Mobile Heroes Uncensored

This may come as a shock but not every massive, successful, money-making app is in gaming, fintech, ride-hailing, or the metaverse. Today we chat with the CMO of a very different type of app: one that builds a digital layer to connect a pre-existing community and offers tools and commerce that make what they do better.

What is it?

Fishbrain connects 14 million fishers across the planet with tools, maps, social features, recommendations, and shopping. We chat with Lisa Kennelly, the CMO, who is building something amazing in a nontraditional (for mobile!) space.

Lisa talks about acquisition channels, what’s delivering uplift, how Fishbrain keeps its marketing and ads fresh, and how they engage their users. Plus, we also get into Fishbrains expansion into commerce.

Timestamps

0:00 Fish on the brain?

3:20 Growing a massive mobile community

4:40 Top channels for mobile growth

7:40 Adding social to your app

10:45 Mobile user retention

12:50 Adding mobile commerce to your app

18:20 Managing global growth from the USA

20:10 Cross-cultural growth teams

22:00 Top 3 tips for marketers in unconventional verticals

Why has Zynga bought no fewer than 5 Turkish game companies? Why are there so many significant success stories coming out of the Turkish game community?

In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier talk to 2 leading experts in Turkey’s emerging mobile gaming ecosystem. Batuhan Avucan, Founder & Managing Director at Mobidictum and Utku Altunkiran, User Acquisition Manager at Kidly talk about what’s happening, why Turkey’s gaming space is growing, and what publishers need to know about the Turkish scene.

We also chat about moving from hyper-casual games to a subscription model, influencer marketing, monetization, AR/VR, and creative strategies that deliver big upside.

Timestamps

0:00 Turkey … the new Silicon Valley of gaming?

5:20 Reasons for gaming growth

6:40 Demographics and dynamics in Turkey

14:10 From hypercasual games to subscriptions

18:45 Virtual influencers

23:45 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in Turkey

Are people predictably irrational? Pretty much, and some game marketers have learned exactly how and used that knowledge to grow. One, with over 1.4 billion game installs, is our guest Mert Ersöz, Head of Marketing at MagicLab Game Technologies.

Mert started his career in -- you guessed it -- behavior economics, and has been growing hit games like Fidget Trading, Text and Drive, Run Race 3D, and more over the past few years.

We ask him:

We also learn more about how MagicLab is transitioning from hyper-casual to casual games, and how their marketing is changing too …

Timestamps

0:00 Predictably irrational?

2:30 From behavioral economics to marketing

3:30 Growing top-ranked games

7:30 Acquisition is great; retention is essential

9:45 From hyper-casual to mid-core mobile games

13:15 Growth in the age of privacy

16:45 Balancing self-publishing and working with studios

20:40 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers

Times Internet is a global behemoth with over 550 million users. Now the company is extending its reach globally from its home base in India.

In this episode, we chat with Machine Zone alum Vivek Girotra, who is building a fintech app for the Indian diaspora: tens of millions who live in the U.S., in Europe, in Asia, and elsewhere around the world. He gets deep into psychographics and demographics as well as the nuts and bolts of mobile growth.

We chat about:

Timestamps

0:00 550 million users

2:54 What is Times Internet?

4:05 Diversifying into fintech

6:34 Psychographics for mobile growth

12:10 From gaming to fintech

15:25 Understanding your app users

18:20 Best predictor of future success

21:30 Educating mobile app users

23:54 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in FinTech

Is it happy days for location-based apps again? We’re getting back to some kind of normal and apps for places, travel, restaurants, hikes, flights, hotels, beaches, and bookshops are back in action.

Today we chat with a super-interesting location-based app called Bimble, which is “counter-mapping” the planet … finding all the cool places that aren’t big on Google Maps and highlighting the small wonders of the world. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Julia Mallaby and Fatima Zaidi of Bimble. They launched 3 weeks before lockdown … but survived COVID! And now they’re doing better than ever.

We chat about:

Enjoy!

Timestamps

0:00 Happy days for location-based apps?

2:30 Sharing the places you love

3:50 Starting a location app during Covid

5:30 Post-Covid growth

7:57 Sharing playlists of places

9:36 Brand ambassadors via TikTok influencers

12:00 Two classes of users

14:30 Connecting to influencers

17:04 Attracting creators to your app

18:30 ‘Counter-mapping’ the world … via Ukraine

23:30 Growth via emotional connection

Scaling to 220 million users is a pretty massive achievement. Helping over 30 million women get pregnant: also massive. And driving growth via content and curation is a pretty unique way to do it.

In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Aurelie Genet, who is VP Product and Engagement Marketing at Flo, the app that’s all about periods, ovulation, and pregnancy on the surface … but even more about wellness, health, and being your best self.

Genet shares the gold on how product, user acquisition, and retention need to align and collaborate to win, how customer experience determines success, and how Flo uses content as both a competitive differentiator and community creator.

In addition, we chat metrics (always fun), her biggest accomplishment, and Genet’s top three tips for mobile marketers in the health & wellness space.

Timestamps

0:00 Scaling apps for hypergrowth

2:30 The growth triangle: product, acquisition, retention

4:40 Bringing marketing and product together

9:15 Customer app experience and growth

12:45 Content, community, and mobile marketing

20:30 Metrics that matter

23:50 Personal accomplishments

26:10 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in health and wellness apps

It sounds insane but one of the top ad monetization specialists in the world is confident that ad monetization is not dead … and that a blast-from-the-past ad unit with super-high CPIs is one of the ways to make it happen.

In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Kelly Kang, currently a senior director at Pixel United (think Product Madness, Big Fish, and Plarium) and has held roles at both Zynga and Glu. She tells co-hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier how ad monetization is far from dead and how monetization pros can still get a great return from app users … even without ad identifiers like IDFA or GAID.

Plus, Kang gives us her top tips in monetization and the one thing she’d change about her career if she could go back in time.

Timestamps

0:00 Post-IDFA advertising

1:10 Kelly Kang from Pixel United

3:40 A career on a computer!

5:50 What would you tell your younger self?

7:40 Making ad monetization work without ad identifiers

12:30 Mobile app ad monetization and product

15:25 Segmenting users via AI

18:00 Finding the best mobile ad network

23:10 The most important things admon pros need to know

How do you get ads that outperform native content? There’s only one way today’s guest has achieved that, and it’s via influencer marketing on social platforms.

“The best thing about TikTok is that you can get massive algorithmic distribution on ads, which I haven't been able to achieve in the same way on other platforms,” says today’s guest Aidan Quest. “So we'll have ads that will perform better than an influencer's content sometimes if the ad is interesting enough.”

Quest leads JetFuel’s creator operations and business development. He spent 30 minutes with John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chatting about what’s new in influencer marketing, what’s changing, and how to make influencer marketing a steady-state growth engine for new mobile app users.

And: why influencer marketing is still the only channel where you can actually get on-platform algorithmic distribution IF your ad is good enough.

The funny thing about good enough? Often it’s the opposite of what you’d expect. Get all the details in this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored.

Timestamps

0:00 Sustainable influencer marketing campaigns

2:01 Recent growth in influencer marketing

3:40 Scaling influencer marketing

7:20 Kicking off influencer campaigns

9:50 Winning TikTok ads

12:40 Going viral on TikTok

16:00 Influencer marketing in the age of privacy

17:50 Working with influencers

20:10 What’s working on TikTok now

21:50 3 top tips for TikTok advertising

March is women’s history month and includes International Women’s Day, so of course we’re chatting with two incredible leaders in mobile growth and user acquisition who just happen to be women.

One is currently a user acquisition manager at Voodoo and has led growth at other top games studios like Jam City. She’s Radostina Zhekova, and she tells us what she’s learned and how she’s grown in a traditionally male-dominated space. The other leads product at Drest, “the world’s first interactive luxury styling game.” She’s Johanna Vuorela, and she’s led growth, built games studios, co-founded companies, and built dream teams.

In this episode we get their best advice, top tips, and opinions about how to grow in the game of growth.

Timestamps

0:00 Women in mobile

3:00 50% of mobile gamers are women

4:50 Fish out of water?

7:10 Mentors in mobile

11:15 Best career advice?

16:00 Interview red flags

18:15 Stereotypes and challenges for women in mobile

21:15 Overcoming imposter syndrome

27:05 Advice for women starting out in mobile

Games with insects are super-hot right now. So are fashion games. And so are games with 2D cartoony graphics. So maybe it’s time to make a game about fashion choices for beetles in 2D?

If you want to grab a place on the Top Grossing charts for games, it pays to pay attention to Sensor Tower’s data on what’s working and what’s hot. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Sensor Tower mobile insights strategist Craig Chapple. Chapple, who used to play games for a living at PocketGamer, shares what’s working, what’s hot, what’s new, and what’s trending in mobile game subjects, styles, and genres.

We also chat about paying players, profitability, and the controversial new part of so many games: NFTs and crypto.

Timestamps

0:00 Winning with data

1:45 Journalism to analyzing game data

4:50 Key drivers of mobile game success now

7:25 A taxonomy of mobile games

10:50 Games > Animal > Insect

12:45 Art styles that are hot in mobile games right now

15:50 Neon bug games, with zombies

16:45 Winners and losers in mobile games now

20:15 Hypercasual games ARE NOT DEAD YET

25:10 Top 3 tips for mobile gaming marketers in 2022