The brief
Galatea is a reading app, the sister app of Inkitt. It already had book lovers. It wanted new people to install it.
This was a team campaign at The Cirqle. I recruited and onboarded creators, and ran some ads on the under 10% of the budget I managed. The results belong to the whole team.
The plan
Creators on Instagram and TikTok made the content. Facebook and TikTok ads showed the best posts to people like the creators’ followers.
What went into it
Posts showed the app, its features, looks based on famous characters, and each creator’s favourite story. Each post carried one message. The ads tested different audiences, mostly people who liked similar creators.
Results
7,077 app installs in 40 days
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| App installs | 7,077 in 40 days |
| Impressions | 6,378,843 |
| Clicks | 46,038 |
| Cost per install | Down about 20% |
| Creators | 11 |
| Posts | 57 |
From those numbers: about 0.72% of views became clicks, and about 15% of clicks became installs. The Cirqle didn’t publish the budget or cost per install, so I haven’t either.
What I learned
Fix tracking before you spend. iPhone privacy changes made installs hard to count. Adjust showed which creator and ad each install came from. Without it, nobody could tell which creator worked.
Use many creators, not one. Eleven creators gave a ranking. One big creator gives one result. The ranking tells you where to move money.
Small moves add up. Cost per install fell by about a fifth because the team cut what lagged and fed what worked, every few days.
Check the store page. About one click in seven became an install. That step depends on the app store page and the ad’s promise. I’d look there before buying more reach.
Keep the brief short. If a creator can’t repeat the brief in two lines, the post won’t carry it either.