Nona Bayat Doubled Her Subscribers in 31 Days By Launching a Challenge

“I felt like I was too comfortable and I needed something that brought me out of my comfort zone. The 75 Hard Challenge was something that I wanted to do for myself, so I thought, if anyone wants to join me, we can go through this together by signing up for my app. I feel like people just liked that they weren’t alone in the challenge and they had a sense of guidance, so I think that's why the challenge was so popular for me.”

- Nona Bayat

THE CREATOR:

Nona Bayat is a Gymshark athlete who has changed her life — both physically and mentally — in the gym over the past four years. She has an exceptionally engaging social media presence, where she posts fitness-related content to her TikTok and Instagram accounts. Well before joining Playbook in October 2021, Bayat has been inspiring women all over the world to exercise with her. Consistently sharing gym selfies, posting daily workouts, and engaging with her audience left her social media followers wanting more.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Bayat may have never considered creating her own fitness app, but her popularity on social media caught Playbook’s attention. The team noticed how she was extremely motivated by interactions with her followers on Instagram, and as a fitness and health enthusiast, Bayat was determined to share her fitness knowledge. When she launched the Nona Bayat fitness app, she set her audience up for success by giving them tons of content and workouts they could complete at home, helping her social media followers train like her.

“I grew my social media following on TikTok and Instagram and prior to joining Playbook, I shared my workouts there. [My social media] blew up when COVID-19 first started. I did a two-week ab challenge which my followers really loved, so I think that allowed me to slowly grow and eventually sign up for Playbook to share my workouts with whoever is interested in my workouts and see exactly what I do,” Bayat said.

THE PLAYBOOK:

When Bayat joined Playbook as a creator, she built several workout programs — Boss Up Workout Split, Upper Body Warm-Up, and Lower Body Warm-Up — to raise excitement around her app. She then decided to launch a challenge to create additional buzz.

Here’s what that looked like:

75 Hard Challenge

Three months after launching her app, with the new year just around the corner, Bayat felt inspired to create a challenge. Her app was slowly growing subscribers at this time, but needed a pick-me-up, so she decided to create the 75 Hard Challenge and launch it on her app.

Bayat personalized the challenge for her audience and the rules were as follows:

  • Adopt a healthy diet (no alcohol, no fast food)

  • Complete two 45-minute workouts every day (one workout must be outdoors)

  • Drink a gallon of water a day

  • Read at least 10 pages of a self-help book a day

  • 5 minute cold shower

  • 10 minutes of meditation

  • Complete one act of kindness

  • Take a progress picture every day

Along with this set of rules, Bayat included every workout she did over those 75 days and her fans followed along. The challenge was well planned out in her app, but what drove her subscriber numbers up was her social media marketing strategy promoting the challenge.

Throughout January 2022, Bayat posted to social media every single day — sometimes twice a day — while completing her 75 Hard Challenge on the app.

THE RESULT:

Bayat followed Playbook’s best practices for creating and promoting a challenge, and she saw exponential growth because of it.

After Bayat hosted her challenge in the month of January, she more than doubled her number of subscribers and grew her revenue exponentially (730%). Bayat started the month of January with 652 subscribers and over the course of 31 days, she more than doubled her subscriptions: by the beginning of February, she had over 1,603 subscribers.

“My subscriber count 100 percent grew because of the challenge and because I was posting every day to social media,” Bayat said. “My subscribers loved [the challenge] and the majority of them have stayed on the app [because of it], and now I'm looking forward to the next thing I am going to create.”

In order to continue growing her app’s subscribers, Bayat continues to follow social media marketing best practices, posting fitness-related content on social media and promoting her app regularly.