Peek Inside Sweat’s 100 Million Dollar App Growth Strategy
If you are an App owner, mobile marketer, developer, or just having been involved with apps then this article will be worth your time.
Today, we are taking one of the most influential fitness apps to see what made them so successful.
SWEAT has more than 1 million active users per month. Their annual revenue is well around $100 M.
They were the 6th highest earners in June 2020.
And they made all this happen by bootstrapping. Meaning, they never took in outside capital.
In fact, they are the only bootstrapped company on the above list.
How is that possible? — you might ask.
Simple: influencer marketing with well-organized content. Now, this isn’t a regular influencer strategy you hear about every day.
Anyone who digs deeper into Health & Wellness probably hears about Kayla Itsines (and her BBG program).
Today I will show you how Itsines made one of the most successful fitness apps appear on the app marketplaces by simply using her influence.
We will take a closer look at influencers, content, and how to align all these with your paid efforts. Shall we?
About Sweat
Sweat was founded by Kayla Itsines and Tobi Pearce in 2015. Before that, they had already been working together selling fitness programs in PDF (e-book) format.
When Itsines’ BBG (Bikini Body Guide) fitness program really took off they started thinking about new ways to reach even more people.
The idea of Sweat was born.
It is not an unprecedented move for a company to expand its brand influence and reach more via a mobile application. However, the story of SWEAT is far the most successful we have ever seen.
Let’s dive in to see why.
Summary of Their Strategy
This tremendous success of the Sweat app simply couldn’t have happened without Itsines and her influence. It was a tool for reaching a broader market and then it became their flagship channel reaching new heights with the company.
It is truly amazing to see how they built out a framework I like to call the “influencer umbrella”. Basically, using other trainers’ existing influence to drive more traffic to the app. It worked for Itsines, and then it worked again for other trainers.
As the app has numerous trainers (aka influencers) it means an extensive amount of content too. They need to handle all trainers’ online presence including social media platforms, groups, websites as well as their paid ads. It requires a lot of work on their end. Which results in a massive amount of free organic traffic.
Beyond putting together a killer content plan and this amazing influencer strategy they focus a lot on personalization. They know what the market wants and when needs it.
In fact, reacting quickly to market changes is something they are really good at.
Understanding the ecosystem of social channels, deep knowledge of the target market, and quick reaction to changing needs are what makes them one of the greatest fitness apps on the market.
Itsines’ Personal Brand
Itsines started as a personal trainer and graduated as a Master Trainer at the age of 18. Her whole career is led by teaching others how to live a more mindful and healthy life.
Once she created her world-famous fitness program the BBG series, she used social media (particularly Instagram) to sell the book(s).
By the time Sweat was founded, Itsines had a massive follower-base on Instagram making it way easier to launch the app.
It is quite nice to promote a new app when millions are following you already, isn’t it?
It is then safe to say that Sweat’s influencer strategy started right at the beginning. The app was a tool for Itsines to reach a broader market.
A market that was well-known to her.
She already knew a lot about these ladies as she was around them 24/7. She didn’t need to do background research to get a better understanding of potential customers.
And what does that all mean to the Sweat app?
To put it simply, Itsines had channels and better resources to promote the newly-built app.
In fact, Sweat is influenced by Itsines’ personal brand to this day.
To back it up with real data, we asked 1000 past, current & prospective users of the Sweat app.
Here’s their answer:
81.2% of respondents heard about Itsines before any other BBG related product including the Sweat app.
This means their acquisition strategy heavily relies on Itsines’ personal brand to this day.
Traffic Sources
With all that being said, let’s take a look at how Itsines’ online presence creates traffic sources for the app.
Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms are great examples of organic traffic. She amasses more than 12M followers solely on Instagram.
Almost all of her posts have a CTA at the end promoting the app.
Here’s a great example of how to adapt to the current climate and change your communication and the product accordingly.
It is not simply a video showing you new ways of working out at home. They created a whole new program called “BBG Zero Equipment” in their response to the pandemic.
Nuances like these make you cream of the crop.
Dominating on social media is one the most powerful tools to have but certainly not the only channel that can account for organic traffic.
Itsines’ website is another great example of that.
Itsines’ page has the same design as Sweat’s. Brand identity looks identical on the two pages. Meaning they are both being promoted under the same brand.
Her website grabs all opportunities to promote the app.
According to SimilarWeb, there are 150k monthly visitors to her website. This is an obvious traffic source for the app and an opportunity to acquire new users organically.
Another core pillar of her online presence is online communities such as Facebook Groups. Generally, in the Health & Wellness industry, the existence of Groups is crucial as consumers like to feel motivated, share successes, tips, the latest diet trends, and more.
To put it simply, they generally like to be surrounded by likeminded people so they can achieve their lifestyle goals easier.
Itsines has a main group of 39k people and then smaller ones around 10k. The average group members are past, current, and prospective users so again great free traffic sources of the app.
The Influencer Umbrella
Now that we saw how Itisnes’ personal brand helps Sweat via additional channels let’s take a look at the other trainers as well.
We asked the community about who is their favorite trainer.
Here is what they had to say:
As you can see Kelsey Wells and Chontel Duncan are pretty popular among users.
Let’s see how their online presence looks like.
For the sake of simplicity, we are going to talk about Wells for now.
Her website has the same content as others’ promoting the app. The design and overall look are slightly different in colors but definitely matches the style of the overall Sweat experience.
Other than her website, she has her own support groups on Facebook. She has 10k+ members overall.
Plus, she has a few paid ads as well promoting the app. These are more likely retargeting ads engaging with audiences that have previously seen her content.
She pretty much has the same marketing arsenal as Itsines just on a smaller scale.
It seems like all trainers account for a portion of user acquisition. I call this the “influencer umbrella”. They all have a personal brand that they nurture actively while promoting the same product — Sweat.
Sweat acts like the parent brand in this scenario.
And what does this mean in action?
A tremendous amount of content that has to be made for all the trainers.
And endless opportunities.
Brand value
To see where brand value truly relies we charted average willingness to pay in relation to relative goal preference.
We asked our respondents about their goals using the app and their willingness to pay.
Here’s how it looks like combined:
As you can see, none lands squarely in the Basics quadrant however Getting stronger / Improving endurance gets real close.
This comes with no surprise.
As this is one of the top reasons beginning to work out among women (according to BreakingMuscle).
On the other hand, this is where Sweat could start to invest more into acquisition along with other angles as Improve overall health (body & mind) and Losing weight.
As Differentiators, users are more eager to resolve pain points.
Or to be more specific, use features that cover these areas.
When we get into the Add-Ons quadrant, it starts to get more niche in terms of what the app could potentially offer.
Willingness to pay is lifted way up there for Manage Stress, Anxiety, and Depression, but in reality, it wouldn’t really be a good plan for the app.
Sweat wouldn’t get anything from advertising a program intended to curb or relieve an anxiety attack.
However, it might have been a good move to launch the Yoga series after all.
Pregnancy sessions got right into trash land. Meaning, it could be a great niche for them in the future.
But right now it is not something that significantly uplifts the overall brand value.
Based on all this, we can see where Sweat’s growth opportunities are.
Plus, it gives us a rough direction towards more specific targeting options as Sweat is becoming more mature.
Tailored messaging
Now, let’s see if Sweat utilizes these opportunities we laid out above…
(Their main market is in the U.S. so from now on we are going to focus on that.)
The official Sweat page only runs 16 ads right now with all being retargeting ads.
I am sure this has something to do with the current climate.
It blew up normalcy as we knew it. And it was just like that with paid ads too.
A lot of brands immediately stopped advertising when the pandemic hit us so they can tailor their communication to a whole new situation.
I am sure Sweat did the same.
However, Itsines’ ads show some more interesting details…
Previously we briefly talked about her new program called BBG Zero Equipment.
This is a recent ad introducing the new program.
No doubt it is a great move for them to be seen as more empathetic while reaching a broader market of those during a lockdown.
The ad itself is quite engaging right from the beginning as Itsines starts talking about the new program.
Then she does a full workout session which is still quite engaging to watch.
It is targeted to those who are already familiar with the app hence there is no CTA at the end.
Overall, this is a great ad introducing a new feature to the community that many will like during these times.
Now, Covid-19 has been quite prosperous for lots of apps but it has downsides as well.
One of them is keeping retention rates high post-pandemic…
Bonus: High Retention Rates Post-Pandemic?
If you have an app, you probably have been scratching your head in the past few weeks trying to figure out how to keep new users acquired during the pandemic.
As our lives are getting back to some sort of normalcy, users are quickly shifting away from apps they couldn’t live without during lockdown.
Keeping retention rates high is a huge growth challenge in peaceful times too.
And it seems nearly impossible in the current climate.
However, it’s not rocket science after all.
The number one rule of keeping COVID-users is making it a habit using your app (before they would eventually end up deleting it).
You can (and you should) do that in various ways introducing new features, sending tailored in-app messages and well-scheduled notifications, emails, etc… the list goes on.
However, there is something else that very few utilizes to this day when it comes to keeping retention rates high.
Paid advertising it is! (Hope you are in the lucky few who guessed it right ;) )
Anyways, let’s take a look at how Sweat retargets users to form a habit among them:
It doesn’t have to be long. Just a quick reminder really.
I like how they actually use the word “habit”. They are confronting you to get on the app.
As far as copy goes, they are always on point. They are not afraid to write long copies if it works better. (It has to be tested either way.)
In this case, it is a brief summary of Sweat’s benefits.
Notice how they used a motivating tone in the Headline below.
To take motivation to another level they chose a very paced music so you are going to get fired up by listening to it.
This ad is really just a great reminder to use the app again.
It’s simple yet effective.
You wouldn’t believe how many brands don’t use any tactics even close to this one.
And this is why we launched a new program called COVID-Boom User Retention Audit.
Now it’s only for a select few (and we are most probably full by the time you are reading this) but if you would like to hear more tactics like this to keep retention high, feel free to reach out.
Side note: Our Linkedin DMs are always open to anyone who would like to discuss ideas.
Conclusion
Sweat is an app based on a personal brand. Most of the time it is the other way around. You have an app first and then the influence.
But don’t think methods they are using cannot be applied to others as well.
If you learned one thing today then it should be this: take a closer look at your content strategy & influencer marketing. And most importantly, align it with your paid efforts. That is the single most important thing you can do when it comes to brand communication.
Don’t go after strategies just because gurus say you must use this and this. Take a look at what big brands do and think about how you can implement them to your business. If you can tweak them to an even better version, you’ll rock. 💯🔥
What You Should Do Now
If you are serious about taking your app to the next level, you should download our 50 Mobile Traffic Sources spreadsheet — it’s incredibly useful if you want more traffic to your app. (Work wonders over 100k downloads.)
If you’d like our direct help planning and implementing these strategies for your market, then click here 👈💰
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