Now the average is ~0.35%.

A 222x decrease!

Andrew Chen calls this the "Law of Shitty Clickthroughs." Essentially, a new marketing tactic's effectiveness will be short lived. We're drawn to novelty (like the flashing banner ad), but as soon as it becomes common, we tune it out and it stops working.

That's why with any marketing, you need to stand the f*&k out (as Louis Grenier would say). 

But this is particularly true with ads where you're blowing money on every impression.

You need to not trigger the "this is an ad" reflex.

Here are some ad types that currently help with that:

1. Customer reactions

Show a user (or actor's) reaction to using the product. 

• Dramatic expressions grab attention.
• A lower quality "iPhone" shot or video feels more organic. 
• You can showcase your product's "wow" or "magic" moment.

2. Customer testimonials

Social proof is powerful. Share customer text reviews or testimonials. Even better, share a video testimonial. We use Testimontial.to to collect ours—like this one from Alex M H Smith about Unignorable.

3. Unboxing

People love unboxing videos. Oddly, even if it's for a product they know nothing about. There's built in mystery and curiosity, and opening up new products is a pleasurable moment for people so we have positive associations with them.

Cut your video to highlight the most exciting moments in the first few seconds.

4. Product walkthrough

Have a customer, influencer, actor, or just a team member do a selfie-style walkthrough using the product. It feels natural and let's you show off the product.

With all of these, make sure to have a good "hook" to get people invested quickly.

And if you're a startup spending <$50k per month in ads (or looking to get them started), our new service, Ad Labs, we can run the ads for you.

40~60% of users who sign up will never actually use your product.

So, nailing the onboarding experience is a key way to increase conversion and retention.

Wes Bush shares what he calls the "Bowling Alley Framework." Here's what that means:

Wes breaks this down in 3 phase:

Phase 1: Build your straight line path

Your user signs up, and hits the product (current state). You want them to get to the "magic moment" where they discover the value your product brings them (desired outcome).

1. Step 1: Map out the current path they take from Current State to Desired Outcome.
2. Step 2: Label each step as Green (necessary), Yellow (advanced features, can be introduced later), and Red (can be removed completely, like a phone number field).
3. Step 3: Remove all Reds. Delay all Yellows. You want nothing but green lights.

Phase 2: Create Product Bumpers

These are elements within the product that push people towards the desired outcome.

1. Welcome Message: Welcome them in, restate value props, and motivate them.
2. Product Tour: This is a step-by-step tour that hand holds them to the Desired Outcome. Let people opt out if they don't want that.
3. Progress Bars: Show their progress to being fully up and running to illustrate they still have stuff to step up. It gamifies onboarding.
4. Checklists: Similar to progress bars, show a checklist of the steps remaining.
5. Tooltips: Have tooltips pop up to show them where to click next.
6. Empty states: If parts of the UI aren't ready to go yet, have a message that explains why it's empty and link to what they need to do it fill it.

Phase 3: Create Conversational Bumpers

Product bumpers only work if they're actually in the product. Often, people will sign up and then bounce.

Conversational bumpers are to bring them back into the product.

This includes a lot of different email types, like onboarding, welcome, case studies, trial expiration, and post-trial surveys.

For a deeper dive into all 3 phases, check out Wes' full article.

Chewy Thompson started a daily fitness challenge on his Instagram 8 days ago. Here's his follower progress:

• Day 1: 520 followers
• Day 2: 526 followers
  
• Day 3: 535 followers
  
• Day 4: 644 followers
  
• Day 5: 1938 followers
  
• Day 6: 16000 followers
  
• Day 7: 50,000 followers
  
• Day 8: 88,000 followers
  
• Current: 128,000 followers

The premise is:

• For every 1 follower total, he walks 1 inch each day.
• For every 1000 followers total, he does 1 pushup each day.
• At the end of each daily video he says "I'm deleting this channel in (365-X, where X is days into the challenge) days unless I reach 1 million followers"

At the end of the challenge he'll be doing 1,000 push ups and walking 15 miles per day. Which at this rate is the end of this week—he struggled even just doing 1 pushup.

I think this works so well because:

1. It's gamified, the more followers the more he has to do.
2. People love watching people suffer. Mr Beasts most popular and highest retention videos are of him suffering (in a box underground).
3. It's a heroes journey and people get to follow along and see him get fit.
4. He has this big goal of working out with John Cena and people want to help him.
5. There's stakes. He'll delete his account if he doesn't hit 1M followers.

Of course, there's more to it. Here are the 6 core ingredients of viral content.

Copywriting is one of the most important skills.

Whether you're writing:

• Ads,
• Landing pages,
• Fundraising pitch decks,
• Cold emails,
• Social posts,
• Negotiations, or
• Speeches

You need to write clear, compelling copy if you want the person on the other end to take the action you'd like them to.

We created this cheatsheet that covers Hooks, Literary Devices, Tips, Post Types, and Frameworks. High-res version.

There are 3 fundamental elements to a potential viral content idea.

Most people when they create content stop after the first two:

Topic + Format + Creative Concept = Viral Content Idea

Let's dive into each and how they fit together:

#1. Topic

What are you writing or talking about? A person, a concept, a framework, an observation?

And, what emotion or outcome are you trying to achieve?

• Entertain
• Educate
• Inspire
• Surprise

#2. Format

How will you present this topic. This includes whether it's a text-only post, a video, a carousel, a podcast, or an image.

This also includes how you structure it, such as:

• X vs Y (comparing ideas)
• Analytical (deep-dive or teardown of something)
• Actionable (step-by-step breakdown on something)
• Present / Future (how things will be different)
• Interview
• Story

#3. Creative concept

The sky's the limit here. This can take the form of gamification, concept mashups, hair-brained ideas, gamification, or absurdism.

This is the realm of MrBeast. $1 to $1B yachts. Being hunted by an assassin. And putting someone alone in a circle for 100 days.

Most people don't add the creative concept. "5 tips to increase sales" is a topic with a common format. Nothing creative about it; therefore, unlikely to go viral.

An example

Billie Eilish (Topic) + Interview (Format) + Ask questions while she eats insanely spicy wings (Creative Concept) = Billie Eilish Freaks Out While Eating Spicy Wings

And 50,000,000 views. Exponentially higher than other videos on Billie Eilish.

You can't create the best ideas in a vacuum.

And everything you need to know about your customers and their needs, desires, and fears are on display somewhere online. Here's the S.C.A.R.F. method for finding them:

Social

Browse LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube (wherever your audience is)

Search for posts about your niche, topic, competitors, industry, and products.

• Read comments and pull out benefits and objections
• Write down 10 words creators use to describe problems

Competitors

Find 3 competitors and go through their website and social media accounts.

• Write down 5 powerful pieces of copy they use
• Scan product pages for unique selling ppints
• Use SEMrush to see their Google Ads
• Find their ads and click through the funnels

Affiliates

Affiliates are incentivized to learn how to pitch products.

Use Goole and SEO tools like SEMrush and ahrefs to find affiliates in your niche (or that mention your product or a competitor's product)

• If they talk about your product, note how they pitch it or how they review it.
• If not, see how they talk about competitors.

Reviews

If you have reviews for your product, export them into two lists:

• List 1: 1-3 stars, find objections
• List 2: 4-5  stars, find benefits

Visit competitor's and do the same.

Forums

Find relevant subreddits and forums (find them with google).

• Track most popular topics. Note objections, pain points, benefits.
• Focus on their desired lifestyle/outcome, the stories they tell, and the words they use to describe things.

Monthly: $49
Annual: $490

^ every startup product ever. 

It's simple, clean, and they save 17% by doing annual. And you guarantee 10 months of revenue and hopefully reduce churn. Win-win.‍

But, is it the right choice? 

Probably not.

You don't see this trends as often with established companies.

Daniel says the trick is to price your annual plan at slightly more than your average LTV for monthly users.

So, if your average monthly user stays around for 4 months ($49 each), price your annual plan at 5 months ($245).

Daniel did this at Codecademy, and claims it was their best tactic at increasing LTV and reducing churn.‍

Takeaway: Consider running this pricing experiment if your average monthly retention is less than 12 months. 

Another, counter-intuitive benefit

More mature companies have figured this out. Meaning you can estimate the average retention for mature software products. Examples that Daniel shares:

• Netflix: Only offers monthly plans. Their average user likely stays around for over 12 months (guilty). Spotify is the same.
• Headspace: $12.99/mo vs $69.99/yr. Ratio of 5.39, so their monthly users likely stay around for ~4 months.
• Calm: $14.99/mo vs $69.99/yr. Ratio of 4.67, so their monthly users likely stay around for ~3-4 months.

Build this into your competitor analysis process!

And check out Daniel's full write up here.

We decide with emotions.

Logic is often what we use to convince ourselves that our emotional decision is the right one, or to justify a past emotional decision.

Rory Sutherland shares a prime example in his book Alchemy. One of his clients was sending out physical letters asking for donations. Like all good marketers they A/B tested several different variations to see which brought in the most money:

1. Control. The regular letter asking for donations. 
2. Donation matching. They highlighted that the government would match their donations, effectively doubling the impact of their donation.
3. Heavier paper. They put the letters on higher quality, thicker paper.
4. Hand delivered. They highlighted that a volunteer hand-delivered to their door.
5. Horizontal opening. They used a special envelope that opened on the end, not on the typical long side of the envelope.

Variations 3 through 5 seem rather weird and extraneous to the whole point. And logically, the variation that highlighted the donation matching should do the best, right? You tell people that a $10 donation is actually $20, isn't that more motivating?

Wrong.

Variation #2 (donation matching) did worse than control. Variations 3 through 5 all beat the control, and the best was variation #5 (horizontal opening).

But if you asked those people why they donated, they'd probably say "it's a worthy cause, blah blah blah" and not "the weird envelope got my attention."

This is what Rory calls psycho-logical—logical in the context of human psychology. 

An ad example

We used this principle 6 years ago for a client of ours that sold powerful computers for machine learning/AI purposes. We made an ad variation that made no sense:

You wouldn't assume sloppily adding dog ears and nose onto a $10,000+ work computer would make it more likely that someone would purchase it.

Yet, this became one of their best-performing ads at the time.

It stopped the scroll and made them look a little closer. And no one else had done it. 

So be a little crazy with your ideas.

When you're starting a business, choosing a product, or even a topic for your personal content, you de-risk it by first identifying your unfair advantages.

A combination of unique assets and attributes that make you more likely to succeed.

The 5 ways you can have an "unfair advantage" are:

#1. Valuable Assets

Having money is an obvious unfair advantage. You can either fund your business, or at least work on it without stressing about paying rent.

Most don't have this one, obviously. A great way to start a business without a lot of money is by doing consulting or running an agency (like we did with Bell Curve).

#2. Knowledge and Education

95% of startup founders have a bachelor's degree or higher. 47% have a Master's or higher.

A degree can also be a disadvantage if you spent 4 years and $200,000 to get a degree that's not relevant to building a business. 

But, in general, knowing more is better. So learn learn learn. 

#3. Location and Timing

There's a billionaire who owns an island near me that made his money from working in telecommunications at the perfect time. He saw that mobile phones were coming and correctly predicted that telecom companies would need to place towers on top of a lot of random hills.

He quietly bought up a ton of these key properties. And then sold/leased them to telecom companies for insane amounts of money.

Study trends. Predict what will be needed if the trend continues. 

#4. Interpersonal Skills

85% of financial success comes from the ability to communicate effectively. Only 15% comes from technical skills or knowledge. 

Charisma can be learned: Give people your full attention. Work on projecting confidence. Genuinely care about others well-being.

#5. Prestige and Social Connections

Prestige is people's interpretation of your skills and status. A product launched by Bill Gates or Elon Musk is more likely to succeed just because a lot of people know and trust them.

Social connections are both "who you know" (do you know a bunch of rich investors, influencers, or potential high value first customers?), as well as your friend circle. Are you surrounded by other motivated, successful people, or are you surrounded by people who laugh at your ambition?

Choose your circles wisely. 

–––

Other examples of Unfair Advantages in the wild:

• Ali Abdaal was in Cambridge Medical School (a prestigious university) so had an unfair advantage making YouTube videos on how to get into medical school.
  
• Lex Fridman was an PhD AI researcher at MIT when he started his podcast, giving him access to some of the top AI researchers—including Elon Musk.
• Marc Andreessen went to the University of Illinois for computer science right after the US government dumped a ton of funding into specific universities for the development of the early Internet. Which then led to him creating Netscape. 
• And we have a big network of both founders and marketers, making it easy for us to launch a free matchmaking service for companies hiring agencies/freelancers.

Find your unfair advantage (or create one) and exploit it. 

A lot of startup landing pages are extremely confusing—particularly software. 

Way too often I hit a website and have no clue what they sell—even if I stick around and read all the features and benefits on the homepage.

Confused people bounce and never return.

A landing page needs to answer these questions to be successful:

1. What is the product?

What does it do and how does it solve a problem they have? Be extremely obvious.

Don't use fluffy filler words. Explain it like you would to grandma or nephew at Thanksgiving.

2. Is it right for me? Am I the target audience?

A tool that helps you "be more productive" is completely different if it's for a single parent, a corporate executive, or a solo creator.

Be clear whose problem the product solves—they'll feel more confident buying.

3. Is it legit? 

Or does it look like a phishing/scam site to get your credit card info?

Invest a little in design. 80/20 is fine. Question 4 also helps

4. Who else is using it? (Social proof)

People are more likely to buy if people and companies they respect are also customers. "Oh if Airbnb and Microsoft say it's good, it must be!"

And if you add links to tweets from real accounts, it'll be verifiably legit.

5. How much?

Tell them how much it’s gonna cost them. 

It's a waste of everyone's time if someone expects to pay $50/mo and gets quoted $5,000/mo after a 30-minute sales demo.

Bonus: Find clever ways to position it so that the price seems like a deal.

6. Where can I get help?

You can't anticipate every question, and no one reads every sentence on the page or FAQ.

Make it easy and obvious to contact you so you can answer their questions.

This also makes it seem more legit and that support is readily available. Use common questions to fix the copy on your landing page so fewer people ask it.

7. How do I take action?

What is the next step that you want the person to take? It should be obvious. 

Bonus: Match the CTA to the "temperature" of the lead.

If they're coming in cold, don't ask them to buy immediately. Get them on a newsletter or free trial. If this is a landing page for a retargeting campaign or email, drive to a sale.

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.

---

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.