into a Google sheet.

12:12So I can read the answers coming in and I could see the profile of these people. And it was getting tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and became very clear that we can get to the right person efficiently. It maybe is not the obvious tactics that have been used. Either on Tik TOK or other platforms, but this motion got it dialed in really tight.

12:33And that's still true today. David Barnard: That's a really solid funnel approach that I hadn't heard anybody using before that you're getting them out of Tik TOK onto the web, not into the app. And so you have a UTM. In there. So you're able to then send very early feedback because they're taking the quiz instantly. So instead of waiting for a conversion event, that's way down funnel and maybe in the app where you can't get good tracking, you're actually getting

13:03that signal on the web where they are. Where you can get that feedback loop going, Greg Stewart: which was very, very important for managing spend. TikTok is an unbelievable platform with 170 million Americans on it most days, but it's still an early stage company and taking an established Facebook playbook. Even though that's been disrupted with iOS 14 and the evolution attribution, there's still a playbook and a lot of people that have built big

13:31businesses in the back of Facebook, and that's just not true yet on Tiktok. So it's a little bit wild, wild west. So we've had conversations with folks that will talk to us the conversation and say, well, you can't raise. Your budget in any ad group, ad set by more than 30 percent a day.

13:48And my question would be like, why, what's the rationale? I was like, Oh, that's what we learned on Facebook and performance marketing. We didn't hold any of those as truths going into this. It was like, all right, if that's an assumption, then let's two X or three X the budget in one day and see if it works.

14:02And these little moves would work. So we have people telling us one thing we're trying another and it's working. I spoke at TikToks. One of their us all hands last December, and I was talking to all the reps and really, really smart people, but most of these reps came from Facebook. Most of the folks in the audience came from Facebook. So they would tell me and they were like, we don't recommend touching your

14:25as manager and making budget changes. You know, within the week and I'm like, within the week, I'm doing this three, four or five times a day and it's make or break on it working or not. We've been able to use the quiz because now I have a pixel on every question, every combination of question that I can see the cost metrics in ads manager.

14:46And I know what in the money looks like for an answer to each of our questions. And then what happens downstream in the app. I don't even have to see what happens in the app. I know it's gonna happen on the app just based on these metrics. And the reason it's very hard right now with TikTok, we're unfortunate.

15:02And that we're not spending time or money anywhere else. We're unbelievably excited about Tik TOK and we just don't have any reason to go spend time elsewhere. And what we learned very early on in our Tik TOK iteration was that most people wouldn't go down this happy path. Uh, going from ad, clicking to the web quiz, completing

15:22the quiz, downloading the app. We would get a bunch of people, but it wasn't most. We learned that for every one person that was answering the quiz, three were going directly to the app store and they were taking a screenshot of the ad. They were sharing it with themselves. And I talk to these people.

15:35Once they're in the app, I'm DMing them. Like, how'd you get here? I'm trying to extract and learn. And we learned that people were taking screenshots of the app and then going to the app store and going down that path, which means I'm totally. But we studied with a lot of math and rigor, the correlation between those that were coming through our happy path and what was happening outside our happy path,

16:00and those ratios were very, very tight. Every time we had a new winning creative, anytime we added material spend or made an unlocked change in as manager, I would see the same step up in app store direct trials and they would move in peril. The charts moved exactly the same, so it gave me enough confidence, even now to know that if it's in the money and as manager, even though it doesn't reflect everyone, it reflects only those that answered the quiz, I can

16:29make all my decisions off of that. And I know what's going to happen downstream that's held true even as we five, six, seven, eight X budget promote growth investment perspective.