💎 Growth Gems #62 - Revenue Growth, Influencer Marketing and Creatives
Hi there,
This week I’m sharing gems on creative frameworks, getting started with influencer marketing (and some challenges) and improving revenue through product analytics and lifecycle marketing. These insights come from Danika Wilkinson, Hannah Parvaz, Ludmilla Veloso, Guilhem Duché and more.
Enjoy!
🥇 TOP GEM OF THE WEEK
💎 If you’re new to influencer marketing, the best thing to do is analyze what your competitors are doing: which influencers they use, and what is the audience reaction to their content.
by Nadia Bubennikova
at 27:55 in Influencer Marketing Tips and Tricks
Creatives: creative framework, collaboration with creatives & emotional hooks
It’s hard to find interesting discussions on creatives with things that haven’t been repeated many times (like “adapt your creatives to the channel”)…
Improving creatives is often a matter of processes and collaboration between teams.
That’s exactly what Shamanth Rao (Founder at RocketShip HQ) discussed with Danika Wilkinson (Head of Marketing (New Games) at Socialpoint) in the How to Break Out of a Creative Rut by Resetting your Processes episode of The Mobile User Acquisition Show.
💎 The new creative framework gives structure to the creative production by setting guidelines that justify the production or not of a creative, with a low threshold for “wildcard” creatives (totally original creatives). Guidelines are composed of different categories: market insights, audience insights, what competitors are doing and more importantly data from test and live campaigns.
by Danika Wilkinson
at 05:59
💎 One of the core parts of the framework is to make sure that there is a strong synergy between testing, ideation and production. There is now a roadmap/calendar each month for when things need to be delivered, tested, analyzed and produced next. Every week, they discuss what’s working and rearrange the calendar if needed.
by Danika Wilkinson
at 07:55
💎 Social Point set up special BI dashboards for the creative team, prioritizing the KPIs to look at to facilitate comprehension. They also did a 3-4 part training session for the creative team to explain the different metrics and what they mean.
by Danika Wilkinson
at 11:30
💎 They grouped creatives in different themes and tagged them with a color. They use a bar graph showing the spend investment in each theme. This has been a great way to make things visual for the creative team and encourage creative diversity.
by Danika Wilkinson
at 14:15
⛏️ Going Deeper: I like the simplicity of the output mentioned here, and can see how this could help promote creative diversity.
A big part of making this work is to find the different creative themes you should explore in the first place. This is often done using user the main motivations for your target personas, like Consumer Acquisition (amongst others) does. More info on the below in this GameMakers video.
Another way to look at this, which might be more straightforward for non-gaming, is to use the Persuasion-Emotion-Trust model. This is Phiture’s approach, not only for ASO but also for ad creatives (as Natalie Rozenblat and Isabella Zulli discussed in this podcast episode).
💎 While split testing on Facebook does not mirror the live environment of a campaign, it’s the most scientifically valuable way to get creative learnings (both win or fail). You can add another level of testing by moving winners to a second testing phase where you double check retention and LTV.
by Danika Wilkinson
at 15:50
At the recent SpeakHer Virtual Summit (App Growth Summit), Yoojin Jung (Head of User Acquisition & Growth at Trailmix Games) shared a bit about some of the recent successful creatives for their Love & Pies game.
It’s a specific type of game of course, but what they did could be extrapolated to other categories (even beyond games maybe).
💎 Find the right balance between grabbing attention through emotional hooks (e.g. romantic scene) and staying true to what the game is really about (e.g. showing gameplay).
by Yoojin Jung
at 1:01:28
💎 TrailMix used narratives to make their ads into a typical romcom series, with characters missing each other. One ad even reenacted a scene from the “Love Actually” movie where the character proposes.
by Yoojin Jung
at 1:01:28
Paid UA: influencer marketing
More gems from the SpeakHer Virtual Summit (App Growth Summit), this time in the “Getting Started in Order to Succeed with Influencer Marketing” session with Ludmilla Veloso (VP of Operations for Airbrush app), Jenny Song Schmidt (Influencer Marketing Consultant) and Natalie Moses (Director of Influencer Marketing at ibble).
💎 Inflation in emerging markets has brought a lot of instability in negotiating deals with influencers. Example: Turkey, Russia, Brazil.
by Ludmilla Veloso
at 1:36:53
⛏️ Going Deeper: Ludmilla was kind enough to share a few tips on how to deal with this:
Try to negotiate longer contracts and choose a currency that is more stable (e.g. USD)
Be patient, some influencers or influencer companies will not fulfill the contract right away because their situation can change rapidly (e.g. the company could go under as their debts increases due to inflation)
If you can, get locals to help you in discussions (e.g. Turkish person talking to a Turkish influencer, etc.)
💎 The Instagram change from swiping up to a link has had a pretty big negative impact. Performance now seems to be recovering.
by Ludmilla Veloso
at 1:36:53
💎 Influencer marketing has become more and more relevant. As a result CPMs are rising, prices are unpredictable, etc. One reason is that big brands with bigger budgets moved to digital and into influencer marketing.
by Jenny Song Schmidt
at 1:38:30
💎 Sending out gifts and PR packages does not cut it anymore. This used to work in the early days of influencer marketing (2015-2016).
by Jenny Song Schmidt
at 1:41:13
💎 However, on top of the performance-focused campaigns, you might also need a budget for “influencer relations”: sending birthday gifts, etc.
by Jenny Song Schmidt
at 1:46:20
💎 Start by building relationships and try to form a community around the product first. Then, you can try to reach out to influencers that are similar to people in your community.
by Ludmilla Veloso
at 1:52:36
Here’s another discussion I watched on Influencer marketing, focused on getting started as well: Steve Young (CEO at App Masters) received Nadia Bubennikova (Head of Agency at BuzzGuru) for some Influencer Marketing Tips and Tricks.
💎 Find the features of the app that are the most appealing to the audience and can motivate them to download: make sure you focus on the most “marketable” features. Also understand which features might be the most confusing, and stay away from them.
by Nadia Bubennikova
at 11:05
💎 Essential things to look at when looking for an influencer:
Average number of views on the influencer’s account so you can predict the cost based on CPMs benchmark.
Engagement rate (you want > 5%) to make sure it’s not full of bots (fake followers).
by Nadia Bubennikova
at 21:28
💎 If you’re new to influencer marketing, the best thing to do is analyze what your competitors are doing: which influencers they use, and what is the audience reaction to their content.
by Nadia Bubennikova
at 27:55
💎 Many people give too much importance to their personal preferences when it comes to choosing influencers or even the channels (e.g. Twitch, TikTok).
by Nadia Bubennikova
at 50:05
💎 Integration videos (60 to 90 second video describing and showcasing the key features of the product, within the influencer’s video) are cheaper and often a better fit for apps than a dedicated video. With a dedicated video, you’re also taking the risk of that specific video being less popular than the rest of the influencer content and not getting as many views.
by Nadia Bubennikova
at 52:55
To close out on influencer marketing, here are two more gems I found in other resources I mined last week.
💎 Pay particular attention to your contracts with influencers and brand ambassadors if you’re using the influencers’ creatives for paid acquisition: you don’t want usage rights to expire as the creatives are starting to see good performance.
by Susan Azari (Head of CRM at AllBright)
at 13:09 in The Rise of the Subscription Economy 2
💎 With influencers, always plan for the longer term. You need to industrialize the process so you can renew influencers, build a constant flow and brand awareness. This is a very long process.
by Guilhem Duché (Cofounder and CPO at Once)
at 12:14 in Leveraging the Most Suitable Marketing Tools for a Dating App
Revenue Growth: experiments, user journey, product analytics
Finally, here are a few gems from some of the resources featured above on improving revenue and the user journey.
💎 Try to keep experiments out of the product for as long as possible. For price testing, start by asking people what would be an insane price to pay for the app and work back from there. Or use 2 different landing pages with different prices.
by Hannah Parvaz (Head of Marketing at Uptime)
at 47:50 in The Rise of the Subscription Economy 2
⛏️ Going Deeper: in-app messages can also be a great way to not go through product development, as it’s often easier to run tests. Andy Carvell talks about leveraging in-app messages in Growth Gems #6.
💎 What’s been very impactful to help with 1-year renewals is to remind users about all the benefits that the app brings around 30 days prior to the renewal date: benefits, testimonials, etc. If some users still seem likely to churn, you can get more aggressive and offer a discount.
by Susan Azari (Head of CRM at AllBright)
at 49:30 in The Rise of the Subscription Economy 2
⛏️ Going Deeper: this is related to reminding users of their subscriptions benefits throughout the lifecycle, like during trial onboarding like Paulo Golovattei (Phiture) advocated in an insight featured in Growth Gems #60.
Still in Growth Gems #60, I shared how Ten Percent Happier mitigates yearly plan churn with their “begin again” communications.
💎 You imagine in your head what the user journey is and what the user expects. But you won’t have any real feedback if you don’t put anything in place for it. You need to open a communication channel and put in place customer support to be able to talk with users.
by Guilhem Duché (Cofounder and CPO at Once)
at 28:24 in Leveraging the Most Suitable Marketing Tools for a Dating App
💎 People underestimate what you can get from product analytics. It’s not just about conversions, it’s about understanding what’s happening. It can help you fact-check, figure out tech issues, UX issues.
by Guilhem Duché (Cofounder and CPO at Once)
at 33:00 in Leveraging the Most Suitable Marketing Tools for a Dating App
And before I leave, a good point about why you want users to be familiar with receiving communications from you early on:
“If someone is signing up and you’re not emailing them straight away, they’ll be confused when you email them one week later” - Hannah Parvaz (Head of Marketing at Uptime)
See you next time. Stay savvy!
⛏️ Sylvain