Community-led growth and product-led growth (PLG) are often talked about separately.

But an effective go-to-market strategy can be to blur the lines between them.

Embedding community in your PLG strategy could mean built-in virality.

Examples:

• Strava: Use it to work out. Stay because your friends and colleagues are on the app too, giving you kudos.
• SparkToro: Use it for audience research. Love it because of the SparkToro team’s community participation, like bi-monthly office hours.
• Hacker News: Use it for news and commentary. Go to Y Combinator, which runs Hacker News, when you want to apply for a startup accelerator (example courtesy of Nir Eyal).

“Build community as a competitive advantage” is one of OpenView’s 11 principles for PLG. Compared to the old (and even fairly recent) days of establishing brand reputation through ads and trade shows, now “users are the brands. People respond to people, and look to folks they trust for advice. … Community isn’t just about creating another Slack channel. It’s about convening and connecting your target audience to help members achieve their own goals.”

Five ways to foster community as part of PLG, from OpenView:

1. Highlight power users’ creations to amplify community creators. Example: Figma’s community plug-ins
2. Build relationships by connecting users with their peers. Example: Optimizely’s Developer Community
3. Participate in existing communities where your users are active.
4. Build a content community. Create informative content that will help your users out. Any good content marketing program does this.
5. Acquire an established community, like how Zapier acquired Makerpad (probably a later-stage method).

Don’t have a product yet? It’s not too early to start building a community to get people invested in your concept—and get invaluable early insights into what your users will want.

The bar for engaging content on YouTube is rising. And YouTube’s algo continues to improve to surface the best, most relevant videos for its users.

If you’re creating content for YouTube, here’s a list of counter-intuitive insights (and how you can use each) adapted from VidCon 2022:

Insight: YouTube is beginning to value quality viewer experience over straight watch time. YouTube is running more surveys, and increasingly weighting responses to those surveys, to figure out how happy/inspired your videos make people feel.

What to do: Map out the emotional experience you want your viewer to have. The goal should be to help your viewers through a transformation, not just burn their time.

Insight: YouTube's discovery algorithm is driven by two major factors, performance and personalization. Performance can be summed up by the question, “did people enjoy this video?” and personalization by, “who is the right person for this video at this exact time that they open up their device for a YT session?” Most people forget about personalization, which is driven by video watch history, channel watch history, and factors like time of day and device type.

What to do: Clearly define your audience and value propositions. Simple, but most brands and creators miss the mark here. If YouTube can’t interpret who your video should be for, it's because your script and delivery aren't clear, and YT will not find the best viewers for you.

Insight: Most people know how important intros are, but the last 30 seconds of your video are critical as well. Recency bias (as well as the peak-end rule) point to the fact that viewers will put a lot of weight on the conclusion of your video—so much that they often judge the quality of the entire video based on their feeling at the very end.

What to do: End your videos with a laugh, some kind of joke, or a valuable takeaway.

Insight: The optimal rhythm for retention is not “the fastest paced video possible”—it’s more like a rollercoaster with a dynamic pace.

What to do: Find opportunities to slow down the pace after a high speed segment and inject an emotional story if possible.

When you're down to the last 48 hours of an email campaign, chances are good that all you have left are the "tire kickers." And if they still don't buy, it's usually for one of two reasons:

• They aren't interested, or
• They don't feel confident in their decision to buy your product

For the second type of prospect, marketers often resort to scarcity/urgency tactics to drive a final burst of sales. This can work. But if buying your product feels like a giant leap to on-the-fence prospects, "pushing" them with countdown timers and FOMO may not instill the confidence they need to take action.

To make your product feel like a natural step forward, try "coaching" prospects through their objections with a minimum viable commitment (MVC).

Here’s how Copy Hackers used this tactic in their closing course launch email:

Notice how instead of provoking anxiety with ultimatums, the copy relieves it with a stress-free offer—the MVC. When you empathize with your prospects’ current emotional struggle, you set the bar just high enough so they feel good about their ability to clear it.

Consider testing this formula in the CTA of your closing promotional email:

1. Maybe you’re [time or value objection]
2. Maybe you’re [unsure of being a fit objection]
3. Either way, you totally appreciate having [guarantee length] to put [Product] to the test to see if you can [achieve most desired outcome or overcome most crippling pain]

One of the biggest paradoxes in marketing?

Popups.

People hate them, yet many companies still use them since they often lead to more conversions.

So marketers who want to capture the conversion benefits of popups need to figure out a way to do so without irritating potential customers.

One tactic to try: trigger popups only for warm users.

According to one study, 92% of first-time visitors to a website don’t make a purchase. But 75% plan to return and buy something on their next visit.

So instead of enabling popups for all users by default, consider showing them only to returning visitors with a demonstrated interest in your business.

For example, trigger a free shipping exit popup only for returning visitors with a minimum basket value (say, $50). The key here is minimum basket value. If you show a popup for free shipping for orders over $75 but a visitor only has $10 in their cart, your popup probably won’t be very effective.

And by only triggering the popup for returning visitors, you don’t bombard first-time, low-intent visitors with intrusive popups.

Prioritization is a critical step in the experimentation process.

You can’t test everything. Testing takes time and resources, which are always in short supply.

One piece of criteria we always recommend factoring into prioritization: impact. How much could test findings move the needle on your north star metric—the metric you care most about?

When making that call, it’ll help to think about a test’s funnel stage.

Bottom of funnel

Bottom-of-funnel events—those nearer to the point of purchase, like the checkout process—are almost certainly closer to your north star, so they have a high likelihood of driving impact.

An extreme example: A test that removes the “buy” button from your checkout page will have a drastic effect on revenue (just not the kind you want!).

Prospects at that stage have high buying intent. They’re ready, or nearly ready, to buy.

However, some changes to bottom-of-funnel events might not be as effective because prospects have already made their decisions.

Top of funnel

Top-of-funnel events, like those in the awareness and consideration stages (e.g., landing pages and ads), can sway decision making. And prospects’ emotional investment may be higher at earlier funnel stages, when they’re discovering how your product will help them.

Plus, top-of-funnel experiments are often easier to test and alter, both because sample sizes are bigger (top of funnel gets more traffic) and because the changes themselves are frequently lower effort.

But they’re farther from conversion, they have lower intent, and they run a greater risk of being vanity tests: tests that move the needle on some metrics but not your north star.

Our recommendation: When your experimentation program is new and you’re gaining an understanding of which tests will have the most impact, all else being equal, go lower in your funnel to remove the distance from your north star.

An effective way to improve B2C ad performance?

Show people using your product.

When we see others using a product, we can’t help but experience it vicariously. This effect improves how we value the product.

A recent marketing study found that you can enhance that effect by showing a hand touching a product. Here’s an example from Yeti:

Based on the research, this increases how much people:

• Like the product
• Are likely to buy it
• Are willing to pay for it

For example, the study found that people who saw a gif of a hand touching a sweater:

• Liked it 9.4% more
• Were 16% more likely to buy it
• And were willing to pay 14% more for it

Brands like Starbucks and Samsung reported more likes on social posts when a hand was touching their products.

In order for the effect to work, the hand:

• Must be seen from a first-person point of view, as if it’s the person’s own hand
• Must touch the product in a relevant way (e.g., feeling a shirt’s fabric, mixing or pouring a drink)
• Doesn’t need to match the viewer’s hand—it can be any skin tone or gender, or even a digital recreation (like an alien’s “hand” in a game)

Steps to implement:

• Include a first-person-POV hand in your image and video creatives. Make sure it’s touching your product in a meaningful way (such as using or feeling it).
• Use those creatives in your ads, on product pages, and in social media posts—in any of your marketing assets.
• Implement this tactic if you’re in the VR or metaverse space.

Content marketing used to be pretty simple.

Finding an article that answered your specific question in a Google search was rare. Articles that got it right earned most of the traffic.

Then SEO shifted to aggregation: articles that consolidated information into one place ranked higher than fragments. This led to the “skyscraper model”—massive, exhaustive guides on subjects.

Now, search results pages are dominated by established brands with loads of authority and backlinks. Most search results contain the same information: copycat content. The problem is, once a reader has read one article, they’ve effectively read them all.

To address this problem, in April 2020, Google filed a patent that, in short, should reward articles that bring new information to the table.

They call this idea information gain. It’s a measurement of the new information provided by a given article, above and beyond the info provided in other articles on the same topic.

So instead of studying search engine results pages to outline articles, content marketers should be asking themselves, “What new information can I bring to the discussion?”

Three ways to factor this question into your content:

1. Create content that builds on other results

Instead of trying to outrank a top-ranking, comprehensive article, assume that the reader has already read it. How can you add value beyond what they’ve already read?

• Share a practical “next step”—a continuation of a competing article.
• Elaborate on a key idea contained within the competing article.
• Write the 102 version of their 101, going into more depth, detail, and nuance.

2. Experiment with risky framings and angles

You’ll likely be rewarded for bringing new and unique information to the table. Consider:

• Addressing unserved intent (“My specific use case isn’t represented here.”)
• Filling in missing information (“It’s weird that no one has mentioned X here.”)
• Challenging a differing or erroneous opinion (“That’s an outdated belief.”)
• Correcting mistakes in Google’s comprehension (“That’s not what I meant by this keyword.”)

3. Build an information moat with original research

Create content that can’t be found elsewhere.

• Include personal perspectives and company experiences.
• Survey your customers, users, or network for interesting data.
• Add quotes from subject matter experts.

Your content still needs to be better. But with the direction Google seems to be heading in, it’s smart to make it different as well.

Most content on ecommerce email marketing focuses on DTC: retention, maximizing lifetime value, and bringing customers back to purchase again and again.

But what should you do if you’re a store selling $1,000+ products that are typically once-in-a-lifetime purchases for customers?

These businesses tend to get fewer repeat purchases, so they can’t afford to give away a huge discount upfront in hopes of profiting off future orders.

Instead of the standard percentage off first purchase promo that most DTC companies use to acquire emails, here are a few alternatives for high-priced items:

• Dollar amount off: If you sell a $2,000 product, try “$200 off” instead of “10% off.” Dollar amounts feel more substantial (and tangible) than percentages and look more attractive when you’re selling a pricey item.
• Free gift with purchase: Free gifts are a popular option with luxury brands. Skip discounting altogether but still offer something that gets customers excited. For example, if you're selling an expensive couch, throw in a low-cost item like an end table as a free gift.
• A chance to win a discount: Everybody who signs up is entered and you announce a winner periodically.
• Custom content with educational value, rather than dollar value: A product recommendation or downloadable PDF. This is a great option if discounting doesn’t fit your brand, but your product is more difficult to understand.

Consider testing two of these at a time until you find a winner that works best for your long-term acquisition strategy.

Frameworks are so acronym-riddled—think BAB, PAS, and AIDA—that they can be more confusing than helpful. Plus, they’re often discussed without any context, adding to the sense that they’re just a bunch of letters.

But here are three of the most powerful copywriting frameworks in context, using classic Porsche ads to explain how they work.

BAB framework:

First up, BAB: before-after-bridge.

• Before: The pain point your audience is facing. Like driving behind a Porsche in a car that’s not a Porsche.
• After: What life is like when that pain is resolved. Hands grip a sport steering wheel. The road ahead is all yours.
• Bridge: The solution—your product. The bridge that takes you from before to after.

The reason we like BAB and the other two frameworks we’ll discuss: They spotlight experience. They zero in on, and accentuate, what it’s like to have or not have your product. Think of it as another form of highlighting benefits, not features.

Another great BAB example, no copywriting even needed:

PAS framework

“In the beginning I looked around and could not find quite the car I dreamed of. So I decided to build it myself.” –Ferry Porsche

That simple statement encapsulates the next framework, PAS: problem-agitate-solve.

• Problem: The pain point. Ferry couldn’t find his dream car.
• Agitate: Agitate the problem. Heighten the negative emotions it provokes—frustration, anger, fear—or the pain it causes. Add some drama.
• Solve: Your product is the solution. Ferry built his dream car: a Porsche.

This example isn’t an ad; it’s a quote. But you can see how PAS can pack a full story into just a few words.

Admittedly, the quote doesn’t have much agitation. We’re including it anyway because we admire its concision and full arc. If this were an ad, it might linger longer on what life is like without Ferry’s dream car. It takes longer to get places, you’re on a first-name basis with your mechanic, you’re embarrassed to drive around in your old ride. Then it would get to that dream-realizing Porsche 911.

AIDA framework

(The example below is an old ad and the copy is a bit blurry. We call out the lines that matter below.)

The third framework is AIDA: attention-interest-desire-action.

• Attention. Grab attention with an eye-catching headline, image, or both.
• Interest. Nurture interest and intrigue. This ad does that by describing the experience of driving a Turbo: “400 horses. Zero to sixty in just over four heartbeats.”
• Desire. Stimulate desire. Want “some very serious amusement”? To get it…
• Action. Take action. Call 1-800-Porsche.

AIDA is a copywriting classic—it goes all the way back to 1898. The fact that it’s still one of the most widely used and recommended frameworks among copywriters is a testament to how dependably it works.

For more on copywriting, check out our favorite examples here.

Personalization works.

We see it every year with Spotify Wrapped, when personalized content goes massively viral. 80% of consumers are more likely to buy when brands offer personalized experiences. Personalized recs account for 75% of Netflix’s watched content and 70% of YouTube’s.

But when personalizing your marketing or product, avoid the creepiness ditch. That’s the no-man’s-land where personalization starts to feel creepy, resulting in fewer conversions, not more.

Examples of creepy personalization: You feel singled out, your privacy seems invaded, or a mistake annoys you and reminds you that you’re being targeted, like when Pinterest congratulated single women on their weddings.

Ways to avoid the creepiness ditch:

• Don’t retarget too fast or too much. Consider waiting at least 24 hours before retargeting, and keep frequency conservative. Over 30% of people actually get angry at an advertiser if they see the same ad 10 times.
• Make sure messaging is relevant. In a study from Gartner, nearly half of participants said they would unsubscribe if content seemed personalized but irrelevant to them. But don’t get so relevant that people feel ill at ease—e.g., by targeting based on sensitive search history.
• Pay attention to bias and stereotypes. Another study found that people who received an ad for weight loss based on their size felt judged. Also be careful about stereotyping if your product uses personalized avatars.

Books don’t work.

Think back to your favorite book from ~2015. How much of it do you remember?

And that was your favorite.

Humans just aren’t wired to retain information well after a single read. That’s not how we learn. We need activities, feedback loops, and metacognition (thinking about thinking about what we’re reading). We need to spread out learning over time.

Of course, retention isn’t just a memory problem. It’s a startup problem too. User retention is what drives sustainable, scalable growth. During onboarding, here are a few ways to boost business retention through cognitive retention:

• Do > show > explain. The more action-driven your user's education is, the more effective it will be. For instance, instead of starting users off with a bunch of tool tips and videos, Grammarly guides them to fix a dummy page’s grammar.
• Don’t show your user every feature. Over-educating a new user will overwhelm them. Spread out learnings—and new feature introductions—to avoid info overload.
• Connect through personalization. In general, personalization reduces friction and time to activation. Some ways to increase learning during onboarding, and make it more personalized in the process: 1) For B2B, offer a one-on-one webinar or demo. 2) Try a “choose your own adventure” approach to onboarding, with users picking their path.

Image: IBM

Following these steps increases the chance that users will reach their "aha moment"—the moment they realize real value from your product. And they need to do that to stick around.

Some companies purposely make it hard for users to disengage from their products.

For instance, with autoplay turned on, YouTube and Netflix automatically show more content after the user’s video has finished. And publishers like BuzzFeed and Bustle use infinite scroll so that more content automatically populates as users move down their sites.

Companies do this to engage users for longer. But this kind of product experience may actually do more harm than good.

Why? Users feel trapped. Although they voluntarily continue to use your product, they may feel negative about it once they break away. They might even be more likely to perceive it as a mindless or addictive waste of time.

To avoid trapping users, consider building natural exit points into your product. That is, give users clear signals that a product experience has ended. Make it easy for them to leave.

A few examples:

• Instagram shows users a “You’re All Caught Up” message once they’ve seen all the posts in their feed from the last two days.
• The dating app Coffee Meets Bagel closes chatrooms after seven days—an exit point that encourages users to swap contact info with their matches or chat with new ones.
• Many mobile games show a post-game screen with options to return to the home screen or play again.

Exit points create a sense of completion and make it easier for users to leave with satisfaction. Users are less likely to feel bad about using your product for a prolonged amount of time.

Here are a few ideas for how to create exit points:

• Instead of enabling autoplay or infinite scroll, use “Next” or “Load More” buttons.
• Celebrate the end of a product experience by framing it as a big win. For instance, after completing a workout, a fitness app could show a message like “You crushed it—now it’s time to relax!”
• For a more transparent approach, show users how long they’ve been using your product and invite them to take a break. Example: ”You’ve watched 97 videos in the last hour. Want to rest your eyes for a bit?”

Unlike attention-trapping features that take advantage of users, exit points treat your customers more kindly and ethically. And since they help deliver a more satisfying experience, users may stick around for longer over time.

About pages are one of the most-visited, yet under-utilized pages on websites.

People who visit this page are often primed to take action because they're already interested in your business—they’re actively seeking to learn more.

To capitalize on this qualified traffic, consider adding an email signup form on your about page. Make sure the CTA and value you’re offering are consistent with the themes you talk about on the page.

For example:

• James Clear offers a free habit-building email course that nurtures new subscribers to buy his book, Atomic Habits.
• Perfect Keto invites visitors to join their keto newsletter and access subscriber-only discounts and resources.
• Exploding Topics asks their about page readers to subscribe to their newsletter where they share emerging trends every Tuesday.

This tactic might sound obvious, but look around. Most companies don’t take advantage of it.

There are a few “rules” to running experiments. Scientists should follow them, but marketers can break them sometimes.

Rule 1: Your hypothesis should test one discrete variable.

It should have one cause and one effect.

• Example of a one-variable hypothesis: If we build tailored landing pages for our audience segments, our unsubscribe rate will decrease.
• Example of a multi-variable hypothesis: If we build tailored landing pages for our audience segments and add personalization tags to our emails, our unsubscribe rate will decrease.

When to break it: Testing one variable, then another, then another isn’t always feasible in a fast-paced startup environment. You might need to break this rule to have fast impact instead of exact insights.

Do you want precise learnings? Follow the rule. Is it more important for you to move quickly and gauge cumulative impact? Break it.

Rule 2: Don’t peek at A/B test results early.

Early in an experiment, the likelihood of a false positive is high. If you peek early and see the result you want, you might be tempted to call the experiment too soon.

When to break it: Looking at your test results early gives you a chance to catch anything that’s critically broken. If you don’t, you could end up running a test for weeks, only to discover a bug that not only invalidated the test but even hurt company performance.

Plus, it’s extremely difficult to guess what your goal for a test’s outcome should be. For example, if your goal is a 5% conversion change but your test ends up producing a 15% effect, you’ll waste time if you let it run without looking at it.

So, although it’s not good science, we recommend breaking this rule.

First, do a spot-check one or two days after launching a test. Look for any critical issues, bugs, etc.

Then, if you’re running a longer test, look at it again at the halfway mark. But with one important rule in mind: If you’ve set a confidence level of 90%, then when you do your midway peek, only call the test if there’s a statistically significant result with a 98% confidence level or higher.

There’s still a chance that the effect you’ll see at the halfway peek is a false positive. But we’ve found that this method is more practical than the “don’t look at a test at all until it’s reached its target sample size” method that no one actually follows, and it provides some added protection against false positives.

When you’re deciding which TikTok creators to work with, we suggest narrowing your search to those who make quality content in a similar industry to yours—instead of basing your decision on the size of their following.

Why focus on lesser-known influencers? They give brands the most bang for their buck.

Influencers with large followings generally charge more—and engagement rates are often lower than those of smaller creators. But more crucially, TikTok users see nano- and micro-influencers as “people like me,” making viewers more likely to trust them and take action based on their recommendations.

With smaller influencers, you aren't riding on anyone's celebrity, only the quality of their performance.

Another benefit of lesser-known influencers: You can commission a higher volume of creatives to test in your campaigns. Since many of them are either early in their careers or striving to work as creators full time, they’ll work harder to deliver a result you’re happy with.

While other brands try to land deals with TikTok celebrities, focus on finding expert craftspeople who know how to engage an audience.

For more on TikTok, we’ve got a fresh, definitive playbook for you: How to Acquire Customers with TikTok Ads. In it, we cover how to make A+ ad creatives, source content creators, structure your ad account, and launch your first campaign.

We spent months interviewing top TikTok ads experts to make sure it’s the most credible, in-depth resource on TikTok acquisition. Dive in here.

“Buy X, get Y free” promotions reliably increase sales conversions.

However, you’ll drive even more conversions by framing a customer’s target product as the free gift, instead of the other way around.

For example, if a customer searches for “fitness tracker” on your website, show them the offer “Buy a weighing scale and get a fitness tracker free,” rather than “Buy a fitness tracker and get a weighing scale free.”

Why it works:

• People don’t expect to see a product they actually want as the free gift.
• This makes them feel lucky—the promotion seems more attractive.
• And the novelty of the offer makes them more likely to buy.

Steps to implement:

1. Choose a target product (the free gift). This can be something your customers commonly search for or a known best-seller.
2. Choose a secondary item (the main product) of equal or similar value. If one product is significantly more expensive than the other (e.g., buy a printer, get a free laptop), people will either question the quality or think it’s a scam and refuse the offer.
3. Enhance the effect with messaging that makes customers feel lucky (e.g., “It’s your lucky day!”)