Entrepreneurs fail when they focus on businesses that don't provide value to people.

That's why nailing your value props is critical.

If you can tell a well-formed value prop story, it's a sign you’re creating something valuable.

Here’s the template. 

Example: Relationship Hero (relationship coaching SaaS)

• Describe a specific person with a specific problem: A 23-year-old male who can’t get a date.
• Describe their current best effort to solve their problem: He gets a Tinder account and does his best to convert matches into dates.
• Describe why it’s still a problem: His matches barely respond, and when they do, the conversation feels boring and forced. He uses it for one hour every day but only gets one date every two months.
• Describe how their life gets better thanks to you: Once Relationship Hero coaches guide him through writing his texts, he suddenly has much better conversations that result in a date each week.

This simple framework helps you validate a plausible business/product idea without having any market research or empirical evidence to show. (Although we recommend those for deeper analysis—talking to customers is incredibly important.)

You can then use that story on your website and marketing copy.

The vast majority of cold emails are ignored.

In the worst case, people flag your emails as spam (causing future emails to end up in spam), and have a negative impression of both you and your brand.

That's why Lemlist, a tool for automating email outreach, warns against doing "cold emails." Instead, they should be warm 🔥

What does that mean?‍

That means only reaching out to people who already have some idea of who you are, and have a positive association with you and your brand already.

For example, if you got a personalized message from your favorite influencer or celebrity, you'd welcome it, and not just flag it as spam. You'd happily respond.

To do that, sadly it's not a quick fix. Which is why most people don't do it. 

You have to:

1. Produce a lot of free content, say on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, podcast, etc.
2. Then engage with people who engage with you. And engage with others writing and commenting on relevant posts in your niche.
3. And then eventually DMing them a personalized message either to get to know each other, give them a free resource, or pitch an offer.

If you do this, your response rates will go from single digit to double digits.

Lemlist believes this so strongly that they encourage their entire team to be active on social media and build their own personal brands.

What motivates people to buy? Look to the psychology of spy recruitment for answers. 

Intelligence officers use an acronym to size up potential recruits’ motives:

• M = money
• I = ideology
• C = coercion
• E = ego

These also align pretty directly with the emotional triggers behind purchasing decisions.

Money

Emotional triggers this motive aligns with: greed and lust

Sadly, greed drives human behavior. Wealth, power, and social currency—all things people instinctively want.

Appeal to prospects' aspirations. Like this copy from Horst Studios: “Where the women you hate have their hair done.”

Ideology

Aligned with hope and a sense of belonging

Two thirds of Gen Zers will stop using—or even boycott—brands that clash with their values.

Speak to the values that matter to your audience.

Talk about values a lot. Two brands that do an A+ job with this: Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia.

Coercion

Aligned with guilt and fear

We don't actually recommend this one. Don't guilt people into buying your products. 

A better approach: Reveal how your product is the guilt-free alternative to the others that are out there. Especially if that benefit ties into your value props.

Ego

Aligned with vanity

A little flattery goes a long way.

Which one stands out the most?

We’ll bet it was the Pringles. Unlike the other two brands (and dozens of other chip brands that come in crinkly rectangular bags), Pringles come in a tube.

This is a pattern interrupt—something that breaks the norm.

Pattern interrupts grab attention.

They draw your eye even if they're inherently LESS noticeable than the competition:

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🦾🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

And in a crowded market, they make your business stand out.

To get in front of more leads, try incorporating pattern interrupts. Some ideas:

1) Like the Pringles example, give your product distinctive packaging.

2) If most companies in your industry have a certain aesthetic, make yours the complete opposite.  

Think of how Liquid Death embraced hardcore branding in the minimalist world of bottled water.

3) Use unusual imagery in your ads.

Ever seen Squatty Potty’s pooping unicorn commercial? Or Poo-Pourri’s “Girls Don’t Poop” ad? These videos got a lot of attention because of their weird visuals. (The bathroom humor just happens to be a coincidence—but we’re not not saying it’s worth a shot.)

4) Along the same lines, use contrasting colors in your ads.

The agency Biddyco used neon colors in its Facebook ads for the cereal brand Magic Spoon. Compared to everyday photos from friends and family in your feed, these bright shades were a total scroll-stopper.

5) Plan a different kind of event.

Instead of organizing a generic marketing conference, the SaaS brand SparkToro hosted an event where each speaker told a story they'd never shared before. Sessions were short—30 minutes max—and nothing was recorded. This made speakers more comfortable with being vulnerable and incentivized people to tune in live.

Good copywriters know the power of future pacing. That's a technique that encourages readers to visualize the positive results your product will help them achieve.

Example: A coding bootcamp can say, "Learn to become a programmer so you can earn a 6-figure tech salary and work from home."

That paints a picture of a big win after completing the bootcamp. It's easy to visualize.

Just one problem with future pacing: It doesn’t work well on skeptical buyers. Their objections cancel out the rosy picture.

To win over skeptics, give instant gratification in your copy. Highlight the good things that are just around the corner. 

Disney does this by making its vacation-booking process just as appealing as the trip that’s months away.

A few examples:

• "Disney Cruise Line gives families dreams to wake up excited about." → Become your family's hero.
  
• Page headings like "Discover Value in Vacation Packages," "Trip Planning Made Easy," and "Book with Confidence" → Enjoy the trip-planning experience.
  
• "With over 50 different hotels to choose from, you're sure to find one that fits your family’s travel style, size, and budget!" → Easily find a place that fits your needs.

As a result, skeptical prospects perceive an immediate reward from booking.

To deliver instant gratification in your copy, frame the purchase itself—and not just the product—as a win. For instance:

• “Order X now, and you’ll feel relief knowing you made the right decision.”
  
• “By saying yes to X, you’ll be one step closer to achieving your big goal.”
  
• “Buy X now, and you’ll wake up tomorrow knowing you finally did something about it!”

Your prospects may still have reservations about your product. But they’ll be more likely to act when you sell them immediate confidence and relief.

Duolingo has one of the best viral growth loops.

And it has nothing to do with the gamification they're known for.

What is it?

👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿
👉🏿👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👉🏾👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👈🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👉🏾 👉🏽 weirdness👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👉🏾👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👈🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👈🏿
👉🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👆🏿👈🏿 

They purposely make people translate really bizarre sentences.

I have an entire album of them on my phone. I send them to people all the time.

And I'm not the only one. People share them on Twitter constantly.

There's even a Twitter account with 100,000 followers called "Shit Duolingo Says."

Weird sentences delight users. They keep you asking, "What's gonna come next?" Which is critical for an app that does one of the hardest things: teach people a new language.

And they cause people to talk organically about the app with others.

Be weird to stand out, delight people, and get them talking.

Each year Google kills tons of its own products.

Why?

Because a company like Google needs each product to generate hundreds of millions in revenue (or be strategically relevant) to justify relative to their other products.

It doesn't mean they're bad ideas, they're just too small for Google.

Killed by Google shares every project sent to the graveyard by Google. It's worth going through it regularly to see if there are any ideas worth replicating.

Often these have many thousands or millions of users who suddenly need a new alternative—making them an attractive market to target if you can act fast.

Imagine this: You’re not an expert in SEO, and are rather mystified by it, so you decide to hire an SEO consultant. You find an expert on Upwork (for example).

They seem confident, so you decide to work with them. Because you're inexperienced, you're totally unaware that there are gaps in their SEO knowledge.

Later, when someone else offers sound SEO advice that contradicts to what your Upwork consultant told you, you’re more likely to take it with a grain of salt.

This is caused by "the anchoring bias." 

We trust the first piece of info we’re given more than newer information.

That first piece of info (Upwork SEO consultant) acts as our reference point—we judge new data against it, letting it skew our opinions on quality. 

We naturally lay the burden of proof with the new information, even if we never validated the old information.

Oh humans.

Applied to creative work, the anchoring bias can make us complacent. We get stuck on the same process, messaging, and copy we’ve used for years—unaware that switching things up could lead to better results.

To avoid a stagnant marketing strategy, run interesting experiments. Or try a new SEO consultant, different freelancers, or an AI copywriting software. 

We’re not suggesting that you fire any loyal employees or partners—only that you try something new on occasion. See if your marketing efforts benefit from a fresh spin.

As you've probably noticed, at the top of every newsletter edition, we tell people how to break up with us... err I mean unsubscribe from the newsletter.

Seems counterproductive, right?.

We tell people how to leave after we fought so hard to convert them to a subscriber. 

So why do we do it?

It's one of the many things we do to make sure our emails keep ending up in people's inboxes. And that they have a positive impression of our brand.

So first, it builds trust—we’re not here to hold your inbox hostage.

And if someone doesn't want to receive our emails, we don't want to keep hammering them until they're so upset that they mark our emails as spam.

Spam complaints hurt your emails’ future deliverability. That is, they increase the chances of your future emails landing in people’s spam folders.

So make it easy for people to unsubscribe. You’ll be doing both readers and yourself a favor.

The entire point of a free trial is to prove value and convert leads into customers ASAP.

So how long should your trial be to maximize conversions?

Most companies offer free trials of 7-30 days, though some run as long as 90 days.

You can justify both ends of the spectrum.

1. Longer trials mean users have more time to get familiar with a product.
2. Shorter trials create a sense of urgency.

So which leads to more customers?

In a study of 7-, 14-, and 30-day trials for a SaaS product, the shortest length (7-day) did best at increasing subscriptions, retention, and revenue.

Meanwhile, there was little difference between the 14- and 30-day trial results.

According to researchers, urgency explains why. With a short trial, we use a product more intensively because we want to maximize its use in the limited time frame.

But with a longer trial, we tend to use the product much less per day. And as a result, we forget about it in the trial’s last days—the most important period because that’s when we decide whether or not to become a customer.

Experiment with short trials to boost conversion. Let us know how it pans out.

Creator Sara Renae Clark offers a lot of freebies to her audience.

It's a really effective strategy. In fact, it's our entire ethos at DC.

Provide a ton of free value. Slowly build people's trust over time. Eventually, they'll trust you enough to buy one of your paid products.

But instead of only offering her freebies as instant downloads or newsletter rewards, she places some as products in her online shop.

To get them, users have to go through the normal purchasing process: create an account, add the item to their cart, and check out.

But they don’t have to pay, of course.

According to Sarah, offering her freebies this way “warms up” leads into becoming paying customers. It’s a practice run that builds her credibility.

The idea is that by going through the motion of buying something without actually spending money, leads will feel more comfortable making a real purchase later on.

And they'll already have an account. Making checkout even smoother.

Other creators, such as Jack Butcher (Visualize Value), offer both a free and a $1 product.

Eye contact is one of the most powerful persuasive tools on the planet.

But staring down the lens of a video camera is an insanely intimidating and challenging task.

Seriously. It's really difficult. 

Despite that, maintaining eye contact can:

1. Make you more persuasive.
2. Make your words more memorable.
3. Make YOU more memorable.
4. Make people more honest (and they'll also think you're more honest).
5. Create and deepen attraction.

In short: making eye contact in your videos by staring at the camera is hugely beneficial.

Here's the great news:

AI can now make you maintain eye contact even if you spend the whole time staring at your speaking notes. 

Or awkwardly darting your eyes around the room desperately waiting for it to be over.

For example:

Windows 11 already offered this. But honestly, it looked creepy.

NVIDIA took a step out of Uncanny Valley. It's basically impossible to tell that it's fake.

This will likely become the norm. Try it out before everyone else is doing it.

Google Analytics just doesn't cut it.

It was made to measure the ROI of campaigns within the Google ecosystem (ex: Google Ads). And to give Google an all-seeing eye across the Internet to make ads more profitable.

It was not built as a product analytics tool.  

With the update to GA4, you get a bit of that. But many users shared that it's still lacking in funnel analysis, retention, and segmentation analysis.

So, what’s the solution?

Amplitude Analytics’s new campaign reporting feature helps you understand how acquisition investments drive product growth.

Amplitude Analytics enables product and marketing teams to view how acquisition sources impact product outcomes, attribute product success to campaigns, measure the ROI of digital campaigns and activate campaigns with better customer segmentation.  

Amplitude is also the only digital analytics platform to combine acquisition campaign reporting with best-in-class product analytics.

It's also the analytics tools we use and love at Demand Curve.

‍Check out their demo environment here

That last tactic notwithstanding, there is a category where the warmth-competence dynamic isn’t as applicable: luxury.

Luxury brands don’t have to be warm to succeed. In fact, it might benefit them to be cold.

Let me introduce you to the greatest academic-study title of all time: “Should the Devil Sell Prada? Retail Rejection Increases Aspiring Consumers’ Desire for the Brand.”

What the authors uncovered was that when it comes to luxury, if a consumer is treated rudely by a salesperson, they want the product more.

Here’s how they put it:

“After threat, consumers have more positive attitudes and higher willingness to pay when…the rejection comes from an aspirational (vs. nonaspirational) brand.”

If you work in luxury, we don’t actually think you should be a jerk to your customers.

A general principle to live by: No a**holes.

But this is a reminder that perceived value directly influences willingness to pay. How much do customers believe your product to be worth?

And perceived value in turn has a lot of factors.

Exclusivity is one of them. So are brand perception, status signaling, and the social currency a company provides to the people who shop it.

A few months ago, we wrote about delighting customers to build loyalty. We used the example of how Apple products always seem to arrive before their estimated delivery date.

Zappos pioneered that type of “pleasant surprise” shipping. If you ordered a pair of shoes off Zappos, they would often arrive a day or two early. 

But Zappos didn’t prove their thoughtfulness just through early shoe arrivals. They also trained their customer service reps to be as patient as possible—even if that meant talking to a customer for nine and a half hours, as one rep did!

Zappos nailed two essential human traits: warmth and competence.

• Warmth: We want to know that a person cares about us and means us no harm.
  
• Competence: We also want to know if they’re capable and skilled.

Those judgments may influence more than 80% of human social behavior.

And crucially, they apply to brands too.

Brands like Coca-Cola have high warmth and competence. They’re trustworthy, friendly, and good at what they do. They even invented the modern-day Santa Claus.

On the other hand, services like the US Postal Service are seen as warm but not so competent (sorry, USPS 🙊).

Brands that score low on both dimensions don't tend to last long. 

Here’s what Princeton psych professor Susan Fiske and customer loyalty expert Chris Malone wrote in their book The Human Brand (emphasis added):

“Companies and brands were judged so strongly along the lines of warmth and competence dimensions that these judgments explained nearly 50 percent of all purchase intent, loyalty, and likelihood to recommend a brand or company. To put that 50 percent figure in perspective, consumer research is normally considered to be significant if it reveals a new variable explaining as little as 15 percent of customer behavior.”

Brainstorm ways to reveal your brand’s warmth and competence.

That doesn’t have to mean nine hours on the phone. Simple gestures—a comped product, a small act of service, or a hand-written thank-you note—can go a long way toward building lasting affinity.

Is your brand more of a Cady Heron or a Regina George? 

Here at Demand Curve, we’re a Ms. Norbury type.

Why? We’re kind of nerdy—and super determined to help our students out. We’re pushers.

(If you haven’t seen Mean Girls, we’ll still be here in an hour and 37 minutes 👀)

What we're talking about is our brand persona.

Thinking of your brand as a character can help you personify it and give it a unique, consistent voice in your messaging.

Now, while it’s fun to think about who your brand would be if it were a movie or TV character, we tend to prefer two other approaches to brand persona.

These are more universal—and you want your persona to make everyone on your team say:

"Ah, yep, I get it. That’s who we are."

Brand as a superhero 🦸‍♀️

Are you a Bruce Wayne who builds tools to solve problems? Or a Hulk who gets raging mad when your audience has a problem that’s holding them back?

Brand as an archetype🕴️ 

This goes back to the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. There are 12 archetypes you can apply to brand.

Think: Patagonia as the Explorer, Harley-Davison as the Outlaw, Disney as the Magician.

We’re still in the “look at what I made everyone!!!” phase of creating AI images.

Oh, look at that, an excuse to share some pancakes from the United Federation:

But we’re also aware of some of AI’s limitations.

For example, DALL-E is great for still images, but video is much harder to do.

So what’s an ecom brand on TikTok or Reels to do?

Fortunately, Karen X. Cheng figured it out. Check out her video.

She tested out different approaches to AI for video until she reached a solid workflow for fashion showcase videos:

1. Shoot your video.
2. Use DALL-E to generate outfits. Erase parts of the outfit in your video, and inpaint over it. (Don’t erase the entire outfit—DALL-E will be able to match color and lighting better if you keep parts of the original.)
3. Use the program EbSynth by Secret Weapons to create consistency between frames. EbSynth is meant to turn paintings into animations, but after testing it out, Karen discovered that it works for clothes too.
4. Run the video through DAIN to blend the transitions between outfits—and create a slo mo effect.

(Sorry if you thought this tactic was going to be about stylish robots.)

"As the person being interviewed, it's entirely up to you to make it a podcast worth listening to or not. Treat it for what it is: A PERFORMANCE. You have to fight to keep listeners' attention through the whole interview. Bring your A-game like a musician or comedian would."

– Swipe Files

Podcasts continue to explode in popularity—making guest podcasting increasingly popular as a tactic for growth. 

Don't leave it up to the host to make it an A+ interview. Take ownership of the experience. 

Here are five tips to step up your podcast appearances:

1. Treat it like a performance, not an interview. Bring energy by smiling and using vocal inflections. Enunciate your words. If you’re going to be on video, use hand gestures for a more dynamic visual.
2. Research the podcast(s) you’re appearing on by asking the host:
3. Who is your audience?
4. What are some of your most popular episodes?
5. What topics will we cover? (Getting the questions in advance = even better)
6. Create a cheat sheet of talking points and send it to the host. It should be an outline with specific examples, not a script. Make sure to include:
7. A 2-minute synopsis answering “Tell me about yourself”
8. Your life background
9. Why you do what you do
10. How people can take action, e.g., sign up for your service or buy a product
11. Your hottest takes or “spiky point of view”
12. Books, podcasts, and resources you recommend
13. Prepare a few interesting anecdotes—telling stories makes for more entertaining and memorable interviews. Rehearse them with your friends so you can perfect the delivery.
14. Invest in good equipment, like a professional microphone. If doing video, get a solid camera and light like the Lume Cube.

Do the above and you'll far more likely dazzle their audiences and generate leads.

Humans are funny.

We tend to prefer things (and people) that aren't perfect.

In a study by Professor Jo Sylvester at Swansea University, candidates who highlighted a weakness during an interview were more likely to be hired than those who didn't.

To put my speculation cap on, it's because it makes the person seem more genuine and believable. They were willing to show weakness, making it seem more likely that they were telling the truth about their strengths.

Phil Agnew decided to put this to the test for his podcast. He did two Reddit ad variations:

One highlighted the benefits of listening to his podcast.

The other very tongue-in-cheek highlighted the downsides of listening to his podcasts.

As you can see this led to a 4x higher clickthrough rate (and therefore a 4x cheaper CPC).

Note that Phil didn't follow the Pratfall to the full spirit, as he actually didn't talk down his podcast. Instead, he framed the benefits as negatives. Which highlighted playfulness and likely got people's attention.

So resist the urge to talk about how amazing you are all the time, and instead be playful and poke fun at yourself sometimes.

The robots are here. Our jobs are lost.

At least to some content marketers, ChatGPT and other AI writing services are seen as a threat to their livelihoods.

But rather than oppose these innovations, we think it’s better to leverage them as another tool in your content arsenal.

Specifically, by using AI to create content outlines.

Software architect Mohammed Osman tested this by asking ChatGPT for a blog post outline about a highly technical topic (C# abstract factory design pattern—huh?).

And ChatGPT delivered.

Why give it a shot?

You can save hours on SEO research.

Since ChatGPT was trained with text from around the web, the outlines it produces reflect how content about a given topic is generally structured.

We don’t advise using ChatGPT to do all of your content creation work, though.

For one, it’s not there yet. The quality isn't the best and GPT3 is notorious for making stuff up if it doesn't know the answer.

Also, Google will find and penalize AI-generated content. Guaranteed.

For now, stick to asking our robot overlords for an outline. It’s much easier to edit than to overcome Blank Page Syndrome.

Then apply your creative adjustments and fresh perspective—something purely AI-generated content can’t do.