In this episode of Mobile Growth & Pancakes Esther Shatz is joined by Lisa Kenelly, Chief Marketing Officer at Fishbrain – a fishing-related app highly popular in the US for finding fishing spots, forecast, socializing and more. They discuss Fishbrain’s new focus on eCommerce, KPI selection and the surprising amount of people that fish in the US.
Check out all the other episodes of Mobile Growth & Pancakes here.
Connect with Lisa and Fishbrain here:
Lisa’s LinkedIn
Fishbrain’s LinkedIn
Fishbrain’s Website
Timestamps
00:17 – Lisa’s Introduction
01:19 – The main KPIs and metrics for Fishbrain
02:41 – The targeted audience for Fishbrain
05:22 – Finding the right audience
09:23 – Ensuring that the right content is curated for Fishbrain
12:17 – Ensuring appropriate responsiveness to business needs
15:33 – Behavioural attributes from users
16:57 – Maintaining consistency in the sales funnel
20:20 – Using a holistic approach towards the objective of social commerce
21:13 – Introducing new users into the funnel
23:33 – Knowing when a campaign has been successful
26:49 – Going back and changing things
28:22 – Quickfire questions
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Lisa Kennelly
Key takeaways
- Fishbrain is a mobile application business based in Stockholm, Sweden. The app initiated as a social networking platform for people who love fishing and has recently incorporated an eCommerce business model
- Currently, Lisa focuses on the eCommerce side of the business. She believes it could become a significant new revenue stream for Fishbrain, with her main focus on driving traffic from Google
- Fishbrain launched this new marketplace about a year and a half ago. Currently, Lisa and her team are trying to ensure that the new marketplace grow whilst ensuring that the existing product continues it’s growth
- On a broader scale, one of the most important KPIs for Lisa’s team is ROAS (return on ad spend)
- Another important KPI that Lisa and her team use to monitor progress is the number of subscriptions. Fishbrain has free and a premium versions of their application
- Currently, Fishbrain has a user base of 11 million and has been operating for six years. While this user base is global, the organization mainly targets the US
- According to Lisa, around 50 million people in the US fish, this is Fishbrain’s total addressable market
- Another important KPI that Lisa and the team focus on is “Catches.” Lisa explains that the aim is for people to show the fish they catch by logging on and posting a picture to their profiles
- Fishbrain ensures that its users have the choice to either keep their location private when posting or put up the location according to their convenience
- Currently, Fishbrain has over 10 million “Catches” on the platform. This data point also helps to connect users to specific stretches of water and specific equipment that will ultimately lead to more and better “Catches”
- According to Lisa, Fishbrain uses the data it collects to provide a better fishing experience for its users, unlike Facebook, which collects data to provide advertisements only
- Lisa notes that fishing is growing is popularity, and this has only grown during the pandemic over the past 18 months as fishing was one of the few activities that did not require too much social interaction and is by default distanced
- There is not a ratio of 50:50 when it comes to classifying the gender of the Fishbrain audience, with the platform being mostly dominated by males. This has enabled Lisa to target more effectively, being able to eliminate a large chunk of the US population, leading to a better ROAS from her ad spend
- Fishbrain marketing strategies are heavily influenced based on the season as fishing is a seasonal hobby, specifically in the northern states of the USA
Full Transcript:
Esther: Welcome to Mobile Growth and Pancakes, a podcast by Storemaven. We breakdown how and why mobile apps grow. In each episode, we invite a mobile growth expert onto the show to breakdown a specific mobile growth strategy, how it worked, why it worked and what they would do differently. I’m your host, Esther Shatz. Welcome to Mobile Growth and Podcast. I’m joined today by Lisa Kennelly, CMO at Fishbrain. Lisa, you want to introduce yourself?
Lisa: Yes. Hi, my name is Lisa, as you mentioned, I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at Fishbrain. Fishbrain is an app-based in Stockholm, Sweden and we’re a social network and tool and now eCommerce shop for people who love fishing, which is the world’s most popular hobby.
Esther: Amazing. You have a whole different range of outputs. What are some of the key KPIs that you guys look at that you, as CMO, are some of the metrics that you’re most focused on when it comes to growth?
Lisa: Right now, I’m actually responsible both for the eCommerce side of the business because it’s a new revenue stream and area of focus for us. I’m obviously focused on GMB and commerce sales, basically. That’s why I’m looking at, just the amount of sales we’re able to drive, especially since it’s a new marketplace that we launched a year and a half ago. Really, looking at both, proving that this marketplace works for our audience and that we can do it, and then continue to build, build, build and show that we can make this a real revenue stream.
From my perspective, that’s what we’re looking at. Of course, as a larger marketing team, we are looking at our overall return on Ad Spend. That’s a big one for us and the growth of our subscription as well.
Subscription revenue is very important because– We have a premium model on the app that you can use it for free but do have a pro version. That’s the other revenue stream for us that we look at, is the subscription revenue and how many new subscriptions we’re bringing in, what’s the subscription [unintelligible 00:02:23]. Basically, it’s the money, that’s what we look at. It’s the money.
[laughter]
Esther: It’s a good KPI to optimize for overall. Can you give a rough idea of scale, around how wide is the audience base that we’re looking at for Fishbrain?
Lisa: Right now we have over 11 million users on the platform. [unintelligible 00:02:46] for about six years. We’re focused primarily in the US. It is global, we’re based in Stockholm but our audience is the US, which is about close to 50 million people fish in the US every year. It’s a really big audience.
While we do have a presence in some other countries around the world, you can download Fishbrain anywhere but the US is where we really focus our marketing efforts just because there’s so many people there and also so much money is there. It’s a huge industry which is why we [unintelligible 00:03:15] this opportunity for all the gear you need to buy for fishing and that’s why we’ve been working out there.
I think the other metrics that we talk about a lot is how many catches are on the platform. People use Fishbrain to– When you go fishing, you log, “Hey, I caught a fish here.” You show the photo of it and you, of course, keep your location private. I know anyone who is an angler will say, “I’m not going to tell anyone where I caught the fish.” Of course, you always keep that private unless you do want to share it, or even just share, “I caught it in this body of water. I’m not going to tell you where.”
We do have over 10 million catches on the platform as well. That’s very big for us because that’s where all the data comes from. With the catches, we can see in all this data about when a fish is caught and how big it was and what gear you used, and then we can feed that back to you as users. The next time you go fishing you can say, “Okay, I should use this type of gear in this body of water to catch this type of fish because of what Fishbrain is recommending to me.”
Esther: Amazing. Basically, you need people to log in and subscribers and eCommerce but you also need that feedback back for the technology of the platform, that the more people are actually using and sharing back their usage, the more you’re able to enhance your own technology.
Lisa: Exactly. It is a social network also. It’s the social network that you get value out of being on it both from a social perspective as well, hopefully, from the data perspective. We’re not using the data in a Facebook way to pump ads at you. It’s more to make the information and for those hardcore anglers who really want to know all the details about fishing. That’s what the data is, is what we’re paying for to you. We wanted to be the data that turns into something relevant.
Esther: I’m interested to hear a bit about your target audience. Obviously, fishing interest is up there. I’ll out myself as not a fisher but my father-in-law is big into fishing, not big into his phone. [chuckles] I imagine he’s maybe not quite the target audience. How do you guys go about identifying who that is for you?
Lisa: I think that is [unintelligible 00:05:23] I myself, I’m not an angler. My father is. He fish my whole life. I’ve always known that he’s into fly-fishing. I love the kinds of fishing. I always say that is proof that this is the world’s most popular hobby is that, even if you don’t fish, every single person I’ve talked to [unintelligible 00:05:38] says, “Oh yes, but my friend, my father, my cousin, my sister, [crosstalk] this is their number one hobby.” Everybody knows somebody. That is really proof of just how dedicated this is.
In terms of the audience, it is broad. What’s really interesting about this past year, with the pandemic, is that the audience has really grown because fishing was one of the few activities you could do that was social distance. People wanted to get outside, they wanted to do something and you can go fish and you can even do it with another person. It’s very easy to [unintelligible 00:06:07] it doesn’t feel forced to keep distance from people. For the most part that was possible. Even with lockdown, most places didn’t restrict fishing. It happened in a couple of places but not too many.
There was a lot of growth that we saw as a platform and also just the fishing industry. We saw that from our industry partners, people who look at participation in fishing in the United States. They all saw that increase. That’s really interesting in terms of how the audience is developing.
In terms of how we’ve grown so far, certainly it was very easy to general Facebook ads, you could target people who’re interested in fishing. That was not hard to do. Our audience is quite heavily male. It’s definitely not only men who fish, it’s certainly split, not 50/50 but there are [unintelligible 00:06:48] huge growing segments actually of women who fish. Our audience at Fishbrain, historically, has been pretty heavily skewed male, so we’re able to target based on that.
It’s definitely the American audience that we’re looking at and it’s also very seasonal. Fishing is very seasonal, especially in the United States. In the southern half of the United States, in Florida and Texas, California and Louisiana, you can more or less fish all year round. If you are in the northern part of the United States, fishing is very, very seasonal. In the spring and summer, you can fish more than in the winter. A few hardcore people go ice fishing but it’s much less common. We also see that a lot in both the target audience we’re going after and then just the curve of our usage, very seasonal.
We’re trying to level out that seasonality through things like [unintelligible 00:07:37] because, of course, even if it’s the dead of December, maybe you can’t go out and go fishing, you’re still shopping deals to buy all the fishing gear for the next year. There’s ways to keep the usage high across the year but for now, it’s quite seasonal.
Going back to the audience, that is something we look at and, “Okay, where are people fishing?” Then, of course, “What kind of fish are they catching?” because all of those things impact into the marketing approach we use, how we talk about it, and then what the platform is giving them.
That’s something I think that’s also been a big learning for much of my marketing team, who many of us are not anglers, is to realize how this thing [unintelligible 00:08:15]. You can’t do marketing content about the bass fishing to someone who’s interested in fishing for catfish, or someone who’s fly-fishing and then try to give them content that’s about deep-sea fishing, or ocean fishing. It’s so different.
The more effective our marketing is is when it’s much more, not a surprise, but relevant and targeted from their interest. As we’ve done more very [unintelligible 00:08:47] campaigns, I’m like, “Okay, here is the campaign really focused on the type of water, the type of gear, the type of fish you would catch in Florida.” That’s going to perform better than a much broader, fishing campaign.
Esther: I guess, I’m curious you mentioned you’re not all anglers in the team. How hard is it to create– It’s very specialized content. What do you know about catfish versus every other type of fish if that’s not your world? How do you make sure that it comes out genuine and that you’re actually targeting the right things when it’s not your air that you breathe?
Lisa: Yes, for sure. I think it’s the combination of both, listening to our users, for sure, and learning from them and having to be open to the learning industry, like, “I’m going to have to learn this stuff and not just apply a top-level view to it.“ We are working on hiring more people with that experience. I now have two anglers on my team and they’re amazing, and they’re in fact just so good. It’s fantastic to have them. Even just to get the language right, to communicate. That’s another thing because we’re based in Stockholm but I’m American so I can talk like an American, I understand American culture, American marketing. I can do that but I can’t go and talk to users or talk like our audience does. We have to combine that knowledge of fishing with also the knowledge of an American audience and what works for them.
I have worked with my previous company called Clue, which is a female health app. That was where you can track your period and know that your period’s coming and all that stuff. That was the topic which I was personally a user, I was the target user. I was really close to it and that was amazing.
After doing that for four years, I wanted to go do something where I didn’t have a connection to the project because I wanted to bring that objective view and feel, “I think it is helpful that I can be objective.” Of course, then I lose something by not being totally the target audience. Then I need to learn and that’s something we do as a company. We go on a fishing trip as often as possible. We go out fishing as a company, we do literally have to live the process. You can learn. [chuckles] Yes, that’s right? It’s definitely a challenge, though. We think about that a lot.
Esther: Yes, it’s an interesting balance because you’re right when you are very close to the product. When we’re speaking with specific developers they’re almost too attached to even respond to performance in some senses, because they’re saying, “I don’t care that it’s showing X, Y, Z. I know because I feel it.” You do have an advantage of being able to be database. You have nothing else to go on other than data and what’s actually working. On the same side, you definitely have gaps that you need to overcome and I think it’s the big fear. You see it with language localization a lot also. When you don’t have somebody native on your team, you have that fear. It’s happened to developers that have accidentally released offensive, completely misguided-
Lisa: Oh, yes.
Esther: -just by not knowing what to say, but it’s really interesting. You actually touched on something interesting, towards the beginning that actually you guys are seeing a pretty significant spike in behavior this year because of COVID, because of stay at home and distancing, which is something that fishing is friendly to.
How responsive can you be in terms of– You set off your year, we’re about to hit 2021, I imagine everybody’s setting off their year plans, but then something like this happens and there’s a shift to the market. How much do you stick with what you know versus responding to what’s happening outside?
Lisa: Yes, totally. While it’s going on you’re just holding on for the ride, and just like, “Okay, it’s coming in and it’s working. We’re not going to change anything for the entire year. When we have time let’s just analyze this.” Like I said, “We do have our peak in the summer, and then it goes down,” although now that we do eCommerce, November and December are crazy as well because it’s Black Friday holiday season.
Now, as you’re planning for 2021, something we’re doing as a marketing team, as the company, is doing a big market research project where we want to look at our existing users as well as the market in general, who’s not our users and really start to understand the thing about their behavior. Has it changed in the last year? Did they start fishing in the last year?
Basically, understanding if all of these new people who started fishing, did we really actually capture them? Is our spike in users matching that growth that we saw? The industry thinks so, but I want to verify that. I want to understand more about these people. Anyone who joined us in the last year or anyone who’s been active recently who was part of this growth we had, what can we learn about them? So we can get more of them, apply for next year, understand them better. Then also of that market that’s out there, who doesn’t know about Fishbrain yet, “Okay, are they planning to keep fishing? What can we provide for them?”
Basically, it’s a very big research project now to just like– We have a hunch about what’s the right way to go, but we now need to back that up with data. Of course, I want to have the qualitative and quantitative balance. We need some qualitative data too and do some user interviews but to really understand, “Yes, what is that market now? It is totally different.”
We did this a year ago. Last December, we did a big market research thing to understand our target users, and then, the world totally changed. We just can’t use that data. We can’t use everything anymore. I mean, we can use some of it, of course.
We need to understand there’s a lot of new stuff. Especially with e-commerce, if anyone who also works in eCommerce, there’s been this jump in the adoption of eCommerce users five years and in three months or less. They can just massively jump forward. “Okay, that’s a huge part of our business now. What does that mean for our audience? What is their e-commerce behavior, not just for fishing gear but for anything?”
Then also on the subscription side, “Okay, we’re a subscription service. How many other subscriptions do you have if maybe, because of the economic situation, your wallet’s gotten smaller or tighter, are you still going to pay an app subscription? How many app subscriptions are you going to pay?” There’s a lot of factors at work right now in the world that I think can have an impact on this. I want to be ahead of them as much as possible. If both, the audience we have, the potential audience, and the behaviors that they didn’t have before, or maybe still have or maybe have changed, really understanding that.
I think that for me, as a CMO, that’s something I have to look at is like, “What is their behavior as consumers across the board, not only with respect to my product but just in every possible area, because all of the things are going to have an impact.
Esther: Interesting. How much can you actually delve into that? Is it user surveys every now and again focus groups? How much can you get that full picture of, “I know what you’re doing inside my app, but I don’t know what you’re doing elsewhere?” How do you flesh that out?
Lisa: The way we did it last year was we’re going to, basically, replicate this year but we’re going to do a big survey, not so big, but a focused survey and then we’ll use some tools and some partners externally to get it to a representative sample, hopefully, both internally and externally. Then get all the data and then distill the inside part of that. Then, “Okay, what does that mean for our strategy, our tactics, in our brand positioning, and our messaging going forward? That’s the other thing.
Also, what does that mean for our product development? If all of the market research tells us that there’s a huge opportunity of a customer that looks very different from our past customers, we have to make sure our products works for that customer. Otherwise, we can go out and do all the marketing we want and bring them all in with great messaging but if they have the app and it’s not matching, the red thread, isn’t there, it’s just a product and they’re all just going to be a waste of money and time and effort.
Esther: It’s interesting because you guys have really distinctive behaviors, eCommerce and purchasing something through eCommerce is very different than sharing through social media platforms, is very different than subscribing to an app. How much are you able to maintain consistency across the funnel and say, “Okay, well, the same efforts are going to work for all of our users?” or “How much are you going segmented and segmented? What happens if the messages need to differ or even clash in the way you’re targeting each user group, each behavior?”
Lisa: That’s such a good question. That really is the core. [chuckles] It’s a core thing, right? Of course, I think, when we think about the company vision and the behavior of our users, these things are all tied together. We’re not trying to shoehorn them things they don’t do. It is all related to fishing. These are all things that you as an angler do. You buy gear, you, hopefully, take a picture of your catch and maybe share it. You do look for these places to go fishing.
All of these behaviors, on the one hand, should be cohesive enough because they all do make sense. Then randomly you go, I don’t know, ride your scooter or something. They are connected, but we have struggled with that. I think we were a little bit naive in terms of what we added in an eCommerce and we’re like, “Oh, cool, let’s come to the app and let us buy something.” No, they came to the app because they wanted to do something, and then all of a sudden we were trying to sell them stuff on top. That was the big learning in terms of what amount of sales could be driven from the app, a least right away. I think definitely the education process with the user, also integrating that into the experience to get them there. That’s a longer journey than we anticipated.
We do have a lot of our eCommerce stuff online, so we have a website also. We started mapping them out for a long time. The reason we started building up the website for both SEO reasons and then eCommerce reasons. That’s a huge opportunity for us as well and so on the web we actually can do different messaging way. The people who find us on the web, especially through search, it’s a different type of customer. They’re looking for something different. That is where the vast majority of our sales come from, it’s from the web.
That’s more maybe like [unintelligible 00:18:26] are searching for something, want to buy something and then, “Okay, what do we do with them? Do we then convert them into app users or we treat them totally differently?”
I think we are trying to still figure out, “Can we have one holistic message for all of them? Do we need to have different messages?” If there’s a perfect, amazing customer who uses the app regularly, is a subscriber, and buys from us, that’s amazing. I want that person. Is there going to be millions of that person or are they going to be what segment is realistic of that person?
Yes, I don’t have an answer, but it’s something we do struggle with all the time. I always like to look at competitors, who’re doing something similar in other space. There’s not a lot, there’s a few but it is a challenge to build that all into one cohesive message and really answer what is the problem you’re trying to solve?
Esther: Yes, I see it a lot. You have the more an app goes all in one, in theory, in principle, you’re like, “I have something for everyone. Anyone who has a remote interest in whatever my genre is is surely going to find what they’re looking for, and yet when you don’t have that specific, really like, “This is the need I’m answering right now and I know exactly what you’re looking for right now, and how I sell that, it can become really, really difficult. I think it’s actually amazing that it makes a lot of sense to have a website to tackle this very different need and different behavior, which is eCommerce, which is hard purchases.
In the App Store itself, there’s that huge challenge of, “I have one page, I have one single page. This one single page has to work on this incredibly diverse user. To portray the diverse, how do I know when I highlight the social media cyber? It’s a gift to be able to have all these different routes to go in but it’s also, in a way, a curse to not be able to narrow in. Yes, definitely.
Lisa: Yes, for sure. The vision is like social commerce. That’s what we’re trying to get to. It’s that you are buying stuff because you see when somebody posted a photo of the fish they caught and you see what gear they use, and then you can go buy that gear that your friend recommended. It’s all built-in and the experience, all I could see [unintelligible 00:20:38] make sense. That is a vision, and it’s amazing, but the reality and the technology, it takes a long time to develop that and get there and get the customer there and all that stuff.
It’s like we’re working towards that vision but in the meantime, you sometimes have to do really much more to, “Okay, realistic and concrete and operational.” I’m like, “At the end of the day, I have to drive sales for this month, this week, through any means necessary.”
Esther: How much do you focus on, top of the funnel, in bringing users in versus marketing to users who’ve already downloaded, or already made their first step into Fishbrain?
Lisa: It’s a mix, for sure. Just the top of the funnel side, for example, it was just in the last year that we were able to start putting some of that marketing budget towards awareness and not just pure conversion. For a long time, it was really focused on conversion. Then last year, we did a bit in the early part of the year on awareness, which was great, but it didn’t help the customer acquisition costs down later on in the year, because we’d already gotten them down the funnel. We’re doing that again this year, which is great, and really fun to get to do some just high-level awareness campaigns.
Basically, as we’ve grown, we’ve been able to do more of that but definitely, it is a mix between, of course, we’re acquiring people that we want to keep the retention high and that’s always the struggle. That’s something that priority works on all the time, and it’s like, “Where is that drop off happening?” and we’re building out our CRM team and our CRM capacity to bring people back and show them the value and keep them active. Especially with the seasonality, that is a challenge, right? Maybe you stop using Fishbrain just because like, “Oh, yes. I forgot. I downloaded it last summer and I forgot about it this summer.” We’re like, “What? Come on.” [chuckles] It’s not you didn’t even want [crosstalk]–
Esther: We worked so hard. [chuckles]
Lisa: Yes. There’s that for sure. Something we’re focusing a lot now, eCommerce is also with repeat customers, right? If we bring in a customer, if we can get them to come in, and then keep buying from us, that’s just going to keep eating away at that Ad Spend and giving us more and more of the return, which is great, much better than us keeping how to get new customers. There’s a huge opportunity there, too. I think it’s always a balance.
It’s something we definitely think about all the time.
Also, I think, it’s an interesting challenge that I’m sure other apps that have been around for a while, have faced [unintelligible 00:22:56] “Oh, yeah, I downloaded Fishbrain five years ago and I didn’t like it.” and I’m like, “Okay, the app is so different now. Have you looked at it? We have all these, we have fixed all the problems with it.” “Oh, cool.” You have to reactivate that person. That’s also a challenge.
Esther: I’m interested to jump back for a second. You talked about awareness campaigns versus performance marketing. I think it’s something that’s much harder to evaluate. The goals, obviously, shift a little bit. How do you go about that evaluation process? Was this successful? Was this worth our time? I think a lot of people default to performance marketing just because that’s where you have the RRI, [crosstalk] that’s what I can prove.
Lisa: Yes. I think when we were doing awareness campaigns on Facebook or whatever, you are able to see, “Okay, is this someone I hit before?” then I do convert them later. There are ways in which we can see that to an extent, obviously. There’s this customer known to us, and then at some point that they get converted. Given how much you’re able to track them based on everything.
That’s part of it, but I think it has to, a little bit, I think last year was going on faith, and that’s saying to finance, like, “Look, we think this is worthwhile and you will see the return later. You have to trust us.” We’ve shown we can do this, but it’ll pan out and we’ve lower acquisition costs down the road, and having some faith between you. I think also for us, especially with fishing, so much of that is there’s out-of-home opportunities.
In a normal year, there’s a lot of in-person fishing is done outside and there’s fishing tournaments, and there’s events. There’s a huge awareness opportunity there that again, it’s super hard to quantify but I think it has a big impact. How do we start to do enough of the tests, have some budget to test on that? Again, “We looked and we saw this had an impact. Give me more for next year.”
Esther: For me, I also, I think, awareness campaigns can be so critical. It is a challenge to be able to validate that but if I’m looking at– First of all, the whole concept of organics, an organic download. Nobody wakes up one morning and thinks, “Oh, the word Fishbrain sounds cool. Let me search for it.” That’s not a behavior. There are some way you reach them. They’re not falling from the sky and no, you didn’t send directly an app but there’s an effect there.
My hope is that as we look at changes with the IDFA and the fact that you’re not going to be able to track performance marketing the same way. We’ve been comfortable tracking performance marketing, until now that this opens the door a little bit for this idea of less traditional marketing strategies as well. Now you’re coming up with different ways to be able to evaluate your performance that can encompass these less easily trackable forms of marketing.
Lisa: It’s totally true. Another thing I should mention in terms of awareness, which we’re thinking about a lot is, as we’ve gotten into eCommerce and we work with brands to have the products that were available on our marketplace, there’s a lot of opportunities for awareness in partnering with those brands. Every brand when we sell it has somewhere either on their website or in their email marketing, has our logo mentioned there. Doesn’t even need to be selling anything, it doesn’t even need to be [unintelligible 00:26:13] It’d nice if they say, “Download Fishbrain,” anything we partner with Fishbrain, right? Getting our logo and our name in front of the [crosstalk]–
Esther: Like that social proof.
Lisa: Yes, that in itself is also– Again, hard to quantify. Maybe you can see some referrals, but I see that having this growing impact on our awareness too. Absolutely, a huge opportunity.
Esther: Amazing. One more question, specifically about Fishbrain right now is, you could go an event, three years has it been or four years of Fishbrain? If you could go back [crosstalk]–
Lisa: Three years in January, yes.
Esther: If you could go back and start again, what do you think you’d do differently?
Lisa: It’s a good one. I know what I would do differently. I think, when I came in and I started out, I came in and was like, “Let’s do a brand repositioning. Let me really understand what our brand messaging and audiences.” I did all the research, all of that I don’t think I did it incorrectly. What I came up with was actually, turned out to be too far ahead of where the app as a brand actually was.
Basically, where I wanted us to be three years ago, that’s where we are now finally, I think, in terms of reaching a wider audience. I really wanted to get us to this– Moving from what we call an avid angler, the hardcore, diehards, who really helped us build the community, to reaching that wider audience of people. In retrospect, I realized pretty quickly that that shift was bigger. Even if I started to see us being ready for that, it took a lot longer to get there than I anticipated. That was just learning in terms of some of our marketing went really broad for a while and then [unintelligible 00:27:53] that wasn’t working as well. We had to roll it back, go back to that more targeted, more messaging we were used to doing, and then gradually, more gradually get to the point where we can be a bit more broad, a bit less for that kind of angler.
Esther: Nice, very nice. Okay, we’re moving into a quickfire. The questions I asked everyone when they join. [chuckles] Don’t worry, they’re not scary. First of all, if you could give any tips to somebody who’s just aspiring to enter the world of growth marketing, what would that be?
Lisa: My tip would be, learn from other people in the field. Find who is the smartest people in growth marketing. Subscribe to their newsletter and follow them on Twitter, and watch them when they do a talk because there are so many smart people in this space and you should learn from them. I learned from people all the time.
Esther: Speaking of smart people in the growth industry, do you have a favorite growth resource that you listen in to, read?
Lisa: Oh, yes. Thomas Petit, who everyone [unintelligible 00:29:00] but he’s just a genius. I love that he has a newsletter now that I subscribe to. I’ve known him since I was in Berlin. We spoke at a conference together and we would have these growth meetups with other marketing people in Berlin. I just love he’s so generous with his knowledge and knows so much, and is always available if you need to bounce ideas and get resources. His newsletter is fantastic, everyone please subscribe. [chuckles]
Esther: Amazing. I don’t know if this is gonna be the same answer, but when the world goes back to normal and COVID ends, you get to take one person in the industry out for lunch. Who do you take?
Lisa: Oh, okay. Can I pick an agency? Can I pick a group of people, as opposed to one person?
Esther: Yes. You can pick a group. I’ll allow it.
Lisa: Yes, so in Berlin, there’s an agency called Phiture. They are ASO and mobile growth consultancy. I’ve worked with them as a client in multiple places. I have been a co-panelist with both the founders, with Andy and Moritz, and I love them. I think they’re brilliant. I would love to go to Berlin and hang out with their whole team because I missed that. I used to work in Berlin. I miss that a lot. That’s definitely [unintelligible 00:30:12]
Esther: The most important question, what is your favorite type of pancake?
Lisa: I probably should say, Swedish pancakes, given that I’m here in Sweden. I make Swedish pancakes for my kids often. Actually, my favorite is probably blueberry pancakes.
Esther: Good. That’s a solid American choice. You’re bringing a bit of home with you? Lisa, where can people find you if they want to see what else you’re up to, hear more?
Lisa: You can find me on LinkedIn, that’s probably the best place. Usually, if I’m doing any blog posts or content, I’ll usually post it up there. That’s probably the best place for that. You can all check out Fishbrain and recommend it to someone in your circle who fishes because I know you all know someone.
[chuckling]
Recommend it to them.
Esther: I’m going to have to go. My plan is now after this, I’m going to recommend it to my nephew who’ll be able to use it on his fishing trips with my father-in-law. That’s how we’ll- [crosstalk]
Lisa: There you go.
Esther: -complete [chuckles] the circle. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today. I’ve learned more about fishing than I have in a long time. [chuckles] It was awesome. Thank you.
Lisa: Yes, thanks a lot for having me. This was fun.
