As a top-performing channel month over month, Apple Search Ads is a consistent part of our overall growth strategy and was the main driver of our rebrand success, capturing strong user intent down funnel and driving incremental revenue.
Improve ad relevancy to boost brand awareness and capture interest.
To capture intent from potential customers still searching for their former brand Truebill, the team at Rocket Money created ad variations based on custom product pages set up in App Store Connect. With these custom ads, they highlighted clear messaging that stated “Truebill is now Rocket Money” and aligned this creative to relevant keywords related to Truebill. When potential customers tapped the Rocket Money ad, they landed on a custom product page that matched the ad creative — assuring them that the two brands were the same and delivering a seamless experience.
“During a pivotal transition, Apple Search Ads helped us create custom product pages and continue to gather intent around our very strong former brand, resulting in a smooth and successful rebrand,” says Rocket Money Growth Marketing Manager Hanna Eguchi. ”In fact, we saw very strong return on ad spend for these custom product page campaigns — outperforming all other platforms. Months later, we continue to build trust around our new brand with custom product pages and see phenomenal efficiency.”
Gain insights and expand keyword coverage automatically.
Focused on optimizing Apple Search Ads for performance, the Rocket Money team separated search results campaigns by brand and nonbrand keywords. Brand campaigns captured interest from potential customers actively searching for brand terms related to both Truebill and Rocket Money. Nonbrand campaigns focused on keywords related to their app’s top value propositions, including budgeting and subscription management.
A discovery campaign with Search Match helped the team mine for new, relevant search terms, automatically expanding keyword coverage. “Apple Search Ads discovery campaigns have been valuable, helping us find top-performing keywords related to personal finance,” says Eguchi. “We found discovery campaigns were especially helpful when we rebranded because we were able to quickly uncover new branded keywords as well.” During the rebrand, the team found search results campaign performance remained consistently strong, driving efficient return on ad spend.
Stay top of mind during peaks in seasonal demand with ads on the Today tab.
Customer interest in apps like Rocket Money generally peaks after Christmas and the first few weeks of the new year, as people assess their financial health. To better capture this seasonal demand, the team at Rocket Money wanted to leverage additional ad placements on the App Store. With Today tab ads, the team positioned their new brand prominently on the front page of the App Store, making their app some of the first content hundreds of millions of potential customers saw when they began their visit.
“Today tab ads were a great way to take advantage of the natural lift in interest we see on the App Store at year-end and stay top of mind with a broader audience,” says Eguchi. “We saw a halo effect while running Today tab ads, with the impression volume of our brand search results campaign increasing by 10 percent.” After seeing a 5x increase in installs from top category keywords with this strategy, the team plans to continue testing additional ad placements alongside increased investment in search results campaigns during key seasonal moments.
Company Snapshot
- Rocket Money
- Finance
- Launched in 2015
- Based in Silver Spring, MD, U.S.