Model and efficiency entrepreneurs don’t at all times converse the identical language. However for language-learning app Duolingo, they’re complementary.
Though roughly 80% of Duolingo’s customers have been acquired by means of phrase of mouth, focused paid acquisition helps spur natural person progress, mentioned Emmanuel Orssaud, the corporate’s VP of promoting.
“We’ve spent a variety of time constructing a product that individuals truly wish to advocate to their pals,” Orssaud mentioned. “Advertising is a layer on prime of that to speed up the flywheel.”
A superb instance of the so-called flywheel in motion is Duolingo’s partnership with Max (previously HBO Max) final 12 months to advertise the “Recreation of Thrones” prequel “Home of the Dragon.” Duolingo launched an up to date model of its course on Excessive Valyrian, the fictional language spoken within the present, to incorporate new phrases and phrases.
In keeping with Duolingo, greater than 40% of people that signal as much as mess around with a “conlang” (aka an invented language) like Excessive Valyrian find yourself sticking round to take one other actual language course on the app.
However hopping on popular culture moments – particularly on TikTok, the place Duolingo’s mascot, Duo, has established itself as a little bit of a meme machine – can be good for reengaging current customers. Duo just lately tore up the crimson (sorry, pink) carpet on the Barbie film premiere wearing pink and carrying a blonde wig.
“TikTok has an enormous impression on retention for us,” Orssaud mentioned. “We all know that individuals see these TikToks and it reminds them to open the app and do a lesson.”
Orssaud, whose native language is French, parlé avec AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: What’s your technique for balancing paid and owned media?
EMMANUEL ORSSAUD: Our greatest campaigns are much less about promoting and extra about exhibiting individuals why studying a language will make their life higher and extra enjoyable.
There was the Excessive Valyrian course, for instance. We additionally gave away free bagels at delis across the US to individuals who ordered in Yiddish once we launched our Yiddish course just a few years in the past. And we gave a free month of premium entry to individuals whose title is Emily as a result of we noticed a spike in demand for studying French after the primary season of “Emily in Paris.”
These have been a few of our best-performing campaigns from a value perspective and a brand-building perspective. We make investments the vast majority of our effort into constructing content material, together with for social, as a solution to construct our model, particularly on TikTok.
Why TikTok?
Now we have a comparatively small advertising staff, simply round 40 individuals, so I don’t wish to waste time attempting each new shiny platform as a result of there are such a lot of of them. However Tik Tok is the place we see essentially the most attain with our movies. Individuals remark and have interaction, and that drives a variety of virality for us.
Typically, we deal with the place audiences are. That’s why we’re additionally beginning to construct a method for YouTube Shorts. Quick-form video is huge for us.
How do you measure all these items?
Relating to brand-building and channels that aren’t one-to-one from an acquisition standpoint, we do one thing that’s tremendous easy: Now we have a survey as a part of the registration course of that we use to ask individuals how they heard about us and why they downloaded. That’s our main supply of data for understanding the place new customers are coming from.
However self-reported data isn’t as correct as observing habits, proper?
A survey isn’t going to be 100% correct, but it surely provides us a very good sign to know how channels are performing for us general, so we all know the place to spend our effort and time to drive progress.
Attempting to be extraordinarily exact with this type of measurement isn’t the most effective funding of our time. I’d moderately have a common higher sense of what to prioritize moderately than measuring advertisements on a one-to-one foundation.
If we submit a TikTok that will get 3 million views after which we see a transparent spike in our new person progress, that’s sufficient correlation. Then we all know this piece of content material doubtless helped with acquisition as a result of we will see it.
I do know a big proportion of individuals obtain the app for enjoyable, prefer to be taught Excessive Valyrian, after which keep to be taught an actual language. However have you ever seen individuals truly turn into fluent in conlangs?
Some individuals do end them as a result of you are able to do these programs comparatively rapidly. The fictional language programs are shorter in contrast with Spanish or French, which might go on for years.
And a few take it very severely. There was [an article about] a bride who wished to do her wedding ceremony utterly in Excessive Valyrian, and he or she was sending individuals hyperlinks to Duolingo.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
