Nutracheck

The client 

Nutracheck is a leading calorie counting app originating in the UK. Since 2005, Nutracheck has been helping people achieve their weight management goals. Within the business, the team have a range of nutrition, sports science and food degrees, as well as personal experience of weight management journeys.

Since partnering with us, we’ve focused on post-pandemic stabilisation, emergence into new territories and ultimately a shift in focus from solely app instals, to actual app revenue growth year on year, factoring in fluctuating seasonality and a shifting competitor landscape. Our work has spanned across Google App campaigns, Meta, Spotify and broader consultancy work, with creative conceptualisation work to ensure the brand stands out, and that Nutracheck’s belief that a healthy and happy lifestyle is more important than weight loss is amplified at every opportunity.

The challenge 

When Nutracheck first came on board in 2020, the focus was all around increasing app instals in the UK whilst maintaining a steady CPI. However, this challenge and Nutracheck’s focus has evolved over the last few years, and we have shifted our approach to app registrations rather than just instals. Going forward, our approach is now shifting to app purchases and customer loyalty instead. While together we have made huge headway in the UK market, gaining a large share of the market, the last year has focused on emerging into new territories, where we have adapted our UK strategy and used our learnings to drive huge growth.

For a successful partnership, we immersed ourselves in Nutracheck as a business, understanding wider challenges such as pricing models, new competitors and behavioural changes alongside the need to drive upper funnel brand awareness, so that knowledge of Nutracheck’s app across target territories can filter down into lower-funnel KPIs.

As Nutracheck started to see UK registration volumes stabilise coming out of the pandemic, the focus shifted to increasing paid subscriptions from both new and existing users of the app. However, in the new territory, we were able to start registration growth from scratch as a completely new opportunity. In order to achieve this successfully, we have had to understand the nuances in that territory to ensure we are leveraging the right platforms, targeting and creatives whilst working alongside other agencies to align on the wider brand.

What we did 

A fundamental part of growing Nutracheck’s business has been to gain a better understanding of new markets and take a test-and-learn approach when expanding into those. In the new territory, our approach started with Google App campaigns, followed by Meta campaigns, and we quickly saw a CPR similar to that of the UK. However, we had to monitor the registration > purchase rate closely, and differences in behaviour here prompted us to look further into the app itself, its database and its appeal to this new target market.

Tweaking the messaging

A huge part of Nutracheck’s success had come from promoting the app as the ‘UK’s top calorie counter’ and emphasising its ‘huge UK database’. To better resonate with the new market, we’ve had to place less emphasis on these USPs and focus more on local references, such as supermarkets specific to the region.

We’ve also had to consider how best to utilise the budget, which has led us to allocate the new territory ~10% of our overall budget. This is due to its smaller population size but also considering the need for more awareness activity in this new market, with allowance for a higher CPR. Whereas the UK is heavily reliant on Apple Ads for success, we took the approach of putting our spend specifically behind Android, allowing iOS app activity to rely on its organic performance in the meantime.

Creative and audience testing

As Meta is such a key platform for success with our UK B2C audience, we ramped up our efforts in understanding which creatives are resonating best with our target segments before establishing our new Meta campaigns. 

We target many segments from interest-based (e.g. healthy eating) to life stages (e.g. newly engaged and planning a wedding) to lookalike audiences of those engaged with Nutracheck’s social media pages as a few examples. We understand the creatives that resonate best will differ for the range of audiences.

On a bi-monthly basis, we switch in new creatives when we start to see saturation in the results. We have tested every ad format and discovered that both eye-catching carousels and day-in-the-life reels are working very well this year across all territories. Interestingly, we can see certain target audiences perform quite differently. 

In the UK, for example, we can see targeting competitor app My Fitness Pal has much more traction than doing this in the new territory, and the following insight from Google reinforces less demand for MFP in this territory.

Our Creative team also did a brilliant job of redefining the brand creative to really incorporate the ‘feel-good’ factor that Nutracheck cares about. This new creative will now feed into all ad assets, both within paid social platforms as well as Google App campaigns, representing our target customer personas throughout.

The results 

Since working together, we’ve seen Nutracheck go from strength to strength and we are proud to be part of that growth.

In the last year, we’re particularly proud of our success emerging into the new market. Our net growth of the app in 2024 to date is 26% up on the same period last year and, in the new market alone, we have seen a 42% in app registrations and a 46% increase in first purchases. This is primarily down to how we have adapted and refined our UK approach into this new market.

We’re excited about continuing to grow our relationship and we’re working on our next ventures together, including a large DOOH campaign in January (Nutracheck’s peak time for new users) targeting a proximity of gyms in a particular city: an approach we can learn from, and take our learnings into other territories at a later date.

Our in-depth competitor review highlighted the need to ensure the website ranks well, which we are exploring with in-depth SEO recommendations, rather than focusing solely on the app itself.

Understanding other gaps in Nutracheck’s online presence means we can also support in expanding our reach through organic and paid social on the likes of TikTok and Pinterest. So, you’re only going to be seeing more of this brilliant brand.

Planning for the future, our full-funnel approach to advertising will mean both broader awareness globally alongside a push for revenue growth each year, with the US as our next growth opportunity, after having tested a small % of budget here already. 

As we continue to flex our marketing strategy throughout the peak periods of the year (post-Christmas and summer), test new platforms and launch impactful creative campaigns, we’re future-proofing the brand’s success and global expansion.

Do you have a similar project in mind?

We don’t work with only the world’s biggest brands. Our clients include many small to medium-sized businesses, non-profits and startups.

Just tell us what you want to achieve, and we’ll let you know what experience we have in your sector, and how we can help you. Alternatively, you can check out more of our work here. Our methodology has been successful in almost all sectors, delivering double and triple-digit improvements on average.