The Secret Behind Weirdly Viral Apps

App founders are using this playbook to

get hundreds of thousands of downloads

on their apps by hiring college

students, having them make videos every

single day, and going viral with

actually high converting short form

videos on Tik Tok. So, in this video, I

talked to Canyon, the co-founder of

Sideshift, a platform that has 150,000

college students looking for jobs in UGC

and making these daily videos. he

dropped some really good case studies

where we go straight into the accounts

and the formats that are getting

downloads for apps right now.

>> So we uh Sideshift we started running

kind of this high volume organic

playbook in like late February probably

like four months ago. Um, previous to

that we'd been, you know, doing just

marketing on our own social channels,

physically going in person to these

college campuses and I think we're

probably around like 10,000 kind of job

seekers on our platform. Um, so about

10,000 users and over the past 3 to four

months have kind of grown that to be now

over 150,000 uh active job seekers. And

it's largely been in part due to this

high volume organic. probably the most

cost-effective way I think for consumer

founders to you know market and

distribute their product. We've spent

probably around 10k across the board and

so you just like run the numbers on that

and like a customer acquisition cost

that's you know pennies is just

ridiculous. And so I think, you know, as

we run this playbook more too, you just

get more efficient in it because you

start to figure out the formats that

work and you can just replicate that.

And obviously they don't work forever.

You know, you need to continue to

iterate and experiment. Um, but it's one

of those things where, you know, I think

we're going to continue to double down.

We actually had to turn off our funnels

in like miday. We only have one, we only

had one engineer at the time. And so

when we had like, you know, 50,000 new

kind of creators join our marketplace in

the span of like a week or two, like

products started breaking. Our

businesses were getting like 3,000

applicants, which is like great in

theory. Um, but the product wasn't

really built for that. But it is one of

those things where it's like as our

content, you know, continues to convert

and drive more users and creators to our

platform, we see a direct correlation to

the businesses that we work with having

success um because they're getting a

bigger pool to pick from on the creator

side. They can make hires much quicker

and they can just launch much bigger

programs for, you know, a very very

affordable cost. So, it's been it's been

really cool to see kind of how this flow

has evolved. How many views on short

form videos do you think you got from

the the 10K budget?

>> Yeah, let me I can actually pull up and

get a pretty accurate

um perception of this. So

>> Oh yeah, that would be cool to like see

it. Yeah, we've run two campaigns and so

the last one that we ran um which I

would say is probably equates to like

half of our views um was 16 million

through it was I think a 300 post

campaign um maybe maybe it was a little

bit more. It might have been closer to

20 I think for whatever reason. And the

dates are off, but we just found

>> million views in

>> Yeah.

>> 30 days from 60 posts

>> from from 300 posts. 300 posts. So

>> 300

>> AC across the board. We had we had five

creators making content, posting, most

of them were posting twice a day. And I

would say for the first two weeks, I

think UGC is one of these things where

it like it takes a lot of patience

because it like some people crack it

right away. They find a winning format

within like week one of posting. I would

say that's not standard for us. It took

like two to three weeks and then as soon

as we found one format, we were just

doubling down on that. We had all five

of our creators pumping it out like

every other day basically. And you know,

it was a 2 million video view video

here, a 5 million view video here, you

know, 100,000 video views that start to

stack up. And it's like when one account

starts to pick up steam, like it just is

really just a flywheel that affects all

the videos. You know, people are then

engaging with the rest of their videos,

which just kind of fuels the funnel and

their account just gets pushed out into,

you know, that audience that you're, you

know, inevitably trying to target. And

so I think it's one of those things

where founders that, you know, have

patience and are willing to go weeks or

even months at a time without seeing,

you know, extremely extraordinary

results, like they get rewarded in the

long run because they just continue to

experiment and iterate. And so it's it's

one thing that we like a with the

companies that we work with try to just

like alert them that like look, it

doesn't work on the first try every

single time. Um, sometimes it takes 300

posts before you find that winning

format, but when you do, you know,

you're able to just double down on that

and and really just change your

business. Uh, dramat

some of the videos from this campaign.

>> One of the things that we have really

tried to lean into is just with like the

job market, everything that's going on.

I think it's like leaning into trends of

just like the broader like macro economy

as well as like trends that are

happening on Tik Tok. It's like you

don't need to reinvent the wheel. I

mean, we see he's like getting denied

from whatever jobs, leaning into the

fact that he has a master's degree. Um,

we can click in these slideshow formats

have, you know, actually really

converted a ton as well. Um, and it's

just like, you know, it's subtle. It's

it's not just screaming your product

out. It's just, you know, subtly

dropping subtly dropping it in there.

Sometimes saying the product. You don't

always need to lay the product, but

like, you know, UGC creator side shift

app. this gets a few hundred,000 views,

like that just converts insanely well.

>> This is a that's a perfect slideshow

that got 84,000 views and you listed the

name of the app on the last slide and it

was like highly engaging because it's

like what are you going to rate the next

thing like the out of 10 format I feel

like is really

>> strong. Also, this guy has less than

2,000 followers. He has 1,900 followers.

like

>> right when he started the account he had

zero followers and so like these are all

you know these are fresh accounts um

obviously you get it warmed up into

whatever niche you know you're trying to

go after but it's like as you start to

like it definitely you know as we can

see like if we go all the way back here

you know he's been posting for a while

like some of the videos it takes a while

like these videos only get a 100red

views like you start getting into the a

thousand view range but you know you

post a ton

and you see no results for a while, it

can start to be like very, you know,

discouraging. Um, but I think, you know,

just continuing to put shots on goal,

it's it's one of the things that's

really hard for people. I think people

just tend to give up on a marketing

channel and just try and go find the

next best thing. Like the reality is

like all these marketing channels,

they're, you know, they're hard. They're

hard to master and it just takes reps.

It just takes practice. And I think the

beauty of UGC is you can get so many

more reps and so much more practice for

just such a cheap cost and it just