Buyer journeys aren’t nearly as clean as we like to imagine. Most people won’t see your ad → visit your landing page → buy immediately.

It’s more likely to go like this:

1. They see your ad while doom-scrolling Instagram. They click.
2. Something distracts them away from their phone.
3. They remember later in the evening (or 3 weeks later) thanks to a Trigger Event.
4. They google your company name.
5. They visit your homepage—not the conversion-focused landing page you intended them to hit.

(At least, that’s how I tend to buy things online.)

Is your homepage optimized for conversion? If not, you may be leaving growth on the table. 

Yes, your homepage has many jobs (too many). One is to orient people to your brand and everything you do. But don’t forget that high-intent visitors often visit your homepage late in the funnel.

Design it with conversion in mind.

Here are some quick ways to make sure your homepage converts:

1. Start by nailing the above-the-fold

Your above-the-fold (ATF) is the portion of your website that’s immediately visible to visitors—your hero header, subheaders, imagery, and calls to action.

Header and subheaders: Keep your copy short. Concisely convey what your product is and why they should care. Visitors shouldn’t have to scroll to understand what you offer and how they’ll get value from you.

Imagery: Static images, slides, video—whatever you choose, keep your products at the forefront. Photos with people are optional, but they have a proven track record of increasing conversion.

Call to action (CTA): Your ATF is the most important part of your most important page, and your CTA here might be the most important part of your entire site. This is what drives action. CTAs for ecommerce tend to be “shop now.” For services, “get started” and “try now” work well. Make sure your CTA is high-contrast and unignorable.

Here’s an example of an above-the-fold done well.

• Concise, punchy header and subheader explaining what Mosaic is and why you should care.
• Attractive visuals of the product
• Clear, high-contrast call to action (although they should depart from their monochrome design and make the CTA a contrasting color to make it pop).

We wrote an entire playbook on ATF alone. When you’re ready to create your ATF, you can follow our step-by-step process.

2. Handle objections in your below-the-fold.

Below the fold, you briefly address any objections visitors might have.

Some elements you might include here:

Social proof: Share reviews, press, user-generated content, testimonials, and endorsements, ratings, customer logos, and customer stats.

• Include social proof near your CTAs to handle their objections at the key moment where they’re deciding to click or not. Trust leads to action.
• There’s basically no such thing as too much social proof. 

Product features: Highlight unique product features that address common concerns.

• Worried about quality? Here’s why we’re the best you can get.
• Worried it’ll take too long? We’ll have you onboarded in 5 minutes or less.
• Worried about not liking the product? If you don’t like it we’ll give you a full refund.

FAQ: Take it a step further and add an FAQ section.

• Start with the most common or highest-friction questions.
• Assume they didn’t read the whole page and repeat all the key points.

Bestsellers: If you have several products, highlight your flagship and most popular items. Or highlight a “starter pack” or samples.

Footer: Include pages in the footer that you want to give visitors access to but aren’t critical to the conversion journey, like your exchanges and returns policy.

I like how MUD\WTR uses their FAQ section to address common questions (objections):

Include CTAs throughout your homepage so visitors don’t have to scroll back to the ATF to take the next step in their buyer journey: the product, pricing, or sign-up pages. CTAs in a sticky nav work well, too.

3. Run an A/B test. 

But wait, it’s easy to make changes and assume they’re better. Time to test that:

Filter for people who have already visited your ad landing pages—these are the warm visitors we’re experimenting with. Send half to your current homepage and the other half to your new, conversion-focused homepage. See which performs better.

Put a little love into your homepage, you might see a big bump in conversion.

Dive into our Above the Fold playbook and Landing Page guide.

The highest ROI campaigns will always be to warm audiences. Whether they’ve:

• Visited your homepage
• Visited key parts of your site (FAQ, return policy, pricing, checkout)
• Purchased previously
• Filled out a lead magnet
• Jumped on a sales call

Cold audiences need a ton of convincing.

Warm audiences sometimes just need to be reminded that you exist. Or you need to overcome whatever unresolved objection they may have.

Here are some lesser-known remarketing strategies to boost sales & reduce churn.

1. Retarget high-performing audiences on cheaper channels

Use top-tier channels and targeting to find quality people, then use cheaper/lower-quality channels to remarket to them. For example:

1. Ensure all your ad sets and ads have unique UTM tags.
2. Find your top Google Ads keywords or Facebook/LinkedIn audiences.
   1. LinkedIn is very expensive but has great targeting.
3. Create custom audiences on Twitter or Display Ads targeting people who visited with those unique UTM tags where people’s attention is cheaper.

Find them where it’s expensive, focus where it’s cheaper.

2. Cross-sell, up-sell, and re-engage inactive customers

After a sale most companies just rely on email to do all the engagement and closing. But, the average open rate on emails is 30~40%.

And a lot of people just open and archive without reading. Instead, use remarketing:

1. Identify cohorts of people who are:
   1. Not reading or engaging with your emails.
   2. Less likely to repurchase or more likely to churn (haven’t been actively using the product)
2. Run retargeting ads to these segments on social platforms (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) to re-engage them.

Here’s how Amazon does it:

3. Remarket for months to come

A lot of folks focus on remarketing within the first few days. Abandoned cart emails or ads after the first day or two. After a couple of week or so, they kinda give up.

Remember: Someone will rarely hit your site and be ready to buy at that moment.

Usually, it’s not “no”. It’s “not yet.” For example:

• For shoes, maybe they don’t need a new pair right now, but they might next spring/summer.
• For B2B services or tools, maybe it’ll take the company months to figure out if they actually need you or if the time is right.

It’s still a decent idea to use a higher budget the sooner the interaction because they are hotter. But try remarketing to people months later.

As a rule of thumb, you should get more salesy the longer it’s been. Don’t overwhelm someone while they’re deciding; it might turn them off. But if you wait 6 months and they’ve forgotten details, hit them with a more direct pitch.

4. Don’t just optimize for purchases

Ad platforms can tell when someone is close to purchasing and charge more for their eyeballs or clicks if your ad campaigns are optimized for sales. Instead:

1. Identify or create pieces of content that lead to leads/sales.
2. Make sure there’s a strong CTA embedded into the content.
3. Send people to that content and optimize your ads for “engagement”:
   1. 50% scroll depth
   2. 20+ seconds on the page (or longer)

This may lead to more conversions at a lower price. Example:

5. Get creative for sniffing for intent

Focus on more than just the obvious pricing pages, product pages, checkouts, and free trial events. Here are other ideas:

• Return policy page
• Clicked on 3+ FAQ items
• Clicked on numerous product photos
• Spent X time on the pricing page & scrolled through the different comparisons
• Used search or filtered
• Clicked to numerous pages on the site

Get creative with sniffing for intent and combine it with:

6. Be specific

Specific will always outperform general. Customize ads and emails to match users' confirmed interests and interactions. For example:

• If they visited a specific product page, hit them with an ad or email featuring that specific product.
• If they talked to a specific sales rep, include them in an ad for familiarity.
• If they spent a bunch of time on the pricing page, they might need help figuring out which plan is right for them.
• If they visited the return policy, maybe they're worried they won't like it

Example: Chaiirish used a product the user visited and added some urgency:

Remember:

• Warm > cold
• Specific > general
• Creative > same-old

If you want some ad inspiration, check out our Ad Vault. And if you want to dive deeper into ad tactics, check out the 461 tactics in our Growth Vault.

Here’s an example of my hatred:

As I said, it’s super common on ecommerce product pages, but I also see them on SaaS/service landing pages like this:

The thinking behind horizontal tabs is reasonable:

• We don’t want to overwhelm people.
• It’s vertically compact, so it doesn’t require loads of scrolling.
• For product pages, this allows all the info to be above the fold.
• Only people who care to see the info will click it.

But there are a few problems.

Let’s dive into each:

1. 1 in 4 users never find the info hidden in them

27% of users in a study of Sephora’s old product page never even discovered the content in the unopened horizontal tabs. 

For REI’s old site, it was a staggering 43% never noticed the horizontal tabs:

Look at what’s contained in those tabs; Specs, Reviews, Shipping & Returns info, and Ingredients—all key pieces of info people use to make purchasing decisions.

18% of Sephora's users and 21% of Crutchfield's users never saw the tabs despite trying to find the information they contained.

That’s 1 in 5 users desperately trying to make an informed buying decision that will likely turn to a competitor.

2. They have an unclear ROI

When you see something listed in a horizontal tab, you don’t know what it contains or whether it’s worth it to click to see it.

Numerous users in the study were disappointed when they clicked the Reviews tab to find that it was completely empty. Or a Specs tab with three dinky bullet points.

Once they fail you once, you’re less likely to keep exploring.

3. They limit your ability to stumble upon info

As Baymard says it:

When content is hidden in “Horizontal Tabs” layouts it’s very difficult for users to “stumble” onto content that could end up being extremely valuable to their purchasing decision — for example, a fuller description of the materials used, or a discussion of production ethics (both of which were observed to be happy “accidental discoveries” some users had when exploring product pages).

Users have to actively choose to see the title of a tab and click it. So it better be clear and enticing

4. They can be confusing to navigate

Tabs like Reviews, Shipping, Specs, and Materials are really clear what they care.

Tabs like the ones below, however, are not immediately obvious what’s contained within them:

For example, where do you go if you want product dimensions? Maybe Details?

Well, they’re actually just in Overview.

5. The title is everything

As you can see, the title of the tab is really doing a ton of the work.

And due to design considerations, you often need to summarize it with a single word, which may not be enough to accurately convey what’s inside.

For example, “Details.” Details about what exactly?

6. It pigeon holes you to the horizontal tabs

Okay, you realize that maybe the horizontal tabs aren’t great for a lot of things.

So you decide to put some some info in the tabs, but other, more important information in separate sections below the fold.

Well this actually performs very poorly. This causes confusion because:

1. Some people won’t find the horizontal tab info.
2. Those that do might assume that all info is in there.
3. Many will be confused due to the complexity of info being in different places.

These little confusions end up mattering a lot when you’re talking about thousands to millions of people navigating a page.

Alternate formats

There are two major formats to use instead:

#1. Vertically collapsed sections

This has become increasingly common on modern sites.

For example, this is what Sephora does today:

Here’s why it’s better:

• It’s far easier to find everything.
• They can auto-expand the critical sections and auto-collapse the rest.
• This decreases the importance of enticing titles.
• Each section can be designed to present the information best.
• There are no limitations on the number of words used in the titles.

#2. Long page, sticky TOC

Present all the info in separate vertical sections, with no collapsing.

Have a sticky nav that lets people bounce between them.

This has nearly the same benefits as above. The primary consideration is whether you want anything to be auto-collapsed or not.

Takeaway

Designers often create something because it:

• Looks good
• Feels efficient

In reality, it confuses and obfuscates essential information.

Confused people don’t convert.

So, the next time you design a page on your site or an app, prioritize usability and clarity above all else.

It's incredibly easy to waste money on ads (either by losing it or not getting the most out of it).

Sending your ads to a generic landing page is a surefire way to do just that.

The same concept applies to all marketing channels and campaigns, but it's particularly painful when you're paying for the clicks.

Top startups use custom funnels and landing pages for their ads to drive higher conversion rates.

This tactic is saying two things:

• Don’t reuse existing ads with new landing pages. Create custom ad creatives for each funnel type to match the user journey.
• Don't reuse the same landing page for all your ads. Match the landing page to the ad copy and creative.

Example: An ad creative comparing your product to a competitor should send them to a page that compares them to that competitor—not your homepage or a product page.

​@oliviercroguy​ had a great thread about this a few years ago that shared 7 proven landing page types.

I've used it as inspiration and tweaked the list below.

Let's dive in.

#1. Interactive Calculators

Landing pages don't need to just do a hard sell. They can also be useful:

Offer a tool (e.g., ROI calculator, savings estimator) where users input data, see tailored outcomes, and are prompted to buy or sign up while using or after.

This is great for any company where the user has a complex question they're trying to answer that can be solved algorithmically. For example:

• Health/Fitness: Macros, BMI, protein needs, etc.
• Marketing: ad budget calculator, LTV calculator, growth calculator, etc.
• Finance: Rent or buy, mortgage, car loan, compound interest, etc

2. Competitor Comparison

If your ad directly calls out a competitor, send them to a page that directly compares and contrasts.

Webflow directly compares itself to Squarespace on a variety of metrics.

Note: If you're going to do that, make sure that you're honest and make your competitor win where it actually wins. If you win every single category, it becomes less believable.

Shopify does a great job showing all the reasons why people choose them over Woocommerce with this thorough landing page:

Takeaway: Don't just compare in the ad, go deep and compare yourself to your competitor side-by-side. Highlight your product’s superior features, pricing, or benefits, with a CTA to purchase or sign up.

#3. Pre-Sales Landing Page

Normally marketing advice is focused on reducing the number of steps. Here you're doing the opposite and purposefully putting a page in-between the ad and the product page (or the App/Play Store).

For example, Ritual had a page that tells a story about personalize nutrition, and then links to their product page for vitamins:

Takeaway: warm up cold traffic with storytelling and persuasive copy to build trust before redirecting to a product page (or App/Play Stores).

Use a narrative-driven approach (pains, product benefits, “why now”), visuals, and a clear CTA to transition to the product page.

#4. Free Trial/Welcome Offer

There's a reason why brands are constantly running promos—they work.

This landing page type's focus is getting them an exclusive welcome offer. For example, here's AG1:

And here an example of an ad they used to get there:

Takeaway: Test an exclusive welcome offer and make a landing page completely dedicated to it.

#5. Quiz Funnel

People hate risk.

A quiz is a great way to reduce the perceived risk in a purchase decision.

This is why bra brands like Third Love have quiz funnels to help you feel more comfortable committing to a purchase:

​And here's an ad that links to this quiz​.

Takeaway: A quiz funnel works best for products where personalization, education, or tailored recommendations increase conversions. ​Here's a comprehensive list of examples​.

#6. Advertorial (a.k.a. Blog Post)

Another way to soft sell is to link to a piece of content that educates your audience and introduces your product naturally.

Here's an example from PetLabCo

We actually used to do this using my cofounder's old "​Growth Guide​" (which he's now turned into a ​Startup Guide​ on his site).

This guide was a primary driver of both ​agency leads​ and ​Growth Program students​ for 2+ years.

Because it had proven itself to generate leads, we sent both cold and retargeting traffic to it—which worked quite well.

Takeaway: Optimize the content for SEO and it can work both organically and for ads.

#7. Listicle

A listicle is one of the ​10 primary types of content​ that is quite similar to an advertorial but it's more directly product focused.

Generally best used for retargeting since it is more of a hard sell.

A listicle, as the name implies, is a list of things (reasons, tools, ways).

Here's an example from baby food brand Yumi:

A classic listicle style is to compare the "best X tools" and then you include your own tool and present it as the best. Here the listicle that Kit/ConvertKit made about the ​13 best newsletter tools​ that conveniently ranks Kit first.

A few other rapidfire ideas:

• Match the copy/imagery to the ad: A super simple hack is to simply tweak the copy and images on the landing page to match the ad copy and creative. Matching landing page copy to the keywords used on Google Ads is a classic tactic.
• Influencer: If you have a famous customer, affiliate, or super fan (and you have their permission), you can highlight them on the page.
• Demo video: Make the page's focus an in-depth demo of your product or service.
• Flash sale/limited promo pages: Make custom landing pages highlighting short-term promos.
• Super minimal: Try a hilariously short and to-the-point page.
• Super long: Try one of those insanely long ClickFunnels-esque landing pages that take 20 minutes to read.
• Social proof: A page where social proof is the star of the show with walls of testimonials, reviews, case studies, and stats.
• Case studies: An advertorial of sorts where it's entirely focused on the results your product/service has achieved for your customers
• No landing page: Lead-gen ads where you collect their contact info directly in the platform can also work wonders.

Start small, expand from there

Don't go out and create all of these right away. Here's how to start:

1. Pick one funnel type and create custom ads and landing pages for it.
2. Look at your existing top-performing ads and create ads that build off the copy and creative.

Once you see wins, iterate and expand to other funnel types.

Calm makes $7.7M per month and has 150M+ downloads for their meditation app.

~50% of Calm’s social traffic comes on autopilot from handfuls of YouTube videos, getting thousands of views per hour on videos that are upwards of 7 years old.

You might suspect they’re all related to meditation, but they’re not. They’re almost all related to sleep:

Calm realized that their biggest usage time was between 9PM and 11PM.

Clearly, people used their app to help calm their minds and go to sleep. So targeting people who are pulling up videos to help them sleep is a high-intent audience that would be interested in their product.

It turns out related keywords have a ton of search volume on Google and YouTube:

So they created videos related to sleep: bedtime stories, rain noises, white noise, ocean sounds, and deep sleep meditations.

And then they subtly funnel viewers to their app:

There’s no other pitch besides the Calm logo as a watermark during the videos.

The beauty of this is that someone will likely pull up the same video every night and see Calm’s logo and CTA every time.

This is not only a great example of using data to find the next growth opportunity, but it’s also a great example of the law of conservation of attractive profits.

Law of conservation of attractive profits

“In the face of technological disruption, profit opportunities shift from the main product to specialized, hard-to-replicate components or services.”

This law was created by Harvard Business professor Clayton Christensen.

Chris Dixon (a16z) summarizes it with an analogy in his book Read Write Own:

“Commoditizing a layer in a tech stack is like squeezing a balloon. The volume of air stays constant but shifts to other areas. The same is true for profits in a tech stack (roughly). The overall profits are conserved but shift from layer to layer.”

For example, Google started as a Search engine and now makes over $50B per year. To maintain their profits from Search, they’ve tried to own more of the stack required to access it: browser (Chrome), device (Google Pixel), operating system (Android and Chromebook), and telecommunication network (Google Fi).

Even still, they pay Apple $12B per year to be the default search engine on Apple devices to maintain their dominance—that price would be much higher if Android didn’t emerge as a massive contender to Apple’s smartphone dominance.

Takeaway: You can steal away land from your competitor by offering what they sell for free. As Bezos said: "Your margin is my opportunity."

Similarly, IBM invests in open-source operating systems (Linux) not to “give back.”

They just don't want to share profits with corporations like Microsoft. Meta is investing in open-source large language models (LLMs), so it doesn’t need to pay to use OpenAIs.

Now, Google’s strategy is to create free and just as powerful versions of ChatGPT. So far, they are not winning that battle.

Calm has done something similar to a smaller degree.

Most people post videos on YouTube to generate ad revenue.

Calm has created a mobile app that generates $8M per month. They don’t need to monetize YouTube videos for sleep, meditation, and relaxation sounds.

Instead, they want it to have as much reach as possible and build as much affinity as possible so they can convert more people to their app.

So, Calm can have the best sleep sound video with zero ads. That matters to people. This is the most popular ad from Calm’s most popular video:

HubSpot can pump out insane amounts of free marketing content because they don’t need to make money from selling education. They make all of their money from their CRM.

Alex Hormozi doesn’t need to charge you for his book or courses because he’ll make way more money by being able to buy into your business for a low valuation because of the affinity he’s built. This gives him a big edge against other creators who have to charge or add sponsors.

Takeaway question: What are people paying competitors for that you can offer to them for free?

For deeper dives into Calm’s YouTube strategy, check out Strategy Breakdowns and Foundation.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Shakespeare’s famous line from Romeo & Juliet is wrong.

First, our perception is very sensitive. The color and shape of a spoon can make something taste sweeter. The sound of a deep fryer can make food taste crunchier.

So, if a rose were named “trash,” it might not smell quite as nice.

This is called the labeling effect.

Second, the popularity of roses might not have taken off if the word didn’t sound as lovely as it does. Products named with softer sounds are often seen as more luxurious (think Chanel or Moet) compared to products with harsher names, which might come across as lower quality or even unpleasant.

Think how many people are named Rose versus the harsher words Geranium or Orchid. Could that not have something to do with the popularity of roses?

All that is to say, the name of your startup or product is very important.

Metrics to optimize when choosing a name:

1. People’s perceptions. As discussed above, the name should evoke the appropriate emotion or set a certain expectation. This is why grocery store names imply lower cost (Costco) or high quality (Whole Foods).
2. Memorability. You want a name that is not easily forgotten, or they’ll remember your competitor.
3. “Googlability.” They need to be able to find you online.
   1. For example, the name Demand Curve is not particularly SEO-friendly.
4. “Spellability.” They need to know how to spell it when they hear it.
   1. This is a major sin of many startups trying to be clever.
5. “Sayability.” They need to know how to say it when they see it. And it should be nice and easy to say.
   1. People don’t like to feel or look dumb. If it’s hard to say, they won’t.
6. Understandability. When people hear it, can they guess what it is? If not, does it make sense when they know what it is?
   1. The “bnb” in Airbnb implies accommodation. VRBO is meaningless.
7. Distinct. You want something that’s not easily confused with something else.
8. .com preferred. Try to find something you can get a good domain for without spending insane amounts of money.

And yes, ChatGPT is an atrocious name on a few metrics:

1. It’s quite a mouthful to say.
2. GPT is a meaningless acronym to everybody but AI nerds, so it’s taken months for my girlfriend not to say ChatGTP (not memorable, and people don’t like things that make them feel dumb)

At least chat hints at what it is, but GPT means nothing (low understandability).

But it is googleable and distinct. However, it’s a rare product that was so good and revolutionary that the name didn’t matter. 99.9% of products aren’t that lucky.

So, let’s use the 8 naming strategies from Ali’s The First 1000 to name our startup/product. His article gives way more examples, so check it out, as I’ll just be doing a higher-level overview.

8 startup/product naming strategies

Here’s the great image created by Ali as a summary:

Creative names

1. Mashups

Two words become one. There are two main types:

1.1 Compound Names (fusion of 2 complete words):

Slam together two complete words.

• Ticketmaster: Ticket + Master
• YouTube: You + Tube (slang for TV)
• Paypal: Pay + Pal
• Coinbase: Coin + Base

1.2 Portmanteaus (Blending sounds and meanings of 2 words):

Blend parts of words together to create a new one:

• SpaceX: Space + Exploration
• Netflix: Internet + Flicks (movies)
• Duolingo: Duo (meaning two) + Lingo, from "Linguistics" (which comes from “tongues”)
  • This can mean “you and your language learning partner”, or
  • “Two tongued” which is exactly what “bi-lingual” means.
• Binance: Bitcoin + Finance

2. Play on words

Words that describe the product, service, or value

Here, Ali says they need to be creatively spelled. I’ll break this category into two.

Creatively-spelled words:

• TikTok: Sound of a clock ticking away as you waste hours of your life
• Reddit: “read it”
• Google: googol (the number one followed by 100 zeroes)
• Nvidia: from the Latin word “invidia,” meaning “envy”—as in, you’ll make people envious. And the “vid” implies it’s for video (which GPUs were for).

Real words, creative meaning:

• Stripe: The black strip on the back of a credit card
• Twitter: Birds making tweet, tweet noises.
• Kindle: Suggests warmth and inspiration. Curling up beside a fire reading.

3. Paying tribute

This category includes companies named after someone (or something) significant to the founder.

3.1 Tribute to the past [mythical or historical figure]

• Starbucks: Tribute to Starbuck, a character in "Moby Dick."
• Apple: Sir Isaac Newton’s apple
• Tesla: Nikola Tesla (inventor of DC current)

3.2 Personal tribute

• Walmart: named after founder Sam Walton (combined with Mart)
• X: named after Elon’s old payments company.
• Roku: means 'six' in Japanese. Roku was the founder's sixth startup.

4. Aspiration

Names that reflect the company’s mission or goals.

4.1 Expression

• Uber: from the German word über, meaning "over, above.”
• Target: symbolizing becoming the go-to shopping destination.
• AgelessRx (our client): implies their goal of increasing longevity.

4.2 Personification

• Nike: The Greek goddess of victory.
• Amazon: The South American rainforest, reflecting size and diversity

Practical names

5. Easy to remember, write and pronounce nonsense

Meaningless words that are short and memorable (ideally, they rhyme or have a .com available)

• Temu
• Hulu
• Tubi
• Brex

6. Value/service descriptor.

Words that simply describe the product/service.

• Threads
• Telegram
• Shop
• Messenger
• Bible
• Weather

Apple loves doing this.

7. Domain name

• The company/product name is just the domain:
• Character(dot)ai
• Booking(dot)com
• Customer(dot)io

This is my second least favorite.

It can get annoying to say. And it’s annoying it Slack/messages when the URL always unfurls. People often start writing things likes booking(dot)com or crypto(dot)com—like I did above to prevent your email tool from autolinking.

8. Abbreviation

When all else fails, use an abbreviation.

• VRBO
• CVS
• ADP

Choose an acronym that’s distinct and easy to say and remember. GPT is terrible. CVS is not bad. At least when evaluated for "is this nice to say?"

But tbh, this is one of my least favorite since acronyms don’t have any soul.

So what’s next

Honestly, I’d recommend shoving this article (both what to optimize for and the naming strategies) into ChatGPT (or fave AI). Then, describe your product/startup and ask it to generate a bunch of ideas.

Then, evaluate each one yourself. Base it on the 8 metrics above and how you feel about it. Remember, the perception and feeling is important.

Then, ask some friends and some people in your target audience what they think. What it makes them feel. How they would say it or spell it.

Keep doing this until you find an obvious winner.

Ideally, it should stand out like meeting your long-term partner. It just clicks and makes sense.

Check out Ali’s article, and the rest of his great newsletter!

Getting your first batch of customers can be one of the hardest or easiest parts.

It’s really hard if you do it incorrectly for your product type.

How you approach it depends on:

• Purchase intent of the customer (high vs low)
  • High: Something people already know they need. A known problem that people know there’s a solution for.
  • Low: Something people don’t know they need yet! An unknown problem or an unknown solution.
• The competitiveness and makeup of the market
• How broadly appealing the product is
• If they’re actively looking for a solution
• If the customer has switching costs (aka opportunity costs)
• Complex vs simple product
• Product category (B2B vs B2C)
• Geographic constraints
• Self-serve vs high-touch

Luckily, Ali created two flow charts depending on customer purchase intent.

GTM motions for high-intent customers

Here’s the flow chart, explanations of each channel below:

#1. Produce discoverable content:

High-intent, no competitors, looking for solution

Create content that people find while searching for a solution. This can be on Quora, Reddit, communities, YouTube, TikTok, or good ol' fashioned Google.

#2. Overservice 1 customer:

High-intent, no competitors, not looking for solution, complex product/solution

For complex, high-ticket products, go above and beyond for a single customer. Create a product/service that absolutely wows them.

Then, get referrals and create a case study.

#3. Hack a distribution channel:

High-intent, no competitors, not looking for solution, simple product/solution

Use clever hacks on existing marketplaces to get visibility:

• Airbnb: Automatic “post to craiglist” feature to increase visibility. [Source]
• “Tiktok: Appended “for Facebook & Instagram” at the end of the app name on the app store to get in front of people looking for FB or IG. [Source]”
• “Paypal: Created bots that reached out to eBay sellers pretending to be real customers and insisting on paying only via PayPal. [Source]”

Note: Quoted examples are from Ali’s article.

#4. Fish on forums/communities

High-intent, competitive space, no switching costs

Similar to #1, except you find existing posts/questions on Quora/Reddit/Forums, answer their question, and link to your product.

Don’t be spammy.

#5. Cold outreach (and reduce the friction)

High-intent, competitive space, high switching costs

If it’s harder for customers to switch from competitors, reach out to your customers directly, offer free value, and be willing to help them migrate. ConvertKit famously did this to get creators off of competitors like Mailchimp.

GTM motions for low-intent customers

#6. Launch somewhere (+ PR)

Low-intent, enterprise competitors, self-serve product

If your customers are massive, slow, clunky enterprises, get in front of the small guys. Launch on Product Hunt, Techcrunch, Hacker News, Indiehackers, or KickStarter, or do a PR push (see #12).

A great way to have a big launch is to be “building in public” (see #10) for months before launch.

#7. Warm outreach/intro

Low-intent, enterprise competitors, high-touch product
Low-intent, no competitors, B2B

Find people in your network who likely have the problem but haven’t found a solution (in person or via LinkedIn), overdeliver, and ask for a referral.

In general, warm outreach is infinitely better than cold outreach, so putting yourself out there is an excellent way to increase response and close rates.

#8. Embed yourself in a community

Low-intent, modern competitors, niche appeal

If the product is niche, be a key member in communities around this niche. These could be on Reddit, Facebook, Stack Overflow, campuses, community centers, or dedicated sites and forums.

Or create your own community around it on Reddit, Facebook, Meetup, or Circle.

#9. Grab attention [on the streets]

Low-intent, modern competitors, broad appeal, geographically constrained

Place objects and signs where your customers hang out. For example, “the dating app Honeypot (now Thursday) got its first users by placing whiteboards with quirky messages around the streets of London. [Source]”

#10. Build in public

Low-intent, modern competitors, broad appeal, worldwide

If your product is broadly appealing and the market is competitive, then use social platforms to build an audience that likes and believes in you and your product. Attract people to you by being authentic.

#11. Use influencers

Low-intent, no competitors, B2C

If it’s a new product category targeting consumers, strike deals with micro and nano influencers to share your product on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube videos, and blogs.

Or, at the very least, get them using it.

Note B2B influencers are also on the rise ;0

#12. Full blown PR

Low-intent, strong social mission

If you have a strong social mission, like Tom’s “buy 1 give 1” business model where they’d give shoes to those in need, then you’re a strong candidate for a full blown PR cycle. You can manage this by contacting editors/writers at publications or working with a PR agency.

Ali gives examples of companies for each in the full article.

Takeaway: Find yourself in the flow chart, and then focus on that channel.

Nothing sells better than a happy customer.

Here are 10 research-backed recommendations for getting and displaying reviews:

Encourage comparisons in reviews

A review that compares your product to another is far better than a regular review:

• Positive reviews that compare your product increase sales by up to 26%. They anchor your product as being better than competitors. For example, “The iPhone 15 has a better camera than my friend’s Google Pixel” is better than “The iPhone 15 camera is really good.”
• Negative reviews that compare are up to 47% less harmful. We attribute their dislike to their personal preferences. Example: “The iPhone’s battery life isn’t as good as the Pixel” is less harmful than “The iPhone battery life sucks.”

Encourage reviews to compare your product by asking: “How was it compared to a similar product you’ve tried?”

Expert recommendations vs customer reviews

Should you display simple customer reviews or expert recommendations?

It depends on how easy it is for people to judge the product's quality by using it:

• If it’s easy to judge the quality, then do customer reviews. Examples: T-shirts, food, hotels.
• If it’s hard to judge and requires expertise, do an expert recommendation. Examples: insurance, dentists, educational institutions, software, agencies.
  • Would you trust “Bob Smith” to recommend a heart surgeon? Or would you trust your family doctor more?

How incentives boost reviews

Most happy customers will never bother to leave a review. Even if you ask them.

But incentivizing them with free products, cash, gift cards, or contest entries makes it much more likely that they will leave a review, and it’s more likely to be positive.

Here’s the data:

• Home improvement store product reviews were 83.4% more positive when incentivized via sweepstakes entries.
• Even a modest $0.25 incentive paid immediately for rating and reviewing a video proved effective, leading to a 20.6% increase in positivity

Do not ask for a positive review. That might backfire and is against Amazon TOS.

Don’t ask for reviews too soon

Getting asked to review a product you just got is like a popup modal asking you to subscribe before you even know what the website is.

Recommendation: Wait at least 10 days before asking for a review to increase the chance they review by 40-60%.

Additional recommendations for software reviews:

• Don’t do it based on time after signing up; do it based on milestones of usage (for example, they just hit their "aha" moment with your product.
• Don’t ask them when they’re clearly in the middle of something.

Some negative reviews are good for you

You see a 4.9-star-rated espresso machine and start reading the reviews. They’re all resoundingly positive…, but you start to get a little suspicious that they’re all fake.

You check the 1-star reviews and see: “There is a considerable difference in taste when mineral or filtered water is used rather than tap water”

You laugh and say, “That has nothing to do with the machine, you bozo!! Well, if that’s all people have to complain about, then it must be good.”

Oddly enough, a low, fairly irrelevant review will improve your perception of a highly-rated product by ~15%.

Takeaway: Don’t hide negative irrelevant reviews, or maybe even showcase them!

Show “likes” on the product page

Leverage the engagement your product has received on social media:

Oddly enough, this only increased sales during non-work hours. However, each additional like received increased sales by €0.26, about 0.14% of the product price.

Takeaway: Show a product’s likes and a few profile photos of people who liked it.

The first review sets the tone

We’re the pinnacle of herd animals.

If the first review is negative, you’ll get fewer sales, fewer reviews, and more negative reviews. This effect can last for 3 years or more.

And the opposite happens if the first review is positive.

Here are some recommendations:

• Launch products to a select group of customers mostly likely to rate it highly.
• Launch on new marketplaces (like Amazon or Walmart) the same way.
• Reach out to early customers that you think are happy and incentivize them to write a review about it.
• If you get a negative review early, do everything you can to correct it.

Order matters

Sales are up to 84% higher if the first review is 5-star versus 1-star, and we rarely read more than 10 reviews before deciding.

Takeaway: Display at least one positive review first before displaying others. Never display a negative review first.

4.3 is better than 4.9 (if it’s your own website)

Oddly, sales peak between 4.0 and 4.5 stars and dip down at 4.5 to 5.0. At really high ratings, we become skeptical and assume the results are manipulated (the study focused on specific retail websites and not a marketplace like Amazon).

Takeaway: Don’t delete or hide all reviews lower than 5.

Reply to all reviews

Replying to reviews has various benefits:

• It can make an upset customer change their mind and increase their rating (and maybe even stay a customer).
• It signals to people that you care about customers.
• And a study showed it increased the number of reviews by 12% and increased the average rating by 0.12 stars.

So make sure to reply to all of them!

–––

Use these 10 research-backed ways to get the most out of customer reviews.

Check our Growth Vault for 84 other CRO tactics (and 373 growth tactics).

Fundamentally, there are only 4 high-level ways to drive growth.

This image from MKT1 summarizes it perfectly:

A startup can do a million things to grow (we’ve covered over 455 of them here), but given extremely limited resources, you should find the highest leverage place to apply pressure to grow now.

Understanding these 4 primary levers helps you prioritize. Let’s dive into each:

1. Get more $$$ from your current slice of pie

• Charge more money from existing customers (make sure to increase perceived value too).
• Sell more products to existing customers (upsell/cross-sell)
• For SaaS, increase revenue per customer by adding new features and tiers, increase the number of seats they use, or increase product usage.
• Reduce churn so revenue can grow over time. The SaaS Quick Ratio is a handy metric for determining whether your growth and churn are healthy.

2. Capture the same pie more efficiently

You’re always getting new customers, but you can do it better. You can generate more revenue with the same or less cost and effort.

There are really only two fundamental ways to do this:

• Increase conversion rates with better funnels (copy, landing pages, lead magnets, sales, etc).
• Lower acquisition costs with better creatives, targeting, lead quality, (and conversion rates ;0)

Note: Check our Growth Vault for 84+ tactics to increase conversions

3. Capture more of the same pie

You’re growing within the same market segment but can get MORE leads:

• Double down on what’s working, but always experiment with creative ideas.
• Watch out for diminishing returns (increasing acquisition costs), especially on ads, if you’ve been going after the same market for a while and keep increasing budgets. That’s especially true if it’s a niche market.
• If you’re steadily growing, don’t wait until you cap out before expanding the pie because it takes longer than you think.
• Set up a different growth engine (content or sales instead of ads)

Note: No matter how good you are, you will never get the whole pie, sorry!

4. Expand the pie (or test new pies entirely)

• Go after new markets/segments (industries, company sizes, geos, verticals).
  • If you’re very early stage, this is just trying to find product-market fit.
• Depending on the new segment, you can either use the same growth engine (ads) or you need to set up another one (i.e., outbound or content).
• Create new content, messaging, and funnels tailored to the new “pie”.
• Always run small tests before going all in. Make sure to prioritize your tests using the RICE/DRICE frameworks.
• Double down if you have similar or higher conversion rates with this new market or segment.

How to use it

Every few months, pick one of these to prioritize and go hard on it. What matters most will depend on your current circumstances (and likely stage). For example:

• A very early-stage company is either focusing hard on one market/segment or testing several to find product-market fit.
• A startup with PMF will likely want to improve conversion rates with well-optimized funnels, great onboarding, and strong retention.
• Then they'll want to focus on capturing more of the same pie by ramping up their current growth engine (ads) or setting up a second (outbound).
• Then they might want to get more from their current customers by charging more and upselling and cross-selling.
• Then, they might want to expand markets/segments as they reach saturation in their current ones.

To dive deeper into this concept, check out the rest of MKT1's great article.

We’ve talked about unfair advantages before, which are more general:

• Money – Access to capital or financial resources.
• Intelligence & insight – Natural ability, education, or unique knowledge.
• Location & luck – Right place, right time, and fortunate circumstances.
• Education & expertise – Skills, training, and credibility.
• Status & connections – Social background, network, and influence.

A founder's job is to identify and exploit their unfair advantages.Here, we'll do the same with your company's Marketing Advantages (a framework developed by MKT1).Marketing advantages break down into four categories with three subcategories:

Of course, you can only learn so much from an icon and a few words, so let’s explain these a bit deeper.1. Product Advantages (Yellow)

• Product virality or network effects – Your product becomes more valuable as more people use it, making it easier to acquire new users organically (ex: Slack, WhatsApp).
• Free offering that converts well to paid – A freemium model or free trial that effectively transitions users to paid plans (ex: Figma, Notion).
  • Figma has a smart strategy where they let users invite others for free (to make it frictionless) and then sneakily add them onto the next month’s billing cycle.
• Obvious & major differentiator – A unique, highly visible feature that sets you apart from competitors (ex: Tesla’s full self-driving tech, and Superhuman’s speed focus).

2. Ecosystem Advantages (Pink)

• Partnership potential (affiliate, channel, influencers) – Strong opportunities for partnerships that drive adoption (ex: Shopify’s app store, HubSpot’s affiliate program, how AG1 seems to own every single podcaster/influencer).
• Integrations – Seamless connections with other platforms that make your product more useful (ex: Zapier’s gigantic integration library).
• Category or market tailwinds – Industry trends or regulatory shifts that naturally favor your business (ex: AI-driven tools benefiting from rapid AI adoption, or crypto companies benefitting from deregulation efforts).
  • It’s better to be WordPress in 2003 than a newspaper.

3. Marketing Fuel Advantages (Green)

• Standout company story or vision – A compelling brand narrative that resonates deeply (ex: Patagonia’s sustainability mission, SpaceX’s vision to colonize Mars).
• Demand for educational content – A topic where deep knowledge and content marketing drive engagement (ex: Ahrefs’ SEO content strategy, Demand Curve’s newsletter 👀).
• Customer love or proprietary data – A passionate user base or exclusive data insights that create defensibility (ex: Duolingo’s gamification loyalty, Spotify’s music recommendation algorithms).

4. Marketing Engine Advantages (Blue)

• Clear GTM Wedge & Ability to Expand – A well-defined initial entry point into the market with a clear path to scale (ex: Stripe started with devs before expanding into enterprise).
• Highest Organic Traffic in Category That Converts to Pipeline – A dominant SEO presence or word-of-mouth traffic driving leads (ex: HubSpot’s SEO dominance, or ).
• Audience Seeks Out Events or Community – A strong user base that actively engages with events and discussions (ex: Webflow’s design community, Notion’s ambassador network).

Okay cool but what do I do with this info?Here’s how to make use of Marketing Advantages:

1. Identify your advantages: Analyze your product, market, and brand to determine which marketing advantages apply to your startup.
   1. If you can’t find any, that might mean something.
2. Develop a strategy: Create a marketing plan to accelerate these advantages. For instance, if your product has network effects, implement referral programs and simplify onboarding (ex: Figma dumps you straight in).
3. Take action: Invest in areas that amplify your identified advantages, such as content creation for thought leadership or partnerships to build an ecosystem.
4. Monitor and evolve: Strike a balance between giving things time to work and being ready to pivot if it’s not working out.

The last you want to do is identify an advantage and then do nothing about it. Because if you don't, you better believe one of your competitors will.

How people/companies normally create an article or post:

They randomly pick a topic out of the air and start writing, not really knowing where it's gonna end up. The structure kinda just happens as they write.

They hit publish, and that topic is “done.”

Right?

Unfortunately, four things make that the wrong way to do it:

• People need to hear the same message numerous times in numerous ways for the message to sink in.
• You can’t guarantee that everyone will see a given post, article, or newsletter.
• Companies only have so many core ideas to communicate.
• Generating ideas and creating content is a slog if done haphazardly.

Finding ways to share the same idea in dozens of ways is critical.

How they should create content:

1. Use a system to generate ideas (like listing out all your customers' problems)
2. Turn each idea into numerous, clearly-defined posts

To achieve #1 and #2, you need to understand the 10 fundamental types of posts you can create. Using them you can turn a single topic into dozens of pieces of unique-feeling content.

The 10 types of posts

The easiest way to illustrate this is with a visual with examples baked in:

Here’s a high-res version to save for future use.

An example using a single topic

Let’s come up with a post for each type for "writing strong hooks:"

1. Actionable: "How to write a fear-based hook"
2. Observation: "The best creators' hooks don't feel like hooks"
3. X vs Y: "When you use a hook vs When you don't"
4. Motivation: "How a powerful hook got me featured in Forbes"
5. Analytical: "Hooks from LinkedIn's Top 30 Creators"
6. Listicle: "10 books for writing hooks"
7. Contrarian: "Most hooks are clickbait"
8. Testimonial/Client win: "How my client grew to 50k followers"
9. Personal story: "How obsessing over my hooks changed my business"
10. Meme: idk some meme about hooks

These are just off-the-cuff ideas. You could approach each one quite differently:

• There are endless memes.
• You can share multiple client stories over time.
• You can share various frameworks on writing hooks.
• You can analyze specific people’s hooks.

In short, you could easily generate over 100+ post ideas about writing hooks using these 10 post types as a guide.

And that’s just for the content idea of “writing hooks,” which could be a subtopic within broader topics like creating ads, copywriting, or audience building.

Plug these into your content creation system, and it will be much easier to generate a ton of great post ideas. Read the full article for examples and frameworks.

With ads and landing pages, you have seconds to:

• Communicate what you sell
• Why it matters to them
• Make them feel something

Energizing emotions such as excitement, amusement, and awe drive action—clicking, buying, sharing, or engaging. Ads that make you feel something are also a lot more memorable.

The Mullet (aka The Smile) is a simple and effective way to check those boxes in a single, powerful headline.

• Business in front: Put the factual business message upfront.
  • “Follow me on LinkedIn.”
  • “People swear by it.”
  • “Please enjoy responsibly.”
• Party in the back: Make them smile with a joke on the business message.
  • “Or I’ll keep following you in person.”
  • “And at it.”
  • “The Internet never forgets”

Got it?

Nah, of course not. Let’s dive into some examples (all from Dan Nelken’s post):

The Mullet is a powerful way to quickly get the important message across and leave them with a smile on their face. People who see your mullet will:

• “Get” what you sell
• Feel positively towards you (which is rare for an ad)
• Remember you (so they think of you after a Trigger Event)
• And most importantly, more likely to take action

Dan even uses this technique for his copywriting newsletter 🤣:

Experiment using The Mullet in your next ad or landing page header.

And if you need help figuring out your value props and writing a header and subheader for your site, check out our popular Above the Fold Playbook.

How many of you would, at least on occasion, like to be out of the relationship you’re in?

That’s the powerful opening line for an ad (here’s the video) from MasterClass for their course with renowned relationship therapist Esther Perel:

It’s a powerful ad that doesn’t feel intrusive or overly promotional. It’s emotional and thought provoking. It’s filled with credibility building and social proof.

Here’s the line-by-line analysis (click here or the image for a high-res version):

Key learnings:

• For longer videos like this, use various cuts to keep people engaged
• Use a strong hook to get people interested, then use another hook halfway to keep their attention (ex: ”Would you say, coming out of your childhood…”)
• Layer credibility and social proof throughout the video to add weight to what you’re saying
• Use social proof/testimonials to pitch the product instead of doing it directly
• Sell the benefits, not the features
• Leave the CTA subtle in the video and use the ad itself to do the pitch.

Want ad inspiration from top startups? Check out our Ad Vault.

As Alex starts his post: “What should a strategy actually LOOK LIKE? What is the "thing"? What is the format?”

It's not a 50-page business plan or an Excel file with 10 years of projected cashflows.

Instead, here’s how to write a simple & effective strategy: as a Google or Word doc.

It’s divided into 4 sections:

1. The strategy argument: Outline your interpretation of the market, your plan, and why you think your plan will work.
2. The strategy statement: A short practical statement of the strategy. Boil it down so your friend can understand it when you tell them over drinks.
3. The implications: A list of the key things you must do to execute the strategy.
4. The execution flow: A suggested order and prioritization of these actions.

Strategy argument

Structure your argument in a narrative flow:

1. The status quo: This is what the market is like right now
2. Why this sucks: Why the status quo needs to change
3. Our belief: How we think differently to everyone else (our breakthrough insight)
4. Our solution: Based on our breakthrough insight, this is how we will fix the status quo and deliver massive value

The narrative flow helps you refine the weak parts of your thinking.## 

The strategy statement

Our brains are lazy. Even exceptionally intelligent people like simplicity.

The best strategies can be summarized in a simple sentence.

Everyone on the team should be able to hear this statement, understand it, remember it, and help it shape their thinking.

As Alex recommends:

• Don’t make it pretty (or cute)
• Don’t make it too short (or you’ll confuse people)
• Don’t make it sound like a tagline (this isn’t marketing copy)

Just make it clear. Unambiguous. Practical. Usable.

For example, when Tesla started, EVs were small and boring. Tesla could have said:

"Use EV technology to create luxury, high-performance vehicles to attract people to the segment and grow the size of the market (before going down market).”

(The bolded text is my addition to Alex’s example.)

In other words: “Make electric cars cool and desirable, then make them accessible.”

The implications

Outline the changes that need to take place to bring the business to a position where it is obviously delivering the strategy.

Obviously means that an external observer could explain your strategy to you simply by looking at what you’re up to.

For example, we never explicitly told the world that our strategy was to create a media/education business to provide free value to early-stage founders so that they trust us and want to work with our agency. But that became obvious to many people.

Break this down into sections across different parts of the business. Product, Brand, Marketing, Sales.

What does it mean for each of them? How do they each need to change?

Execution flow

If you nailed the strategy, it should be easy. If it’s not, your strategy isn’t clear enough.

Sketch out the order of the high-level actions to implement this strategy:

1. First we need to do this
2. Then this
3. Then this

This isn’t every single task. That’s what Asana, Basecamp, and ClickUp are for. Instead, these are the high-level things your company must do to fulfill its strategy.

For example, to create a media/education business to provide free value to early-stage startups so they trust us and want to work with our agency, that could have been:

1. Start a free growth community
2. Start a free newsletter to nurture the community
3. Create free resources and distribute them on our website and social media and include mentions of the agency
4. Grow the audience and traffic to these resources

What’s next

Run the strategy by the team and friends. Then, start implementing it.

And stick to it. Don’t get distracted or compromise until the strategy is proven wrong.

If you want to dive deeper into some of Alex’s strategic ideas, I’ve written about 3 of them in previous newsletters:

• Play the Opposite’s Game with your strategy
• “Normalize the Weird” or “Weird the Normal”
• Contrarian Value

I also recommend his book No Bullsh*t Strategy.

Or you can read through the 48 strategy tactics we've had in the newsletter.

I’ve spent far too many hours scrolling through the top posts on Reddit, YouTube, X, and Instagram to reverse-engineer what made them go viral.

Three distinct types of posts go viral:

1. Remarkable world news: pandemics, wars, explosions, new presidents, etc. This goes viral because of its real-world impact.
2. They’re cute, hilarious, funny, amazing, inspiring, infuriating, or heartwarming.
   1. A woman’s car melted by a fire, but her Stanley mug remains pristine.
   2. The Dallas Zoo simply tweeted: “The Zoo is closed today due to a serious situation.” Comedy gold.
   3. Greta Thunberg dunks on Andrew Tate.
3. Someone went extremely over the top and did something 99.9999999% would not. More on this below.

#1 and #2 are quite hard to manufacture.

But with #3, you have a serious chance if you’re creative and put in the work.

Some examples of going over the top:

1. Mr Doodle spent 2 years doodling all over the walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture of a completely white house and filmed it as a stop motion video – 6.4M views on YouTube and 158k upvotes on Reddit
2. MrBeast spent 17+ hours saying "Logan Paul" 100,000 times – 23M views
   1. This is MrBeast’s thing. Doing insane stuff that no one else will: recreating Squid Game, burying himself for 50 hours, rebuilding Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, or going through the same Drive-Thru 1,000 times.
3. A man turned his missing eye into a working flashlight –192k upvotes on Reddit
4. KamuiCosplay spent 1.5 years creating an insanely detailed cosplay costume with over 1,000 LEDs – 152k upvotes on Reddit
5. Richard Linklater filmed the movie Boyhood over 11 years with the same cast to accurately portray growing up – $57.3M box office on a $4M budget.

The above are flashy consumer examples, but it can be applied to B2B as well

The bar (and the viral ceiling) is often much lower. Some simple and effective examples:

• The massive CopyHackers guide Every Copywriting Formula Ever. It's an obvious bookmark as a copywriter.
• Lenny’s Newsletter’s goes incredibly deep in his articles, often featuring quotes from dozens of people he interviewed at hot startups.
• Naim Ahmed’s post, where he analyzed 100 hooks in detail.
• Richard van der Blom’s annual 100 page PDF reports on the LinkedIn Algorithm.
• GrowthInReverse’s deep analyses of how creators grew to 50,000 subscribers.

You want someone to say: “Wow, this is insane! I can’t believe someone did this.”

Because if they do, they’ll forward it to someone else.

An important caveat

So yes, this may be the most likely way to go viral.

But it requires a really good idea and a TON of work (that's the whole point).

To be more than a simple flash in the pan, you need to find something related to what you sell. Otherwise, it's just a cool thing that people share, and you don't get anything lasting out of it. Your product/service needs to be an inherent part of the story.

Takeaway: Make your message so integral to the narrative that people can’t tell or experience the story without it.

Mr Doodle's is a great example of that. He took his regular art to an unparalleled level. If you liked the video, you'll love his art. You can't tell the story of the video without talking about his art.KamuiCosplay, too, created a great piece of marketing by highlighting her skill.

But, the man who turned his missing eye into a flashlight got nothing but a few days of dopamine from all the fleeting attention. No one knows or cares who he is specifically.

So find something that no one in your industry has ever done or is likely willing to do, and do it in a way that makes your product an integral part of the story.

I recommend the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger.

The typical company hires an SEO agency that pumps out low-quality content at high rates. Or they hire meh contract writers to write fairly meh content that are thinly veiled sales letters. Or they write surface-level and basic stuff.

And the typical person spends less than 30 minutes writing a LinkedIn post and wonders why it flops.

Which brings us to the first commandment of content marketing:

Thou shalt write for extremely high quality. 

Until you've earned a reputation for quality in the reader's mind, they don't read closely. Instead:

• They skim.
• They don't fully appreciate your arguments.
• They assume you're just trying to sell to them (instead of educate).

The ultimate “hook” is the author's reputation. In other words, the “from line” is more important than the subject line. The author more than the title. The podcast more than the episode title. The YouTuber more than the thumbnail.

You want to train people to see your name (or brand) and associate it with being worth the time investment to stop and read it.

Because most content is not.

You can do that by not shying away from great, in-depth content.

People don't have short attention spans for content: They finish three-hour Joe Rogan episodes and binge fourteen hours of Netflix.

They have short consideration spans: they must be hooked quickly. To do so, ensure your first minute is incredible.

Extreme quality stems from four factors:

• Engagement — Are you hooking readers with your intros? Are you exciting them about what they're about to learn? Are you effectively conveying how valuable the material is? Does it spread out hits of dopamine? Does it break up lots of text with images?
• Concision — Are you conveying your points without fluff?
• Depth — Are you offering a thorough analysis that exceeds the self-evident parts of the material? Are you giving them access to knowledge or data they wouldn’t normally have access to?
• Novelty — Are you sharing counter-intuitive thoughts that readers wouldn't have pieced together on their own? That's how you trigger dopamine hits.

Yes! All of this matters for SEO as well. A huge factor in SEO is whether someone clicked a link in Google and terminated their search on your post. It has to be good if the person stopped trying to find other resources to answer the question.

The criteria for different content types

Search-driven (SEO) content should fulfill these criteria:

• You have something comprehensive and actionable to say about the topic that can resolve someone’s query.
• Potential customers search Google or YouTube for this topic.
• The topic can naturally segue into a pitch for your product.

Sharing-driven (social) content should fulfill these criteria:

• You have something novel and surprising to say about the topic.
• The novelty resonates emotionally or intellectually, which prompts sharing.
• The topic can naturally segue into a pitch for your product or cement you in their mind as an expert in that topic.

And both types of content benefit if you go over the top. It makes it noteworthy, shareworthy, “bookmarkable,” and “linkable” (in other blogs and newsletters). The best backlink strategy is making content that people organically link to—also known as the Skyscraper Technique.

In short: quality is king

The world doesn’t need more content. But it desperately needs better content.

Across almost every industry or niche, there is opportunity to become a respected name by writing in-depth, quality content.

Train people to associate your name with quality, and you’ll have their attention.

What’s next?

This is an edited opening of our Content Marketing guide. Continue reading here.

Here are some additional resources:

• I enjoyed this podcast episode on Lenny Rachitsky’s writing process (writer of a 7-figure, 650,000-subscriber newsletter).
• My guide to writing hooks.
• My cofounder's guide to Writing Better (read by hundreds of thousands)
• Go through the 64 content marketing insights shared in this newsletter.