300K Downloads in 5 Days: How Lightricks Used Instagram to Launch a New App

October 25, 2018

You've heard the not-so-breaking news. Instagram marketing is the current big thing — not the next big thing — if you care about marketing or selling your products or services on the Internet. Business-to-consumer marketing and brand marketing on Instagram have been a buzz lately, thanks to the fact that Instagram hosts a surfeit of diverse peoples from all over the globe.

 

Instagram also creates specific tools, features, and pro tips for business owners and influential individuals to soar in their respective industries. In agreement to this marketing trend, many marketing experts swear by Instagram as more than just a photo sharing social network but also a platform that has a fully-fledged community with the potential of making any business a worldwide success.

 

This was the case of Jerusalem-based technology factory Lightricks, which used Instagram to launch its second photo editing app Enlight Photofox.

 

 

What is Enlight Photofox?

According to its Instagram page, Lightricks calls Enlight Photofox the "most creative and addictive photo editor" on the iOS platform. With millions of downloads on multiple app stores, the app has 4.7 stars rating on iTunes, 4.5 stars on App Sliced, and 4.0 stars rating on Macworld. The app has been acclaimed ever since its launch, thanks to Lightricks' strategic use of Instagram.

 

Similar to other Lightricks' apps, Enlight Photofox is a fun and powerful app for content creation on iPhone and iPad devices. This creative juggernaut gives you the power to edit images of different formats and turn them into beautiful works of art that are usable for professional and creative works.

 

From aspiring to experienced artists, this professional-grade retouching toolkit is more than enough to get your creative juice running. Features range from special effects and layers to tonal adjustments and brushes—all geared towards its tagline, "You’ll never believe what you can create on an iPhone."

 

 

How did Instagram enable Enlight Photofox to become a success? 

InstagramLightricks' first project, Facetune, was quite successful when launched and climbed to the top of the global iOS paid app charts with ease. But when Lightricks completed its second app, Enlight Photofox, the company was worried as to the standard the first app has established. As a result, the company opted for Instagram marketing to reach millennials and seasoned artists alike.

 

According to the words of Co-Founder and CEO Zeev Farbman of Lightricks, Instagram accommodates "creative imagery" with professionalism; therefore, IG marketing was an inevitable approach to launch and call attention to their new app. The app received an impressive response from the IG community, which was described by the CEO as "explosive". But before the explosive response, how exactly did Lightricks use Instagram to drive attention to Enlight Photofox?

 

Before anything, the folks at Lightricks understood the fact that Instagram's community indulges aesthetic works of creative imagery. Instead of turning to YouTube or Facebook, they decided to drive downloads through the most logical option available: Instagram.

 

The goals were to generate utmost exposure for Enlight Photofox ahead of its release date, propel instant downloads by Instagrammers upon its release, and measure the results with Consumer Price Index (CPI), Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS), conversion rate, the number of downloads, and App Store ranking.

 

The solution was to promote the app with stunning visuals and then wait for instant downloads by the Instagram community.

  • Content Creation: To showcase the creative features of Enlight Photofox, Lightricks created a series of video ads to garner attention from the IG community.
     
  • Call-To-Action: To encourage Instagram users to download the app, the company published each video coupled with Instagram's default Mobile App Install CTA button.
     
  • Audience Demographic: Earlier, Lightricks had run a number of successful ad campaigns on Facebook and determined the demographics of its app audience. The demographic was further verified by the company's responsive Instagram audience. Its audience was aged 18 years and above, and the targeted devices were iPhone 6S and 6S Plus at the time of the app's release.
     
  • Adverts: To promote the new app and reach more people, Lightricks created two direct-response ad campaigns to push its video ads on Instagram. One was a Cost Per Mille (CPM) campaign while the other was a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) campaign. Since it was charged per 1000 impressions, the CPM campaign targeted the app's typical audience as mentioned above.

    On the other hand, the CPA campaign targeted a wider range of Instagram users. And since its price was determined by acquisitions (i.e. the number of app installations), Instagram's algorithm handled the hard part by connecting the app with more users without inflating the advertising spend.
     
  • Results: The conversion rate was reported with an increase of 50% as compared to Lightricks' other campaigns off Instagram. The video ads became a huge success, with post engagements reaching a mouth-watering figure of 40 million. The app had already gathered more than 300,000 downloads by the end of 5 days and also reached the top spot in the global iOS paid app charts. Moving on, the ROAS was reported to be 3.5x.

 

 

Enlight Photofox's Instagram Case Study: Top 4 Takeaways

Takeaway

1. The very first takeaway in this case study is the audience. As stated earlier, Lightricks opted for Instagram marketing because their app could connect with the photo-loving audience. If it was a video-editing app, YouTube marketing could have been a more logical option.

 

2. The more you know your audience, the better your ads and marketing campaigns perform. If you've never been sure of this, now you know how important knowing your audience could benefit your campaigns. Even though Lightricks used Facebook and Instagram to determine the exact demographic of its audience, you can use any tool or platform to do so. 

 

3. According to Statista, the social media advertising space is expected to see an increase in revenue annually. The truth is social media advertising has generated nothing less than $67.97 billion in 2018 as of early October. This was estimated with a 10.5 percent annual growth as opposed to last year's revenue of $41 billion. What this stat means is, advertising on social media shouldn't be overlooked by any business owner regardless of the size of your business. The market is huge.

 

Thanks to its extensive advertising opportunities, you can run different types of ads on Instagram. By combining a CPA campaign and a CPM campaign, Lightricks ensured Enlight Photofox was exposed to a variety of audience. Therefore, downloads were almost guaranteed to escalate as the video ads reached both users under the specified demographic and generic Instagram users.

 

 

Even though this was added to Instagram's collection of success stories on October 25, 2016, it has four takeaways, which are still very applicable today. And thanks to the recurring success of Lightricks' photo editing apps, the company now owns 6 different apps on the iOS and Android platforms. Now is your turn to use Instagram marketing for whichever goal you have: improved conversion rate, increased sales or downloads, brand awareness, user engagement, product/service perception, etc. Cheers!

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