Brief:
- Taxi-hailing app Curb partnered with Taptica, an advertising insight platform, for a location-based social campaign that drove 300% app install growth while cutting cost-per-installs (CPIs) by 35%, according to a case study made available to Mobile Marketer.
- Taptica leveraged both Facebook and Instagram for the effort, using the platforms' data to target ideal riders in the cities Curb operates in. When a city-specific strategy proved unduly costly, Taptica created joint-city campaigns to save money while still reaching relevant clientele within a 50-mile radius of Curb's areas of operation. It was a strategy that paid off, driving 5x more app installs than targeting via individual cities.
- Curb's Facebook campaigns featured elements specific to each city, offering discounts of $5 and $10 for first-time riders. Taptica said it found the incentives generated an increase in app engagement by 2.5x as well as insight into who Curb's most prevalent users are. The joint-city campaigns allowed Curb's message to extend to users in similar cities without spending more on any one individual locale. Curb has added 12 additional U.S. cities to its 65-city presence as a result of the overall effort.
Insight:
Curb's success partnering with Taptica points to how working smarter, not harder, can pay big dividends for app marketers. Brands often value platforms like Facebook for their hyper-targeting capabilities, but as Curb and Taptica learned, uber-granular strategies can be incredibly costly and don't always achieve the desired business results for the resources sunk.
The joint-city approach shows the two partners adjusting strategy when a hyper-targeted tack might've been stalling out. That pivot managed to strike a finer balance, reaching the desired scale while not being overly-broad in the messaging, providing a huge boost in return. Taptica and Curb's campaign, beyond driving 300% app install growth, helped the taxi-hailing service climb 23 points in the Google Play Store, moving up spots from #46 to #23, the companies said in the case study.
As ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft continue to snatch up more business from cabs, that growth is nothing to gawk at. While there is no explicit push from Curb to appeal to younger millennial consumers, launching campaigns on Facebook and Instagram is an indicator that that's exactly who the brand wants to reach.
