Business of Apps Podcast

#116: An App Launch: Expectations vs. Reality with Amrick Chauhan, Lead Product Manager at Which?

Expectations versus reality. This theme is as old as this world. In so many walks of life, we set our expectations high, we’re driven by optimism, which on itself is a great quality but sometimes it may lead you to a very frustrating experience.
Mobile app development and marketing can be one of the brightest examples, especially when venture capital is involved and the expectations that app projects will deliver quick returns are high.
Today we have Amrick to tell us the story of expectations versus the reality of developing and launching the app called Which?.
Today’s Topics Include:
Amrick's career spans Financial Times, Sainsbury, KFC, Guardian, and now Which? - the UK's consumer champion, the non-profit organization that protects consumers.
Which? app development key lessons learned
How app development teams can avoid making common mistakes
What app categories are the hardest to develop apps for
Android or iOS? iOS longtime user
Amrick's first mobile phone. Nokia 3010
What features would Amrick miss most? Apple Pay
What’s missing from mobile app technology? More AR and VR capabilities
Links and Resources:
Amrick Chauhan's LinkedIn profile.
Which?'s website.
Quotes from Amrick Chauhan:
”It was quite interesting to me because I had a chance to reflect on the journey of building and then launching an app."
"So that first assumption about product features was really us having an expectation we knew what we needed to build. We thought we did."
"I think a lot of it comes down to the culture that you have within the company. There are some obvious mistakes that you should avoid doing, things like choosing the right text style..etc. But I don't think anyone should really be afraid of making mistakes."
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#115: Chasing app users’ rapidly changing interests with Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, Advisor at SmartNews

If you app marketer, one of the things at your job that rises your pulse and eyebrows is the mobile churn. This is the KPI that measures the percentage of users who have abandoned your app, the logic goes – the smaller the number the better but unfortunately in real life, this number is always bigger than you would want it to be.
So people leave apps, in some cases to some glitches but in some cases because their interests change. From a technical perspective, the app may be fine but it just doesn’t deliver the experience they need. 
In this episode, Fabien will tell us the story of chasing app users’ rapidly changing interests.
Today’s Topics Include:
Fabien’s career spans the famous PC console gaming company Ubisoft, the industry-leading mobile data analytics company Data.ai (formerly known as App Annie), and now Smartnews – the award-winning news app.
Product-driven vs. Consumer-driven culture
What changes SmartNews team introduced to strengthen their business
Segmentation
Chosen segments to scale
Product-Marketing alignment
Adaptation
The right technology stack
Proactive vs. reactive
Trying unusual ideas
Android or iOS? Android
Fabien’s first mobile phone.
What features would Arthur miss most? Apps to read news 🙂
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Live translation capabilities
Links and Resources:
Fabien-Pierre Nicolas’s LinkedIn profile
SmartNews’s website.
Quotes from Fabien-Pierre Nicolas: 
”Typically, a lot of people are comsuming news in the morning time, just as you wake up to catch up with what happened or what might happened when you’re asleep. And there is as well a phenomen of consumption right before going to bed.“
“I will probably compare it to the dart board is essentially your marketing budget. And you should say “hey, where should I throw my darts and whom should I aim this budget?”
“When we looked at all Japanese market, we asked ourselves – “which segments are we underindexing, especially when it comes to preferences and what do they want?”

#114: Does Connected TV become the next big thing in UA? with Arthur Querou, CEO at Vibe

Let me ask you something, do you watch TV? Sem Nexus, Apptweak Depending on your age, when you hear a question like this, you may get a mental picture of a TV set or your Roku box, your Apple TV, or even your iPhone, if watching movies and TV series on a smartphone is your thing. Now, remember all those never-ending commercial breaks on your TV set? 
Well, you may also remember how people began watching video content more and more on their computers and then, especially on their beloved mobile devices. So, naturally, businesses followed people and so desktop and mobile advertising began to squeeze ad dollars from the traditional TV ads. Well, by now you would think TV ads are about to go extinct completely? Not so fast. Enter Connected TV and the advertising on it.
Today’s Topics Include:
Graduated a decade ago University of California, Berkley, Arthur was Co-founder & CEO of the mobile playable ad units company, Chief Mobile Officer at Adikteev before launching Vibe in January 2021
Unpacking what is OTT
How advertising on CTV works
CTV ads' competitive advantage
App categories that fit the best CTV advertising
The future of advertising on the Connected TV
Android or iOS? iOS
Arthur's first mobile phone. Nokia 3310
What features would Arthur miss most? WhatsApp and email
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Brining more AAA quality game titles on mobile
Links and Resources:
Arthur Querou's LinkedIn profile Vibe's website.
Quotes from Arthur Querou: 
”At tech we hvae this strange addiction to acronyms." "OTT stands for Over The Top and it means any content that goes over a standard channel." "I think the most important thing is to think about, when you are marketer and you want to leverage CTV - can I capture my audience on TV in an effective way?"
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#113: How Lose It! hit 2 million monthly active users with Erin Webster-Shaller, VP Marketing at Loose it!

Ok, a quick experiment - try to recall apps on your smartphone, that you’ve been using since the inception of the App Store?
And now, I am not talking about the native iOS apps, no-no, apps developed not by Apple. Can you think of any? If you do have some, at least one, it means the app hasn’t lost your trust and the trust of so many other people. It just works for you all and that’s why to this day it is still on the market.
Today, we’ll be talking about one of the apps from the early days of Apple’s App Store, that is still out there and has more than 2 million people using it regularly.
Today’s Topics Include:
Erin's background is in the biotech company in Boston and was involved in a wearable product development
7 ingredient recipe to stay afloat for years and years and grow your app's user base to millions of users
Ingredient #1 - Maintain an Effective Product
Ingredient #2 - Prioritise User Experience
Ingredient #3 - Active Free USer Base
Ingredient #4 - Empower & Encourage
Ingredient #5 - Key Promotion Times
Ingredient #6 - Data-Driven Decision-Making Process
Ingredient #7 - Stay Selective & Nimble
Android or iOS? iOS
Erin's first mobile phone. Pink Nokia Razor
What features would Erin miss most? Spotify
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Software and hardware feature to adapt the smartphone to different use case, based on the time of the day and location.
Links and Resources:
Erin Webster-Shaller's LinkedIn profile
Erin Webster-Shaller's Twitter handler.
Lose it! website.
Quotes from Erin Webster-Shaller: 
”Since then the company has grown sustainably, we've remained really small and nimble, which really differentiate us in the fitness app space."
"We have over 50 million people downloaded the product, collectively they've lost over 120 million pounds."
"When you look at the competitive landscape of companies that we've been competing with for the last 14 years, we all have taken very different approaches for the free versus paid landscape. Where do you draw that line? And for Loose it! I think the early team saw the value of  having a really robust free product."
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#112: How to hack TikTok with Mike Cimmarrusti, Co-Founder & CEO of Realize

By this time you’ve heard about TikTok countless times, on some occasions, you heard about it from your children, and on others when tech pundits were arguing that TikTok is the first solid rival for Instagram & YouTube & Snapchat video market empires.
But you may get this impression “well, this is not for me, it won’t work for my business, because I have no clue what to do with it”.
Well, in this episode we will do our best to change your mind.
Today’s Topics Include:
Mike's career spans sports, trading, and now being CEO of the leading home design app with 2 million users
TikTok's competitive advantage
How TikTok is different from other platforms conceptually
TikTok content creation best practices
How to approach the right Influencers and Creators
What Mike didn't like about TikTok
Android or iOS? Actually both iOS and Android
Mike's first mobile phone. Motorola Razor
What features would Mike miss most? Audible / Spotify / Google Maps
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Suggest what you get for dinner.
Links and Resources:
Mike Cimmarrusti LinkedIn profile
Mike Cimmarrusti's email address.
Realize website
Mike used these channels to reach out to influencers and creators to run an ad campaign for his app:
LinkedIn Post
Open Source Creator List
Quotes from Mike Cimmarrusti: 
”That when I realize that I want to spend the rest of my life helping people communicate visually."
"We landed on TikTok because it was really easy to create. We spent some time on it ourselves obviously to use the platform and realized this is really to consume and really easy to create."
"What I realized it was way less work and more likely to get viral if you just copy what is on the platform and tweak it toward you message"
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#111: Push Notifications with Nicole J Castillo, Senior Director, Mobile Products at NewsCorp

How do you get your app users’ attention and communicate something to them?
Well, if you could just be next to them, if you could just live in their neighborhood that would be easy to do. But you can’t live next to tens of thousands, even millions of people who use your app at the same time, right?
So what do you do? You use digital communication channels like email, in-app messages, and yes-push notifications. The latter is the topic of my today’s conversation with Nicole.
Today’s Topics Include:
Nicole’s 10-year journey spans telecom, real estate, and today it’s media & publishing
How push notifications stack up against other digital marketing channels
How many push notifications do people get on a daily basis and their attitude toward them
From what kind of apps people don’t mind getting push notifications
Types of push notifications
Challenges app developers and brands face when it comes to pushes
Nicole’s wishes for what to change in push notifications tech
Android or iOS? iOS
What features would Nicole miss most? Google Maps
What’s missing from mobile app technology? The tech will allow the balance between using your smartphone for so many things and yet not being addicted to it.
Links and Resources:
Nicole J. Castillo  LinkedIn profile
News Corp
Business Of Apps – connecting the app industry
Quotes from Nicole J Castillo:
”I think it’s obvious for push notifications as the way to leverage the economy of scale. You have push notifications, people are aware how they work. Anybody who has a phone for any number of years they know how to turn them off when they become annoying. But there has been a lot of rise in opt-in and opt-out options, Focus Time and the newest stuff with Apple’s lock screen.”
What we’re seeing is that one average we’re talking about 46 push notifications a day, like almost 50 a day and probably more depending on your type of apps”
I’m really interested to see the evolution, so I’m not necessary interesting in seeing a new standard, I really want to see where push notifications can evolve to.”
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#110: Making social media campaign go viral with Jonathan Maxim, CEO at HeyPal

Every app marketer would love for their app marketing campaign to go viral. Spending less by getting your potential users’ attention to spread the message about your app is pure gold.
Today’s guest is Jonathan Maxim, CEO at HeyPal and former marketing strategist. He talks about how to make your social media campaign go viral.
Today’s Topics Include:
What is HeyPal? Social language learning platform (no affiliation to PayPal)
Countries: HeyPal’s biggest blessing and downfall is supporting them all 
What is growth hacking? Where organic and paid campaign meet to play nice together 
KPIs: Measure click-through rate, downloads, cost per install, and retention
Going Viral: Cost per acquisition drops exponentially; growth is used to gauge success 
Common Mistakes: Are you going for reach, downloads, sales, or spread a message?
TikTok: How valuable are dance videos to society? Very powerful, free, relevant content
Android or iOS? iOS - Jonathan is an Apple fan, but admits Android is getting better
What features would Jonathan miss most? Voice notes feature
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Delegate and trust, not micromanage
Links and Resources:
Jonathan Maxim  LinkedIn profile.
Jonathan Maxim on Instagram
HeyPal website.
Quotes from Jonathan Maxim:
”We just crossed the million downloads mark, and it’s been an awesome ride. We had some viral moments with HeyPal, no doubt.">
"It makes it really easy to speak with somebody from another country if you’re trying to learn a language. The whole idea is to build a gap between curriculum learning and practice."
"It’s really the social glue on the language learning space."
"Social media is one component of the marketing strategy to make things go viral."
"The ads that have an influencer or a real human in them, they convert better. They have better click-through rate, better conversion rate, even though they cost less and the production quality is lower.”
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#109: Solving the AdTech Maze to make UA manager life easier with Ankit Rawal, VP - International Sales & Marketing at Affle’s MAAS

Every person on this planet who needs to get up on a Monday morning to tune in his brain to work and, basically, it never stops till Friday evening, would agree that it is tough.
Now, if you are an app marketer, there are several questions that are floating in your mind all the time - who are my app users? Do I know all kinds of app users that may need my app? How should I approach all these people? Where? What marketing channels should I use?
All these questions push app marketer over and over to brainstorm new ideas with a mind mapping app or just drawing diagrams on a paper, peering into data points on her or his laptop. Day in. Day out.
So on this episode we will try to address all those questions and make her or his life easier.
Today’s Topics Include:
Ankit's has 15+ years experience being in the IT industry under his belt, his background spans across companies like Microsoft and Oracle and many others.
The changes in AdTech for the last decade
Challenges in the industry
Helping advertiser to navigate the convoluted maze of the Adtech
MAAS platform capabilities
Android or iOS? One+ running Android
What was Ankit’s first mobile phone? Nokia 3100
What features would Ankit miss the most leaving his smartphone at home? Audio content to listen to on the go
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Advances on the VR and AR frontiers
Links and Resources:
Ankit Rawal  LinkedIn profile.
MAAS powered by Affle website.
MAAS powered by Affle profile on Business Of apps.
Quotes from Ankit Rawal:
”As the penetration of smart phone increased with both iOS & Android growing App stores were launched… It for the first time developers can build software in one part have easy distribution thanks to global appstores across the world. You could develop locally & sell globally… Hence it became a wild west advertisers were focusing largely on growth and volumes. .. with incent traffic, burst campaigns.. 
Unfortunately our Ad industry is notorious which I should also take blame for is the 3 letter acronyms CPM, CPI, DMP, DSP, MMP, CDP & what have you… which makes anyone outside it wonder Huh?? App is a conduit to any activity a user wants to accomplish be it shop, play, get entertained, study & more.”
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#108: How to market apps via Influencers with Nadia Bubennikova, Head of agency at BuzzGuru

So it’s Monday morning, you’re sitting at your desk, taking a sip from your coffee mug and go like “Ok, I know my app’s user base isn’t growing as I planned. That’s obvious. I need to try another channel. Hm….”
Let me interrupt your thinking at this point, that thing you’re looking for right now is Influencer marketing. This is how you can reach out more people that need your app and get them excited about it.
To unpack Influencer Marketing for you, I’ve got a today Nadia to talk about types of apps it fits the best, how to reach out the right Influencers, what to expect and more.
Today’s Topics Include:
What types of apps do fit for an Influencer marketing campaign
Examples of apps for those Influencer marketing campaigns were ran
In-house vs. hiring an influencer marketing agency
KPIs to assess an influencer marketing campaign efficiency
How Influencer marketing helps apps to go international
Influencer marketing trends for 2023
Android or iOS? iOS
What was Nadia’s first mobile phone? Motorola Razr
What features would Nadia miss the most leaving his smartphone at home? Apple Pay
What’s missing from mobile app technology? More features for the Health app
Links and Resources:
Nadia Bubennikova  LinkedIn profile
BuzzGuru website.
Quotes from Nadia Bubennikova:
”Basically on this platform we have coaches from different spheres that teach end-users on the platform how to get a specific skill, like how to play a guitar, learn a specific language, basically anything you can image. Seems pretty easy, like a nice feet for the Influencer marketing but there is a catch. That catch is that, in this case, our goal was not to drive not a general audience and the end user of the product that would learn some skills, but to recruit coaches of some very specific skills.
That would sound strange but for me the most awful would be disconnected from the campaigns, from the work because Influencer marketing never stops.”
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#107: Apps and brands with Charlie Cooke, Head of Growth at Sidekick by Sorted Food

Let’s make a quick mental experiment. When I say brand, what pops up in your mind? Apple? Nike? Tesla? That’s right - all those are brands, in fact if you think about it you can easily count like a dozen of brands around you.
And there is more - you can think of some of the mobile apps on your phone as brands as well. Today, Charlie will help you to get a better grasp on how to apply a brand concept to your app.
Today’s Topics Include:
Charlie has been working with a variety of the startups across of multiple sectors like sport, property, language learning and now food.
What is brand
What role brand plays for a newbie app startup
How different generations, like Millennials and Gen Z, perceive brands
Common mistakes people do applying a brand concept to a mobile app
Android or iOS? Android, never dabbled into the iPhone stuff
What was Charlie’s first mobile phone? Nokia 3310
What features would Charlie miss the most leaving his smartphone at home? Spotify to listen podcasts everywhere all the time
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Features to decrease distractions the smartphone brings into our life.
Links and Resources:
Charlie Cooke  LinkedIn profile
Sorted Food website.
Quotes from Charlie Cooke:
"For me it’s really fundamental thing. A lot my thinking around it starts with, and maybe for lots of people, the Simon Sinek  “Start with Why”  book. It’s around why the company exists, like how we communicate our ideas clearly, build relationships with customers, it’s actually a starting point for a company.
I’ve started to see some research that there is that shift towards cause marketing, activism where where they kind of expect a brand to have a purpose.”
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