AI video mobile app CloneAI is now doing $200K MRR.

19 days ago, they swiftly pivoted to jump on the TikTok “AI Hugs” trend and almost instantly went from #115 to #9… …on one of the App Store’s most competitive categories. The story and TikTok strategies:

CloneAI, released in 2022, has been toying with AI video-making features for a while but has always been ranking beyond the top 100. Until 19 days ago.

When they jumped onto the blowing AI Hug TikTok trend faster than anyone else:

This trend started a few weeks back. Searching for “AI hug”, you’ll find countless organic videos doing millions of views showing off the trend and tutorials:

This 10M-view video shows a full tutorial on how to do AI Hugs with RunwayML. However, it’s web-based and not so UX friendly.

So CloneAI pivoted its entire App Store value proposition and features to AI hugs and then things exploded:

They rocketed up to #9 on the App Store. Because of the exploding trend, they’ve been racking up all the ASO traffic. TikTok Trend > Viral + WOM > App Store Search > CloneAI. As usual, I’ve also done a deep dive onto their TikTok marketing strategies:

On their main account, they’re pushing 6 to 7 organic videos a day. Simple side by side photo at the top and hugging video at the bottom, like the one above.

And they’ve aggressively sparked ads for the best performing ones:

Now they’re trying to scale. They’re doing targeted micro-influencer marketing, like from this tutorial account page:

They’re now scaling content across multiple in-house accounts to try multiplying their reach:

But their genius move was pivoting their mobile app to ride the TikTok trend wave quicker than anyone else.

Timing is everything.