Our company has undergone many changes over the past year or two, as we transition from a language company to a learning company, with products focused on literacy for children, brain fitness, and more. Last year we acquired a number of companies as part of this transition, including a brain fitness company by the name of Fit Brains.
A good chunk of my time on Thursday is devoted to Fit Brains. Though the original Fit Brains team in Vancouver continues to handle some of the business, much of the marketing strategy and implementation efforts have shifted to the Rosetta Stone headquarters in Rosslyn. In the morning I work on my Facebook Fit Brains ads, which drive people to install one of the Fit Brains apps or sign up for a free trial on the website. The Fit Brains app install ads haven’t been doing so well in the past couple of days, with the cost per install rising and our ranking in the App Store falling. I try to improve performance by launching new campaigns with different copy and targeting; unfortunately, however, there’s no guarantee that this will work. Advertising isn’t a hard science conducted in a sterile environment, and while we can get results quickly and fairly easily, oftentimes it’s difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle the different factors that may have led to these results.
Later in the afternoon I consult with my colleague at Fit Brains about the ads, and then participate in our weekly Fit Brains meeting, where people from various departments review their work and present upcoming initiatives.
Tomorrow is the beginning of our back-to-school promotion, a big revenue driver for the business, and so I call our Facebook marketing partner to confirm that everything is in order and ready to launch. During the promotion period we’ll have weekly calls to go over ad performance. This is important not just for the sake of my own ads, but also for other members of the team, who can use the information I share to optimize their own ads in terms of imagery, copy, and the destination webpage.
In addition to ad results, we also regularly share content across the digital marketing team. This afternoon, for example, my coworkers and I in social media meet with the email marketers to finalize what we’ll include in an upcoming email. The purpose of this email – the third in a recently launched series – is to gain attention and drive engagement, and so we draw its content from recent successful posts on Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
In the evening the whole team heads over to a local bar for a farewell party. One of the members of the customer retention team, who we’ve all worked with on various projects, is leaving the company. That’s another thing you have to get used to when transitioning from academia – people come and go much more frequently.
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