Landing page copy is difficult to optimize. You need a sufficient level of traffic to run accurate A/B tests, but driving traffic to your landing page is costly (you're paying per click just to get people to the landing page you're testing).

Consider running ads to test and refine your landing page copy.

Since your ads will get significantly more impressions than your landing pages, you'll be able to get statistically significant results on your copy, quickly.

Try this:

• Create multiple copy variations to test in Facebook's ad manager. Instead of conversions, focus on click-through rate. The goal is to determine which copy incites the most engagement.
• Test until a clear winner emerges. Use the winning ad copy as your landing page's headline, sub-headline, and body copy.

People checking out your pricing page are likely high intent prospects.

Here's a quick copy fix to turn more of them into customers: Try reframing your pricing copy to include highly valued features for free.

• Before: "$100 per month for up to 10 hours of transcription"

          What your buyer thinks → "10 hours for $100 is $10 per hour. That's pretty pricey..."

• Optimized: "$100 per month. Your first 1000 subscribers are free!"

           What your buyer thinks → "$100 is pretty cheap for what I'm getting..."

Consider getting feedback from your users to understand what they value most about your product. Repackage your product to offer that value "for free" with the purchase of your product at full price.

While most marketers know they should be tapping influencers to sell their products, few know how to find the right influencers for the long-haul.

Here's what to look for:

1. Seek long-term relationships over one-off campaigns: Brands and products that are reinforced over time to an influencer's loyal following lead to deeper affinity. Consider working with influencers who have an interest in becoming a true representative of your brand.

2. Consider prioritizing influencers with high engagement across multiple platforms: This is a sign that their audience is engaged and excited about their content—and that they didn't just fall into meme-based fame on one channel.

3. Most startups should start with micro-influencers over macro-influencers: Influencers with smaller followings are more accessible than their celebrity counterparts. But, more importantly, relatively small followings lead to more trust. Pick creators with smaller follower counts (5,000-25,000), and tailor your message to what that audience trusts the creator to know about.

Keep in mind that influencers can outlast mediums. Ask yourself: If Instagram was to become irrelevant tomorrow, would the creators you're working with still have influence?

Influencer marketing on TikTok requires a different approach than Instagram and YouTube.

TikTok has a high variance algorithm—the impressions that a creator’s average post gets isn’t constant. If a video is good, you get boosted. It’s that simple.

Smaller influencers have more power than they do on other platforms. So it's worth taking a chance on smaller creators if they’re very talented and you believe in their ability to break out.

Here's a suggested strategy:

• Use an app like Swipehouse to find creators that fit your brand. Use data. Avoid trying to manually wing it with seemingly "on brand" influencers.
• Consider splitting your budget: Work with a few bigger creators (20%), but take bets on a large number of small creators (80%).
• Pay with gifts: For the smaller creators (less than 50k followers), you can send products in exchange for content and exposure. They’re likely running their TikTok account on the side, rather than relying on sponsorship income to pay the bills.
• Give them creative control: Give creators even more creative freedom than you would on other platforms. Due to the algorithm, they really need to hit an authentic nerve for videos to go viral.

Giving influencers coupon codes and special links to share helps account for some conversion.

But they won’t tell the whole story—people often hear about your product from an influencer, but think about it later and come back to your site in a way that’s not tracked to that particular influencer.

The workaround? Combine analytics data with an attribution survey.

• Add a post-purchase attribution survey and ask customers where they heard about you first. (There are tools like Enquire for Shopify that get 80%+ completion rates for post-purchase surveys.)
• List influencers as the option.
• Even better if you break it down by channel (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)

While your link data may show a low ROAS, you’ll likely find that your influencers are actually bringing in a high ROAS once the survey data is accounted for—justifying influencer marketing as a profitable channel for your brand.

It's not just your customers who can refer—your best influencers can refer other influencers to your brand.

Once you find a great long-term influencer partner and you’re ready to scale up, it’s worth incentivizing your partner to activate other great influencers.

Here’s how to do it:

• Create a referral system for your long-term influencer to sign up other influencers.
• Give them a percentage of sales generated by the influencers they refer and activate.

They’ll be motivated to sign up other great influencers because they’re paid based on the performance of those influencers.

Now your long-term influencer partner isn’t just your advertiser—they’re incentivized to help you scale influencer marketing as an acquisition channel.

If you run a subscription business, here's a tactic that can increase your LTV and ROAS (return on ad spend):

Offer discounts for groups.

Think of group discounts like Spotify family plans—users get a discount (say, 10% off) for joining your subscription together.

There are two key benefits:

1. Acquisition: Users are incentivized to bring in friends, since the initial users benefit from the discount. So the group discount becomes an acquisition mechanism.
2. Retention: Individuals within discount groups tend to cancel less frequently, since doing so would make their friends pay more. As a result, retention increases.

Bonus: If your store is built on Shopify, you can use an app like Skio to test this.

Cross-selling campaigns tend to increase average order value (AOV) more than standalone sales promotions do.

For example, most marketers offer free shipping once a cart reaches a purchase minimum. That’s table stakes. But you can increase your AOV by promoting another ongoing campaign in combination with your free shipping offer.

Three campaigns for you to try:

1. Get free shipping when you buy any of these two products.
2. Get 3 for the price of 2 on all flash sale items.
3. Buy one, get one free—plus free shipping on orders $50+

Add personalized recommendations and highlight complementary products when possible.

Example: Someone interested in a new game console would likely be willing to add a game to their cart in order to redeem free shipping. So make sure your checkout flow asks them if they want to add a game instead of an unrelated product.

People love receiving free rewards from brands.

But don't wait for birthdays—that's when customers receive gifts from lots of other brands.

Try this instead:

• Reach out with a freebie at a random time of the year: Not for a birthday or a holiday. Simply a surprise for being a loyal customer. People will remember your thoughtful, random gift—more than they would if you sent them an email that got buried in their inbox next to 50 other brands' gifts.
• Relate your gift to your core value prop. E.g. Chewy—the pet eCom store—randomly sends customers pet portraits. People want more of what they pay you for. This will lead to more affinity.

The most famous referral success stories are outliers.

The well-known referral programs that grew brands like Airbnb and Dropbox are highly unlikely to work for your startup.

In fact, instead of trying to "build a successful referral program," you should be focused on finding your company's viral loop.

Examples:

• If you run an ecom pet store, your viral loop might be getting dog owners to post pictures of their dogs on Instagram (with you tagged).
• If you're in EdTech, your viral loop might be a bustling community where eager students get free course credits when they invite their classmates.
• If you're a SaaS founder, your viral loop might be a freemium tier where your customers include your badge in their footer.

There are no one-size-fits-all solutions. You have to dig into what your product offers and align that with an incentive that increases your exposure.

Common startup mistake: Asking customers to refer their product at the end of the sales process, before they've even tried the product.

That’s like asking someone if they’d recommend a movie as they’re waiting in line to go watch it.

It's ineffective and will lead to a low adoption rate and annoyed customers.

Instead, look for moments when rapport is high between you and your customer:

1. Right after your customer gives you a high Net Promoter Score on a follow-up survey.
2. When your customer renews for another billing cycle.
3. When your customer actively engages with your marketing efforts (replies to an email newsletter, sends a social media DM, or comments on a post).

It’s in these trigger moments when your business is top of mind for your customer. Use that to your advantage by engaging them in your referral program.

To get referrals to work, you need your incentives to check three boxes:

1. Your customer acquisition cost (CAC) must be less than the lifetime value of that customer (LTV). This is obvious.
2. The referrer's incentive needs to be desirable enough that your customers take action.
3. The referral's incentive needs to be desirable enough that they convert.

Different business models call for different incentives. Here's what we've seen work best:

• For B2B: Tailored personal rewards work better than discounts. A gift card to a local restaurant works better than 20% off your product since B2B customers are employees—they're more motivated by personal incentives.
• For Ecommerce: Discounts or cash offers work because there is a direct benefit to the customer. But your cash incentive needs to be significantly large enough to drive action. $5 off typically doesn't cut it.
• For SaaS: Offer greater access to your core product—that's what users come to you for. So give them more of it. E.g. Dropbox offers referrers more storage. 

Common startup challenge: Your product solves a problem that people don't know they have yet.

For example, no one knew they needed an Uber–they thought they needed a taxi.

When planning your go-to-market strategy, choose a marketing channel that:

• Allows you to get in front of a lot of your target customers, quickly
• Allows you to get in front of your target customer, inexpensively

There are seven ways people learn about new products:

1. Word-of-mouth: through friends, family, and colleagues
2. While browsing online, organically: SEO article, social media recommendation
3. While browsing online and seeing a promotion: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ad
4. Offline, organically: seeing a product on the shelf, someone using it
5. Offline and seeing a promotion: billboard, posters, samples
6. While at home, seeing a promotion: direct mail
7. Someone reaching out to you: direct sales

Go through all seven ways people learn about new products and list all the channels that are possible. For each channel, ask: How quickly and cheaply can I reach my target customers? How many are there?

This exercise will clarify which marketing channels will be most effective for your go-to-market strategy.

Most marketers skip a key step in the growth process while running A/B tests.

Everyone looks at quantitative data. That's easy. Your analytics platform will show you which A/B variant had a better conversion rate.

But few dig in to figure out why a given variant won.

Two approaches to determining the why:

1. Use heatmaps: Tools like Hotjar will help you figure out why certain variants won. Were users distracted by a suboptimal CTA in one variant? Maybe users bounced before scrolling past the top half of your landing page?
2. Survey customers who were impacted by the test. You can use tools like SurveyMonkey to set up automated survey emails that trigger post-purchase. Ask questions that help you determine what aspect of your test variable got them to purchase.

Figuring out why each variant wins will inform your next tests: It's what keeps your growth flywheel spinning.

Most SaaS apps lose 95% of new users within 90 days. A majority of these users drop off before they finish onboarding.

When customers fully onboard, they're more likely to stick around and pay for your product. One way to encourage them to complete onboarding? Give them a quick win.

Example: After logging in to Quora for the first time, a new user sees a checklist called “Set Up Your Account.” The first step, “Visit your feed,” is already checked. The user has accomplished something just by signing up.

People are more motivated to keep going if they think they’ve already accomplished something. Early in the onboarding process, keep motivation high with quick wins and reminders of what the ultimate big win will be.

• Keep the “job-to-be-done”—what users will get out of the onboarding process—front of mind. Airbnb’s host signup page shows you what your monthly earnings could be if you complete the steps to rent out your home.
• In your welcome email, don’t waste precious space on a “thanks for signing up.” Remind them of how your product will benefit them once they’re fully onboarded.

Tip from behavioral psychology: people place a higher value on things that they have a hand in creating. If you allow people to customize your product, they'll either 1) convert at a higher rate, or 2) pay more for it.

Two examples of customization in practice:

Ecommerce: Converse allows shoppers to choose the color, shape, and star placement of their famous All-Stars.

SaaS: Slack lets users customize their setup with bots and integrations. Customization in SaaS doubles as a retention driver — switching costs rise as users integrate other tools.

Here's the lesser-known benefit: customization generates valuable data. Take Converse. If people self-select one particular color or style more than the rest, Converse can use that data to create a core product line.

Failed payments can be a quiet cause of unnecessary churn.

Even very successful startups like Segment have said that non-payment can account for up to 50% of total churn in a given week.

If you sell subscriptions, use this process to reduce churn. (This can be automated.)

• When a card fails, retry the card-on-file again before emailing your customer. Over 20% of payments are resolved by retrying the card before sending emails.
• When you do need to reach customers, email them a mobile-friendly link without a password so they can easily give you their new card details.
• If customers don't engage with your email, send an SMS.

Your customer acquisition efforts aren't optimized without a heavy focus on retention. Limit failed payments to fix a leaky bucket. 

Cold email works better when your targets already know who you are.

So unless your startup is a household name, you might consider pre-targeting: Run ads to a specific list of email addresses before reaching out to them. 

Pre-targeting can boost open rates and response rates because it makes your company feel more known—especially in industries with large, older companies (like government, manufacturing, supply chain, and real estate).

How to run a pre-targeting test:

• Pull a list of at least 1000 emails. Call this group A.
• Then pull another list of 1000 emails. Group B.
• Run ads on LinkedIn and Facebook and directly upload the group A list (you’ll want to use “Direct Audiences”). Then email group A.
• Email Group B without running ads.

See which group responds and converts better.

Final tip: When optimizing your pre-targeting campaigns, consider choosing the Awareness objective on your ad platform. You just need your prospects to see your ads—not click. It’s cheaper because fewer advertisers bid on awareness ads.

More people read emails on mobile as opposed to desktop.

If you're not truly creating mobile-first emails, your campaigns aren't fully optimized. 

The good news is that it's easy for email clients & ISPs to automatically adapt mobile-first designs to desktop whereas the opposite is not true. So if you optimize for mobile, your design looks sharp regardless of the device.

Here's how you create great mobile-first emails:

1. Write short subject lines to prevent them from getting cut off on mobile.

2. Keep the design clean to make it easy for readers to engage the content:

• Narrower design with plenty of negative space.
• Bigger, legible fonts.
• Larger, easy-to-click CTAs.

3. Use small files only. Many mobile devices are running weak processors. Prevent people from bouncing due to slow load times by compressing your image files.

4. Send a test and read it on your own phone before scheduling.

There's often a disconnect—marketers use desktop platforms to create and send emails. It's easy to overlook mobile when you're working from a computer.

Some social proof is better than none.

According to a major ecommerce study, a seller with negative reviews and poor photos is more likely to outperform a seller that has zero information.

Chew on that for a second.

Zero information leads to distrust, while negative information facilitates a neutral level of trust.

This finding illustrates the importance of “uncertainty reduction.” That is, people require information to feel more trust about something.

That’s not to say you should actively seek out bad reviews. Rather, understand that having no reputation or photos whatsoever may preclude sales.