Product-led growth has been all the rage for the past few years. The concepts are simple:

• Have a great product 
• Make sure the product gets better when others use it too
• Let people customize their experience 

When you have those elements, a product grows itself and becomes hard to leave.

Individuals will often start using it and then invite their coworkers until eventually everyone in the company is hooked.

Think tools like Slack, Dropbox, Figma, Airtable, Miro, Canva, Superhuman, and Zapier.

Part of PLG is nailing the invitation email so that coworkers more readily sign up too.

Here's Elena Verna's breakdown of Slack's invitation email. Use it as a template:

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.

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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.