Duolingo Marketing Story: All It Takes Is A Cute Green Owl

How This Simple App Hacked Your Mind To Revolutionize Language Learning

Note: There’s A Little Gift Waiting For You At The End

Duolingo, the language learning app founded by the former reCAPTCHA CEO Luis von Ahn, is making notable progress in transforming digital education in an era of social media.

I am personally been using this app for a long time now and became obsessed with learning my favorite languages every day with bite-sized sessions.

Today, We will dive into the unique way Duolingo markets its products to the world.

What’s in here for you:

This article will help you learn the key marketing tactics & techniques Duolingo uses so you can apply them to your business/brand marketing.

First of all, let’s divide Duolingo's Marketing into 2 categories:

1. Viral/Word-of-mouth Marketing

2. In- product marketing

1. Viral/Word Of Mouth Marketing

In today's economy, the term 'competition' has a new definition. Previously, 'competition' was all about businesses that offer similar services.

But not anymore.

In today's attention economy, where everyone competes to get a piece of people's attention, the definition has pretty much changed.

For example, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says the company's biggest competitor isn't other streaming services but rather the time people sleep.

Spotify says they are not just competing against other music services but rather all forms of audio, including podcasts, radio, and even 'silence.'

The king of brand marketing, Nike, says they're competing with 'inactivity' and not just with other shoe brands.

Also, the meditation app Headspace says they're competing with people’s stress, not just with Calm and other meditation apps.

So, If you think about a language learning app like Duolingo, what would be its biggest threat?

Social Media, Streaming & Video Games. In other words, entertainment.

Duolingo is a business. The more time users spend on the app, the more money they make and the more impact they will have on the students' lives.

If people become obsessed with doing something else, like doom-scrolling on social media, they won't be able to keep people returning to the app every day.

With the 2020 pandemic, one of the biggest threats to Duolingo got even bigger and more serious.

With the lockdown season, social media platforms, especially short-form platforms, saw colossal user growth. Platforms like TikTok were able to hit the incredible 1 billion user mark.

So, this was becoming a severe threat to Duolingo's business. They needed something powerful to fight against.

Enter Duo — The Almighty

Duo came to save Duolingo from declining. Even though It's a cute little owl that works as the brand's mascot, It has the power to flip things in their favor.

To do so, Duolingo created a brilliant content marketing strategy w/Duo.

The strategy was to take this cute mascot and create entertaining content on social to take a cool edge in the minds of their audience.

While Duolingo offered educational value, its mascot, Duo, offered entertainment value to compete in the digital space.

With this mascot, they created relatable TikTok videos filled with humor, targeting Millennials, Gen Z & Gen Alpha.

Slowly, they started to build this character by adding character traits, delivering humor, and mixing some insider jokes as well.

Duo's Dualipa joke is a really good example of that.

A… nd unsurprisingly, Duo went viral.

People loved this unique idea of a cool, cute mascot that appeared on their feeds every day.

The content attracted an audience that got those jokes, understood its vibe, and liked its traits.

Plus, the community began creating internet memes expressing the great effort Duo puts in to get them to practice.

Here are some of those memes.

Duolingo, aware of those memes, brought it to the next level by using them throughout its brand marketing. Here's a thank you note from its Merch store as an example.

The marketing strategy actually worked. This mascot, which appeared on the social feeds daily, became a reminder for people to take their daily language lessons.

Also, one of the biggest reasons the strategy worked was its perfect alignment with the product design. Not just social media, they have features like 'streaks' to motivate the users to take their daily language lessons, aligning with its need to bring users to the app daily.

We can talk about streaks and stuff next.

Note: There’s A Little Gift Waiting For You At The End

2. In- product marketing

As I said before, Duolingo is a business that makes money by keeping users on the app. Every other thing out there that grabs their users’ attention and interest is competition for them.

So, no matter how good an app's content marketing is, if the product sucks, if the product cannot compete with the existing options, people won't choose that app over the other interesting ones.

Because people want interesting experiences and great products need to deliver 'em.

Take social media for example. They are addictive, and people spend so much time even doomscrolling because their content is interesting.

Because they are entertaining, social media companies don't have to work hard to get users to open the app and browse for content. The marketing is embedded into the product itself.

That's precisely what Duolingo did.

They saw that if they were to take the traditional route and create just another boring educational app, it would die with its boringness.

People like Elon Musk talk about this. He says that the education needs to feel like a video game. It has to be fun enough to get students to learn.

So, following that path, Duolingo mixed entertainment with education.

Just like social media, they made the language learning experience fun and sharable. So they don't have to work hard to get students to learn every day.

That's interesting, isn't it?

But you know what's even more interesting?

The way they did it.

Science Behind Edutainment

The success of Duolingo isn't an accident. There's a science behind every element they use to attract and retain users. Just like Sesame Street, each component is designed to tap into your mind.

Let's see the key psychological effects Duolingo uses in simple language.

1. Loss Aversion

One of the key features Duolingo has is its 'streaks' feature. It encourages people to continue learning every day to keep their streak. But, if we look deeper at it, we can see that the Loss Aversion effect underlies the feature.

In simple terms, the Loss Aversion effect explains why people dislike losing more than they like gaining. Duolingo's streaks feature makes you feel like you're 'losing' the streak if you skip a day.

You don’t like losing the streak you worked hard to build. So, It motivates you to come back daily to avoid losing the streak.

2. Sunk Cost Effect

This is another effect behind the 'Streaks' feature. It explains that people tend to stick with things they’ve invested time and effort into— even if the current costs outweigh the benefits.

Once you get invested in your streak and build a somewhat long streak, you become reluctant to give it up, even if you are unmotivated to practice.

So, you continue to open Duolingo and do your daily lesson.

3. Variable Reward Effect

In 1950, a scientist named BF Skinner observed lab mice responded more ravenously to random rewards than predictable rewards.

In his experiment, the mice would press a lever, and sometimes they'd get a small treat, sometimes a large one, and other times nothing at all.

Unlike the mice that received the same treat every time, those that received unpredictable treats pressed the lever addictively.

As for mice in the 1950s, this effect is valid for people in the 2020s, too.

That's why Duolingo offers bonuses, boosts, and XP randomly. Sometimes, you get a little reward, occasionally large, and other times nothing at all.

This unpredictability makes you eager to receive rewards like that. So you keep doing more lessons to earn them.

4. Social Comparison Bias

People tend to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with others. Designer Brands like Gucci, Social Media Companies like Meta, and Reward programs like Starbucks rewards use this effect.

And Duolingo also uses this effect widely in their app.

In Duolingo's case, they have leaderboards that show students users’ rank against others learning the same language.

Those who outperform the majority of the ladder get an upgrade to a more prestigious tier; the tiers are called 'leagues'. And every week, the leagues reset.

That ladder scores you see compared to others motivate you to outrank them and get to the top, or else you’ll fall behind them.

When you fall behind in your league ladder, Duolingo sends you emails and notifications to motivate you to keep earning points in the ladders.

Because of the leaderboards, you're likely to practice more than you thought enough.

5. Commitment Bias

Duolingo recently announced a few features that do the marketing for them. And they are genius innovations.

They launched social features like 'Friend Streaks' & 'Social Quests' that let people use the app with their friends.

Behind both features is a psychological effect called the commitment bias.

This effect refers to the tendency of people to feel compelled to continue an activity once they've committed it.

With friend streaks and social quests, they've tapped into this effect by letting individuals make a commitment to their friends to invest in learning.

Now, if one decides not to continue, isn't just mean they're abandoning their learning, but it also means they're breaking the commitment they made with their friend.

Now, it’s not just about learning; It’s also about friendship.

The bigger the investment, the greater the personal commitment to avoid breaking it.

To learn more about the psychological effects you can use to grow your brand and business, checkout the full ebook at the end of the article.

A Fax Machine

What they've done is make the product social much more than individualistic. Doing so, they’re making Duolingo much like social media.

One of the biggest reasons why social media is growing so fast isn't because it is advertising everywhere.

Yes, they do advertising, but they’ve also embedded marketing into the products. So Naturally, the products do the marketing for them.

When you ask a user to share the product with their friends and family, They always ask the golden question of marketing.

What's in it for me?

So, what social media companies do is make the products work better for the user when they invite their friend and family.

Social media works better when other people are using it.

That’s why social apps continue to dominate the internet.

Just like that, Duolingo made the app better not just for the person who receives the invitations but, more importantly, for those who share it.

That's crucial.

Now, of course, they will invite their friends and family to the product and do the marketing for Duolingo.

Just like social media, Instead of creating a photocopy machine, they made a fax machine, a machine that works better for you when other people are using it.

How's Duo Doing Now

Right now, The company, Duolingo Inc is having a great time. They reported 178M in revenue this quarter alone, 40% up from last year. Also, the stock is at an all-time high of $318.

Most importantly, Duolingo is advancing on its grand mission to revolutionize education.

Let's wish the Duo the best of luck for the change they're making in the world.

Thank You, Duo.

— Your Gift Is Here —

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