How Bloom Makes $2M/Year With Its Organic-to-Paid Strategy

Bloom is a Gen Z investing app. Think Robinhood + Duolingo.

In 2024, Bloom doubled down on scaling their organic growth after realizing that their old paid ads strategy had CAC at an unsustainable level.

Currently, Bloom is top 100 on the charts and pulling 100k installs a month.

Here's Bloom's Organic to Paid Strategy (with examples):

2. Volume > big influencers

Bloom worked with micro-creators and built faceless accounts internally.

Each post 2x/day, 60 videos/month per creator, and let the algorithm find winners.

Once a post would go viral they would propagate it to all the other accounts.

3. Brain-rot to Talking Head Content

Bloom transitioned from brain-rot TikTok content to higher-production creator videos.

They went from faceless content to hiring talented creators at scale.

Faceless content can get reach, but talking head and face creator content tends to convert better.

Faceless content is great to get early volume. Slideshows and carousels can be produced high volumed easier than nano-creator content.

4. Viral UGC Strategy

Bloom's primary viral content format is text on screen videos where creators perform a simple task in the background without speaking using a trending sound.

Bloom does sometimes use talking creator videos. The creators either bring up a dramatic financial story or take an educational approach.

The main format stays the same, but Bloom just changes the creator, hook, angle, and story.

Bloom Viral Content Hooks:

I feel so behind...

I had a good day until

Savings breakdowns

I wanna save $X for XYZ

how much money y'all saving?

is it just me or {insert investing/saving relatable pain point}

If I see one more 19 year old with their own apartment I might just crash out

Educational angle: "Why your Roth IRA is so important to start early"

5. Bloom's Conversion Strategy

The reason Bloom makes these text on screen videos work so well is leveraging the description and comments. Bloom uses indirect CTAs instead of "Download Bloom here".

Relatable stories with the app dropped in comments or description. "This app is called Bloom" in the comments. "Bloom helped me save for college" in the description.

Bloom has their creator army plant comments on other creators posts to drive boost the comment section.

Example below: "someone said bloom..." then people will ask "whats bloom?" in the comments and thats when the creator replies "search bloom on the app store" and it then gets seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

6. UGC to TikTok Ads

Bloom leverages the organic-to-paid feedback loop.

Bloom treats UGC to paid as one channel or a continuation vs two separate channels.

Once a winning piece of content naturally falls off Bloom then turned it into a paid ad with the same creative.

Here's what Bloom does differently with paid ads.

The first part of each ad is organic because it's proven to get the attention of views, but the second part going right into using the app. Which gives the viewers more context, explains the app more visually, which can increase conversions.

"Organic proves, paid amplifies".

TL;DR (How to Replicate This for Your App):

Bloom (Gen Z investing app, "Robinhood + Duolingo") scaled to $2M+/yr revenue by mass UGC and then repurposing the winners as TikTok ads.

UGC + TikTok Ads Strategy:

20+ accounts, 2 videos/day to find viral winners

Propagate viral winners to all accounts

short relatable text hook-driven content

use relatable angles with trending sounds to get reach

Use soft CTAs in description and comment sections to get conversions

Turn viral winners into ads, but insert an app demo after the first 3-5 seconds

I’m Jax Dwyer, Co-Founder of Cult Media. We’ve generated over 1M paying users and 20B views for consumer apps using real human UGC and UGC powered paid ads. No AI slop.

If you’ve reached product-market fit and want to scale your app...

Let's talk growth by DMing me.

or:

Schedule a call with me here

Links

• go.cultmedia.io/opt-in?utm_source=x_lm_jax