Muse and Metrics S5 EP 11 — Proactive Listening with Teresa Roldan [Guest Bio, Summary, Audio and Transcript]

Guest Bio

Teresa Roldan is a visionary digital marketer whose expertise has been shaping the mobile app industry for over ten years. Based in Madrid, Spain, Teresa stands at the helm of ASO4Apps, a company she founded to provide mobile developers with innovative marketing solutions. With a commitment to driving app growth, engagement, and monetization, Teresa has developed a reputation for creating data-driven strategies that cater to the unique needs of app developers.

At ASO4Apps, Teresa deviates from traditional agency models, offering a flexible approach that aligns with developers’ shifting priorities and budget constraints. Her mastery of mobile advertising, app store optimization, product marketing, and strategic planning makes her an invaluable asset in the realm of MarTech. Teresa is well-versed in the nuances of the app development process and leverages her comprehensive insights to enhance app performance beyond launch.

As a proud Women Techmaker Ambassador, Teresa is at the forefront of advocating for gender diversity in the tech sector. Her Spanish roots add a unique perspective to her work, enriching the global tech community with her diverse experiences and innovative mindset.

Through her work at ASO4Apps and her advocacy efforts, Teresa embodies the spirit of ingenuity and resilience. Her journey from a non-technical background to a respected leader in tech marketing is a powerful narrative of transformation, underscoring the impact of embracing challenges and relentlessly pursuing growth.

Summary

Key Highlights:

1. Teresa Roldan’s Professional Journey and ASO4Apps:

• Teresa Roldan brings over ten years of experience in mobile marketing, with a focus on app growth and monetization.
• She founded ASO4Apps to provide specialized growth strategies for mobile developers, deviating from traditional marketing agency models for a more adaptable, client-focused approach.

2. Proactive Listening and Client Satisfaction in Marketing:

• Teresa emphasizes proactive listening to understand client needs, necessary for adjusting strategies in real-time.
• Discusses the challenges posed by privacy changes like Google’s Privacy Sandbox and the importance of adapting marketing approaches accordingly.

3. Role of AI and Data Analytics in Marketing Strategy:

• Details the critical role of AI and data analytics in forming and predicting effective marketing strategies.
• Highlights the human aspect of data interpretation, essential for meeting client objectives.

4. Women Techmakers Ambassadorship and Community Engagement:

• As a Women Techmakers Ambassador, Teresa finds a strong resonance with the global community.
• Operates from Madrid, Spain, fostering connections within the global tech community and advocating for gender diversity in tech.

5. Future of Marketing and Need for Global Regulation:

• Calls for global regulations to address discrepancies in technology use, ensuring ethical practices.
• Underlines the importance of a unified approach to managing technological advancements.

6. Personal Journey and Advocacy for Inclusivity in Tech:

• Shares her transition from journalism to becoming a prominent figure in tech marketing.
• Advocates for the creation of supportive tech communities and the empowerment of women in the sector.

7. Insights into Business Strategies and Tech Regulation:

• Discusses the impact of technology on business strategies and the necessity of comprehensive regulations.
• Emphasizes the need for data-driven decision-making and aligning business goals with marketing strategies.

Conclusion:

In this episode of Muse and Metrics, Teresa Roldan offers an in-depth look at the complexities of mobile marketing and the importance of customer-centric strategies. Her journey from journalism to tech marketing and her role as a Women Techmaker Ambassador highlight her adaptability and commitment to creating an inclusive tech environment. Teresa’s insights into AI, data analytics, proactive listening, and the need for global technology regulations provide a multifaceted perspective on the challenges and opportunities in the evolving tech landscape.

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Transcript

(This is a raw transcript — there may be errors)

00;00;07;11–00;00;19;05
Philippa Burgess
Hello and welcome to Muse and Metrics. This is your host Philippa Burgess. This is season five episode 11. And today’s topic is proactive listening.

00;00;19;08–00;00;50;10
Teresa Roldan
I’m Teresa Roldan and I’m mobile marketer and growth manager with ten years of experience working in the retail environment in these specific eight, I’ve been closely working with different developers brands in their journey to market their products to help them grow, scale their businesses. So I’m also the founder and marketing director of Face Off for US is for US is mobile marketing service.

00;00;50;11–00;01;26;16
Teresa Roldan
We are building to provide product marketing solutions for small businesses. I didn’t say on purpose that we are a marketing agency because our logic, I would say the first from agency is as we align our action plan to we develop our priorities and budgets means we make our marketing service plan flexible so we achieve results. Even though we have some budget limitations.

00;01;26;18–00;01;58;29
Teresa Roldan
Very normal on small businesses. The idea is to adapt to the developer and not the other way around. That’s why we take this approach on behalf of the client. That’s why we don’t like to be seen as a marketing agency or a conventional marketing agency. And apart from that, I recently became our woman ambassador. I say I recently became because I received this good news like three months ago.

00;01;59;02–00;02;32;25
Teresa Roldan
And you can guess where those my accent come from. I’m based in Spain, I’m located in Madrid. And although I’ve been just three months in this program, I already got this feeling of being in the right place. I mean, I come from Spain. The woman to make our community isn’t as weak, of course, as in the US. But I’ve already have this positive connection of this wonderful community.

00;02;32;25–00;03;10;27
Teresa Roldan
It’s like being in a safe environment. This environment leads to its woman to be part of different events topics because it allows, as it is, a global community. I’m not sure if you have also these these feeling to be in the right space. So these passivity to connect interact their experiences with other women with a very similar background, similar challenges in their everyday lives.

00;03;10;29–00;03;27;01
Teresa Roldan
This is key because you quickly get this feeling to to fit inside this community. Yeah, I think it’s a great chance also to level up your skills to get positive connections.

00;03;27;04–00;04;12;16
Philippa Burgess
It has been joyful for me. I’ve been in the program coming up on a year now and I will say transformative. I feel completely part of a community, and I think it also confirms that identity. I mean, for you and I actually both have that similarity of having this marketing background, and only recently have I gone back to school as a graduate student for tech and being in a tech community and a tech program really affirms that I’m in the club because I feel like coming in this creative backgrounds, I didn’t always feel connected to tech and I look at my history and I was coding HTML and in college because it was just a

00;04;12;16–00;04;33;08
Philippa Burgess
new thing and I was super interested in it. And I just never thought about the fact that my interest in programing gave me the identity to sort of say, I’m in tech. I’ve worked in a number of app development projects and I understand what you say about being developer focused and making sure that the developer is getting what they need.

00;04;33;08–00;04;55;10
Philippa Burgess
And I think it reminds me of, you know, what they call a fractional CFO, a chief financial officer, where you’re sort of lend your services to many companies that need this position in house but don’t have the budget for it. So you’re sort of aligned with them saying, I’m part of you and part of your team as if I was inside your company.

00;04;55;13–00;05;09;28
Philippa Burgess
Your company just doesn’t have the budget and I don’t have it wouldn’t make sense for me to just have one client, so I’m going to have a few. But really, all of you can think of me as someone who’s essentially just such an integrated part of your team.

00;05;10;00–00;05;58;09
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I would always encourage all our women in tech to apply for this to this program. In my case, I come from from this marketing background and the business environment is obviously different from the one in the US, the one that you have also different from other European countries. Of course, every country has its own specifics, but the fact be able to connect the possibility to share a community with a woman around the world, with the Latino community is like building upgrades for us all is like helping kind of include every woman she’s living in her own space.

00;05;58;11–00;06;43;09
Teresa Roldan
And also it might be because particularly coming from from Spain, which in my case, the possibility to share, know, let’s organize events even with other Spanish speaking communities, cross borders, cross the seas. It’s just lovely to to connect also with European African woman, American woman. But these possibilities wouldn’t be able without this woman. Take me program on. I also want to thank you for for this program and also for for this interview to make these this statement that we want to do, encourage all the other women.

00;06;43;12–00;07;19;19
Philippa Burgess
Very, very much. I mean, that is part of the the show is to be an inspiration to share these inspiring stories of how people got started, how they evolved, and that this is a very welcoming community and it’s something that has been an inspiration for me to keep going and to feel so supported and what I do. And I think that that’s one of the things about tech is there’s there’s room for everyone you can come at it from a creative side, you can come at it from a deeply technical side.

00;07;19;19–00;07;42;19
Philippa Burgess
I see that a lot of the work that the mentors within our community because the we’re tasked with being mentors to others, there’s so much support for us in our growth and our ability to connect. And I’m seeing that they want from us is to improve our are speaking, to improve our stage presence, to really have that confidence.

00;07;42;19–00;08;07;28
Philippa Burgess
And it is a blend of the technical skills and the social skills and the interpersonal and the public speaking skills. And I’m currently in the Women Developers Academy, and I signed up for it knowing that it’s a step on the path to Jedi. And that’s one of my goals, is to become a Judi and it’s a public speaking course, which is for me, I’ve done public speaking of no, no problem with public speaking.

00;08;07;28–00;08;31;21
Philippa Burgess
It’s the developed, the coding that I’m really working through right now and really wanting to get the technical side of it. So it’s it’s interesting to see that even if you’re really competent in the coding, there’s this whole other public facing side to it. And that’s and so I’m kind of feel like I’ve got strengths in one, but definitely a learning curve in the other.

00;08;31;21–00;08;55;17
Philippa Burgess
And some people are the other other way. They’ve got strengths in one and being visible and learning how to speak about what they do to help others is their learning curve. So I think that’s that’s an interesting part of it. So I want to kind of come back to what inspired you because you have a very specific niche in marketing and a very technical because you really work hand in hand almost that seems like in lockstep with developers.

00;08;55;20–00;09;09;25
Philippa Burgess
So you really understand developers, you really understand their workflow, their process, their timing, their challenges and helping in app development and an app marketing, which is a very specific niche of marketing.

00;09;09;27–00;09;38;21
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I couldn’t agree more with with you because I develop my tech skills over these, these years. I didn’t actually initiate my career in tech. I have I would I like to say that I think tech found me and not the other way around because I have a background in journalism, meaning my official background is non-tech related at all.

00;09;38;24–00;10;08;08
Teresa Roldan
So I wasn’t supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be trained that tech environment I wasn’t supposed to deal with. So one or two mutation data analytics or product marketing, I started working as a journalist, in fact, during my student years. So I’ve got like thousands of different jobs like translate our waitress, even in logistics. So all these to, to, to pay your career.

00;10;08;13–00;10;40;17
Teresa Roldan
But at the end you used to support us. You start working on a journalism environment, you develop some kind of content writing skills, then you move on to search engine optimization of certain business. And at some point I end up as a marketing manager, mobile marketing manager. We focus on mobile applications. As you mentioned, and although it’s not a 100% tech role, it is not about software development.

00;10;40;20–00;11;26;19
Teresa Roldan
I identify myself more with creativity and to partnership. The fact is that mobile marketing, it is true that in a position to conventional marketing is less about sales and business development and more about data and analytics more related to measurement and less related to to branding. It says right. We call, for example, our advertising efforts performance marketing for this reason, because we measure every single metric to evaluate the success of our campaigns, of our efforts.

00;11;26;22–00;11;56;27
Philippa Burgess
And that’s a big one, is that measurement and that analytics and that reporting. And I guess the question there is, as you’re doing this, how much of it informs yourself and your team as far as your marketing so that you know where to pull the levers, add more budget change a tactic, go continue doing something that’s clearly working, or is it with your clients or in this case, or your partners in this, the software developers, the app developers?

00;11;57;00–00;12;12;16
Philippa Burgess
More specifically, is it reporting to them to help them sort of understand the scale, the scope of of the work, and to sort of say, hey, this is working, but maybe it needs more budget?

00;12;12;18–00;12;46;02
Teresa Roldan
So I also want to share my experiences working with with marketing agencies in the past with which we agencies and also with developer. Because after all these years working with with developers, with brands, you realize that most of the clients are barely satisfied with their agencies on their agency results. That’s like around half of the agency clients will say they are not satisfied.

00;12;46;02–00;13;26;04
Teresa Roldan
And this happens in every single B2B agency. So my experience working in this type of agency sold me the main common issues of old marketing, which would be agency. And you need to understand these challenges and you need to understand how to overcome them because it’s these way how you try to solve all these issues. You’ve mentioned how you try to tackle them, how is or how do we approach to the client?

00;13;26;07–00;13;55;01
Teresa Roldan
Let me say what I did in the past, how I’m doing right now. So after university, I decided to move forward. Professionally speaking, it was also on economic crisis in Spain, and I decided to work abroad to travel a bit to get to know other European countries as well. So I left Spain and I moved to Germany and work for around four or five years in different German cities.

00;13;55;04–00;14;35;23
Teresa Roldan
I’ve been also around like a year in the UK and even made some gigs in other European countries. And traveling around is also I get very valuable feedback about all of these different mindsets of people. And at the end you’ve got this feeling that these challenges are a misuse are very similar, you’ve got same feedback, same needs. So I started to, to like change the way of working and started to listen to clients for actually to make them feel understood as well.

00;14;35;26–00;15;11;27
Teresa Roldan
Why I bring in this topic of proactive listening because I mean, not only to hear about their client challenges, technical stuff. So one, but to take actions based on these feedback. And I think that’s essential. That’s when you realize that no matter how good you are on your job, how professional an agency is, or how we’re using technology, you always need to validate your input, your strategy with a client.

00;15;11;28–00;15;53;20
Teresa Roldan
You also need to educate your client, the developer, to understand how we work, what are our processes, how marketing works. And you are supposed to do so because you are using hired for this purpose, right? You are the one that should guide and support the client. So what success and that’s key that this ability to listen proactive to the client after all these years you realize that if clients aren’t satisfied with with agency what’s are agencies doing wrong?

00;15;53;20–00;16;28;11
Teresa Roldan
Why are clients complain. So there’s a very typical also mistake or answer you always get from especially in Spain, you always get I use what I would say answer from any boss from a standard Spanish company and answer. That’s always horrified me, which is I pay you to work, not to think. And you have to understand also this answer in the professional context.

00;16;28;13–00;16;59;02
Teresa Roldan
You might in you’ve got hypotheses, new ideas, and improvements in a process that you think it could led to a better result in some way. You come up with this idea to your boss to lead to a board or your investor, and instead of asking for more details, ask him to brief them with a report on their thumbs if it’s spelled with an acceptable background or of data they they share no time with you with.

00;16;59;02–00;17;28;09
Teresa Roldan
The answer would be you to work with using. And that’s a mistake, right? We going back again with these ideas to guide and support the client, to practice, listen and take actions based on all these feedback. I also like this. This I like mobile environment. I like working on the app business, but sometimes you also like working with people rights.

00;17;28;09–00;17;52;25
Teresa Roldan
You need this sense of of trust, of being understood at some point also by your workers, by the company you’re working with. And after so many years working in different environments, in different brands, you need to understand that. You need to listen, you need to listen to your colleagues, to the company as well, of course, the client as well.

00;17;52;28–00;18;24;26
Teresa Roldan
But the fact of particularly working in agency means listening to to the clients, the people who we work for. And you get this feeling that the client isn’t always understood when you start listening to the developer. It seems that the developer wants to communicate, that they don’t want to getting too detailed, blah, blah, blah or too much technicalities.

00;18;24;26–00;18;54;13
Teresa Roldan
They simply want to get more users to increase their revenue point that it. And if the agency didn’t or don’t reach the expected results, you they will always always the ANC comes up with some technicalities we sell them blah blah. That’s how I never will explain. That’s when the friction is made. That’s useful cases scenario for any B2B business for them.

00;18;54;17–00;19;24;02
Teresa Roldan
We have, on the other hand, also the marketing agency, the specialists working on this project. They set it up, take action, optimize seats and report the results, but the client isn’t satisfied and the specialist is wondering why is the developer not satisfied? Why is he or she really happy? Because they implement some improvements they made, some supporting with their revenue.

00;19;24;02–00;20;06;18
Teresa Roldan
So why is the customer really satisfy? And here’s where proactive listening becomes very harmful, because the way to solve this situation, my approach, for example, is to have a simple, clear plan. So every action should be included in that plan, in the marketing plan, should be visible and understandable by the client. The client must understand this plan and should have always access to it to have an overview of the status of the ongoing performance based on all type of actions that are running in this plan.

00;20;06;18–00;20;29;29
Teresa Roldan
The clients should always know what we are doing, why we are doing, and what will we be achieving. If not, we are making a mistake and we need to guide the client to achieve growth. That’s how the clients would see our plan. That’s how we can understand better our services and our activities.

00;20;30;01–00;20;54;16
Philippa Burgess
I think that is so valuable to have that very clear actionable steps and to really make it very clear to the client also what they’re paying for, because I feel like they there’s a sometimes a disconnect between process and results, and they’re buying a process and you have enough experience to know what type of results that could get.

00;20;54;19–00;21;33;11
Philippa Burgess
But the reality is it’s still a process and that if they’re retaining your services, there’s different levels that you can be retained at, I’d imagine. And a lot of clients want the premium result for the best investment choice, and it’s trying to communicate with them that I’m flexible with your budget, but also the results are also going to be flexible with that budget too, because if you retain me for more than there’s more that I can do and there’s a bigger team that I can have and bigger things that I can invest in as far as like technical tools and, and things that you buy as a marketer.

00;21;33;13–00;22;00;08
Philippa Burgess
And so is there a community how do you sort of deal with that gap? There’s a there’s a meme that basically is out there that has a rubber kitchen glove with plastic rhinestones on it, and then another one that has, you know, pure gold with the real gems and it sort of says, you know, sort of the kitchen, the kitchen glove is client budget and the real gold sleeve is client expectations.

00;22;00;11–00;22;06;07
Philippa Burgess
And so how do you match, you know, client budget versus client expectations?

00;22;06;10–00;22;41;12
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, you have to avoid. So on the one hand, as plain like misleading communication you have to have you need a proper plan. Right. But on the other hand, that’s tricky because of course the client will always want more than they pay for, obviously. Otherwise they won’t be hiring you. So I think at this point is one take when I this from a fundamental piece of the this agency.

00;22;41;14–00;23;30;23
Teresa Roldan
I mean, tech, of course, is always linked to like process automation and including new services lines for any business. But the idea of driving for certain forecasts, certain growth KPIs attached to what the client is paying for is also the other important element. I also wanted to discuss with you because I think this this two week pilot of an agency, one is proactive listening, the other one is forecasting, planning why it is important because we need like data driven decisions.

00;23;31;00–00;24;12;02
Teresa Roldan
That’s where the right decisions rely in any business. So you need to understand that data based modeling is like the fundamental piece in any business, and it’s the, I would say, the element in which most companies fail, but not only agencies, but also developer developers. And you want imagine how many companies I’m talking about big brands, big, huge companies of millions of thousands of dollars don’t have a forecasting plan.

00;24;12;02–00;25;02;01
Teresa Roldan
They don’t have like year set up for their business goals, etc. And I’m always impressed how they live it. It’s like a final point in every meeting because they don’t rely on these these type of plans. And I think forecasting is so important because you need to stop looking behind every time there is a like a drop on sales job on, for example, on your in the case you have mobile applications, you need to understand they are always asking what’s happened and this doesn’t make the company move forward and start looking forward because without plan you cannot look forward.

00;25;02;05–00;25;07;19
Teresa Roldan
I’m not sorry if I come. I am making myself clear.

00;25;07;22–00;25;45;15
Philippa Burgess
Because you’re very clear. I understand you have to have forward looking projections and you have to have the activities aligned with that. And I think that that’s where you also and maybe you can elaborate on the use of AI and the use of other prediction tools that can use past data and sort of start to see and recognize certain cycles, certain times if there is a season in, if you can look at something over the course of a year and say, well, typically we always do have a lift here and then a drop here and you can sort of see, okay, there’s a cyclical illness to this and we can start to expect that

00;25;45;17–00;26;25;21
Philippa Burgess
and or we can look to see what activities we could do to supplement to really change that. Or maybe it’s a larger cycle, it’s a seven years cycle. But I think the elaborate sort of in sort of how the I can help, I know like I’ve been looking a lot at machine learning and now that’s leading me into deep learning and to to sort of say a very simple understanding that I have of like what is machine learning is that if you are doing a conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit, you just give the computer the data points and it figures out the calculation between how do you convert, whereas in normal programing you would give

00;26;25;21–00;26;43;17
Philippa Burgess
the computer the calculation to convert. And so the machine learning kind of figures it out. So yeah, Can you elaborate more on sort of the use of AI and how that works in these forecasting models?

00;26;43;19–00;27;48;27
Teresa Roldan
If Yeah, so we use A.I. AM mobile marketing in different areas. There’s a lot of investments on design, on video design, on static design. There’s also a line to to copywriting, to content writing with all these big force suddenly of different sorts of words for based on my but also there is a line of data modeling. These are predictions and it’s important that every agency has data and analytics department or or team investing time in collecting data from the client’s customers, govern it, collecting it, driving it, analyzing it, leaving it to to us, to to the marketers, to structure it, to interpret it, to understand it, and to create the corresponding reports for the clients.

00;27;48;29–00;28;18;16
Teresa Roldan
Because it is true that I help a lot of companies to, to provide to a lot lots of hundreds or thousands of of data. Some of them are more useful than others. But the ability to interpret, to analyze and understand all these data, all these reports are coming from the human part, right? So we need to understand all these data.

00;28;18;17–00;28;48;19
Teresa Roldan
We need to understand what is useful, what is attached to our priorities. And what is more secondary. Because what the client is always interested in is on the feedback is on the insights you provide with all these data. They are not interested in interested or fairly interested in how you collect these data. How are we collecting this data?

00;28;48;19–00;29;18;15
Teresa Roldan
How are we 3 minutes? With which a piece are we collecting these data? What are we? What tools are we using? Sometimes they ask. They do, but they are not willing to. It’s because they are paying you to do it. So they. They just want to know that the information is right, that the reports are right and the feedback on the conclusions you are driving because of this data is the proper ones.

00;29;18;18–00;30;16;06
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, that’s why I meant about attaching KPIs to our activities, to all of our activities in any business from community management, no matter if we are working with tweets, with post, but also ways we are seeing. So we align all in the main business goals, knowing which KPI should we target is also part of us of humans driving the right way or the proper way to analyze some of these highs, So to say is part of the API, part of the data analytics team in case we have any these, all these issues that you may find to, to attach all these KPIs to collect all these data is also part of your ongoing, I would

00;30;16;06–00;30;54;23
Teresa Roldan
say, challenges when, when working on a retail environment. I’m not sure if you have heard about these privacy sandbox that’s Google announced Apple applied on the App Store like a year or a year ago and it has been really a nightmare for every marketer. Everyone I remember it was like nearly two years, maybe ago the apple started to drug of the identify the user IDs.

00;30;54;23–00;31;21;20
Teresa Roldan
So the pixel does identify the user with a certain campaign from us and then at certain other network where the US. So it’s down. So you start getting data and you don’t know where those these users come from. You don’t know anymore where those these revenue come from. Now it’s the time off for Google to do the same thing.

00;31;21;20–00;31;54;04
Teresa Roldan
So we will have this nightmare also for Android products probably by the end of this year or beginning of the next one. So again, you need to find always good team around. AA might be helpful in some cases because now, for example, there are some companies developing what they call predictive modeling instance of using this user fingerprint. So I think this would be probably the future, although currently.

00;31;54;04–00;32;29;19
Teresa Roldan
Yes. And I would say as a proper implement that does they should. But I think with the time same happens with with electric cars, at some point everyone will have them. So at some point we will all be using these predictive modeling and these medium mix modeling conversions to track users being privacy centric. I think we would need to this path and hopefully we will find the way easier way if we say.

00;32;29;22–00;33;16;14
Philippa Burgess
Yeah, now I think AI is definitely the revolution that we’re in right now and it’s significant and I think that everybody needs to be paying attention to it and finding their way into understanding it. I even feel like the public has to have a role in being a guardrail when it’s not working and to know when to speak up and say that it is creating bias or unfairness or just not working right, because these are not perfect systems and we need to be able to report them and and just see how they’re utilized, because I do think the goal of tech and people I know in tech are very positive and very much inviting and

00;33;16;14–00;33;55;08
Philippa Burgess
creating the future. But they’re don’t always have the thought process of what happens when threat actors start using these same technologies they seem to want to create for good. And they have that mindset that whatever I’m doing is good. It’s a positive thing in the world. And I think that we all sort of have to understand now. It doesn’t always work that way and we all need to have a shared responsibility in making sure that these technologies aren’t used in ways that they weren’t necessarily ideally created for, but can still be utilized in ways that create harm.

00;33;55;11–00;34;35;05
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, totally. I mean, it can be very tricky. I heard this this afternoon, for example, over the news that there were a case of some students that were faking their colleagues at school, at school. So we are talking about secondary kids, kids in the secondary states. And they were like putting their colleagues faces into like naked adults bodies and they get sued for that because they are not adults.

00;34;35;05–00;34;57;03
Teresa Roldan
Yet we have this this issue on this great challenge. We say, yeah, because it can harm us a lot as well. So we have to see the the two sides of every technology is always the same. There’s always some people that tend to use it in the wrong direction.

00;34;57;06–00;35;22;23
Philippa Burgess
Yeah. And I just think as a society, as a global community, we all need to be aware of that. It’s that these things can happen. I mean, I think one example of this is Facebook has community guidelines and TikTok has community guidelines, but every country employs their own team to manage those community guidelines and sets their own algorithms to flag content.

00;35;22;26–00;35;58;24
Philippa Burgess
And so, for example, they can’t have community managers in every country speaking every language. And there’s many countries in the world who speak multiple languages. So when they had the coup in Myanmar, there was no there was nobody managing that because they didn’t have anybody hired at Facebook who spoke the language. And so things that an English speaker would never have been able to get away with because it was in a language that they had just not considered meaning to monitor.

00;35;58;26–00;36;25;04
Philippa Burgess
You can have these basically violent takeovers happen when people sort of misappropriated the technology. And I use TikTok as an example because I was doing a lot of advocacy for Ukraine and I kept getting dinged by the American moderators, and yet I would see content that was coming from Russian moderators who did not moderate with the same standards.

00;36;25;06–00;36;51;07
Philippa Burgess
And so for every post that I made that I felt was totally in line with community guidelines and was not different than other things I was seeing come out of other countries. I was getting flagged for it and I was getting very frustrated to the point that I actually left the platform because I said This is just not a fair application.

00;36;51;09–00;37;19;06
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, sometimes it even happens with with the Spanish languages. So it’s like English is always the focus language we should all be communicating with with this language. If you don’t speak language, you are not even able, for example, to open an account on Google ads or any other network because of course the landing page is in your language.

00;37;19;06–00;37;51;02
Teresa Roldan
But then you click on it and then see absolutely everything in English. So it is impossible not not to to work without the English language because of this, because they don’t have people in every single language working that’s come revised can support you. So I understand the company is kind of tough. Like I don’t know how many languages are in the world, 300 or whatever, how many languages should be.

00;37;51;08–00;38;21;22
Teresa Roldan
But at some point you need to get a point is that there are some also tricks that because of these people are doing. For example, there was even like had a seal and a Yeah. So that’s with tricks we do in in certain countries, especially what we call C three countries which can be, for example, India or Mexico or LatAm region.

00;38;21;25–00;39;04;21
Teresa Roldan
You can trick Google’s algorithm, although it’s hugely nowadays sophisticated because they are not targeting these regions. And you can do some tricks to Bailey’s, for example, the Google ads get some more users for the same price. So there are many tricks you can still doing. You can still trick Google in in this sense because they are focus on non g one countries, especially English in the US and the have nots are not able to do like extend their support as they do in in the US to to other regions.

00;39;04;21–00;39;39;21
Teresa Roldan
So of course we have different regulation in the European Union know across Europe, but there are many countries that they have all these fraud and technical issues on, especially like flexible laws that allows all this tricky behavior to to happen. And we need to start dealing also globally with these issues because all these issues are global, not country wise.

00;39;39;21–00;39;59;14
Teresa Roldan
And we need to start understanding also that we are working on a global community and at some points we need some global regulations. I know it sounds a bit utopic, but at some point we need it, especially if we want to keep developing Asia, for example.

00;39;59;16–00;40;29;17
Philippa Burgess
I very much agree with that. I think the global regulations matter because within the US and I imagine, you know, within each country there’s a set of rules and regulations. And if you create a contract within if I create a contract with somebody within the United States, I can then take that contract to court and have it protected if that person owes me money, if that person did something wrong, I have a set of laws that protect me.

00;40;29;20–00;41;00;28
Philippa Burgess
But as soon as you start doing international business and we’re not even talking about major companies in your site, like just global governance issues, but to have that legal framework because right now, if you do something with people outside of your own country and something goes wrong, there’s no legal framework that really protects you. That’s easy. And when you start to get into the international law space, it’s expensive, it’s clunky, it just it’s worth it just seems worth letting it go and saying, okay, I just I want to deal with that person anymore.

00;41;00;28–00;41;31;17
Philippa Burgess
I’ll just cut that. I’ll take that loss then to try to hold that accountable. And so I think that even if we want to have greater collaboration within countries and then of course, when you start getting into these big I’m kind of seeing this from the idea of a very small company, but even these big companies that do operate globally have to be thinking about these things, like how much weight of the legal framework in the legal structure is there to support them.

00;41;31;19–00;41;38;16
Philippa Burgess
And I think that that makes global business challenging.

00;41;38;19–00;42;20;14
Teresa Roldan
Yeah, even some companies like Google or Apple, they are our face one Facebook. They are so big that they have to act as international concealers somehow because there are no laws in their countries that allows them or forbids them to do certain things because not every region or country has developed rules towards technologies, etc. And that’s the reason sometimes, for example, Google or Facebook we see.

00;42;20;17–00;42;55;02
Teresa Roldan
So it’s also always Amazon takes the lead on that and start regulating kind of globally by itself, because there are no rules at all in the markets currently that they can attach to. So I think it’s quite tricky and sometimes we are leaving our rights in some sense to all these companies to to to deal with these issues because there are no other regulations in the place.

00;42;55;02–00;43;40;00
Teresa Roldan
So I don’t we need to start dealing with a lot of issues on an ongoing basis and then suddenly a scandal or boycotts opens up to sort of all over the news and they start regulating us crazy without knowing too much about the topic itself. For example, the case of Amazon in in Spain was quite big because Amazon had some workers from Spain working in Germany, not legally, and they stopped being sued.

00;43;40;02–00;44;18;00
Teresa Roldan
They start having to regulate all these technological offers, but still, I think they are there. The whole European Union is struggling to make regulations because trying that’s like our own 30 countries agree on something. It’s kind of impossible. Nowadays. We move technology, move forward much faster than us as human beings or us as a society. And there’s a lot of challenges in this sense.

00;44;18;04–00;44;53;20
Teresa Roldan
There’s a difference between also knowing and understanding. Understanding is a way to get acquainted with with, with something. You might know, for example, that I might’ve heard somehow all these all this technology in progress might hurt somehow. Some of our right of our private rights as people, as human. But you know it but they don’t really understand it.

00;44;53;22–00;45;19;06
Teresa Roldan
The full potential and all the options you have in your hands when applying this technology. I mean, it is like when you when you were a kid and your mother told you, don’t go there, don’t climb there and you’ll hurt yourself and you go there, you know, you can get hurt, but you still go there and then you fall down and you hurt yourself.

00;45;19;09–00;45;46;25
Teresa Roldan
I mean, you’re not silly. You can get there. You you, you know, you will get yourself. But until you don’t get hurt that you don’t understand it. Really you you need to like a isn’t all let’s that’s how you can apply those will to all these a potential There’s a lot of potential there is a lot of ways towards using these these tools.

00;45;46;28–00;46;20;23
Teresa Roldan
But if until you don’t get acquaintance of the importance of adopting our businesses, they all they need to be regulated and that’s it. We need some guidelines. We need some experts digging into the topic, applying certain relations like we’ve been doing all our lives. I mean, historically it has always happened. The same with technology in the fifties was with the television.

00;46;20;23–00;46;58;14
Teresa Roldan
They would say they will they will leave out radio on radio businesses. But it didn’t happen. Then it came Internet. On the Internet. They say they would like shorten or make marginal they mass media the televisions but they didn’t is still there. So what we need to do is kind of try to regulate all this new technology. That’s it’s sometimes I would say you can get scared, but it’s it is a revelation.

00;46;58;14–00;47;32;21
Teresa Roldan
What we do need that’s the same with Internet. There’s I would say, hundreds of thousands of challenges we face over all these years. Not many years. I mean, the Internet became broad, like, what, ten, ten years ago, maybe 20 years ago, with with more. But I mean, it was a broad problem to do to deal with all these issues when the Internet came.

00;47;32;21–00;48;28;19
Teresa Roldan
So same happens, we see. Yeah. And I think we will deal at some point probably later than sooner. But at some point we will deal with these relations. We will have the the same challenges. So I think it will come up with an agreement at some point. I would say the workflow for most businesses and not only developers, but us working the digital environment of always very similar failures, face of first the product you start polishing your product, you start wanting to market your your product or your service in the markets you need like to deal how to market your your product, your service, and then you want to start building these go to market

00;48;28;22–00;48;56;00
Teresa Roldan
strategy as well. So what’s the end? All of these faces will be data driven and should be applied to, I would say in the digital business at least, and I would say any business in general, though, it’s might imply like other processes, like even working in a supermarket, they cause every single dollar they made. So we need to have these data driven mindsets.

00;48;56;03–00;49;31;10
Teresa Roldan
I saw that most company friends doing this, for example, usually mobile developers, specifically speaking, they have like four different milestone or stages where they start working on these go to market strategy. We have first these initial of face the Nation states. They start with the need of getting more user. They want more users into their apps. They need to generate more leads for their business.

00;49;31;10–00;50;07;23
Teresa Roldan
They want to drive organic installs, organic traffic by by organic traffic, acquiring users without ads, without paid traffic for, for example, their own media, like their own website, social content, video content, etc.. So they start with these these needs. Then they move on to the second milestone, which would be for any mobile developer. They realized they should start investing based ads, speed advertising.

00;50;07;25–00;50;39;20
Teresa Roldan
They start investing quality rather in quantity because they see they are getting some users, but those users aren’t bringing enough value or they don’t fit into the value proposition of of the product. So they start doing some beta testing. In this case, they might hire an agency or they might hire someone to drive these cohesion efforts. On the third stage or third step.

00;50;39;23–00;51;25;26
Teresa Roldan
They realize they should invest in other types of marketing activities like monetizing these these users, the sub testing, waterfalls, test pricing, keep on running through the advertising, optimize it, do a retargeting, set up maybe a associative optimization or abstract imitation strategy with SEO or Appstore optimization. What we mean is optimizing your website or your page in the corresponding mobile star with with keywords so that your product visibility is not relied on though the algorithm or Google’s algorithm.

00;51;25;27–00;51;53;11
Teresa Roldan
This way you start your book, start appearing in Google results in Google search queries without the needs of thousands of of users driving into your into your web or your application. So you have all this set up on running, you have a SEO A so you have with us, as I mentioned, also monetization. So what? What’s next? What’s next?

00;51;53;15–00;52;28;07
Teresa Roldan
The business already allocates organic activities in an initial stage. Then on a second phase, they start to innovate advertising, Then almost out of phase, they become more sophisticated than my hire an agency to support them, to optimize their they optimize their their strategy, their marketing strategy looks they come up with one decision strategy, etc.. So the last and final step is to iterate to keep optimizing this strategy, this ongoing strategy.

00;52;28;10–00;53;02;24
Teresa Roldan
Once everything is set up our running, we need to refine all these ongoing activities, ongoing action. This is when data and analytics become crucial. And here is where most companies us already mentioned fail, but they fail to solve these KPI KPI based activities. They fail to keep growing because they they are not able to plan to make a proper or realistic forecast.

00;53;02;27–00;53;42;16
Teresa Roldan
So they need of establishing all these KPIs, setting up goals. Okay, hours to forecast results is then so essential that will decide whether our business will succeed or or fail us. As we’ve been all through this conversation. But you need to start looking into your forecast. You need to start looking, be looking forward to you need to to attach all your marketing activities and your both activities to your business goals to understand your business potential.

00;53;42;19–00;54;28;21
Teresa Roldan
And it is not an energy task. So I, I totally understand if companies don’t get it properly set up the first time or the first three times, because it is really a great task, you also need to have a proper analytics plan. You need to be able to talk users revenue and that’s a whole lot of time, effort and nightmares you will have because it’s of course allocating growth through your marketing and aligning with with these business goals will also help you to identify your your plan if your plan is working well, if not, if you need to make some changes.

00;54;28;27–00;54;57;13
Teresa Roldan
So all this comes with this, with the timeline at the end, the client needs not only proper clear communication, they need to have proper clear plan. They need this plan to be attached to certain KPIs. And they need to understand that if they want to lower the budget, if they want to cut someone activities, the performance will decrease accordingly.

00;54;57;16–00;55;12;13
Teresa Roldan
So that’s where we come up with the first question of the interview. That’s the where is the balance of all this? You need to be very data-driven IDM. So that’s the the, the real key point in this business.

00;55;12;13–00;55;25;05
Philippa Burgess
You talked about proactive listening and I really loved that. Can you just expand on proactive listening and how that ties into what you were just talking about being data driven and KPIs and, and just that relationship management.

00;55;25;08–00;55;57;03
Teresa Roldan
So proactive listening is the way to, to listen based on understanding what’s the feedback about on changing taking actions so we don’t have to leave out the second part because some companies tells you everything that it’s okay, we can go, we can do this. And after one the client signed a contract, they just forget about it. You need to take actions based on this feedback.

00;55;57;05–00;56;25;15
Teresa Roldan
You need to get a point. Things that otherwise their relations might be harm not only with the clients, but also with with the workers within a company. If I call it if a worker tells, you something you really need to evaluate together and to assess whether their feedback provided makes sense to apply to integrated in their business in the process.

00;56;25;18–00;56;54;20
Teresa Roldan
Because otherwise it’s just listen, I mean, everyone can listen. We want to connect, but it is like a process you then have. It is very useful to have things get right on the first place. So it’s like trial and error. You try one thing, you try one hypothesis, you might fail or it is okay, but you need to keep improving it.

00;56;54;23–00;57;25;28
Teresa Roldan
So that’s like the whole group of optimizing everything in your business. You keep improving your your and you keep making clients happy. So I would say they need to understand what are the needs of the developer. It doesn’t matter if it’s A of B to b, b to C company. If we are talking about mobile applications, they need to understand what’s the product about.

00;57;26;01–00;58;05;09
Teresa Roldan
That’s really important. And that’s not a small advice, I would say, because I have this feeling that many companies handle products or a handle clients without knowing when the product and I mean I can talk about so many examples of irritating conversations with clients and companies and misleading communication. You need to know very well your product. Why? Because you need to understand the audiences you’re targeting, you need to understand the niches.

00;58;05;09–00;58;31;03
Teresa Roldan
So niches are there which are right in. We say this in marketing, we need to target properly each of our actions so that we have like a very optimized flow and a very well optimized plan. When scaling up our business, we need to know where to point what to on how to do it, what are the problems that we are solving.

00;58;31;05–00;58;55;04
Teresa Roldan
So the best thing is to start knowing your product. For example, when I introduce myself here, I didn’t say if I was mother of three kids or not, and I don’t like to say that I don’t like to speak if I am mother or not, because it’s like, come on, sentence. We at the end I’m I don’t know.

00;58;55;04–00;59;28;01
Teresa Roldan
So our engineer, I lead in this company but after they say I’m mother of three kids. No, but no man said I am father of two sons or I my father. It’s useful to hear that. So I would say that the this burden of of carrying our private life to professional life is something that is specific for for women.

00;59;28;03–00;59;54;13
Teresa Roldan
It doesn’t matter if you have kids or not. It doesn’t matter if you have to take care of your parents, for example. But at the end, what you really need is to understand if you are a good professional or not, and we need to try to balance it out a bit so we can be compared as as a professional with which men and not only us as mothers or as daughters of of someone.