Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science

On the podcast: scaling Meta ads from zero to $100,000 a month, why they waited a year after launch before buying ads, and how a pricing page experiment shifted users toward annual subscriptions.

Top Takeaways:

📉 A big audience buys you a launch spike, not a growth engine
Even 7 million subscribers produce a bump at launch and a steady trickle after; durable growth still came from paid ads, SEO, and a product that converts cold traffic.

🧱 Fix trial-to-paid before you spend a dollar on ads 
A full year of product work before the first ad lifted the conversion floor for every channel, because paid traffic always converts colder than organic.

🧲 Cold traffic converts better on a quiz than in the App Store 
A long, personalized web quiz educates users, overcomes objections, and raises perceived value — and it beat direct-to-store traffic in a head-to-head test, which is why 90% of traffic goes there.

💰 Show annual first and shrink the perceived risk, not the price 
Presenting annual upfront with a day-by-day trial timeline and a promised day-12 reminder shifted plan choice from 60/40 to 75–80% annual, with no price change.

👯 A two-person plan is retention insurance disguised as a discount 
15% off for adding a workout partner gets 15% of trial starts to take it, raising order value and keeping both users subscribed longer.

🔬 70% of experiments fail on the first try — winners come from documenting why 
Locking in the problem before brainstorming solutions, and writing every test down, turns failures into iterations instead of dead ends.

About Ethan Ethier:
🏋️Head of Growth and Operations at Built With Science, a science-based fitness app founded with YouTuber Jeremy Ethier. Personalized workout plans, nutrition guidance, and AI-powered coaching designed to help users train with research-backed methods.

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