How a UAE grocery app tripled installs in month one.
A launch date, a market owned by giants, and no budget to outspend any of them. Here is what we did instead, what it produced, and how the installs were counted.
the launch forecast
there
work by us
with no markup
99creatix is a web design and growth agency serving the UK, EU, USA, Canada and UAE. For a UAE grocery delivery service, we rewrote the app store listing for how people actually search, built landing pages that convert paid traffic, and ran the launch campaign on the client's own ad account. Installs came in at three times the launch forecast in month one.
Landing pages and launch campaigns sit inside our published plans. Every price is published in full.A market already
owned by giants.
The client had a launch date and a category where the incumbents can spend more on a single weekend than a new entrant can spend in a year. In grocery delivery the first app on the phone usually keeps the customer, so a slow start is not a slow start. It is the whole outcome.
We could not outspend anybody, so the only route left was to make every install cheaper than it was for the people we were competing against. That is a discipline problem rather than a budget problem, and discipline is available to a small business in a way that budget is not.
To be exact about what we did and did not do: the client built the app. We did not. Our job started at the point where somebody who had never heard of them was deciding whether to download it.
Three moves,
all about cost per install.
Every one of these makes the same install cheaper rather than buying more of them. When you are the smallest spender in a category, efficiency is the only advantage you can actually own.
Rewrite the store listing
The listing rebuilt around the words people type when they want groceries delivered, not the words a brand team likes. Title, description and screenshots that answer the only two questions a browsing shopper has: what is this, and why this one. App store search is search, and it responds to the same discipline.
Landing pages that convert
Pages built to turn ad clicks into installs instead of decorating the campaign. One offer, one action, fast on a phone on mobile data, and tracked end to end so we could tell within days which message was carrying the campaign and which was wasting money.
Cut what did not pay
Campaigns run on the client's own ad account with spend billed at cost and never marked up. Each week the audiences and messages that were not producing installs at a sensible cost were cut, in writing, and their budget moved to the ones that were.
The numbers,
after one month live.
“We saw downloads increase in the first month.”
How this number
was counted.
The 3x is installs recorded in the client's own app store console, measured across the first month live against the launch forecast agreed before the campaign started. The forecast was written down in advance, which is the only thing that makes a multiple like this mean anything.
Ad spend ran on the client's own account. They saw every currency unit of it, billed at cost with no markup, which is how we run paid campaigns for every client.
One honest note. A launch month is a launch month: novelty, press and a new listing all help, and none of that repeats. We report month one because it is what we were hired for, and the campaigns that continued after it were reported on cost per install rather than on the headline multiple.
Ad spend goes straight to the platform from your own account. You own it, we manage it. See the full price list.
Before you ask us.
How was the 3x install figure measured?
It is installs recorded in the client's own app store console across the first month live, compared with the launch forecast agreed in writing before the campaign started.
Did 99creatix build the app?
No. The client built the app. We handled the store listing, the landing pages and the launch campaign that brought people to it. 99creatix does not build mobile apps, and we say so before anyone asks.
Do you mark up advertising spend?
No. Ad spend goes straight to the platform from the client's own account, billed at cost with no markup, on every engagement. You own the account, we manage the campaigns.
Can you run a launch campaign for a business that is not an app?
Yes. The same method applies to a shop opening, a new market or a new product line: one clear offer, pages built to convert rather than decorate, and weekly cuts to whatever is not paying.
Three more
with the hard parts left in.
Beautiful products on a website nobody could find, with paid ads eating the margin.
+47% organic traffic in 90 days → Home & interiors · Dubai Interiors storeLosing walk-ins to a competitor two streets away who simply showed up first on the map.
+33% footfall in 60 days → Legal services · UAE Law firmFound only by people who already knew its name, sitting on page three for everything else.
×3.4 non-branded clicks →Your version of this
starts with fifteen minutes.
We will tell you what we would do, what it would cost, and whether we are the right people for it. Sometimes the answer is no, and you will get that answer on the call.