Early growth marketing tactics to maximize ROI - Kevin Kawai (NewsBreak)

With so many factors to consider when bringing an app product to market, where should growth marketers focus their time and attention to maximize return on investment? To answer this question, Remerge host Taylor Lobdell interviews Kevin Kawai, a seasoned growth marketer with over ten years of experience. In this episode, Kevin shares key growth marketing tips on no-cost growth tactics, waitlist campaigns, lifecycle and paid user acquisition, optimizing onboarding, driving virality, paid advertising, performance metrics, and where growth marketing is headed with AI. 

Kevin is the Lead Growth Marketer at NewsBreak, a news app for current events, news, and weather alerts for your local community.

Questions Kevin answered in this episode:

• What are some universal growth strategies that apply across the board of the different verticals you’ve worked with?
• What do your weekly or monthly goals look like for NewsBreak?
• You handle B2B and the lifecycle marketing for users. What strategies do you find more effective for managing both sides of the equation?
• What are some key tactics you use to make sure people stay with your app?
• What tips would you give someone who is trying to break into growth marketing? What background do they need to have?
• How do you help boost signups, execute waitlist campaigns, and ultimately, conversion rates?
• How are you marketing to get B2B advertisers on NewsBreak?
• What’s your favorite go-to growth strategy?
• How do you think growth marketing is going to change in the near future with all these AI tools?
• How do you gauge the interest of users with a new feature?
• How do you encourage someone who uninstalls your app to complete a survey?
• Can you talk about balancing short-term tactics with the long-term view of unit economics when scaling an app?

Timestamp:

• 0:53 Kevin’s background
• 2:58 Kevin’s role at NewsBreak
• 5:18 Tips for successful onboarding
• 7:04 Breaking into growth marketing
• 8:59 Implementing “waitlist” tactics
• 10:53 B2B marketing for NewsBreak’s ad platform
• 11:57 Tools and resources for go-to-market strategies
• 14:18 How AI will impact growth marketing
• 17:38 Where to focus your attention
• 19:30 Success with user surveys
• 21:40 Balancing short- and long-term goals for scaling
• 23:53 Where to go in the South Bay of SF

Quotes:

(2:17-2:33) “I think one of the bigger misconceptions with early-stage organizations is that they try to achieve results in an immediate fashion, but a lot of these growth tactics tend to be more long-term projects.”

(12:05-12:19) “I’ve seen a lot of go-to-market strategies come from AI these days. And I think from the AI perspective, it probably gets you about 50 percent of where you need to be for a full strategy.”

Mentioned in this episode:

• Kevin Kawai’s LinkedIn
• NewsBreak App