The Bango 'Three Minutes With' series talks with app developers around the world to get their views and experiences with user acquisition and monetization in the global marketplace. In the latest article, Bango Marketplace talk with Kristian Pechovski, Business Development Manager at Telecoming about the challenges facing app developers, Facebook campaigns and how he believes subscription-based models are the next big thing.
Bango Marketplace: What do you think is the biggest challenge the app developer faces?
Kristian Pechovski, Telecoming: The current app developer landscape is very competitive. The stakes are getting higher and higher while consumers are more demanding. This forces companies like Telecoming to continually innovate.
Bango: What is one of the most important outcomes for Telecoming in its Facebook campaigns?
KP: Facebook offers us the chance to engage with a wide range of targeted users. This segmentation enables us to measure user performance and their interests accurately with our products. It's a great channel to try out new features and implementations, so we can see if we’re following the right path to meet consumer expectations.
Bango: What is the app developer's most significant challenge when it comes to monetization?
KP: The biggest challenge is finding the silver lining between making a compelling and unique product and choosing the right monetization method for it. There are great ideas out there but selecting the most suitable for your users isn’t easy. I strongly encourage each developer to test, test and keep checking any and every single possibility to find the most suitable one.
Bango: Do you treat user acquisition and monetization as two separate activities?
KP: Not really. I consider user acquisition part of a monetization strategy that involves many different activities - in-app purchases, in-app advertising, subscriptions, and promotions. User acquisition is the set of actions and marketing techniques implemented to drive potential clients to interact with the various monetization inputs. It's vital for any digital business - especially if it's subscription-based - to have a reliable and clear user acquisition strategy to achieve successful monetization.
Bango: How do you measure the success of your advertising campaigns?
KP: We measure the success of our advertising campaigns by separating our KPIs into two blocks: one based on performance (CPI and CAC) and another based on retention and LTV.
Bango: Subscriptions are the new trend in monetizing mobile content - why is that?
KP: We are living in the new ‘subscronomics’ era. This term expresses the popular trend of moving into subscription-based business models with an economic approach based on innovation. This is not limited to the digital environment, but a model suitable for any industry. Modern society welcomes this trend which is driven by significant changes in consumer consumption models: loss of ownership interest, connectivity, users on the move, among many others.
Users agree to pay service memberships in exchange for having an offer that is more extensive than ever before. They don't want to be continually making decisions. They want it all and are willing to pay for it. Subscriptions multiply consumption but reduce all purchase decisions to a single moment of commitment.
Bango: How has technology created the consumer's journey and how does AdTech fit into that?
KP: Consumers today follow a very non-linear journey. They interact on multiple touchpoints before engaging with a brand. This non-linearity has made the sales funnel more complicated, whereas in the past sales used to follow a more fixed set of paths. Marketers should be increasingly more holistic in their efforts to meet their goals. That's why AdTech is so essential in today's digital landscape. It gives advertisers the necessary tools to engage with consumers at the right moment, with the right messaging, through an adequate channel.
Telecoming provide technology to monetize digital services through direct carrier billing, AdTech and apps. Voted one of the best companies to work for in Spain by economic magazine Acualidad Economica, the company has won numerous awards for digital marketing tools.