Interview with Xavier Bourlard from Headway
Xavier has over 12 years of performance-based advertising, online/e-mail marketing and mobile user acquisition experience, with a strong focus on leading and growing the business development internationally. Before joining Headway, he was based in Berlin working at Glispa – an international marketing platform for mobile and digital entertainment clients.
At Headway, his responsibilities are to build and manage the several teams from the European office based in Barcelona, and to lead the mobile app marketing activities internationally. His goal is to empower Mobrain – the In-House Mobile Marketing Platform from Headway – as an all in one mobile advertising solution for all app developers and brands from all over the world.
Get to know more about him!
Quick quiz Xavier Bourlard – Headway
Xavier will join us on Friday 1st of June at the W Barcelona Hotel. Do not miss the chance to learn from him and purchase your tickets now đ
1. How and when did you arrive to the mobile industry? Why did you decide to stay and work on this sector?
After more than 8 years spent in the digital industry, display and email marketing, etc. In January 2013, after moving from San Francisco to Berlin, I started my work experience in the mobile industry and I am still there since! Why? We are in a very fast paced and innovative industry, and also becoming very professional for the last few years, with all the tools, and new features for app marketers to measure the impact of their actions on daily basis. We feel that we can have an impact and make things change by helping App marketers to succeed.
2. What project are you working on now?
Right now and for at least the next 6 months, my main priority is to align our “savoir-faire” everywhere in the world where our offices are located. You can always find me somewhere between Barcelona, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Mexico, Seoul and lately Dubai, aligning processes, and making sure we have the right experts in every country to help and grow the local app developers extending their marketing capabilities.
3. What is the most important professional quality an app marketer can have?
A modern app marketer should be primarily data-driven and be able to measure and define clear expectations of every action and strategy. Before taking any action, a marketer needs to be able to reply 3 simple questions:
- WHAT? What do I want to get from this marketing strategy?
- HOW? How I will proceed and how I will measure the success?
- WHY? For instance, do I want to get new users or to re-engage the existing ones? The purpose of the action.
4. What KPIs do you control every day? Which ones are the most important?
It depends on the vertical. In the gaming vertical, we control mainly retention rate and tutorial completion. In food delivery or retail industry, we check the CVR between installs and orders. These metrics are all important to make sure we provide the right users to our clients.
5. What problem do you face in your everyday as an app marketer?
In our daily mission, the most challenging part is to understand and to set a growth strategy. Define a clear strategy of growth by managing our clientsâ expectations. Should we always expect the users convert right away into purchases for a new retail app? Explain clearly that, user acquisition, re-engagement, and cross-channel promotion are working together, and some expectations need to be set over a certain amount of time.
6. What is the best option to monetize a mobile app?
Video and playable ads, but depending on your app. It works well for games, but maybe not for a lifestyle app.
7. What advice would you give to a company or startup before launching a mobile app?
How big do you want to become? Do you have enough financial support to compete in this highly competitive world? Where do you see your app in 5 years (user database, geos, monetization, etc.)?
8. What are the biggest challenges facing the mobile app industry?
I guess, I will not be very original, to tell, that traffic compliance and fraud prevention are one of the biggest challenges that an app marketer is facing in his day-to-day life. More and more tools and benchmarks are appearing, but still, hackers find new ways to circumvent the different solutions launched by the MMPs. Keep fighting against it, involve everyone from UA manager, app developer, publisher, ad network, to the MMP and make sure all actors go in the same direction and work with total transparency, that’s the key.
9. What trends will mark 2018?
More and more mobile app marketers are switching from CPI/CPA models offered by traditional networks, favoring a performance-oriented CPM/programmatic model in its place. There are numerous reasons for this shift. Marketers want more transparency into where their ads appear and how they are served. Programmatic media-buying allows the marketer to buy traffic directly from publishers, direct integrations, and from transparent programmatic media partners where the risk of fraud is minimal and they know exactly which media sources and audiences yield the highest ROAS and LTV.
10. How do you keep up to date with all the news in the app marketing industry? What sources do you consult?
I spend around 1 hour every day on several media outlets, I am part of Whatsapp groups where we share the latest news about the mobile app industry such us VentureBeat, Adexchanger, Mobile Dev Memo & eMarketer without forgetting all articles shared on LinkedIn.
11. What will you talk about in Applause 2018?
I will talk mostly about successful mobile growth strategies and key opportunities and challenges, which app developers and marketers are facing in the areas of user acquisition, monetization, retention/engagement, re-engagement as well as data science, & analytics as it pertains to mobile, gaming, retail and mCommerce brands.
12. To finish, what apps or games have surprised you in the last year?
Blinkist: that perfectly fits our fast pace world. In less than 15 min, you can get an overview of a book, audio or read. If you like it, then you can buy it. It does not replace a book, but it gives you opportunities to open yourself to new books.
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