Turner Kirk (MOOV): Tips to Grow Your Mobile Marketing Career
When Turner Kirk joined MOOV, the maker of fitness and wellness products, a year and a half ago, he was tasked with leading growth and user acquisition for a brand-new product. The app called Sanity & Self, a self-care app for women, has since climbed to the top 50 in Health & Wellness and now features nearly five thousand five-star reviews on the App Store alone. We caught up with Turner at the App Growth Summit to chat about his career and tips for becoming a better mobile marketer.
How did you get into mobile user acquisition?
Before moving into paid user acquisition, I managed organic growth programs at Smule, a music app. I was drawn to paid growth because I wanted to learn how to optimize campaigns and become even more efficient. With paid growth campaigns, you see the results of your work very quickly, and the best part is watching the numbers go in the right direction.
What are your top tips on becoming a better mobile marketer?
There’re no shortcuts, and learning is truly the only way to get better. Here’re my top five recommendations:
Shadowing. The fastest way to learn is to be around a team of people who are really good at what they do. Talk to your co-workers at lunch, learn what they are doing, and find areas where you can help them. It sounds like a very old-school way of learning, but it works. I was lucky to get to work with Alessandra Sales at Smule, who was recognized as a Mobile Hero for her app marketing achievements, and learned a lot from her.
Attending conferences. Conferences like App Growth Summit are another great place to learn. The best way to network is to find the person you want to talk to about a specific subject. But if you are very new in the industry, you can always find the most interesting person in the room and just be a fly on the wall around them.
Research & reading. Perhaps, the easiest approach for anyone is to learn online. There are many resources out there to learn about marketing. For example, Neil Patel shares interesting and actionable content. But for me, the fastest way is to research information about a specific part of the acquisition process you want to learn about, like app store optimization or keywords. Resources like Udemy or Lynda.com are great for getting your feet wet in a short period of time.
Talking to partners. Finally, you can learn by talking to your partners. Especially if they launch new features, they can share tips that will make your job a lot easier. Plus, as a mobile marketer, you spend most of your time adjusting bids and looking at numbers, so sometimes it is just nice to talk to people.