Madeira Unlocked

A fantastic product nobody had heard of yet.

For a small island, Madeira has a lot going on. A festival in one parish, a market in another, a concert in Funchal on a Tuesday. Plenty of it still travels by word of mouth, and if you're visiting for a week, you usually hear about it the day after.

Madeira Unlocked wanted one app for all of it: events, activities and local experiences, for people who live here and people passing through. The founders needed a full marketing function behind it, and they needed it quickly, because the beta launch had already happened a couple of weeks prior.

One agency, one 360 marketing strategy for every step of the funnel.

We launched and ran the whole marketing plan: sales & marketing strategy, branding, website, SEO, content, social media, paid ads, PR, outreach, influencer partnerships and an official launch event, all from one team working to one plan.

That plan followed HubSpot's inbound method of attracting, engaging and delighting customers, and the point was to reach people at every stage of it.

At the top, the job was getting noticed by people who had never heard of Madeira Unlocked, so we partnered up with influencers, got featured in a Madeira guide on Amazon, an influencer video on YouTube, launched PR outreach, developed blog posts written for search, made on-street displays and printed flyers around the island.

Once someone was curious enough, Meta ads and the website took them straight to the download.

Social became a daily habit of weekend picks, hikes and trail alerts, giving people a reason to come back to the app. That's what the 19,000 active users figure measures.

We think covering every stage with one team is the main reason the launch worked.

Every action represents a small piece in the bigger puzzle, with the same voice and branding, because the same people made it. When a post takes off, the ad budget can follow it the same day, and what people search for on the website can shape next week's content. Nobody has to brief another supplier or wait for a handover.

Split those jobs across three agencies and you usually end up with three strategies, each looking fine on its own report, and gaps between them where users quietly drop out. A young company can't afford that. One strategy, and the people to deliver it on every medium, is what we offer as a long-term marketing partner, and Madeira Unlocked is the clearest proof we have of why it matters.

The logo already existed, and honestly it was a good one: a padlock with the outline of Madeira as the key. We built the identity around it. Greens from the laurel forest, a warm mustard yellow, plenty of cream. Photography of levadas, sea cliffs and the triangular houses in Santana. Then all the collateral, so the brand looked the same on a phone as on a flyer pinned up in a café.

From three pages to a content engine.

Madeira Unlocked already had a website: three pages on Squarespace, with very little on them for Google to find.

We started with a content strategy built on clear content pillars, so every page and article had a job to do. Then the site grew around it. We added a blog, download pages for the app and dedicated landing pages for individual campaigns, so an ad or an influencer video could send people to a page made for that exact message.

The website answers one simple question: what's happening in Madeira this weekend? The new SEO-optimised site exists to answer it and send people to the app, with separate paths for partners and event organisers.

Last but not least, we set up tracking and reporting. It's the least glamorous part of the work and the one we'd defend first, because without it you can't tell which pillar is bringing people in or which campaign page actually converts, and the whole funnel turns into guesswork.

From the first month, the site was getting more than 1,500 visits a month.

Organic social and community growth.

Social was where most people met Madeira Unlocked for the first time, so we treated it as two channels at once: the top of the funnel for new audiences, and the reason existing users kept opening the app.

We launched Instagram, Facebook and TikTok from zero and built the content on four pillars that mirror what the app does: events, deals, hikes and weekend plans. Those pillars became the Instagram story highlights too, so anyone landing on the profile could tell in a few seconds what the app is for.

The content had to be useful enough to save. Levada guides like Levada Nova and Levada do Moinho, weekend picks, local deals, and real-time updates when the island changed people's plans.

Influencer partnerships, including a YouTube video on the island, carried the brand to audiences our own channels couldn't reach yet, with every piece pointing back to the app.

The result: an Instagram account built from zero to 2,412 followers in a couple of months, organically.

Big reach for a small budget.

While the content team was building the community, Sid, our performance expert, ran paid social on Meta with one focus: getting the right people on the island from an ad to the app, for as little as possible.

The ads used the same content pillars as organic social, so a paid post looked and felt like something worth following. Budgets moved towards the ads that performed best, and away from the ones that didn't.

The result was an average cost-per-click of €0.12 across our campaigns.

An events app needs an event.

We ran PR and direct outreach to partners and the local community in the run-up. Then we organised the launch event, our own Oktoberfest in Madeira, because launching an app about things to do in Madeira with a press release alone would have felt a bit odd.

Through a fully integrated, socially-led performance marketing strategy, we have delivered:

19,000 active users to the app.

The website went past 1,500 visits a month from month one.

Instagram went from zero to 2,412 followers.

Paid clicks averaged €0.12.

Founders got their very first revenue from paid Premium Passes and from partners' paid listing, delivering the proof of concept they needed to scale up their business.

"Audrey played a key role in building our marketing efforts from the ground up. She developed our overall marketing strategy, designed our marketing materials, contributing significantly to the growth of our platform, helping to increase our user base eightfold during her time with us."

Andy Meyer, Co-founder, Madeira Unlocked