This newsletter curates growth insights from Demand Curve's community. It keeps you up-to-date on growth tactics.
This week we're covering podcast listener conversion, dwell time, mystery and intrigue, and E-A-T.
How to convert podcast listeners into email subscribers
Insight from Growth Marketing Today.
If you're using your podcast as an acquisition tool, you face a real problem: It's notoriously hard to get conversions.
But you can use scarcity and urgency to convert listeners to your email list and nurture them down funnel. How?
Tease limited-time downloads they can only get that week.
Here's loosely how “Growth Marketing Today” does this at the beginning of their podcast:
- Tease the episode highlights/benefits: “In this episode, you’ll learn x,y,z.” This hooks the listener.
- Then, explain how you can save them time: “And before we begin, we’ve put all the actionable takeaways into a free PDF. Why take notes when you can just get them from me?”
- Create Urgency: “Why get it now? Because once I publish next week’s episode, this goes back to costing $100.”
- CTA: Grab it in the link in the show-notes or on our website.
The scarcity (you can only get the PDF this week) combined with the low maintenance ask (all you have to do is download it from our site) gets people to act quickly.
And to save time turning podcast episodes into notes, you can use a tool like Descript to quickly transcribe the audio, then edit it down to the highlights.
And what about all the listeners who listen months or years later? Offer them something else when they hit your landing page. Something related and still useful.
Optimize LinkedIn posts for “dwell time” to increase reach
Insight from Demand Curve.
Your LinkedIn posts can get significantly more reach with this small tweak.
The LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes "dwell time”—a measurement of the amount of time a user spends viewing a post—when assessing virality.
More dwell time leads to more impressions.
You can lean into the algorithm by creating posts that people stop and spend time on.
Here’s how:
- Avoid single images in your post. Instead, upload a multi-page PDF with key insights or brief case studies on each page. Each page should flow into or introduce the next.
- In the body of your post, tease any surprising conclusions or data. Give your audience a reason to stick around to view the entire PDF.
Remember to only include outbound links in the comments section—the algorithm might demote content with outbound links in the body. You can mention the link in the body of your post so that your audience seeks it out.
Use mystery and intrigue to increase ecom conversion
Insight from Sleeknote.
Blasting out sale announcements feels straightforward and promotional. As a test, try teasing sales in advance so customers can’t wait to check their inbox:
- Blur out sale items. Chubbies does this for their Black Friday items, using playful copy and a CTA of ‘setting an alarm for tomorrow’ to see what surprise items are on sale.
- For physical products, try using a daily deal sequence leading up to a big sale.
• Most companies can’t run daily deals forever. But before a launch or big sale, it fosters intrigue and gets subscribers into the habit of clicking.
• Example: Poo-Pourri offers six different deals over 12 days before Christmas and promotes them in their emails.
In doing so, they create a curiosity gap, where the subscriber feels compelled to check back each day to see the next deal.
Note: This works well before big events like Black Friday/Cyber Monday. But better yet, you can create your own holiday like BarkBox does for “National Dog Day.”
When used sparingly, a little mystery and intrigue go a long way to drive clicks and sales.
E-A-T your content marketing
Insight from Google and OptinMonster.
Google has an acronym for content they tend to rank higher in search. It's E-A-T:
- Expertise: The content’s author is knowledgeable in their field.
- Authority: The content, site, and author are authoritative.
- Trustworthiness: The content, site, and author are reliable.
Google uses E-A-T to rate page quality, along with factors like website reputation and page purpose. According to Google, all high-quality content takes a “significant” amount of one or more of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill.
To improve your E-A-T score:
- Commission content from knowledgeable creators.
- Make sure claims are substantiated and sources reputable.
- Showcase your brand’s credentials and awards.
- Create an informative “about us” page.
- Respond to all reviews (not just the good ones).
If your content strategy is fast and furious, rethink your approach. A churned-out article won’t just hurt your brand reputation and thought leadership. It will make Google bury your content.
News and links
Influencer marketing tool: Instagram stories are often the best performing user-generated content (UGC) for paid ads. But they disappear after 24 hours—so many brands fail to save them. That's why a few of our friends (DC community members) created Archive App. It's a Shopify App that automatically saves and labels Instagram Stories and Feed posts that your brand gets tagged in. You can capture your UGC in the background and have it ready for when you need it. Try it out here.
Put our growth insights into action: If you find our growth insights and copywriting tactics useful, but you don't have time or resources to test them, we'd recommend checking out Northern Comfort. They're great at running experiments, reviewing, and implementing growth tactics for direct-to-consumer websites. You can reach out to them here.
Community spotlight: Delverise has been helping founders in the DC community with digital product launches and growth strategy. If you're a lean team launching a new product, we recommend you check them out here.
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