The Growth Vault

1. Only 1 in 2000 startups raise money
2. Solo founders take 3.6x longer to scale than founding teams of 2+.
3. The average age of a successful startup founder is around 45. 

We love surprising facts. They trigger a surge of dopamine. And we're dopamine fiends.

In fact, surprising facts are how Snapple was able to boost sales in 2002. They put weird facts under the lids of their drinks. It was a smart campaign for a few reasons:

1. Variable reward. Slot machines are addicting because we never know what's coming next. Sometimes it's a win. And it's different every time. The ever changing facts under the lids kept people guessing and wanting more.
   
   
2. Social currency. Sharing interesting facts makes us look cool, smart, or interesting to our peers. So people were incentivized to share the stats, and talk about Snapple.
   
   
3. Ritual. As discussed in a newsletter a few weeks ago, having a ritual around your product can increase people's satisfaction with using it. Much like reading fortune cookies after a meal at a Chinese restaurant, people opened the lid of a Snapple, and read the stat to their friends. 

Surprising stats are also effective hooks in social posts. For example:

If you hit people with a surprising fact, they'll instantly be hooked. And even the best content will be ignored if it fails to hook people.

If you're growing your personal audience, and want to go deeper on how to create content that makes you unignorable, join the Un-ignorable Challenge.

Enrollment closes in 2 days. Join 241 entrepreneurs learning to grow their audience.

A lot of "strategies" are filled with fluff and buzzwords. Or they focus purely on the goals (like 20% more revenue) without focusing on the how or the why.

Richard Rumelt outlines 3 key elements to a good strategy: 

1. Diagnosis: This isn't merely identifying a problem; it's understanding the nuances and underlying structures that are causing it. It's also identifying what the competitors are doing, and not doing.
   
   
2. Guiding policy: The unique approach you'll take to solve that problem. This isn't just a set of goals, but a framework that informs your decisions on the actions you'll take to achieve them.
   
   
3. Coherent actions: The specific steps to implement your guiding policy. Random tactics won't cut it. They have to fit together to support your strategy.

Let's use an example from the world's largest company, Apple, when Steve Jobs became CEO again in 1997 when it was on the brink of bankruptcy:

1. Diagnosis: In 1997, Apple had dozens of products. Nearly none of them were profitable or clear what problem they solved. The core issue was that their product line was way too complicated, confusing, and expensive to service.
   
   
2. Guiding policy: Jobs decided Apple would focus on a small number of products and make them exceptional. The goal was to reestablish Apple as a brand that stood for quality, innovation, and a superior user experience. And to be patient and wait for the next big technological opportunity before adding more products.
   
   
3. Coherent actions: Jobs famously cut down Apple's product line from dozens of items to just four. He then waited years before capitalizing on the next big opportunity: the iPod (and iTunes). Then the iPhone. Then the iPad. Then the Watch.

Their strategy was not "get profitable through customer-centric excellence." Instead, it was specific. And it continues to guide their decisions today, over 25 years later. 

Although Apple no longer has just 4 products, Apple is still slow to release new products. VR headsets have existed for years. But they didn't want to act on it until they felt they could deliver an exceptional product experience. 

This is why at our agency, Bell Curve, we focus so much on strategy. A well thought out strategy, can make all the difference. Tactics are what you layer on top.

Landing page copy has to be punchy and interesting so it doesn't bore people. 

But that also means it might not tell people everything they need to know to make their buying decision. (Here are examples from REI and HubSpot.)

Which is why SEO expert, Tim, recommends creating a buyer's guide. As he says:

"A detailed buying guide holds the hand of whoever is in charge of solving that problem and putting forward a case for product/service purchase."

Here's the overarching template he suggests:

1. Intro to the core issues
2. Questions to help the user self funnel (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
3. Diagnose the position they're in (if X and Y, do Z)
4. Introduce the features/benefits the different buckets need
5. The prices associated with the different buckets
6. Where your solution sits in comparison to the buckets
7. Best use cases for your solution
8. Wrap things up

A buyer's guide walks people through all the things a sales person might. It just does it at a larger scale, and helps people hesitant to hop on a call.

Here's Tim's full template.

TikTok has quickly become one of the first ad channels to contend with Google and Meta.

How is it different? Well, the ad management is relatively simple, and broad targeting often does best.

But it all comes down to amazing ad creative.

Here are 4 best practices:

1. Lead with a hook

Even the first frame counts. 25% of users watch beyond the first 5 seconds.

• Open your video with action and exciting audio to maximize engagement
• Display an enticing headline (e.g., "This app will change your life! 🤯" )
• Show an unusual or provocative visual to create intrigue

2. Sell with stories

Authenticity is what resonates. It cannot feel like an ad. 

People buy on TikTok when you tell them a believable story that sells the lifestyle benefits your product provides in a relatable context. 

3. Keep your ads short, fast, and lean

~60% of videos with the highest clickthrough rates get their message across in the first three seconds and keep their ad length within a 30-second sweet spot.

Stitch together 1-2 second quick cuts with different camera angles and speeds. Cut out pauses and lulls as much as possible.

4. Take big swings, then iterate on what works

You won't learn much by running 10 ads that are all roughly the same. 

Test a high volume of wildly different “big swing” ad creatives to find what resonates with your audience.

Scrap the losers. Focus on the winners. Throw in big swings every few weeks.

---

For 4 more best practices, and 8 ad examples/formulas, and a lot more, check out the rest of our TikTok Ads guide.

Ways that ads/marketing campaigns fail:

1. It turns people off from the product.
2. It's not compelling–people don't care.
3. People care, but forget about it quickly.
4. People care and remember the content, but they can't remember what it was for.

We've all had that last one—the hilarious ad that you can't remember what it was selling.

And an ad wins when: People care, and they remember the product/brand (then buy).

There are three main categories of ads as described by Ariyh:

1. Functional: Descriptions of the product. Ex: 100% organic cotton socks.
   
   
2. Emotional: Trigger emotions not necessarily tied to product features. Ex: "Because your family matters” with a photo of a child and parent, by Wells Fargo.
   
   
3. Metaphorical: Relevant parallels between products and different objects or scenarios. Ex: “Leave the noise behind” with a photo of a screaming child, by Bose headphones.

Two key findings from an August 2022 study analyzing recall of different ad types:

• People remember both metaphorical and emotional ads better than functional ads, but remember brand details best when the ads are metaphorical.
  
  
• A week after seeing the ads, people were 24% more likely to recognize a snippet of a metaphorical or emotional ad, compared to a functional ad.  

Of course, an ad, particularly a video ad can be several:

A mix of metaphorical and emotional to grab their attention and build up (what you can do and why it matters. Then finish with functional (technical specs etc).

But in general, don't just focus on the functional benefits. Make people care.

One of my friends has a $10M sock business, Outway. And I'm madly jealous of one his greatest hacks.

Whenever he meets another founder, he gives them a pack of free socks. If he really wants to wow them, he custom designs socks for their company first.

This rocks because:

1. It's a delightful surprise.
2. It's a thing they'll likely use.
3. They'll think of his nice gesture every time they wear the socks.
4. And it doesn't cost him much.

Here are a three other freebie strategies:

#1. Gift it at a key decision moment

For the past 30 years, Gillette has sent millions of free shaving kits to men to celebrate their 18th birthday—right when many men start needing to shave for the rest of their life. 

Hook them early, and they'll buy replacement blades for decades.

#2. SMS-based raffles

Ship raffle tickets with your orders. Text out the winning number once a week.

Encourages frequent orders. And it's a great excuse to collect phone numbers.

#3. Go a little over the top (if your product has high customer life-time values)

Airtable used to give out Airtable-branded Airpods with their startup program, and to people working at target companies.

For one, it's an over the top gift that someone will appreciate for years. 

For another, people who work in startup "open concept" offices will definitely wear them.

Lastly, no one sees branded, colourful Airpods so it leads to conversations about Airtable.

We've all seen the viral posts like:

• "Top 20 Free AI Tools that feel illegal to know"
• “I’ll teach you more in 10 slides than a $75,000 MBA” (then is super generic)
• "TED talks are free education, but 99% of people don't know which ones to watch"
• Or just a funny meme about the latest thing Elon said 

Do they do well? Yes, often they do.

But it depends on how you define the term "well." If all you want is attention (views, likes, comments, reposts, maybe even "followers"), then yeah, sure, they work.

But if you're trying to get more leads and customers, then I don't think that Elon meme is gonna convince anyone to drop $10k/mo on your consulting, nor subscribe to your $500/mo SaaS product. 

So don't create content to get attention. Instead, create it to build intention (to buy).

To do that:

1. Focus on building trust. Leaning into overused viral templates is a sure-fire way to slowly erode trust and respect from the most engaged and discerning people. 
   
   
2. Look really good at what you do. If you sell email marketing services, you better consistently demonstrate how much you know about email marketing, and how your work has helped others. Don't talk about free AI tools 80% of the time. Demonstrate your expertise and brag a little about your work (and your customers' success).
   
   
3. Prioritize leads, DMs, and replies—not likes, comments, followers, subscribers. The highest engagement posts are often the worst at driving leads. The best posts for driving leads, often have mediocre engagement. Resist the dopamine.
   
   
4. Really crack your content's "job to be done." What painful problem are you trying to help someone solve? Figure that out and be the best at helping them solve it.

This is easier said than done—in fact, we've created an entire 4-week cohort course about this very topic called Un-ignorable—so far we've trained 1,253 students including folks like Zain Kahn, Amanda Natividad, Eric Partaker, and many others.

If you want to learn how to create content that helps you become an un-ignorable expert, for the next 37.5 hours we're offering $300 in discounts and bonuses to 139 people. 

You can learn more and grab the offer here.

It's the last cohort we're doing for ~6 months.

Sure, we can all slap a form in our footer to get more newsletter subscribers.

In our experience, that doesn't do very much.

Neither does the one at the bottom of your 20-minute blog article. 

Here are 2 that have worked for us:

#1. Pop-ups/Modals

Beware: Don't do this 👇. Especially not immediately.

Everything about that makes me sad.

Instead, have they been on the page for 5 minutes and have they made it 40%+ or more down the page?

Great, then they've gotten value—pop up a modal and pitch the value they'll get.

Better yet, use a lead magnet related to the piece of content they're reading.

#2. Gated content

Throwing a form in your blog's sidebar is unlikely to move the needle. Adding it into the middle of the content can definitely do better—but both feel like old banner ads.

So we gloss over them.

Instead, for long-form, in-depth articles, like our playbooks, we would gate the second half of the playbook. If they were invested, they'd subscribe.

Don't just add a form and assume people will use it.

We all get too many emails—give people a reason to add more to their inbox.

The average person gets ~120 emails per day. Founders and decision makers get even more thanks to being bombarded with cold emails.

Getting someone to read your cold email is an uphill climb—and not deleting it is Everest. 

To do it right, you need to bait interest and then hook it.
↳ An enticing subject line = the bait
↳ A great opening line = the hook 

Unless you're Elon Musk, launching into your experience and credentials aren't enough to get someone interested when they're desperately just trying to hit inbox zero.

It’s like someone walking up to you at a party and saying "yeah, I went to Harvard."

A much better hook: Start your cold email with a five-minute favor.

The five-minute favor is a concept introduced by Wharton psychologist Adam Grant in his book Give and Take. It's simple:

Spend five minutes every day doing something that helps others. Just five minutes. Don’t expect anything in return.

Examples:

• Share something they’re working on with your audience.
• Write a review of their book or podcast.
• Donate to a cause they support.
• Engage with their social posts.
• Fill out one of their surveys.
• Make an introduction.

Help them out, then casually mention the favor in your cold email opener. They'll be far more likely to respond—particularly in a positive manner. 

Growth marketing is increasingly about community building, and less about clever hacks.

Apply a community mindset to your cold outreach, and it'll become much warmer.

This is for the scrappy folks in the crowd. The "do things that don't scale" people.

Being active in communities is a great way to build up your initial user base and network. 

BUT! You don't want to just pitch yourself. No one likes that. And is often grounds to be kicked out of the community.

So instead, you want to be active in relevant convos and provide value. But constantly monitoring Slack communities, Reddits, and social media is a huge pain.  

Use these tricks to do it faster:

#1. Slack: Join communities that your target audience use.

Under Preferences, set up notifications for keywords related to your product—you'll get pinged whenever you should weigh in.

#2. Upwork: Use the paid tool Earlybrd.io to track job descriptions with keywords related to the problem your product solves, e.g., “custom Shopify site.”

Get alerts about relevant jobs as they’re posted—then apply and pitch your product.

#3. X/Twitter: Bookmarking search results is the move.

Go to the search page and enter “min_faves:200 [keyword]” then sort by Latest.

You’ll find tweets related to your keyword with at least 200 likes

(Use “min_retweets:200 [keyword]” for retweets instead.)

#4. Quora/Reddit: Use the paid tool Syften to track keywords.

It’ll send Slack or email notifications as these get mentioned. It'll also work for Slack, Upwork, Twitter, ProductHunt, and various others.

–––

Just remember: Being helpful and kind is the priority. Provide value first, and just make it known what you do and how you can help them more.

Rituals turn mundane tasks into experiences. 

When customers follow a series of prescribed actions for a product they tend to:

• Enjoy the experience more
• Enjoy the product more
• Pay more to have it 

But rituals can't be random gestures. They need to be systematic and repetitive. It has to feel natural to how people actually use the product, and enhance the experience.

Some familiar ritual examples:

• Oreo: Twist, lick, and dunk cookies in milk.
• Corona: Press a fresh lime wedge into the bottle.
• Champagne: Pop the cork, cheer, and pour into flutes. 

Why rituals work:‍

Rituals increase people's involvement with a product in a unique and memorable way.

• A ritual instructs people on the "right way" to use it.
• A mini version of the IKEA Effect, the ritual makes customers feel like they had something to do in the creation of the product experience, therefore increasing its value and appeal.
• It gets them in the right mindset for using the product.

They also turn a mundane moment into an experience. They're not just opening up a bottle of sparkling wine, they're celebrating a win.

Steps to implement:

Elements of a great ritual:

• Easy to do: If it's hard, people won't do it.
• Tied to an emotion: Like celebration for champagne. Relaxing for Corona + Lime.
• Have a trigger: Celebration for champagne. KitKat increased sales by creating the ritual for KitKat + coffee—drinking coffee is a very common trigger.
• Add to the experience: Let's face it, Corona is kinda meh. The lime adds to it. 

Once you have an idea for your ritual and you've found an emotion or context to tie it to, test it on a small scale. 

Then associate the ritual (lime in a corona) with the target emotion (relaxing) by showing it in a context that evokes that emotion (someone on a beach in Mexico on vacation).

If you've done it right, your ritual will grow organically and become inherent to the
product experience.

Most founders/marketers completely wing their growth strategy.

Here are 3 ways to use research to find opportunities in the market: 

#1. Audience Whitespace

Of people interested in your product/category, who isn't being being served? For example:

#2. Channel Whitespace

Where are customers spending time and competitors are not?

For marketing channels, Charlie says to find the intersection of:

1. Where your potential customers hang out
2. Where there's the least competition
3. Where competitors are already seeing results
4. Where your content/voice makes sense

#3. Positioning Whitespace

What are your customers:

1. Searching for (search trend analysis) and
2. Asking for (social listening)

That competitors are not focusing on. For example:

Take time to study these 3 whitespaces to find opportunities—and if you're willing to invest, tools like SimilarWeb have a ton of data to parse through.

Warren Buffet's net worth is $117,000,000,000 and his company's investment portfolio gains on average 19.8% per year.

His own company's stock costs $548,984.95 each—wild.

He's famous for his "buy and hold" strategy—resisting selling in the best and worst of times.

Besides insane willpower, one of his greatest strengths are his expertly written shareholder letters.

In them he convinces and assures his shareholders to continue to hold their shares. To believe in him and his strategy even through the worst crashes and recessions.

His tactic for writing compelling letters, as John Harrison wrote:

Or as Jeremy wrote:

Write marketing copy, newsletters, emails, and messages as if to a sister, a best friend, or your mom/dad. And not for a state of the union or to a supreme court judge.

Google has bots that crawl the internet clicking on links. It does this periodically, and it uses sitemaps that website owners submit to help it find pages—particularly new ones.

We all know that a page that gets a lot of external links (ones from different sites) have a huge effect on SEO (hence why people play the backlinking game). 

But you wouldn't assume that adjusting internal links (ones pointing to other pages on your site) to drastically influence your SEO rankings.

But according to the 3 SEO experts above, it is one of the biggest levers you can pull. Ethan Smith's agency says it can increase search impressions by 10 to 50% within 50 days.

Here's 7 tips for internal linking: 

#1. Don't just link to a page once, do it 7+ times. If you want a page to be found via search, link to it from multiple pages. Graphite says there an inflection point at 7+.‍

#2. A link from the homepage is the most important. Have your homepage link to all of your most important pages. 

#3. Create an HTML sitemap page that links to every page. Link to this page from the homepage. Here are some examples of HTML sitemaps.

#4. Add site-wide navigational links in the header, footer, or sidebar.

#5. Don't just rely on footer links. Google gives more weighting to links in the main content area of a page than it does a footer as they're more likely to be clicked. 

#6. Use contextual "anchor text." Don't say "Join our marketing community by clicking here." Instead say "Join our marketing community."

#7. Make sure you don't have any broken links. Find broken links using audit tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Semrush.

If you invest in SEO at all, then spend some time adjusting your internal linking.

A group of 11 young women arrive in Italy for vacation, only to find that the villa they reserved via Booking.com doesn’t actually exist.

Alix Earle, a TikTok influencer with more than 5 million followers, laments about the scam to her audience. 

But it’s not Booking that responds to make it right—it’s Airbnb. They save the day by putting them up in a nearby villa straight out of White Lotus:

Alix’s videos documenting the saga got more than 20 million combined views on TikTok. One social media expert estimates the earned media value for Airbnb at around $100,000.

All for what probably cost a few thousand dollars to compensate the host.

Booking did eventually respond... with a boilerplate comment asking Alix to reach out on another social media platform for support. (Yikes.)

Maybe it’s no surprise Alix’s videos have inspired other users to create videos sharing their negative experiences with Booking.

The moral of the story: "Social listening" can really work. Look for opportunities to swing in and be the savior.

ConvertKit founder, Nathan Barry, did this when their competitor, Gumroad, jacked up their prices suddenly. They even offered to handle migrations for people for free.

We've figured it out. The one growth hack to rule them all:

A great product that solves a painful problem or fulfills a need.

I know that's incredibly difficult to achieve, but that's truly the thing that matters.

All of the 400+ tactics we've shared in this newsletter over the past several years are useless if it's trying to grow something that is not useful.

In fact, a truly amazing product, service, or piece of content will grow despite poor marketing execution. But these tactics are what you layer on top of a great foundation of a sound product, a sound brand, and a sound strategy.

OR to get initial users for your product to help you determine if it does solve a painful problem or fulfill a need.

And that's why ultimately we prefer the term "growth" over "marketing."

Because growth is cross-disciplinary. If changing your product in a way that makes it more useful is the best way to get more users, then that's what you should do. 

If people aren't buying or retaining then continuing to throw people at a "meh" product is not going to magically make it all better.

I know this isn't our normal actionable advice. But I've felt funny sharing tactic after tactic when the above is what we firmly believe. It's the ethos of what we do at Demand Curve and at our agency, Bell Curve.

The foundation is the most important. So make sure to build a strong one.

The easiest way to get invited to be on more podcasts?

Be an amazing podcast guest.

If you wow both podcast hosts and listeners:

1. Hosts will recommend you to their friend's podcasts.
2. Hosts of others podcasts will invite you on.
3. Listeners will tell hosts of other podcasts to invite you on.

Obviously a big part of it is charisma, which is hard, but here are some tips from Jay Clouse that anyone can implement:

#1. Weave examples and data into stories

Don't just spout facts and ideas.

Make it tangible and engaging by weaving them into entertaining stories.

#2. It's not just about you

People often listen to a podcast because they like the host. Listeners care about their perspective.

So pause to let the host cut in. Ask for their opinion.

Make it feel like it's two smart friends having an intellectual conversation. Not a TED talk.

#3.  Do your homework

Listen to the show beforehand. See how conversations normally go and the types of questions the host normally talks about, or the things they naturally gravitate toward.

And ask the host questions about the audience to understand what they care about.

#4. Talk up the show

Make the host look good. Reference another one of their episodes or talk them or the podcast up a bit.

They'll appreciate, and they're fans will appreciate it.

BONUS #5: Be pleasant, friendly, and helpful throughout

• Make it easy to book time with you.
• Hang around after the recording and get to know the host.
• Suggest some of your friends/contacts that might be good for the show.

Make the host and listeners like you and you'll be asked to go on more podcasts, and likely get more out of the appearance.

Which of these stands out the most? 🐶🐱🐭🐹🐰🦊🐻🍉🐼🐻‍❄️🐨🐯🦁🐮🐷🐸🐵

What about? desk, chair, bed, table, chipmunk, dresser, stool, couch

What about in this image?

I imagine most of you will say the 🍉, chipmunk, and the pink shoes (I know at least one of you won't—yeah, I see you)

In 1933, German Psychiatrist, Hedwig Von Restorff, discovered that when presenting someone with a bunch of pieces of information from a single category (animals), and one that isn't (fruit), people recall the "odd one out" (🍉) much better.

That makes intuitive sense, right? As Seth Godin points out, you'll notice and remember the purple cow in the pasture way better than the brown or white ones. 

So what does this mean for marketers?

Easy, you can be clever with design. Make the thing you want people to notice and remember be visually different than the rest.

That can be your product or brand, a feature, a price option, or an ad.

Ways you can do this:

1. For physical products in stores, be like a tube of Pringles instead of another bag of potato chips.
2. For brands, choose an entirely different aesthetic than competitors, like Liquid Death's heavy metal vibe.
3. For price options, make the tier you really want people to buy visually different than the other options.
4. Comparisons, have your product compared to competitors and make them all black and white (drab) and yours in full color (exciting and noticeable).

Be as creative as you can be with this. 

Most brands play it safe and do what everyone else does. But the wild and creative stuff will make you stand out and be remembered.

Stories are powerful.

They capture our attention, and carry with them powerful lessons with enough context to help us envision how they're relevant to our lives and how to apply them.

Compare these two pieces of copy:

The first focuses on the what.

The second is a simple story that illustrates why someone should use the tutoring service. 

But imagine instead the story was:

‍"Little Johnny, a 10-year-old boy in New Hampshire, liked to ride bikes, collect pennies in his stomach, and crush cans of Liquid Death.

Oh which reminds me, I don't really like the UX of Liquid Death. I can't close the can and throw it into my bag after opening it!

Anyway, did I mention Little Johnny was not doing so well in Math class? Well, his parents Suzy and Bob, an engineer and a doctor, are deeply ashamed...blah blah tutoring blah blah he's doing well now!"

Snore, right?

Wes Kao (founder of Maven and altMBA) says to find your story's MVB (Minimum Viable Backstory). Find the perfect amount of context to set the stage—and cut the rest.

For example, that camping trip where you almost got eaten by a bear:

So tell stories in your copywriting, but cut out excess context. Your audience will be more captivated. And your message won't get lost in a sea of irrelevant details.

People hate paying for shipping. In fact, 48% of US shoppers abandon shopping carts due to the shipping costs.

The classic workaround is to offer free shipping at a threshold like $75, which pushes people to add a few more things to the cart.

BUT, if it's someone's first purchase, maybe they don't want to make a $75 risk instead of a $25 risk. So here are some other options:

1. Offer free shipping for first-time purchases

Particularly if they're buying a "sample pack." This will let them make a test purchase to see if they like it. Then a $75+ order in the future is less risky.

Of course, you'll definitely get people trying to game this by creating new accounts each time—so it's not an ideal solution.

2. Offer a "free shipping" subscription

According to a recent study, a flat-rate subscription for free shipping can boost revenue per customer by 34%. The obvious example of this is Amazon Prime.

Each order will be lower value on average, but subscribers will order more often. Over the course of a year, this nets out to more revenue.

But, you can only really do this if you have a variety of products (like Amazon) or you sell consumable products they need to keep replenishing.

3. Just bake in the price of shipping

If your product costs a decent amount, and they order relatively infrequently, just bake shipping into the cost. If I bought a mattress from Casper and they charged me $100 to ship it, I'd be quite annoyed.

Charge me $100 more for the mattress and I will likely think the bed is more comfortable—thanks to its increased perceived value.

Humans are not logical. Quite the opposite. Clever marketers know this and leverage it.

This is why marketing and behavioral sciences expert, Rory Sutherland, says to focus on "perceived value" over actual value.

Here's how you do that:

#1. Specificity

A painkiller that's for "back pain" can be more effective at relieving back pain than a generic painkiller, even if it has the exact same ingredients.

It's more effective because we believe it will be. The classic placebo effect.

#2. Cost

An expensive painkiller is more effective—again even if the ingredients are identical. (Waber et al. – 2008)

Same goes for the taste of wine. That $100 bottle will taste better than the $10 bottle—even if they're the same wine with different labels.

#3. Packaging and presentation

There's a reason why Apple invests heavily into its packaging and unboxing experience—a premium package subconsciously signals that the contents are premium.

And a glass of wine will taste better in France on your honeymoon, than from a bag on a couch by yourself on a Tuesday night.

#4. Exclusivity and scarcity

If there's something you can't have, your perceived value of it often increases. There's nothing inherently more valuable about a First Edition Charizard Pokemon card besides the fact that you don't have one, and very few others do.

This is why "limited editions" and "this is the lowest price it'll ever be" are effective.

#5. Brand storytelling

The brand TOMS used to donate a pair for every pair bought. This story of social impact increased the perceived value beyond just the physical shoe.

Many people paid more to get the good feeling of having "done the right thing" even if the shoe itself was no better..

#6. Social proof

If you're a soccer/football fan, and you know this ice cream flavour is Lionel Messi's favorite, you're going to desire it more. You'd probably even pay extra.

Or, if you know that it's the number one selling car in the world, clearly it must be pretty good and you'll be willing to pay more for it than an average-selling car.

Takeaway

This isn't about tricking people—perceived value is still value.

If someone is more satisfied after purchasing shoes because they feel good about someone in need getting a new pair of shoes, then you've enhanced their experience of shoes on a completely other level.

Or if their back pain goes away, or their wine tastes better, then the increased cost or the slight "trickery" still led to a better outcome.

Just make sure that the claims you're making are true!

Social ads (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) have a big advantage over Search, Display, and YouTube Ads.

The ads come packed with social proof—likes and comments. The more positive engagement you have on them, the better the ads will perform.

A really good ad for a good product will accumulate organic engagement—but this can take a while. And if you’ve set up your campaign targeting to exclude current customers, the chances of getting positive reviews from happy customers is slim to none.

One workaround: ask satisfied customers to like your ads and leave testimonials as comments. Here’s how:

#1. Automate an email to go out after purchase, e.g., a few days or two weeks. Adjust the timeframe based on when someone is going to be most excited about your product.

For example, if you sell a product that gives immediate benefits, like a cell phone case, they'll be most excited in the first week. But for project management software, it's gonna take them a lot longer to fall in love with it—so trigger it after a "magic moment."

#2 In your email, ask whether customers enjoy your product.

Provide two clickable options: yes or no.

Clicking “yes” sends them to a page asking them to like your ad and leave a comment. Encourage participation by offering an incentive like a coupon or store credit.

If using Facebook, here's how to grab the URL of the ad:

Clicking “no” should lead to a one-question survey asking for feedback.  

(Might as well do some customer research in the process so you can improve your product.

Important: Do this with your best-performing ads. Incentivized engagement won't turn a "meh" ad into a "WOW" ad. So start with a "WOW" ad and amplify it.

If you're older than 30, you probably remember late-night informercials for knives and exercise equipment. 

"You might pay $100. You might even pay $200! But we're selling it for just $39.99 for the next 20 minutes.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! If you order in the next 10 minutes, we'll give you a second knife, and a knife sharpener worth $20 for free." 

Here's how that worked:

1. They price anchored you at $100 or even $200.
2. $39.99 seems cheap in comparison—what a deal.
3. But they "quantity anchored" you at 1 being 39.99. Now they offer 2 for the same price!
4. Oh wait, AND a $20 knife sharpener too? I'd be crazy to not order several. 
5. For good measure, they added time pressure to get you to order right away—at 1 AM while your partner is asleep and not there to talk sense into you.

These were really effective.

We can use similar sales tactics, just in a less obvious and cringe way. 

Here's what Alex Hormozi recommends for creating effective "bonus offers" on sales calls:

Psychologically, if there’s all these bonuses, the buyer will think: “Well, the core offer has to be more valuable than all these bonuses."

And if you assign a price point to the bonuses that exceed that of the core offer, it’ll become a no-brainer—like an extra $40 knife and a $20 knife sharpener.

Everyone loves to say, "Let's run an A/B test!"

But it's actually not the right move in many cases—particularly for startups. Make sure you can answer “yes” to these 7 questions before and after running an experiment:

Before

#1. Is your hypothesis testable?

Testable: “If we change our landing page header, our CTR will increase.”

Not testable: “If we change our landing page header, site visitors will like it better.”

That’s subjective and not measurable.

#2. Have stakeholders committed to abiding by the results?

We tend to reject outcomes that contradict our beliefs (called the Semmelweis Reflex, for gross reasons). That can be a problem if an experiment’s results are at odds with HIPPOs: highest-paid people’s opinions.

So ask: Are the HIPP actually willing to change it?

#3. Is the test doable?

Be realistic about the amount of time and resources it’ll take to reach statistical significance. If you don't have high volume, it probably isn't. Use this calculator to find out

#4. How can we make sure results are reliable?

Pay attention to Twyman's Law: Any figure that looks interesting or different is usually wrong.

Be very skeptical of the results, particularly if they're surprising.

After

#5. Are there clear cause and effect?

People shop more when it’s cold in the UK. That doesn’t mean they shop more because it’s cold. It probably has more to do with the holidays.

Correlation is not causation. Drill into the deeper reason.

#6. Have we gotten the most value out of it?

Your results could affect your market, product roadmap, future experiments, and entire growth strategy. One way to increase experiment value is to share your findings with your entire team.

#7. Are our experiments truly driving decision making at our company?

Are you just doing them to checking them off of a to-do list? Or is it actually something that's driving decision making? If not, they’re not worth the resources you’re putting into them.

And as a handy reference, here's a graphic!

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If you've never seen it, the Will It Blend? YouTube channel is one of the viral greats. For years they'd use their blenders to rip apart different everyday objects:

But what exactly makes a campaign like this spread and get 293,926,912 views? And for a boring old blender company, Blendtec, no less.

Jonah Berger (professor at the Wharton School) outlines in his book, Contagious, that we share content because of:

1. Social currency. Sharing it makes us look smart, cool, or interesting to our peers. For example: the ridiculousness of a blender tearing up a brand new iPad.
2. Triggers. A stimulus in our environment prompts us to talk about it. For example: a friend busts out their blender to make a smoothie—or mentions their breakfast.
3. Emotion. When we care, we share. Activating emotions like anger, excitement, amusement, and awe drive action more than happiness, sadness, and contentment. For example, the amusement and awe we get watching marbles get pulverized.
4. Public. Can others see that people are using or engaging with the product? It's hard to emulate the behavior of others if we can’t see it. For example, we see the millions of views on the videos.
5. Practical value. We believe it to be legitimately useful to someone—even better if it's niche and we can think of "just the right person this'll help." For example, knowing that this blender is more than enough to grind up your smoothie.
6. Story. What broader narrative can this be wrapped in? Embed ideas and products into stories that people want to tell. Make your message so integral to the narrative that they can’t tell the story without it. Like the blender that's able to rip apart a crowbar.

Contrast this instead to Blendtec making videos that simply talked about the tech specs (5 speeds, 1hp motor, etc) and showed it effortlessly make a mango smoothie.

BORING! Who cares, right?

If you want people to talk about your product, infuse your marketing campaigns with these elements to drastically increase the chance of it going viral (and driving sales).

YouTube is arguably the best social channel to grow a presence on. It's massive, it builds a ton of affinity, you generate ad revenue, and videos can get views for years (unlike a tweet).

If you don't know Ali Abdaal, he has over 4.5M subscribers on YouTube—and generated $4.6M in revenue and $2M in profit in 2022.

One of the main ways he's generated that revenue is by teaching people to grow on YouTube, here are his top 15 lessons after 6 years posting regularly:

We recently ran a market research survey for one of our clients.

We used Survey Monkey to pay for respondents from their network, who were selected based on specific demographic (age, location) and firmographic (job) criteria, given the client's limited existing audience.

Honestly, the answers were pretty bad—most were unusable.

This outcome isn't entirely surprising, given that survey participants are typically paid per completed survey—they're incentivized to race through them as quickly as possible. Same goes for incentivizing people with $25 Amazon gift cards

To address the issue, we decided to do something unusual: We added a skill testing math question at the beginning of the survey. Nothing hard, just simple addition of two 2-digit numbers.

As we expected, this caused a huge drop-off at the start. But the quality of the remaining responses improved dramatically – they were well-thought-out and highly useful. 

The working theory is that the question:

1. Weeded out those only interested in answering as fast as possible, or
2. Forced participants to briefly pause and reflect, setting a more thoughtful tone for the rest of the survey.

Either way, it significantly improved the results of the survey.

If you run incentivized surveys, consider adding some mental friction to the process.

We're naturally attracted to and influenced by people who are similar to us, or a have a shared identity that we value.

For example, if I meet someone online who is from my hometown in Canada, or is from Ireland (because I have an Irish passport), or went through YC, or studied at the same university, or has an aussie shepherd—it immediately makes me feel closer to them.

This phenomenon is called the Unity Principle. Here are four ways to leverage it:

#1. Share personal stories to build affinity‍

The founder of a fitness startup can share a personal story of struggling with their weight.

The personal story creates a sense of shared identity (past struggle with weight). Other people with similar weight control issues can see themselves in the founder's story, feel a sense of unity, and are therefore more likely to trust the exercise program and sign up for it. 

Just make sure the story is true.

#2. Highlight a cause you care about

Patagonia talks a lot about their cultural values like environmental activism, transparency,  and community:

If you value those things too, you're more likely to purchase a Patagonia jacket instead of a North Face jacket because you feel a sense of kinship with the brand.

#3. Loyalty programs or "group name"

Raise up and label your best customers with loyalty programs and special perks. 

Even better if you give members a special name. Like how Lady Gaga fans are called Little Monsters, or how Ship30for30 cohort members are called "shippers." If you give people a label they'll feel more connected to each other—and to you.

#4. Lean into geographical/cultural unity

Ryan Reynolds goes by the handle VancityReynolds on social media. "Vancity" is the nickname for Vancouver. 

I'm confident that due to this, Vancouverites (and Canadians broadly) have a stronger affinity for him because he proudly wears his Vancouver-ness. An easy way to get millions of people on his side without upsetting anyone in the process. 

To learn more about the Unity Principle and more pre-suasive techniques, Katelyn Bourgoin created a great free, email course on how to Pre-sell with Pre-suasion.

Nearly six years ago, before Substack, we had a client at our agency who helped creators offer premium, members-only content on their WordPress sites. 

Their budget was limited, and the total market was relatively small: WordPress creators who monetized their audience with memberships. So ads and content were not a good fit.

We opted to grow their business using cold email.

But as you know, almost all cold emails are terrible and instantly deleted.

You know when they're not? When they:

1. Look like regular emails from people you know
2. Talk about solving a huge pain point you actually have

For #1, we wrote in a casual tone. For #2, we did our homework. 

We paid for scrapers and virtual assistants to go through lists of WordPress sites that sold memberships and label them based on the tool they were using. We did research into the top objections people had about each tool—likely their biggest headaches as creators.

In our emails, we called out those headaches and highlighted how our client's tool would relieve them. 

Another common objection was the headache of migrating. So we offered to do it for free.

Our response rate was nearly 80%. And we booked tons of sales demos.

To make cold emails work, do your homework, and speak to your prospects' biggest headaches that you know they have.

If you’re struggling to prioritize the content you create, you probably don’t have a well-defined content center of gravity. That's the core element that the rest of your content strategy is built around.

Defining your center of gravity (COG) helps inform the direction of your strategy.

Below are a few different COGs, plus companies built around them.

Keywords (SEO): Companies create content around the keywords their audience searches for. That typically includes blogs, white papers, and FAQs.

This is the most traditional COG—which also means a lot of people think of it as the default content strategy. But growth agency CEO Ethan Smith advises holding off on SEO unless you have 1,000+ visits a day from non-SEO sources and 1,000+ referring domains. Otherwise, reaching SEO success is a slow grind. 

Example: HubSpot has written content about nearly every possible keyword related to sales or marketing.

Use-case content: Think customer stories, webinars, templates, and other formats homing in on user pain points.

The goal is to provide solutions to those pain points with your content. This strategy is often informed by speaking to customers and determining common problems.

Example: Besides creating guides and templates, the productivity software company Scribe also runs a Slack group to understand user needs. 

Podcast: Repurposing content is the name of the game with a podcast as your COG.

Using this strategy, you might turn interview transcripts into blog posts or newsletters, and publish short audio/video clips on social media. You leverage smart things said on the pod. 

Example: The media company Testimonial Hero doesn’t rely on full-time writers to create content. It repurposes snippets from its podcast as YouTube videos and LinkedIn ads.

–––

These aren’t the only possible COGs out there. Find a core format that's ideal for your product/industry, and use that to inform how you build and distribute your content.

Runners end races with a sprint finish, getting faster as they approach the finish line. The chance of them quitting plummets.

This is an example of the goal gradient effect. We become more invested in completing a task when we think the end is getting closer.

It’s yet another reason why reducing uncertainty during the checkout process is so important. If a shopper doesn’t know how long it’ll take to complete a purchase, they’ll miss that final sprint-to-the-finish-line burst of investment. 

And be more likely to abandon their shopping cart.

The easiest way to leverage this effect is to display a progress indicator during your signup or checkout process, such as the percentage of steps completed, the number of steps left, or a checklist. That way, shoppers know exactly how long until they can sit back and celebrate their new purchase.

Here are two examples, from Adobe and HelloFresh (I think HelloFresh's specificity is better):

You can also use encouraging copy before and during the signup/checkout process to let users know how close they are to finishing. For instance:

• “Signing up will only take three minutes.”
• “You’re halfway done.”
• “Almost there! Just one more question…”
• “Last step: Where should we send X?”

If you're on Shopify, you can use an app like iCart for this.

There’s a reason Skittles wants us to taste the rainbow instead of seeing it.

Skittles’ famous slogan “Taste the rainbow” is a great example of using a sensory experience to make you want some sugary treats right away.

Imagine instead of encouraging you to taste the rainbow, Skittles said “See the rainbow.” 

You probably wouldn’t be as tempted to impulse-buy a bag.

The reason? In ads, some senses are more likely than others to drive faster conversions. That’s according to a study led by researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of Washington.

• Proximal senses like touch and taste lead to earlier purchases.
• Distal senses like sight and sound lead to more delayed purchases.

In one of the study’s experiments, participants saw fictional restaurant reviews that emphasized either: 1) taste/touch, or 2) sound/vision. The taste/touch participants were significantly more likely to book reservations closer to the present date.

In another experiment, participants read ad copy for a festival that highlighted either taste (“You will taste the amazing flavors…”) or sound (“You will listen to the amazing sounds…”).

People who read the taste version had higher interest in attending the festival that weekend, whereas sound folks were more likely to be interested in going to the festival…next year.

Takeaway: If you want your ads to drive immediate sales, create a touch- or taste-based sensory world in them. Either with words or imagery.

If you've ever used Instagram, you've probably seen people add 30 hashtags to their posts and nothing else for their caption.

A recent study that analyzed 65,000 Reels and 180,000 posts on Instagram has two big findings on what helps content perform better:

#1. Hashtags help.

A Reel with >1 hashtag has on average 30% more reach (and about 18% more engagement) than one that has no hashtags.

The optimal number of hashtags falls between 2 and 4.

So use some, but don't do 30. 

And of course, make them relevant to the content.

#2. Posts benefit from long captions. Reels do not.

I was both surprised and not surprised by the results below.

I wasn't surprised that short captions dominate on Reels. Videos are fairly self-explanatory, and Reels are a quick dopamine hit and move on. 

But I was surprised by the effectiveness of 1,000+ character captions across posts and Reels. That's starting to get to LinkedIn post length—something you don't often see on Instagram.

So go ahead and tell a story and add context along with your posts.

People often talk about sales copywriting frameworks. A very popular one is PAS: Problem → Agitation → Solution.

For example:

• Problem: "Tens of millions of people have been laid off in 2023."
• Agitation: "And the recession still isn't even over—more are coming."
• Solution: "Here's how to make yourself invaluable at your company:"

You make readers think about a problem. You make the problem seem worse. Then offer a solution to that problem now that it's top of mind.

Now that you know the PAS framework, you'll see it being used a lot. 

To extend PAS and apply it to a multi-email sales campaign, Jon Brosio recommends:

• Email 1: Establish a problem (Problem)
• Email 2: Amplify consequences (Agitation)
• Email 3: Share a transformation story (Tease the Solution)
• Email 4: Back up your offer with social proof. (Prove efficacy of the Solution)
• Email 5: Finally reveal the offer and show how it works. (Solution)
• Email 6: Create urgency by limiting the time or added bonuses. 

The next time you're setting up a sales email campaign, try this framework out.

Threads (Instagram's Twitter clone) is officially the fastest growing app of all time—hitting 100M users in just 5 days. For context, Twitter has 250M users total.

But... it's completely unclear if this is going to be the next TikTok or Clubhouse. 

Every creator, founder, and social media manager is asking themselves, "should I be posting on Threads right now??"

The benefits of doing so could be:

1. Land grab. Typically when a new social platform launches, it's easier to grow on it due to reduced competition.
2. New audience. Anecdotally, only my weird tech friends use Twitter. Yet everyone I know uses Instagram. Threads could give access to a new group of people.

But social expert, Jack Appleby, argues that the best strategy right now is actually to do almost nothing. 

Because frankly we have no idea if this could die out in a few months. It's not like Threads offers any unique value over Twitter. In fact, it currently offers less.

So at the moment, the risk-reward ratio tips towards more the risk category of wasting your time and resources. That being said, Jack does recommend doing the following:

1. Create an account, update your bio, and add a link to your site.
2. Do one post as a placeholder so the account isn't blank.

That way if someone searches for you, they find you, and you avoid a negative experience.

But then just wait a few months and see what happens. If it proves itself to have a ton of organic usage and a unique value prop, then great, invest then. 

Hi, it’s Joyce 👋—here to break down another piece of marketing spotted in the wild. This time, direct mail from my local Chevrolet dealership.

This mailer set off my market-y senses for a few reasons:

• The personalized gift card. That’s an actual gift card—and it even has my name. The personalization leverages the endowment effect—when a sense of ownership enhances value. In this case, a gift card with my name makes me value it more than if it were just a generic “save $35” coupon.
  
  
• The QR codes. They help make it easier to take action—no need to type in a phone number a URL yourself, you just scan a code to book an appointment. Going one step further, the dealership includes instructions in big bold font so that the less tech-savvy can still take advantage—a great call since people of all ages own Chevies.
  
  
• Who can redeem this offer. The offer isn’t just for existing customers: “all Chevrolet owners we have yet to assist” are also welcome. It’s the perfect way of encouraging recipients to share the deal with Chevy-owning friends.

All that good stuff aside, the copy is... well, not great. Here’s how I’d clean it up.

Here's how we improved it:

1. Straight to the point. No flowery and meaningless copy.
2. Shorter paragraphs and lists. Making it way easier to scan and digest.
3. Highlighting the most important parts—expiration dates, phone numbers, and offer.

People have short "consideration spans"—particularly for something they randomly got in the mail and are trying to decide whether to huck into the junk mail bin (or keep scrolling). 

Make it as easy as possible for people to get the point.

I still wouldn’t trust AI to generate or write these insights. Or our playbooks. Or our course material. Or our teardowns. (Maybe for outlines and edits, but not core writing.)

BUT, it could be good for more mechanical SEO content and not “thought leader” content. 

A glossary that goes deep on industry/niche specific words can be an SEO treasure trove. If you’ve ever searched for anything related to investing, you’ve probably landed on Investopedia's glossary. It’s massive. Every term is defined in great detail.

According to SEO expert Jake Ward, most brands barely invest in glossaries due to the cost-benefit of paying someone to write them. That means they’re generally easy to outrank.

Assuming $0.05 per word (the low end for writers), 1,200 words per article, and 300 glossary items, it’s a $18k investment minimum ($600 per article). And a ton of time. 

With AI tools you can generate them for about $1k total ($3.33 per article).

It's a fast way to generate a ton content that's underserved and targeted to your niche.‍

BUT here's the problem with this strategy.‍

This is 100% a growth hack. As we shared last week, SEO is fundamentally going to change for top-of-funnel queries once Google bakes in generative AI responses. Glossary items are definitely going to be one of the first to be answered adequately by AI. 

So sure, you can use it quickly scale your SEO today. But it will not last as AI quickly develops and gets integrated into search. It could still be worth it given the low investment cost, but don't expect it to be a long-term growth solution.

To hook people, you need to tap into their emotions.

One of the best ways to do that is to eloquently put a voice to an unvoiced concern, frustration, or opinion.

You want people to say:

1. "Finally, someone said what I've been thinking!"
2. "That’s so damn true."

Finally, someone said it

Many of the comments on the following post were people saying: "Yes, finally somebody said this thing that I've been thinking."

Chris clearly hit an emotional nerve. People are tired of companies simply virtue signaling, rather than fixing a fundamental problem.

Because this post resonated, it got thousands of responses.

That’s so damn true

Here, Andrew tapped into a feeling that every entrepreneur has had:

We all know that dumb luck and great timing play a huge part in success. We just don’t always say it.

So when someone else does, we go, "That’s so damn true."

For eloquent hooks, you need to be able to:

• Identify a concern that people haven't adequately voiced, which means keeping a pulse on trends like shared frustrations
• Give voice to that concern in a way that rings true

If you can nail it, it really works.

You could be quoted for years to come as various accounts share your post. 

We recently launched a free email course on crafting un-ignorable hooks. Join 860 others learning how top creators hook our attention—with tons of examples. This was a sneak peek 👀

Many ecomm founders think of product images as a one-and-done investment.

They schedule professional photo shoots, then use the pics from them for years.

But product photos have a major impact on purchasing decisions, so it's worth experimenting with them. Here are five ideas. 

#1. Use something for size comparison (show your product in context).

Even if your product description includes dimensions, people will understand your product's size better if you show it near something familiar. For example, if you’re selling a picture frame, show it over a couch in the living room.

Don't make people think—uncertainty is a conversion killer.

#2. Test photos without smiling models.

Product images with smiling models are overdone. So test photos in a natural scenario. Consider how hotels show photos of rooms without anybody in them, making it easier for you to picture yourself in those rooms. 

#3. Try different image sizes.

Size can influence our perception of value. In one study, a dress shirt seemed more valuable when shown in a small image, whereas a hard drive's perceived value increased with a bigger image. It’s worth testing different image sizes and the amount of white space in your photos.

#4. Include complementary products.

If you plan to capture your product in a natural scenario, why not include other relevant products to show how they benefit each other? This is a major upsell opportunity—just remember to link those other products shown.

#5. Have fun with it—it's just a test.

Use Midjourney, Photoshop, and other AI and design tools to throw your product into strange scenarios. Like a watch on Honest Abe's wrist.

For that matter, if you can't afford actual product photos for initial or test images, play around with AI. If something does really well, consider staging an actual photo.

Although ChatGPT can already answer a lot of search queries, most people still don't use AI as their default search tool.

That's soon to change.  

Google is rolling out generative AI answers at the top of its regular search results, which could kill the need to click to a website for most queries.

Here are SEO expert Eli Schwartz's recommendations for a new strategic approach to SEO.‍

#1. Focus on mid- and bottom-funnel keywords 

AI will adequately answer basic and broad questions.

Examples: "What is a demand curve?" "How long are Instagram stories?"

Searches like "hotels Vegas Strip" will spit out lists of hotels. On the other hand, "Usher Las Vegas" is further down the funnel—the person searching for that is either looking for reviews of the show or interested in booking it. They're more likely to click on a result, rather than read an AI response.

#2. Focus on revenue from SEO, not volume

Because a lot of "tire kicker" searches will be handled by AI, traffic and clicks will go down. So revenue is a better metric to track SEO success.

#3. Use "People also ask" for content ideas rather than keywords

"People also ask" is a window into the types of queries people are trying to get answers to, and they're generally longer-tail (and more specific). It'll be useful for spotting mid- and bottom-funnel queries that can help generate content ideas.

#4. Prioritize "domain authority" less and relevance and topical authority more

Backlinks from sites with high domain authority were once useful for the most competitive search terms. That might not be the case anymore, since those competitive broad terms will be addressed by AI.

So instead of fighting (or paying) for backlinks from Forbes and TechCrunch, focus on backlinks from less popular sites that are highly relevant and specific to your niche.