The Marketing Formula that Propelled Duolingo to 500M Users
EP 87 of The Logan Bartlett Show: Untold stories from tech's inner circle
In my latest podcast interview, Luis von Ahn (CEO, Duolingo) unveiled the marketing strategies that made Duolingo the #1 language learning app globally. We discussed the backstory of Duo, the famous owl mascot, as well as the A/B testing and gamification that have propelled Duolingo to 500 million users.
Click here to view the episode transcript | Watch the full episode on Youtube | Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
✉️ Episode Memo
If 5 Germans & A Dog Can Build It - Make It Free
Duolingo has a rule against charging for anything that’s simple to build, as you’re likely to get quickly disrupted. This rule helped them surpass competitors and protect themselves from other startups as they built sustainable competitive barriers.
Staying Scrappy Post-IPO
Even though Duolingo is now a $9B public company, the team is still meticulous about maximizing their money, especially marketing dollars. A few examples…
Duolingo doesn’t care where their users come from, so they direct ad spend to countries with lower current ad costs. If ads get expensive in France, they’ll move them to Italy and so on.
Duolingo focusses on building their brand organically online instead of directing dollars to performance marketing. From passive aggressive Twitter comments to viral TikToks, Duolingo gets creative.
Duolingo takes advantage of discount advertising opportunities, such as when they waited around for a great deal on Pittsburg billboards before launching their campaign.
Today, the company spends about $50M/yr on marketing, which is only about ⅕ of the budget of other similar size organizations. Yet, they’re not afraid to spend when it’s worth it. For instance, Luis shared the story of hiring a fancy agency to make a purposefully cheap-looking April Fools Day ad, as the actual low-budget agencies weren’t getting it right.
Duolingo’s Content Formula For Rapid Growth
Duolingo experimented with many unsuccessful campaigns early on, but when Duo started popping up in memes, they leaned into content that was already gathering organic views. Two tactics that helped Duolingo make some of their biggest strides…
Making people laugh - Duolingo’s content focuses on entertainment, and it never feels like they’re selling to you. People love the owl’s character, so letting the brand personality evolve and leaning into inside jokes has worked wonders.
Hiring a Gen Z creative genius right out of college: To appeal to a young audience, you need young team members who deeply understand their generation. At first, Luis didn’t believe dancing TikToks would work, but countless millions of views later, he’s bought into the viral free advertising we all love.
Lessons From A/B Testing
Luis found that the team’s intuition on what software changes would work didn’t line up with the metrics, so they adopted a culture of constant A/B testing. Yet, you’ll never know everything going on behind the metrics, and some decisions still just have to be made on principle. For example, sending 30 notifications in 5 minutes would probably boost app usage, but it would be a horrible user experience.
⭐ Highlight: The Secret To Duolingo’s Marketing Success
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