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!

‍

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.