About the client
Gold Apple is a major beauty retail player: selective cosmetics, care, and a proprietary app with loyalty and personalised recommendations. The goal was not awareness in a vacuum but measurable traffic to the app followed by orders. The market is crowded with marketplace offers and aggressive performance ads; the client needed a channel where audiences already expect expert product content.
Core KPIs: cost of a quality visit and share of users completing in-app goals in early sessions. Reporting combined UTMs, creator-specific promo codes, and reconciliation with the client’s mobile analytics.
Strategy and channels
We ran YouTube + Instagram with beauty creators and working makeup artists. In beauty, purchase decisions often follow “how it was applied” and “what’s in the travel kit”; trust in the artist beats a generic slogan. YouTube delivers depth and watch time; Instagram adds fast looks and Stories swipe-ups.
We avoided betting on one macro influencer: the mix combined mid-tier channels with proven engagement and micro creators in professional makeup and problem-skin niches. Everyone received the same brief for showing the app — search, cart, loyalty mechanics — and we banned vague integrations without an explicit install ask.
Channels with suspicious follower spikes or low-quality comments were cut. For part of the roster we added a second Stories touch 48 hours after the main post for incremental taps without a large budget increase.
Challenges and fixes
Wave one showed inflated click-to-install expectations from generalist “entertainment” creators. We narrowed the pool to authors with at least 40% beauty-themed content in the quarter. Legal review slowed copy — we introduced approved phrasing templates and a claims glossary. Visual inconsistency hurt feed performance; we added reference frames for lighting, app close-ups, and minimum UI screen time, which improved completion and CPV.
Results
Over six active weeks we recorded 85,000 visits to the app via tracked links and codes. Average video CPV was 0.95₽, below the initial benchmark, freeing budget for additional creators from the reserve pool.
ROI 410% reflects gross margin on orders attributed to this campaign in the agreed window. New installs as a share of app MAU rose more than in control weeks without influencer. Makeup artists with 30–120K audiences often delivered the best view-to-tap ratio and store completion.
The client used our cohort breakdown for the next quarter: repeat candidates, channels on a “do not use” list for KPI misses, and guidance on retention — users from makeup tutorials returned on days 2–3 more often than users from some paid channels in the same period.
Against marketplace noise we avoided price wars in the creative and instead highlighted what the app uniquely offers: bonuses, early access to limited drops, personalised picks. Creators received a list of safe USPs and comparisons to avoid legally risky claims — that sped approvals and cut reshoot rates.