Ok, so here is the case study for Making Facebook and Google Ads Shine.

Category: App Installs

Industry: FinTech

Ad Platforms used: Google Ad Network and Facebook Ads

Campaign Types: Universal App Campaign from Google and B/W Awareness and App Install Campaigns in Facebook Ads

Upcoming Growth Experiments: Referral System, User Activation Optimisation, and Retention Strategy.

Avg CPI: INR 19.58

Other promotional methods: Community Amplification, Content Marketing, Native Ads (Upcoming)

First I identified what were the pain points and benefits the app drives and how the competition does it.

The creative base was dependent on the above.

We drove our maximum base via Google Ads with just adding more creative assets to test (Headlines, colors, images, videos etc)

What creatives worked the best?

1. Before/After which implies how was the condition before using the app vs how it will be after. The CTR on this one was more than 6%

2. A Benefit driven creative (did competitive research to know how other brands have done it too)

3. Videos showcasing product use case

Total Impressions Driven till now : 3 Million+

Total Clicks were driven: 200k+

The Cost Per Install was under our control (below INR 20 is what we targeted)

Remember, Google will eat your budget if you don’t set it right. We started small and then grew it to INR 7000 per day.

Bidding Strategy used: Target CPA (Which was kept at 25, but we were able to get CPI’s at INR 19.58 overall)

In Facebook Ads, we drove brand awareness + reach ads along with app install ads (helped us reduce the CPI as it was a little expensive to drive installs from FB. I was though sure of one thing, we were driving good quality from there).

Product Analytics tools used to monitor In-App activity and custom events: Mixpanel

App Install Growth, Churn and Play Store stats: Google Play Store Console (Developers)

User Journey, DAU. MAU Monitoring App: Google Firebase

Push Notification: OneSignal

Email Marketing for engagement and activation: Customer (io)

Important Learnings :

1. Make Sure you test more on messaging than creative and brand colors, We tested both and found messaging resonating better.

2. Use product analytics to find out why user churn is increasing and let the dev know about any potential issues a user might have while onboarding

3. Work on customer retention strategy and engagement for day 1

4. Setting up iOS SDK on FB and Google Ads is a tough nut, make sure you have good developers to pull that off quickly.

5. Make sure onboarding for users is swift as a knife. If not, it will result in more churn, less activation and more loss of ad spend.

6. Study stats of the industry in which the app comes. If the churn stats are normal across the world, make sure you communicate the same to the client so he doesn’t mistrust on your efforts

7. With more paid ads, your Google Play Store rankings and chances of coming to explore page increases. Make sure your descriptions, name, and App Store Page are optimized with reviews, etc.

8. Communities helped in driving organic installs and helped us in giving feedback (improved the product a lot lol)

9. Don’t forget Content Marketing and Network Effect. Create beautiful playbooks and make sure they are distributed amongst your TG’s

Upcoming experiments with growth :

1. Micro-Influencer Marketing

2. Utilizing platforms like MoEngage for Re-Engagement and enhancing user journey on the app + personalized messaging

3. New channels for more acquisition: Native, Twitter Ads, etc

4. Twitter Growth as a lot of fresh TG who are into finance and investing hang out there.

5. more playbooks that can be shared amongst TG

6. A LOT MORE!

7. Focusing on User Retention and Reducing Churn

Will keep all of you updated once the journey continues.