For many brands, performance marketing can become a crutch, warns Manu Orssaud, CMO of language app Duolingo, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Direct response is easy to measure, which makes it very attractive. But the more that advertisers invest in DR the more they, well, invest in DR, often to the detriment of their brand marketing efforts.
“There is a trap that many of our competitors and other brands have fallen into, which is to use performance as a lever to scale very, very quickly before they get a strong product-market fit,” Orssaud says.
To attract funding, app-based businesses are under enormous pressure to show rapid user growth. Eventually, they “get hooked on” measurability, he says.
And once performance marketing becomes a main driver of growth, it’s “really hard to come off of it,” Orssaud says. Duolingo puts a cap on how many users it acquires through paid media channels.
“We believe this is the right way to grow,” Orssaud says. “We have a very strong product and a very strong brand.”
But a strong brand doesn’t happen by accident or through luck. Duolingo spends a lot of time and money on brand marketing, which has been paying off. Even people who don’t use the app are probably familiar with its lovably unhinged mascot, Duo the multilingual green owl.
Duolingo has created a strong community centered on Duo, who (half-jokingly) threatens users on social media when they post about not completing their lessons and also stars in hilariously demented TikTok videos, like the one in which Duo sings a gibberish version of “Cotton Eye Joe.”
“We want to continue doing content that’s fun, entertaining and gives people three seconds of something weird that’s memorable,” Orssaud says. “[That’s] what marketing should try to do.”
Also in this episode: Inside Duolingo’s love of “brain rot” content, using “streaks” to boost retention, that farting Duo Super Bowl ad from last year (just watch it!), measuring word-of-mouth marketing and learning Japanese.
