The Facebook Retargeting Ads That Drives App Revenues

What is up app nation. It is Steve P. Young founder of appmasters.com. The place you go when you're one action packed content really did grown yet downloads and more importantly, and one that really wants stress is your revenue. And hopefully retention goes along with that revenue as well. Today, I've got phenomenal guests. He's all in the fitness industry with took a lick in that. His app on the app audits during the YouTube live streams, I've got to work with them, super excited to have him.

Cause it was like he's built a successful business in a very crowded fitness category, but really built a niche for himself through the kickboxing phase. We're gonna learn about how do you work with influencers, email marketing strategies, what's working, what doesn't and how does he turn his passion? He's really passionate about kickboxing into. An app and into a successful business and really investing in some of the high quality content key creates within the app itself.

It's I, you know, for me, Mike, I wouldn't go down this endeavor, like some complicated too pricing too much for me, but super excited to talk all about this with our guests, Mike Durst, he is Michael . He is the co-founder of Uber. Go check out the app in your app stores, O O M P H or oomph.app. All of that is linked up into the show notes. Mike welcome to the show. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It was nice to hear you do the intro live.

I've been listening to the show for, you know, before we started working together and, uh, your insurance is always super energetic. So yeah, happy to be here and glad deck, glad to be doing this with you. A friend of mine is like Steve, your intros are super energetic and then just kind of goes down a little bit. And then, you know, like you gotta fight, you gotta find a nice little balance between the two it goes up and then it goes down.

Yeah. It's got a good flow. You got it. That's why I'm saying. Yeah, that's so true. All right, man, let's talk about the Facebook strategy what's working from that end. Sure. So funny, it was on our Facebook page. We're not overly active. We haven't ventured into building, uh, you know, an active audience on our Facebook page. And that's just basic stuff. You know, manpower. We wanted to focus mainly on Instagram. Um, but Facebook ads is something that I've been, you know, diving into since we launched.

So that's, that's something that I've been, um, getting fairly good at and kind of understanding, you know, what's what works and what doesn't. And, um, The one thing I would S you know, for your audience to take, as far as like a tactical step is to really just test your creatives and test, test your audiences and see, you know, what works. So if you're planning on launching a campaign, try like literally like 20 to 30 different.

Creatives, um, different styles, different, you know, videos or stills, and then test those against four or five different ad sets with, you know, an audience based on interests. Um, an audience based on the lookalike of your app installs or, um, e-commerce, you know, website visits and really do a lot of extensive testing to narrow down what ads, what audiences are really working for your brand. Um, I think that's the biggest.

Piece of advice that I could give anyone is to really do that, that groundwork, um, before just, you know, as opposed to, you know, making one or two ads and launching them and just hoping that they work. I think testing is a really big strategy because. Um, the ones that I always think are gonna crush it and never do well. And the ones that aren't going to do well, always crush it. So you like, you're my opinion. I've found doesn't really matter or what matters is, you know, does it convert and does it work with the audiences that you're choosing?

Um, so when we first launched. I think over the past year, we've created over 400 or 500 different ads that we've tested. Um, and actually the last couple of months, there's been one ad that outperforms all of them and we still create instilled test, but we haven't been able to beat that one out so that one's been running for awhile. Um, but yeah, definitely testing, um, different, different types of ads and creatives and audiences is a big tip.

The, to get a little bit into the details of this. Are you testing like dramatically look different looking. Photos and videos, or is it just around the same like type of brand style? And look, we do a bit of both. Um, obviously all of our videos do have, uh, a look and feel sort of, but we've tested a user generated content. We've tested videos that we've shot, um, workout videos. You know, videos with texts versus no texts.

So you can go pretty granular on like what, you know, the different types of tests you can do. But we try to, um, definitely test different types of creatives, even like user generated, uh, pictures where they like are looking with the app or anything like that. Sometimes those do better than you think. Um, so yeah, I think stylistically, you want to stay true to your brand and how you want your brand to be represented.

Um, but don't be afraid to test different things. When you're AB testing, when you said, Hey, launch with like 20 different ads, is that just within the Facebook ads platform? Like you AB test here, the 20 ads, you figured out Facebook, which one works the best. Exactly. Yeah. Facebook's algorithm is so good that it's, you know, the one, the other thing, as far as like a practical tip is to let Facebook's algorithm do its magic.

So. You know, when I first started, if not, it didn't perform well within the first day, I'd be like, Oh, it's not working. And I turn it off. Um, but what I found is if you leave a bunch of ads up within, let's say you create 10 ads and you have four different ad sets and you've got a different audience within each ad set and you test those 10 ads. You've got 40 different ads running. Let Facebook run those ads for, you know, a couple of days, like even seven days before you start switching them off.

Unless there's something that's like super obvious. Um, but that's what I found. It takes Facebook a little bit of time. And when it does, it'll put the budget behind the ones that are working. So you don't really need to do anything. I used to be more active, but it's kind of like check it and forget it and then let Facebook run and see which ones it is showing to more people. Um, and. Th those are your winners. So I actually barely will turn an ad off unless, unless I'm like, it's really nice.

I'm doing well. Is there a suggested budget that you have for these. Yeah. I mean, if, if your budget is low, then you, the, the goal is just to test less ads. So if you can do like 30 bucks a day, um, you know, create five ads and put that behind three different ad sets. Um, and you'll see some, some real results there. If you have a little bit more money than, yeah, you can go on a larger scale. You know, like if you don't have 30 bucks to testify that and like, what kind of business are you really trying to build?

You know what I mean? Like you have to invest a little bit to get. Cause I talked to some people and it frustrates me so much. Like Steve, I spent it all. I have no more money. I spent it all on development. I'm like, dude, like, how are you ever going to find product market fit? You know, growth hack. You can do all these other things, but you have to invest some marketing. Exactly. I mean, I mean, to me, even if you're able to say, okay, I'm going to put 300 bucks a month.

That, that, um, you know, I'm not the best at maths or whatever it is, 12 day or something, you know, that, that, that amount will, you know, that'll give you some, at least some understanding of the data and understanding of, you know, what's working and what's not working. And 300 bucks a month is something that I think, you know, you should be able to invest in, in yourself and in your business. Totally. I like it.

All right. Are you doing anything from the like event optimization site on Facebook to make sure. That you're getting people who are actually gonna purchase a subscription. You know, you don't have anything on that side. Okay. No, absolutely. So as far as like, if you're in the app, um, space, yeah. Event optimization has been really critical. Um, actually I'll, I'll throw a couple of things into this one. Um, so one is, you know, initially.

Uh, the strategy for us was getting a cost per install. So if you're first starting, your real goal is, you know, cost per install because you don't really have the data to drive, you know, cost per trial or cost per purchase. Um, So trying to get that low cost per install. So you can start building an audience. Once you have a bit of data, then you want to switch to, and this is just, what's worked for us anyways, is, you know, switching to cost per trial.

Um, so you can optimize for trials. So within Facebook, you can go into your, um, campaign conversion and you can say, okay, I want it to optimize for, uh, app trials. And that that's been a really great strategy for us. Uh, right now, I think we're able to get, you know, I think our trial is, uh, $4 and 50 cents per trial, which is pretty good. Um, and another great strategy, because like you said, those are now. Qualified leads that you're getting that are actually taking action and Facebook will, will work.

I mean, I'm not sure how I was 14. Well, um, in fact, this, but, you know, things may change very soon. Um, but you know, all posing for trials optimize. If you, we have a seven day. Free trial within our app. So optimizing for purchases doesn't really make sense for us right now, cause it takes too long to see those results. So we, we do optimize for trials and then we optimize for purchases on our retargeting campaign.

And I think that's another really big tip for anyone. Um, in the app. Business is a retargeting campaign actually drives revenue for us because. Well, we do is we, we do a, um, uh, cost per trial campaign where most of our budget goes. And then about 10% to 15% of our budget goes to a re target where we retarget people that have actually downloaded the app, started a trial, but didn't make a purchase. So those people, um, when they see the subscription page, they just click continue and we'll get charged right away.

So you see real results really fast. And the return on investment on those campaigns is really, really good. Oh, I love it. Yeah. And I think that re-targeting is another, just crucial aspect of the whole Facebook ad strategy because you're, you're, you're hitting people that are now familiar with your brand. They they've already shown interest and they're more likely to, uh, to convert to a sale, to summarize you're re-targeting the people that have signed up for a trial and making sure they stay on and subscribe.

Exactly. So there are people that have actually done the trial, but didn't buy, they canceled the trial. So we'll actually retarget those people and, um, uh, and get them. Yeah. And we'll optimize that campaign for purchases. Interesting. That's really interesting. So you have to wait the seven days that they canceled. No, it's instant always. So yeah. Yeah. So yeah, basically whoever we're retargeting, they would have already been through the seven day free trial.

Got it. Got it. Is that pretty easy to set up within Facebook? Yep. Okay. Yep. So what you do is you go in and you can, uh, basically when you're creating an audience, you can say, okay, for op uh, trials, and then you can exclude people that have made a purchase. Um, when you're, when you're setting up your, your audience, you can do that. And then these are just events that you put in within the Facebook SDK through your developer for your case, dad or uncle.

Right? Dude, this is phenomenal. I love this stuff, man. I think this is such good stuff. Anything else you want to cover on Facebook? Um, No, I think, yeah, I think that's, that's good. Um, I think the retargeting thing has been big, cause that's something that I tested out recently, like two months ago and I was like, Holy crap, we're making sales, you know? And, and you know, we're making profit right away as opposed to waiting for the seven days.

So that that's been a big one.