In today's digital world, many mobile app brands focus their efforts on digital marketing channels, and while they are successful, traditional offline channels like radio and digital audio present untapped opportunities to reach a wider audience and drive app downloads.
We’ve tested and identified effective strategies to optimize radio and digital audio for increasing mobile app downloads. In this blog post, I’ll explore a successful case study of our client, a cash-back savings app, that significantly increased its market footprint by 350% and achieved a remarkable 950% increase in new app account signups.
Specifically, by employing a multi-channel audio strategy and optimizing unique creatives to activate different target audiences, we were able to effectively scale growth while maintaining performance KPIs.
Let's dig into the strategies and tactics used to achieve these results.
Test and Scale
Begin by running one or two creative variations in a couple of markets with a moderate budget. This initial phase helps generate valuable data about target user behavior and provides insights that will inform future campaign optimizations.
Leverage the learnings from the test phase to expand the campaign into additional radio markets. Consider incorporating local DJ endorsements and testing new creative variations to target different customer segments. Monitor sign-ups and conversion rates as media spend increases.
Expand into New Markets and/or Channels
When you see successful results, it’s a good time to increase your market footprint or expand your reach in a way that meets your goals. In our case, we expanded into national media channels, and you can explore adding satellite or streaming audio. Monitor key performance indicators, such as cost per sign-up, and growth in sign-ups.
To further boost visibility and user growth, you can consider incorporating podcasting into the marketing mix. Common placements include host-read ads, pre- or post-roll ads, mid-roll ads, or dynamic insertion or sponsored segments. Adding podcast placements helps you reach a highly engaged and targeted audience and helps to build trust in your brand, as listeners are typically very loyal and dedicated listeners.
Optimize for Market Efficiency
At this point in our client’s campaign, we shifted focus towards market efficiency by reducing the number of markets to the top 100 that had the highest ROI. We also added local and streaming TV and increased the number of creative variations to 30+. Despite targeting a narrower market, we were able to continue to drive sign-ups while maintaining consistent conversion rates.
By employing a multi-channel audio approach and tailoring creative content to appeal to specific target audiences, the campaign achieved outstanding results:
- 350% market footprint growth: The app expanded its presence in various markets, reaching a significantly larger audience.
- 1,000% campaign budget growth: As the campaign progressed, the client increased its investment to maximize market expansion and user growth.
- 950% account sign-up growth: The optimized multi-channel audio strategy led to an exceptional increase in new app account signups, demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach.
The main takeaway here is to test and scale. Having a hands-on creative team that is integrated with your media team and analysts gives your the right formula to make decisions based on data that will help you quickly scale and grow.