How Wondermind and Rocket Money Leveraged Ads, Influencers and Celebrity Partners to Promote Finance & Wellness Platforms

To assess the successful elements of a new platform launch this research will cover two main segments:

• ‍Rocket Money
  How financial budgeting and subscription management app Rocket Money generates app downloads through paid ads and influencers
• ‍Wondermind
  How “mental fitness” company Wondermind launched their website leveraging co-founder, Selena Gomez’s influence, paid ads and referrals 

This will provide a full scope of ways to leverage what’s working in the health and wellness content space. 

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Key Takeaways: Rocket Money Growth

Rocket Money spent $14M and prioritized spending on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat during a top growth period, when app downloads increased by 69% MoM.

• Recommendations
  (i) Make organic, user-generated content for TikTok ads so that the viewer thinks they’re watching a regular TikTok video. 
  (ii) TikTok ads should incorporate something the app helped a user achieve, how the app works, what you can learn from it, how much you saved from it, and a call to action to download. 
  (ii) Instagram ads can be more diverse. Experiment with UGC compilations of real people sharing how much they love the app. All ads must state how the app has solved major pain points for users.

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Rocket Money’s branded searches are ranking organically through a simple organic app landing page.

• Recommendations
  (i) Create a single landing page for the app on a subdomain.
  (ii) Prioritize conversions through lead generation over app downloads to capture emails and set up accounts.
  (iii) The landing page should feature three key selling points of the product, and social proof (ie. “$100M+ saved for customers” or “3.4M+ happy members”) as your primary page content.

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Their non-branded searches are ranking for people looking up how to opt out of subscriptions, which they mimic in their YouTube strategy.

• Recommendations
  (i) Create help desk content that acts as simple tutorials to anticipate what your audience may need help with. 
  (ii) Align your YouTube strategy with your organic search strategy, especially for resource-based content that viewers may look up both on Google or YouTube for answers.

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Rocket Money generated 21M views from content creators posting about their product.

• Recommendations
  (i) Work with a range of creators from lifestyle to home improvement or gaming. 
  (ii) Ensure commissioned content comes from the natural tone of the creator and is not scripted.
  (iii) Create unique landing pages for each of your creators to direct traffic to. These should be shorter than the organic landing page and should focus on key selling points and testimonials to incentivize sign-ups.

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Rocket Money is a financial budgeting app that specializes in managing recurring subscriptions for users. 

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Young and middle aged men are primary users of the Rocket Money app on Android* devices. 

*Only Android app data is available

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In January 2023, Rocket Money peaked at 935K downloads and 528K monthly active users. We’ll unpack the strategy behind it.

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Rocket Money spent $14M in the United States to generate 935K Android app downloads in January 2023. 

Rocket Money spent $89M from August 2022 to July 2023 in the United States on Paid Advertising.

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User generated content (UGC) is king for TikTok ads.

Rocket Money ran 10 ads on TikTok in January 2023. 64% of the budget feature UGC and 36% of the budget went to professional content production ($1.7M).

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Have a creator tell a story about how your app improved their life.

This top ad is 26 seconds, features a voice-over, text on screen and screen recordings of the creator using the app.

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Use testimonials and identify how you solve everyday pain points with Instagram ad messaging.

The top spend on Instagram in January 2023 featured a compilation of different UGC videos of users testifying to how much they love the Rocket Money platform. 

Spend $642K | Imp. 104M | CPM. $6.2

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On Instagram, you can get away with more tailored, less organic video ads, but have a catchy hook. 

This one features an exaggerated presentation of a girl crying while looking at spreadsheets.

The hook states “Still using spreadsheets to track your finances?”

Spend $384K | Imp. 62M | CPM. $6.2

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Pinpoint major problems your app solves with examples but most importantly by targeting what prospects are too lazy to do themselves. 

In this case, it is finding and cancelling subscriptions you didn’t realize you were paying for. 

In the ad, the speaker explains how Rocket Money even got refunds for them on platforms they never used but had subscribed to. 

Spend $107K | Imp. 17M | CPM. $6.2

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Create a subdomain with a simple landing page for your app.

Organic traffic accounted for 42% of all website traffic on January 2023. Rocket Money’s organic strategy is 93% branded, ranking for “rocket money” queries. 

App Landing Page Tactics:

• The hero banner should indicate the key benefit of downloading your app.
• The hero CTA should direct viewers to create an app account and capture their contact information. 
• Provide three key selling points further down the page if the viewer doesn’t convert at the top.
• End the page with social proof, another CTA to sign up, and where the viewer can download the app.

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Create step-by-step organic content that speaks to your app.

Rocket Money made articles sharing how to cancel different forms of subscriptions and rank for people searching for that.

They have a matching strategy on YouTube— though they haven’t uploaded a new video for a few years, these still generate views for them.

Non-Branded Keywords

• manage subscriptions
• how is venmo diff from paypal
• find my subscriptions
• budgeting apps
• is venmo safe?
• paypal
• subscription manager
• how to write a check
• rainy day budget
• roku.com

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Rocket Money honed in on their influencer strategy, generating over 21M views through creator posts from Aug. ‘22 - Jul. ‘23.

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Build strong relationships with macro creators, they generated 56% of views for Rocket Money.

Micro creators represent 40% of the influencers but only generated 9% of views. 

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Commission organic posts that are filmed in the creator’s tone. Ensure that at least one area of app functionality is addressed.

Views 7M

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Views 3.8M

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Views 1.7M

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Views 1.4M

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Monitor influencer performance with individual creator landing page UTMs.

*Pulled from launch month, October 2022

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Key Takeaways: Wondermind Launch

Roll out your product launch in phases. Wondermind soft launched the idea of their brand and an email collection form 1 year before the website launched.

• Recommendations
   (i) When undertaking major topics spanning multiple disciplines (mental, physical and financial health) roll out the concept of your product over a year so you can slowly introduce and build awareness about the purpose of the product.
  (ii) Start with email or sms data collection as a way to directly communicate with prospects as you launch the full product.

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Don’t spam your celebrity partner’s audience. Selena made 9 posts on her account from Nov. ‘21 to Aug. ‘22, generating 119M views for Wondermind. 

• Recommendations
  Build meaningful leads with your celebrity partner by:
  (i) Having them post during the pre-launch phase to build hype.
  (ii) Making sure product is linked on their website to generate referral traffic.
  (iii) Show social proof: Use their image on ads with quotes from them about the product in the ad copy.

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Start advertising 4 months before launch, then boost spend for three months during & after the launch. 

• Recommendations
  (i) Use Facebook & Instagram to promote lead generation, such as signing up for emails.
  (ii) Use Paid Search for people actively trying to understand more about ways they may be feeling. Think about what people may be searching for if they’re looking to start budgeting or learn how to reduce stress in their lives.

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Create a referral program that rewards your audience for sharing the app with resources & merch.

• Recommendations
  (i) Reach current users’ networks by building a referral platform that rewards people with valuable and usable resources.
  (ii) Build a strong publicity campaign to generate referral traffic, focusing on lifestyle, business and financial publications.

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Focus predominantly on anxiety and its connection to finance. Fidelity sponsored a series with Wondermind about financial wellness. 

• Recommendations
  (i) Create a blog and Instagram content in a list form (i.e.” 8 ways to take care of your mental health when you’re on a budget”) that addresses actionable takeaways for prospect worries.
  (ii) Engage with your audience online, ask them what they need and how you can help.
  (iii) Put paid spend behind content that discusses taboo topics, like navigating awkward money conversations or how to manage money problems in a relationship refer to yourselves as “money experts” on the topics.

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Wondermind is a “mental fitness” platform co-founded by Selena Gomez. Its aim is to help readers improve mental health practices. 

While this is not an app, it’s a wellness platform (also focusing on finances) that leveraged a celebrity partnership during launch.

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Women of all ages, but especially Millennials (25-34) are using Wondermind overwhelmingly on mobile devices. 

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Don’t be everything, all at once. Slowly roll out sections of your app to build awareness while refining your product.

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Celebrity partners should promote waitlists & key dates. 

Selena made 9 posts on her account from Nov. ‘21 to Aug. ‘22, generating 119M views for Wondermind. 

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Make launch content specific and to the point about the product.

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Leverage your partner in your brand’s organic posts early on but phase them out over time. 

From November 2021 to August 2022, Selena Gomez was featured in 11% of posts made on Instagram (19 posts). 

From September 2022 to July 2023, that dropped by -86%— making her present in only 2% of posts (6). 

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Use your partner as social proof that they’re backing your brand. Focus on promotional assets and organic videos sharing stories related to the purpose of your app.

Make sure your partner is engaging on posts you make featuring them.

Engagements 42K

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Not all content needs to be high-quality & promotional. This top-performing post is a pixelated, selfie-style video of Selena sharing a vulnerable video about her mental health. 

Views 50K | Engagements 32K

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Leverage important events in your partner’s career. This post is promoting Selena Gomez’s Apple TV documentary on her journey with mental health.

Views 210K | Engagements 25K

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Post organically as you roll out your launch, focus on building awareness about your purpose and introducing key players. 

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Consider hosting an in-person event to demonstrate the overall connection between personal finances and wellness.

Engagements 1.1K

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Engagements 4.9K

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Prioritize heavier spends in the pre-launch and launch periods. Instagram is a top promotion platform for mental health content.

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Ad creative mix should communicate the purpose of the product (ie. mental fitness newsletter) and show examples of it.

Ad Tactics:

• ‍Quantify success, Wondermind’s copy states “See why 200K+ people read the Wondermind newsletter”. 
• ‍Create FOMO, and let the reader know that by not reading a piece of content, they’re missing out on improving their life.
• ‍Use a quote from your celebrity partner in the ad copy as a testimonial.

Spend $13K | Imp. 1.7M | CPM. $7.8

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Spend $7K | Imp. 895K | CPM. $7.8

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Spend $2.3K | Imp. 298K | CPM. $7.7

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Target long-tail queries about anxiety, ways to improve it and link to resources that aim to improve financial worries. 

Tactics for Paid Search ads during the launch month:

• Mental health and physical wellness are intense topics that need to be addressed in a mindful way. Create list content that benefits people struggling with specific problems to direct them to a resourceful landing page.

• Share stories that address real people’s problems by including narratives of people who would use your app. Wondermind states “We asked people with depression to share what they like to do to feel a little bit better”.

Use ad copy to confirm you want to educate holistically instead of just explain concepts. 

Wondermind A/B tested two paid search ads for people searching “ADHD symptoms”. 

The title copy is the same but the order is switched in each variation. Copy that listed “Here’s what ADHD is” instead of “How To Know if You Have ADHD” performed better. 

Top Performing Ads

Keywords

• how to snap out of depression
• why am i unhappy?
• what to do when you feel hopeless
• i feel lonely
• ways to cope with stress
• what do you do when your sad
• jesus and stress management
• how to make friends as an adult
• ocd sensitive
• free online support groups
• motivational mantras
• bi polar disorder

*Pulled from launch month, October 2022

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Ensure your celebrity partner shares the product on their website. Wondermind generated 289K in website traffic from referrals.

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Incentivize early adopters of your product to participate in a referral program by offering rewards.

Referral Program Tactics:

• Host your referral program on a subdomain, Wondermind uses “sharingiscaring.wondermind.com”
• Use a point system that helps build community, offering participants the chance to get exclusive opportunities or things related to the brand
• Build resources for early referral prizes, these can be worksheets tailored to the money-mind-body connection
• As people gain more reward points, shift towards a merch approach

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There’s a need for financial wellbeing and anxiety resources.

Fidelity is confirming the connection between wellness and financial health through a sponsored series with Wondermind.

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Wondermind has a whole financial stress section in which they dive into different concepts with the intention of validating that it’s okay and normal to feel stressed by money.

Topics 

• How to Save Money When You Feel Like the World Is Ending (1)

• How to Deal With All of Your Inflation Anxiety (2)

• 8 Ways to Take Care of Your Mental Health When You’re on a Budget (3)

• How to Deal with Being Laid Off (4)

• How to Stop Spending Money When You’re Sad (5)

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References:

1. How to Save Money When You Feel Like the World Is Ending

2. How to Deal With All of Your Inflation Anxiety

3. 8 Ways to Take Care of Your Mental Health When You’re on a Budget

4. How to Deal with Being Laid Off

5. How to Stop Spending Money When You’re Sad