The Growth Vault

Keys to a great landing page:

• Put your key value prop front and center.
• Handle the most obvious objection upfront.
• Use negative space to direct people’s eyes to your header.

When you create a compelling, frictionless landing page, more people click and convert.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

One way to poach future customers from competitors:

• Create landing pages that compare you against them.
• Address customers' biggest objections.
• Show your product in action.

Then, when people search for you versus your competitors, you'll show up on the Google results page.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

Most growth marketers are not great. They never learned the frameworks underlying growth. Instead, they haphazardly throw ideas at the wall without process or iteration.

So, hire slowly—and with a skeptical eye.

We're usually looking for three qualities in a candidate:

1. Proactiveness when crafting experiments and scaling them up.
2. Process for consistently generating growth ideas.
3. Reflectiveness and data literacy when they assess what their growth successes and failures have taught them.

I use a three-step project to assess these qualities. It looks something like this, but it varies significantly per growth role, and this is not one-size-fits-all:

1. The candidate ideates and ranks customer acquisition strategies. This reveals their ability to identify high-leverage opportunities and see the big picture.
2. They walk through their methodology for optimizing conversion at every key step in our product journey. This reveals their process-driven approach to spotting bottlenecks and generating hypotheses.
3. They create sample content for the growth discipline they're being hired for, such as running ads or email marketing. This showcases their tactical competency.
   

Collectively, these projects answer three screening questions:

1. Are they proactive?

Growth marketers must be proactive and resourceful. Resourceful growth marketers are those who never stop generating ideas, running experiments, and iterating. Never hire a "set-it-and-forget-it" marketer.

For example, when Facebook releases a new ad format, a growth marketer should spend ad dollars to uncover whether there's new, low-hanging fruit to pick.

When customers use a product in unexpected ways, a growth marketer digs in, talks to customers, and uncovers how these learnings can improve website, ad, and email messaging.

2. Do they have a process for generating and prioritizing ideas?

Does their ideation process result in multiple worthwhile projects? We're assessing their flexible, cross-disciplinary process more so than their output. A great process adaptably generates quality ideas forever.

Because every company's resources are limited and growth can be time-consuming and costly, I also look for a candidate who understands how to prioritize projects and efficiently allocate focus.

3. Do they know what a job well done looks like?

Do they know what mastery looks like in the role they're interviewing for?

If they're running ads, for example, can they identify compelling value propositions, write enticing ad copy, and target audiences that fit the product?

Finding growth marketers:

We can match you with a vetted partner here.

Interesting:

Barack Obama created a playlist to go along with his new book.

His playlist tweet generated ~ 2x the retweets as his official book launch tweet.

Why? Relatability.

When people notice that you have similar taste, they relate. It's on-brand, and they retweet.

See the full resolution image on Twitter here.

Your "above the fold" (ATF) section is the part of your site that's immediately visible before scrolling. It's your first impression. And it's your asset that determines whether people stick around and see what you have to offer, or bounce.

We wrote a playbook on creating a high-converting ATF section. You'll walk away understanding exactly what you can do to level up your landing page. Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to start reading.

We wrote a thread highlighting how top startup's adjusted their landing pages due to COVID.

Here's an example from Airbnb:

Airbnb's business was upended in April. But by June, rural bookings were growing.

Key site changes during that time:

• Action prompt: "Book unique places" —> "Go Near [places]"
• This handles the objection of "It's not safe to be where everyone else is."

See the full thread on Twitter here.

We wrote a thread explaining email marketing. Here are a few of the actionable insights that you can apply to your email strategy:

Why email?

1. Email is where the most dollars remain uncaptured.
2. Email is an owned channel. Instead of relying on social media algorithms to surface your content, you're directly in subscribers’ inboxes.

Email is high ROI and you have direct access to your audience.

How to grow your list:

You don't need a huge list. You want a growing list of people who are in the mindset to actually trust you and buy from you.

• Create a lead gen asset that excites people—quickly. E.g. really high-quality content.
• Use popups: Love 'em or hate 'em, they work. Just make sure they provide value to your audience.
• Quality of subs > volume.

Here are the two most important things to get right when crafting emails:

1. Subject line.
2. Body copy.

The 80/20 on each:

Subject line:

If people don't open, nothing else matters. Make your subject line:

• Self-evident: You don't want people guessing why you’re bugging them.
• Segmented: Have a subject that's hyper-relevant to each sub-audience.
• Concise: 50 characters or less—or it'll be cut off for mobile users and they might not open it.

Body copy:

The goal of body copy is to drive people to your CTA:

• Fulfill the expectation you set in your subject line.
• Promise more value that is only delivered through your CTA.
• Be aggressively concise—don’t waste subscribers’ time.

Use flows—automated emails triggered by subscriber actions.

Two critical flows:

1. Nurture: Subs are more likely to take action when they first sign up. Move quick.
2. Post-purchase: Over 50% of customers who make 2 purchases make a 3rd. Optimize for that 2nd purchase.

Choose the right software for your business type:

• SaaS, apps, service businesses: Customer IO, Iterable.
• Ecom startups: Klaviyo, Drip.
• Creators: ConvertKit.

See the full thread on Twitter here.

People place a higher value on things that they have a hand in creating. If you allow people to customize your product, they'll either convert at a higher rate, or pay more for it.

Two examples of customization:

Ecommerce: Converse allows shoppers to choose the color, shape, and star placement of their famous All-Star shoes.

SaaS: Slack lets users customize their setup with bots and integrations. Customization in SaaS also improves rentention—switching costs rise as users integrate other tools.

A lesser-known benefit: Customization generates valuable data. Take Converse. If people self-select one particular color or style more than the rest, Converse can use that data to create a core product line.

Check out the other 8 copy improvements on Twitter here. And if you haven't already, give us a follow @GrowthTactics for threads like this every week.

Check out the rest of the fixes on Twitter here. And if you haven't already, give us a follow @GrowthTactics for threads like this every week.

Why you should consider testing cold email as a growth channel

No one likes getting cold emails.

But when it’s done correctly, it works. Some businesses single-handedly grow through cold email.

Take a look at this email (we wrote it as an example):

This is cold email perfection:

• Clearly indicate why you’re reaching out and how you’ll add value—and be specific: “Customer IO will increase revenue by ~12%.”
• Proactively handle key objections.
• Add a personal touch up front, which acts as the hook for the rest of the note.
• End with one clear CTA. And since it’s the first email, ask for interest instead of time in your CTA. “Do you think we’re a fit?” works better than “Let’s book a call” at first.
• Include “persona-matching”—the presumed sender of the email isn’t a salesperson. It’s the employee who most closely matches the role of the intended recipient. This builds trust and can lead to better cold email ROI.

We’ll teach you how to send effective cold email campaigns like these.

What makes email so great?

• Targeting: Emails let you target exactly the people you want, and when done right, they’re so personalized that people can’t help but respond. You can’t get that with ads. Why? Ads cast a wider net, meaning you’ll always end up hitting people who will never buy from you. A 2% CTR would be impressive with ads. For email? You can see CTRs as high as 50% on strong campaigns.
• Access: Most decision makers still manage their own email inboxes. This is a massive opportunity. So long as you have the correct email address, your message lands in front of decision makers as they’re actively making business decisions.
• Low capital investment: All you need is an email account, and potentially software to help you automate your process. So it makes sense to start with this channel if it has potential for you. That way you’re not burning cash before you’re generating revenue from clients.

Who should use cold outreach

Most early-stage startups should test cold outreach, but it’s most profitable for B2B companies.

Why?

Cold outreach isn’t “free”—that’s a common misconception. Due to the labor involved in outreach and sales, CACs can be relatively high. In many cases, only high margin products can support cold outreach as a growth channel.

B2B companies typically have a higher margin than consumer companies.

Think of it like this:

Say you run an online shoe company where you sell $100 pairs of shoes that cost you $25 to make. Cold outreach might not be worth your time: You’ll likely spend hours sending emails, setting up calls, and managing the funnel. Labor hours would exceed your $75 margin.

But for a B2B SaaS business selling $1,000/month contracts? 5 labor hours to close a deal might result in thousands of dollars of profit.

That doesn’t mean you should rule out cold outreach if you’re not at a B2B company with high margins.

You can still make cold outreach work. Here’s a framework for identifying companies that cold outreach could work for:

• High margin products that can afford the labor of emailing and closing.
• Products that are expensive and that people aren’t actively searching for (if people are searching for your product, search ads and content might be more effective).
• Most early-stage startups that need a low capital investment way to sell and generate revenue so that they can afford to test other channels—like running ads or hiring a content writer.

Specific examples of companies that should test cold outreach:

• Agencies who charge $2000+/month per client and collect their first payment after the first month.
• Most B2B SaaS companies.
• Companies selling expensive physical goods (like equipment or medical devices).
• Edtech companies that sell high-margin digital products.

If you’re deciding whether or not you should test cold outreach, here’s an actionable framework. Test cold outreach if you meet one or both of the following criteria:

1. Your profit margins are greater than $500 per closed deal AND your payback period is less than 2 months.
2. You’re at an early-stage startup that sells products over $100 and you can afford to sell at low margins to get off the ground—do things that don’t scale until you can afford to test channels that scale.

Creating a cold email strategy

Here’s what a cold outreach pipeline could look like:

• Generate a prospect list.
• Invite the qualified prospects (via email) to an online product demo, sales call, or webinar.
• Address their objections and entice them to purchase.
• Negotiate and close their contract.

We’ll show you how to test cold outreach as a growth channel. That means standardizing your approach and running tests to see if you can acquire customers profitably through cold outreach.

To get the rest of our cold email module, you can buy the Growth Program here. Here's what else you'll be able to do with the program:

• Design your growth strategy: Your dedicated growth advisor will help you focus on what matters, so you can ignore what doesn't.
• Build your funnel: Redesign your landing pages, marketing emails, onboarding flow, and referral programs to significantly increase conversion.
• Launch and scale acquisition channels: Go deep on the inner-workings of every major customer acquisition channel—ads, content, referrals, and everything else. See our examples of what good work looks like.

If you're not ready to buy, you can get a free course of the sample here.

Try marshmallow testing your referral program. 

The marshmallow test: Give a kid a small reward now or two small rewards later. See which they choose.

The team at IntelyCare—a two-sided marketplace that matches nursing professionals with open shifts at nursing homes—tried their own version of the marshmallow test.

They tested two referral program offerings:

• An extra $1/hour next shift when a referral starts an application (small reward now)
• $100 when a referral completes their first shift (larger reward later)

So what happened?

The $100 offer increased referrals by 65% compared to the control group.

Not bad. But not even close to the winner.

The $1/hour offer increased referrals by 81%. And the CAC was less than half that of the $100 group: $110 compared to $257.

The rate at which referred people started working with IntelyCare was about the same for both groups. 

Takeaway: It’s not the size of the reward but the speed it arrives that really motivates people.

Of course, that might not be the case at your business. Maybe your customers prefer waiting for a bigger reward. But if your referral program has a longer reward cycle, try testing a variation with a quicker, smaller payout. You might be surprised by the results—both referral rates and CAC.

Good-Better-Best (GBB) pricing can help you gain more customers, more revenue—or both.

It's the concept of utilizing product features in your offers to target different customers.

For example:

• Gas stations sell regular (Good), plus (Better), and super (Best)
• American Express offers green, gold, platinum, and black cards
• Cable TV providers market basic, extended, and premium packages

Most companies start with the Best option (obvious potential revenue growth) when they should really begin by figuring out their fence attributes.

A "fence" attribute acts as a barrier to prevent customers from crossing over to a cheaper option.

HBO Max, for example, uses a 2-tiered variation of GBB. Their fence is ads:

Even though the ad-supported plan (Good offering) is five dollars cheaper, ads are such as strong barrier that 90% of subscribers choose the Ad-Free plan (Best offering).

To implement good offers, you need effective fences. Here are a few ways to identify yours and brainstorm pricing:

• Identify features with wide and deep appeal
• Use no more than four attributes to differ between Good-Better and Better-Best
• Maintain a consistent progression of benefits from Good to Better to Best
• Good pricing shouldn’t be more than 25% below Better
• Best pricing shouldn't exceed Better by more than 50%

For context, many companies expect:

• 10 - 20% of revenue from Good
• 25 - 50% from Better
• 30 - 60% from Best

Note: The actual numbers will depend on the number of attributes, degree of differentiation, and the price spread.

Here’s a clever retention strategy from the DTC olive oil brand, Graza.

Include a QR code on your product label for restocking:

The QR code takes users to Graza’s product pages where they can checkout in a few clicks.

What makes this strategy so effective?

When we’re running low on olive oil (or any everyday item we rely on), we usually add it to our shopping list. In that moment, we have high purchase intent. We may even be extra motivated to buy because we want to avoid the pain of running out or trekking to the store.

The QR code capitalizes on this intent by making it ridiculously easy to restock.

This tactic works for consumables—sunscreen, detergent, toothpaste, makeup, shaving cream, beverages, and so on.

Adding a QR code on your package can help improve retention so long as your customer has their phone within reach.

Before Apple’s update, you could focus your ad efforts on targeted, bottom-funnel creative. Low-hanging fruit.

But these days, that doesn’t fly—ads should focus on educating. 

Given the update, marketers can’t pinpoint the funnel stage where prospects might see specific creative. To work around this, your creative needs to educate and sell—each piece should answer:

• What is the problem that you're solving?
• What is the brand and product?
• Why do I need this and how will the product improve my life?
• How can I trust you to be the best option?
• How do I get it right now?

This is why UGC does so well for customer acquisition—a satisfied customer naturally addresses all those questions above, and the content itself is social proof.

These ads efficiently build brand equity on the back of the performance media dollars.

Cadence does a fantastic job with this through their ad creative (also on a scrappy budget).

The best ads don't feel like ads at all, so make your ads come off friendly, helpful, aspirational, or educational.

For SaaS startups, surveys are critical.

They’re how you find out what customers actually want, instead of building products, growth strategies, and business models on assumptions and beliefs.

But in practice, we’ve found that running surveys are a lot like meditation—everyone talks about it, but few actually do it.

Those that do run surveys often make these repeat errors:

1. They don’t ask questions that get to the heart of customer decision making and product-market fit.
2. They don’t segment the results. They lump everyone together, for less-revealing findings.

Here’s how you can fix both.

Questions to ask

Use this survey template from PMF Survey to get started, recreating it in whatever survey platform you prefer, like Typeform.

Here are some possible questions—alter them based on what you’re trying to learn about your customers.

• How did you discover [X product/company]?
• How would you feel if you could no longer use X?
• What would you use as an alternative if X weren’t available?
• What’s the primary benefit you’ve experienced from X?
• Have you recommended X to anyone?
• What type of person do you think would benefit from X?
• How could we improve X to better meet customer needs?

Segments to break out

• Most active and loyal users
• Infrequent users
• People who signed up for your service or a trial but never used it

If you split out those three segments, you’re more likely to gain insights into why customers are active in your product. And why they churn.

Here’s a shortcut for refining your product copy: 

Find out how influencers are promoting your competitors’ products. Then take the best aspects of their language and use it in your copy.

Influencers are experts when it comes to driving engagement and action from their audiences. And people who follow your competitors’ brand ambassadors are likely in your target audience as well.

By studying how these ambassadors talk about products—and how their followers respond—you can find out what resonates.

To find sponsored ads for your competitors, use Google. This way, you can look up public posts tagged with both #ad and the name of your competitor. You can also look up specific keywords from post captions. Some example search strings:

• site:instagram.com #gymshark #ad
• site:instagram.com @walgreens #ad
• site:instagram.com #neutrogena #ad hydro boost

Example: Look at this sponsored post from a beauty influencer. It’s a goldmine of copy ideas for skincare brands.

A quick way to rank higher in Google: Turn unlinked brand mentions into backlinks.

If you have an online presence, there are likely mentions of your company that don’t currently link back to your site. Consider searching for these and convincing the owner of the content to link to you.

Having more backlinks (especially from high-authority domains) sends a positive signal to Google that could increase your rank.

Here’s how to do it:

First, find unlinked brand mentions.

If you have Ahrefs, use its Content Explorer tool. Search for your brand name and exclude your domain. Example: For HelloFresh, that search would look like: “HelloFresh” -site:hellofresh.com

If you don’t have Ahrefs, you can look on Google using these search operators:

• intext:[keyword] Use this to specify your brand name. The “intext:” portion tells Google to find pages with content including this specific keyword.
• -[domain.com] Use this to avoid getting results from a specific site. That could be your own site and social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and so on.

For HelloFresh, that’d look like: intext:HelloFresh -hellofresh.com -facebook.com -pinterest.com -twitter.com

Make sure you look for variations of your brand name. Check misspellings like “Hello Fresh” with a space.

Once you have a list, reach out to the content owners. Keep it short and sweet. Prove that you’ve read the article and make a case for why they should link to you.

Voilà—low-hanging fruit backlinks.

Small changes to the way you convey your prices can have an outsized impact on conversion.

One of our favorite pricing tactics? Anchoring—setting expectations so that your price becomes more attractive.

Here are a few ways to use price anchoring:

• When listing items, include the higher-priced items first. Think about a wine list. Seeing higher-priced items near the top of the list creates a price anchor and makes the other items on the list feel less expensive.
• Use specific numbers to encourage people to spend more. This works for quantity as well as pricing. Snickers grew sales by changing its quantity anchor from "them" to "18."

• Break down your prices into smaller units. £4.57 per day feels more attractive than £1,668 per year.

Check out more sharp pricing psychology tactics here.  

P.S. Katelyn Bourgoin is running a buyer's psychology session live at our Growth Summit. She'll dig into pricing psychology and leave you with actionable tactics to test. If you haven't already, register here (takes less than one minute, totally free).

Direct mail is wildly overlooked as a channel—its average response rate is 9%.

Compare that to 0.4% for organic social and 0.6% for paid search.

One of direct mail’s most effective uses today? Automated retargeting.

Here’s a simple way to test it:

• Identify site visitors who abandon cart and create two segments.
• Keep one group as the control. Send them your standard abandoned cart email flow.
• For the second group, skip the abandoned cart email and instead, send a beautiful postcard in the mail with a unique QR promo code (say, 10% off first purchase). You can set this up to send within 12-24 hours of the cart abandonment.
• Test the conversion difference between groups.

Direct mail engages people who might not otherwise respond to digital retargeting. One study concluded that marketers see a 300-400% lift in conversion rates when targeting cart abandoners through direct mail.

You can use a tool like Inkit, Lob, or Rejoiner to automate this whole process.

Affiliate publishers aren’t robots.

Just like your customers, partners, and colleagues, they’re humans. Meaning: They’re driven by connections and emotions.

If you build relationships with them, you could see a sizable bump in your affiliate sales.

Try this. It’s a proven tactic that 99% of marketers (an unscientific estimate) don’t do.

• Get a publisher list on Rakuten or Impact.
• Use your list to scrape contacts on LinkedIn.
• Connect with the contacts you find. Send each a personalized intro note.
• Gather their contact info (emails).
• Shoot them a note every once in a while—especially around times when you want to accelerate sales, like the holidays. Keep it simple and friendly (“hey, wishing you good luck this Q4”) to keep your brand top of mind.

That’s one tactic. But think about other ways you can develop relationships with affiliate publishers. For instance, you could offer them free items or coupons. In a previous role, one of our Bell Curve growth strategists sent his affiliate partner wine coupons. Sales skyrocketed.

Most companies work with affiliates through platforms that programmatically make your ads appear on affiliates’ websites. But the people behind the platforms are the ones who click the buttons that can make those ads show up more than anyone else’s. Strengthen connections with them, and you could grow your sales.

You can quickly validate TikTok ads with zero ad spend.

Organic learnings happen fast. You'll know in 48 hours whether a post is a flop or poised to go full-throttle. Once you have a winner, pulse it with Spark ads to amplify results.

Here’s the framework:

1. Define your ideal follower. Who and where are they? What content do they desire?

2. Create and publish content. Make your content searchable so that when people search for keywords in your niche, they find your videos. Make it great so people share.

• Source content ideas—Use Answer The Public to determine what people are searching for. Add a few keywords specific to your niche and pick 5-10 questions to inspire your content.
• Start content flywheel—Bake engagement triggers into the content by encouraging viewers to ask questions in the comments. Answer those questions in future content to build momentum.

3. Evaluate performance. After you publish content, track KPIs over 24-48 hours to gauge potential:

• % Watch Time
• Likes to Views Ratio
• Saves or Shares

4. Run your best content as Spark ads. When you post organic content on TikTok, the algorithm determines who you reach. With ads, targeting lets you control who sees your content. The point of this step isn’t to rely on ads, but amplify proven content to accelerate growth.

• Select the campaign objective, "Community Interaction"
• Run A/B test. A: Interest-Based. B: Hashtag
• Spend $75 - $150/day
• Let the ad run for 7-10 days, then turn it off

The additional bump in views and engagement should help TikTok’s algorithm amplify your content, getting it in front of the right people.

Concise, simple landing pages generally convert better.

For instance, it’s best to eliminate any unnecessary copy, creative, and CTAs.

But less isn’t always more. Take a look at this experiment.

A law firm created two variations of a landing page:

• One with the firm’s phone number (with a “call” primary CTA) followed by a lead generation form
• One with only the firm’s phone number—no form

The form got very few submissions. But the variation with the form generated 53.2% more calls than the variation without it.

The reasoning behind this: Forms act as a visual prompt for action.

Though both variations used the same primary “call” CTA, the inclusion of the form made obvious to leads—even people skimming the page—that the next step is to get in contact.

Based on these results, it’s worth testing how conversions are affected by the presence of a form. For example, if you have a landing page with only an email address or phone number, consider adding a form.

Free trials are often touted as one of the best ways to get more SaaS leads. But if your trial users aren’t turning into paying customers, your acquisition model is broken.

To convert more users, try one (or more) of these strategies:

• Personalize onboarding. Send a welcome email when users sign up. Ask what they need help with. Or offer a one-on-one demo to show the full potential of your software—Funnel CRM shared that doing so increased conversions from 5% to 9%.
• Trigger support emails based on user activity. Adobe offers a 7-day trial for all its Creative Cloud apps. If users spend more time on a particular app, they’re automatically enrolled in a sequence focused on that app’s features.
• Offer a short feedback session halfway through the free trial. Resolve issues that users encounter. Communication platform Nextiva uses a 15-minute feedback session to uncover issues and offer support. The short time frame makes the ask feel like a small commitment—and gives Nextiva the chance to schedule another call at the end of the trial.
• Limit the features available during a free trial. Your product’s best feature should be easy to find and use during the trial. But to add intrigue, make secondary features visible but not accessible. This will entice users to upgrade to a paid account.
• Offer a discount at the end of the trial. Some users may not be fully convinced to sign up once their trial ends. In this case, you could try offering a generous discount off the first few months of your paid tier. Payment platform Dunnly offers as much as 60% off for 3-6 months after its free trial ends. It’s seen more fully paid conversions this way than by simply extending free trials—the discount weeds out leads who are reluctant to pay anything. And if users are continuously experiencing value in the discount months, they’re less likely to churn once they start paying full price.

Founders dream of product-market fit (PMF).

But most of the advice you’ll find online reads something like, “You’ll know it when it happens”—a lagging indicator. This doesn’t help you understand what PMF really is or how to get there.

Sean Ellis, who ran growth in the early days of Dropbox and coined the term “growth hacking,” found that a simple survey can help you quantify PMF. Use it as an actionable, leading indicator.

Ellis’s survey technique has been used by companies like Slack and Superhuman to reach—and accelerate—PMF.

Here’s how:

1. Survey users (ideally 100+) who have experienced the core product benefit.

Ask: “How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?”

Group responses into three buckets:

• Very disappointed
• Somewhat disappointed
• Not disappointed

2. Measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.”

If your “very disappointed” segment is at least 40% of the total sample size, that’s a strong sign that you’ve found PMF. That percentage is based on Ellis’s research benchmarking nearly 100 startups.

If your “very disappointed” bucket is under 40%, there are a few additional questions you can ask to iterate toward PMF. Check out Superhuman's in-depth post for the full framework.

Here’s a quick change that could increase Facebook retargeting conversions:

Shorten your ad copy.

Sounds ridiculously simple, and it is. But many marketers retarget with long-form ad copy—and it might be bringing down conversion.

‍Brainlabs ran a series of ad copy split tests for a fashion retailer. Short ad copy—copy that fit on one line on Facebook—consistently drove more clicks for retargeted users than long-form copy (64% vs. 36%).

Compare that to prospecting campaigns, where clicks from short-form and long-form copy were equally split.

The theory behind this difference:

• Retargeted users are often already aware of your brand and product. They’re higher intent and don’t need as much education, so they react better to shorter messages.
• New prospects need more education—so longer ad copy might be necessary.

Consider testing short- vs. long-form copy in a retargeting campaign to see if you get a similar conversion improvement.

Creating compelling social ads is only half the battle.

Impressions and clicks are great. But you need folks to add your product to their carts and convert.

That’s where your ad landing page (often a product page) comes into play. Here’s how to optimize it for more adds to cart.

• Show real people using your product. Skip Photoshop and take a quick snapshot with your phone. Even better, show a hand touching your product—this can make your product appear more appealing.
• A/B test your CTAs. Try different messaging like “Shop Now,” “Check Out,” “Add to Cart,” etc. Also test the button’s actual placement, e.g., next to your product image, above or below your product info, or even as a fixed button on mobile.
• Address objections in your copy. For example, make it clear how long shipping will take and what your return policy is. Anticipate the reasons shoppers might give for not buying—and then handle those objections preemptively.
• Include user-generated content at the top of your page. Most companies default to including UGC at the bottom of a page, after product info. But UGC often converts better than staged product images. Try adding it to your product carousel (think: product selfies) or interspersing it among product info.
• Find out what’s holding shoppers back. Consider using an exit-intent popup to ask users about their hesitation. Here’s a simple template from Hotjar. The multiple-choice format makes it easy for shoppers to provide feedback in seconds.

Your optimization efforts can get more adds to cart, but users will still inevitably drop off during the checkout process. So make sure you have cart-abandonment email flows set up to convert a percentage of that group.

How most companies do keyword research: Build a giant list of top-of-funnel keywords. Then move down the funnel toward conversion.

How most B2B companies should do keyword research: Target prospects who are already close to converting.

This is “pain-point SEO”: Identify your prospects' main questions and pain points, then find relevant keyword opportunities that address those topics.

If you focus on high-intent keywords around customer pain points, your content will have a much better chance of converting people immediately, even if the search volume is low.

How to uncover pain points:

• Study forums and communities where people discuss topics related to your product, like Reddit and Quora. Then enter their URLs into your keyword tool to find out what keywords they rank highly for. Example: A Reddit post at r/Entrepreneur ranks #4 on Google for the keyword phrase “starting a business with 50k.”
• Interact with your customers via interviews, phone calls, and surveys. Ask them what problem they were looking to solve before stumbling across your business. And how they would describe your product/service to a friend who knows nothing about it.
• Talk to your sales/CX team. You’ll get great insights into the problems customers are trying to solve, and any objections they might have.

Take notes and look for patterns. Turn the most common use cases, questions, and problems into content ideas. Then use Ahrefs to size up the opportunity of keywords that tie into those pain points and intents.

Once you have a handful of keywords, pop them into Clearscope. Run a report on each to gain AI-backed insights into how to rank for it.*

* Clearscope is our sponsor, but our content team was using their reports for SEO well before we partnered with them. Demand Curve readers can get up to three complimentary Clearscope reports. Head over here to get your free reports.

When it comes to email, some marketers invest loads of time in writing, designing, and building flows. But they under-invest in making sure those emails actually land in inboxes.

This is called email deliverability.

To reach your subscribers, you need to indicate to internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail that you’re a legitimate sender.

One way to improve your sender reputation and email deliverability: IP warming. Instead of blasting all your contacts at once, “warm up” your list by gradually scaling up the volume of sent emails. Do this over a period of at least ~4-6 weeks.

At first, send emails just to the people who are most likely to open, click, reply, and forward. Don’t get too creative at this stage. Send emails that you think have a high probability of generating interest, like a promotion similar to past successful ones.

This will send positive signals to ISPs and help you reach more inboxes as you scale up.

IP warming is also important for brands that are switching email platforms. If that’s the case:

• Export your most valuable leads—new subscribers and people who have clicked on your emails in recent months—to your new email service provider.
• Run your next campaign to just this audience.
• Increasingly add more contacts for each new campaign.

More than a third of SaaS websites don’t show enough of their product’s user interface (UI), according to research from Baymard.

Why this matters: Without a visual representation of your UI, people don’t feel like they know enough about your product. So even if your site has text describing how your software works, they won’t necessarily feel confident about moving forward.

That’s because, according to research, users most value UI representations in the form of images, GIFs, videos, and demos. Take note—we listed those in descending order of importance. Images come first.

Why not videos?

Videos take longer to load and require more user effort. (Users first need to decide to watch a video, then click “play” and adjust their audio volume.) In other words, a video is a lot more demanding than a screenshot. The same goes for demos, which feel like extra commitment compared to images and GIFs.

This is actually good news for optimizing your SaaS site, since creating images requires less effort. Here are five tips for better representing your product:

1. Prioritize showing images of your product’s UI. Take screenshots of key screens, like your main dashboard and most important product features. Example: Clearscope displays a screenshot of its text optimizer on its homepage.
2. Show more concrete images of your product than abstract ones. Abstract graphics show only an interpretation of your product. The online counseling platform BetterHelp could do better here. Instead of using abstract illustrations, it could show its app’s scheduling and messaging functions, plus other features.
3. If you do use videos, make them short and loop them. The idea is to make your videos mimic GIFs, which often sacrifice image quality. Take a look at the looping six-second video on HelpDesk’s homepage for some inspiration.
4. Make sure non-looped videos load quickly and have scrubbing previews. This is best for longer video walkthroughs with audio. Scrubbing previews show what’ll happen in a video when you move your cursor across a video’s timeline—they give users an idea of what to expect.
5. If your demos are self-guided, make that clear. A CTA button that says “Try a demo” feels much more inviting and low-effort than one that says “Book a demo.”

Marketers know PDF content upgrades are a potential game changer for the conversion rate of a blog. PDF keywords, on the other hand, are a surprisingly overlooked content opportunity.

No matter what niche you’re in, there's a good chance people are looking for PDFs related to the product or service you sell. Consider the following keyword examples:

Search volumes may be low, but so is the competition. What's more, search intent is crystal clear. Searchers have problems and they're looking for solutions—PDF resources about their specific dilemma.

To find relevant PDF keyword opportunities in your space:

1. Search for the keyword "PDF" in Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer.
2. Exclude modifiers suggesting the searcher is looking for a software solution, not information (e.g., convert, merge, compress, save, turn, combine).
3. Include keyword modifiers related to your niche (e.g., keto, trading, social media marketing).
4. Scan the results for relevant PDF keywords you can create content for.

Once you have your keyword(s), create a landing page or blog post on the topic and offer a PDF bonus in exchange for an email address. The bonus can be a unique asset (e.g., checklist, cheat sheet, guide) or a nice-looking PDF version of the original content. Experiment and see what works.

Content upgrades have the potential to lift conversions as much as 500%—possibly more.

And if you can rank for those assets, you’ll have yourself a self-perpetuating traffic and conversion machine.

As you create a product, service, or piece of content that you want to go viral, carefully consider why someone would share it.

Jonah Berger, a professor at Wharton, conducted rigorous research to figure out why people share. Here are the six reasons he found (with examples of each):

1. Social currency: “We share things that make us look good.”

• We all seek social approval. It’s human nature. So we share things that we think will boost others’ perception of us.
• Example: When the founder of SmartBargains.com launched a new site, Rue La La, he made it invitation-only. It sold the same products as Smart Bargains. But because consumers now felt like insiders—a badge of social currency—they bought a lot more.‍

2. Triggers: “Top of mind, tip of tongue.”

• We share and talk about things we come across. Which is why people discuss things they see regularly (like Cheerios) more than things that are less visible in their everyday lives (like Disney World).
• Example: The most inescapable song of 2011, Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” peaked in daily searches every Friday after it came out.

3. Emotion: “When we care, we share.”

• We share things that make us emotional. Things that elicit high-arousal positive emotions (awe, excitement, and amusement) and negative emotions (anger and anxiety).
• Examples: Basically, everything on Upworthy.

4. Public visibility: “Built to show, built to grow.”

• We imitate things we see. We’ll go to the food truck with the long line and sign up for the email service we see others using (AOL, then Hotmail, then Gmail).
• Example: The Apple logo is upside down on a closed MacBook. But it’s right side up when the MacBook is open—say, at a coffee shop where others are working nearby. That’s solid public branding.‍

5. Practical value: “News you can use.”

• We share useful information. Passing along helpful tips, tutorials, guidance, etc., strengthens social bonds.
• Examples: #lifehacks viral videos on TikTok, Brené Brown TED Talks‍

6. Stories: “Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.”

• Berger explains that “people don’t think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives.” Which is why Aesop didn’t just say the words, “Don’t give up.” Instead, he told a story about a slow-yet-persevering tortoise who ended up winning a race.
• Example: Unboxing videos are a type of story. As psychologist Pamela Rutledge puts it, each is “a mini-three act play with an exposition (presenting the box), rising action and conflict (what is it? can I get the box open? will I like it?) and resolution or denouement (showing what’s in the box).”

For more on virality, check out our complete guide to organic viral marketing.

Good video testimonials work wonders in landing more sales. In fact, for 89% of enterprise companies, they can drive anywhere from 25% to 50% lifts in conversions.

But many companies struggle to produce video testimonials quickly and cost-effectively. They spend as long as six months on video production, often recording customers at live events or sending videographers to film their subjects directly. They don’t realize that you can get informercial-level video testimonials without traveling anywhere or investing in expensive equipment.

Here’s how:

• Identify your top customers. Depending on your product or service, these might be your repeat buyers, customers with high engagement, or those who’ve consistently referred your business to others or given high NPS scores.
• Create an enticing offer in exchange for a short video interview about your product. A few examples: an exclusive discount, credit toward customers’ next purchase, or a free month of service.
• Sign up for a free Calendly account if you don’t already have one. This will make coordinating interviews with your customers easier.
• Email your top customers with your special offer and Calendly link.
• Keep your interviews short, no more than 20-30 minutes, and record them on Zoom. Ask questions to guide customers toward a cohesive narrative. Try these ones:
• Why did you want [product]?
• What problem were you trying to solve?
• What do you like about [product] vs. [competitor]?
• What surprised you about [product]?
• Would you recommend [product] to others? If so, who and why?
• Use a video editing software like iMovie to cut out any pauses, umms, or other unwanted sounds. Add music from AudioJungle to give each testimonial more life—we recommend using tracks from the Cinematic category.
• Publish the testimonials on YouTube. Then add them to your sales pages and use them in your ads, emails, and other marketing collateral.

Once you’ve nailed down the process, consider automating your offer as an email sequence so you can collect testimonials on the regular. The more footage you collect, the more assets you have to leverage as social proof for your product.

DTC and ecommerce shops, here’s a creative way to delight and retain customers after a purchase:

1. Buy raffle tickets. These are cheap—a roll of 500 costs less than $9 on Amazon.
2. For each order you ship out, include some raffle tickets. Instead of broadcasting your raffle on your site, keep it on the down-low. Only tell customers in their confirmation email or a note in their order what these tickets are for and why they should hold on to them—this makes the whole experience feel special.
3. Announce the winner via email or SMS. Then ship the prize to them. For raffle prizes, think small goodies that relate to your product.

Why this strategy works:

A raffle is old-fashioned fun, and in this case, it’s unexpected. By delivering unexpected value, it creates delight—and studies show that delight improves customer loyalty.

This strategy might work especially well for subscriptions like FabFitFun and Birchbox since they have recurring orders. You can easily include raffle tickets with each scheduled shipment.

Community-led growth and product-led growth (PLG) are often talked about separately.

But an effective go-to-market strategy can be to blur the lines between them.

Embedding community in your PLG strategy could mean built-in virality.

Examples:

• Strava: Use it to work out. Stay because your friends and colleagues are on the app too, giving you kudos.
• SparkToro: Use it for audience research. Love it because of the SparkToro team’s community participation, like bi-monthly office hours.
• Hacker News: Use it for news and commentary. Go to Y Combinator, which runs Hacker News, when you want to apply for a startup accelerator (example courtesy of Nir Eyal).

“Build community as a competitive advantage” is one of OpenView’s 11 principles for PLG. Compared to the old (and even fairly recent) days of establishing brand reputation through ads and trade shows, now “users are the brands. People respond to people, and look to folks they trust for advice. … Community isn’t just about creating another Slack channel. It’s about convening and connecting your target audience to help members achieve their own goals.”

Five ways to foster community as part of PLG, from OpenView:

1. Highlight power users’ creations to amplify community creators. Example: Figma’s community plug-ins
2. Build relationships by connecting users with their peers. Example: Optimizely’s Developer Community
3. Participate in existing communities where your users are active.
4. Build a content community. Create informative content that will help your users out. Any good content marketing program does this.
5. Acquire an established community, like how Zapier acquired Makerpad (probably a later-stage method).

Don’t have a product yet? It’s not too early to start building a community to get people invested in your concept—and get invaluable early insights into what your users will want.

The bar for engaging content on YouTube is rising. And YouTube’s algo continues to improve to surface the best, most relevant videos for its users.

If you’re creating content for YouTube, here’s a list of counter-intuitive insights (and how you can use each) adapted from VidCon 2022:

Insight: YouTube is beginning to value quality viewer experience over straight watch time. YouTube is running more surveys, and increasingly weighting responses to those surveys, to figure out how happy/inspired your videos make people feel.

What to do: Map out the emotional experience you want your viewer to have. The goal should be to help your viewers through a transformation, not just burn their time.

Insight: YouTube's discovery algorithm is driven by two major factors, performance and personalization. Performance can be summed up by the question, “did people enjoy this video?” and personalization by, “who is the right person for this video at this exact time that they open up their device for a YT session?” Most people forget about personalization, which is driven by video watch history, channel watch history, and factors like time of day and device type.

What to do: Clearly define your audience and value propositions. Simple, but most brands and creators miss the mark here. If YouTube can’t interpret who your video should be for, it's because your script and delivery aren't clear, and YT will not find the best viewers for you.

Insight: Most people know how important intros are, but the last 30 seconds of your video are critical as well. Recency bias (as well as the peak-end rule) point to the fact that viewers will put a lot of weight on the conclusion of your video—so much that they often judge the quality of the entire video based on their feeling at the very end.

What to do: End your videos with a laugh, some kind of joke, or a valuable takeaway.

Insight: The optimal rhythm for retention is not “the fastest paced video possible”—it’s more like a rollercoaster with a dynamic pace.

What to do: Find opportunities to slow down the pace after a high speed segment and inject an emotional story if possible.

When you're down to the last 48 hours of an email campaign, chances are good that all you have left are the "tire kickers." And if they still don't buy, it's usually for one of two reasons:

• They aren't interested, or
• They don't feel confident in their decision to buy your product

For the second type of prospect, marketers often resort to scarcity/urgency tactics to drive a final burst of sales. This can work. But if buying your product feels like a giant leap to on-the-fence prospects, "pushing" them with countdown timers and FOMO may not instill the confidence they need to take action.

To make your product feel like a natural step forward, try "coaching" prospects through their objections with a minimum viable commitment (MVC).

Here’s how Copy Hackers used this tactic in their closing course launch email:

Notice how instead of provoking anxiety with ultimatums, the copy relieves it with a stress-free offer—the MVC. When you empathize with your prospects’ current emotional struggle, you set the bar just high enough so they feel good about their ability to clear it.

Consider testing this formula in the CTA of your closing promotional email:

1. Maybe you’re [time or value objection]
2. Maybe you’re [unsure of being a fit objection]
3. Either way, you totally appreciate having [guarantee length] to put [Product] to the test to see if you can [achieve most desired outcome or overcome most crippling pain]

One of the biggest paradoxes in marketing?

Popups.

People hate them, yet many companies still use them since they often lead to more conversions.

So marketers who want to capture the conversion benefits of popups need to figure out a way to do so without irritating potential customers.

One tactic to try: trigger popups only for warm users.

According to one study, 92% of first-time visitors to a website don’t make a purchase. But 75% plan to return and buy something on their next visit.

So instead of enabling popups for all users by default, consider showing them only to returning visitors with a demonstrated interest in your business.

For example, trigger a free shipping exit popup only for returning visitors with a minimum basket value (say, $50). The key here is minimum basket value. If you show a popup for free shipping for orders over $75 but a visitor only has $10 in their cart, your popup probably won’t be very effective.

And by only triggering the popup for returning visitors, you don’t bombard first-time, low-intent visitors with intrusive popups.

Prioritization is a critical step in the experimentation process.

You can’t test everything. Testing takes time and resources, which are always in short supply.

One piece of criteria we always recommend factoring into prioritization: impact. How much could test findings move the needle on your north star metric—the metric you care most about?

When making that call, it’ll help to think about a test’s funnel stage.

Bottom of funnel

Bottom-of-funnel events—those nearer to the point of purchase, like the checkout process—are almost certainly closer to your north star, so they have a high likelihood of driving impact.

An extreme example: A test that removes the “buy” button from your checkout page will have a drastic effect on revenue (just not the kind you want!).

Prospects at that stage have high buying intent. They’re ready, or nearly ready, to buy.

However, some changes to bottom-of-funnel events might not be as effective because prospects have already made their decisions.

Top of funnel

Top-of-funnel events, like those in the awareness and consideration stages (e.g., landing pages and ads), can sway decision making. And prospects’ emotional investment may be higher at earlier funnel stages, when they’re discovering how your product will help them.

Plus, top-of-funnel experiments are often easier to test and alter, both because sample sizes are bigger (top of funnel gets more traffic) and because the changes themselves are frequently lower effort.

But they’re farther from conversion, they have lower intent, and they run a greater risk of being vanity tests: tests that move the needle on some metrics but not your north star.

Our recommendation: When your experimentation program is new and you’re gaining an understanding of which tests will have the most impact, all else being equal, go lower in your funnel to remove the distance from your north star.

An effective way to improve B2C ad performance?

Show people using your product.

When we see others using a product, we can’t help but experience it vicariously. This effect improves how we value the product.

A recent marketing study found that you can enhance that effect by showing a hand touching a product. Here’s an example from Yeti:

Based on the research, this increases how much people:

• Like the product
• Are likely to buy it
• Are willing to pay for it

For example, the study found that people who saw a gif of a hand touching a sweater:

• Liked it 9.4% more
• Were 16% more likely to buy it
• And were willing to pay 14% more for it

Brands like Starbucks and Samsung reported more likes on social posts when a hand was touching their products.

In order for the effect to work, the hand:

• Must be seen from a first-person point of view, as if it’s the person’s own hand
• Must touch the product in a relevant way (e.g., feeling a shirt’s fabric, mixing or pouring a drink)
• Doesn’t need to match the viewer’s hand—it can be any skin tone or gender, or even a digital recreation (like an alien’s “hand” in a game)

Steps to implement:

• Include a first-person-POV hand in your image and video creatives. Make sure it’s touching your product in a meaningful way (such as using or feeling it).
• Use those creatives in your ads, on product pages, and in social media posts—in any of your marketing assets.
• Implement this tactic if you’re in the VR or metaverse space.