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.

You don’t need “link building” trickery to rank in Google.

Here’s a startup whose only SEO strategy was to consistently publish perfectly optimized blog posts a few times per week:

They started with zero authority, zero backlinks, and a new domain.

So what makes a blog post “perfectly optimized?”

It's a blend of art, science, and choosing the right keywords. 

Let’s dive in.

The anatomy of a perfect blog post:

Before we do, an important message:

A perfect blog post is optimized as much for humans as it is machines. You need to make it engaging, thought provoking, and thorough. It needs to solve the person’s problem and sustain their interest throughout the process as time on site and “terminated user’s search” are strong SEO signals.

#1. SEO Metadata 

No, this is not for SEO ranking. It’s to improve clickthrough rates when your post shows up on Google. Treat it like ad copy—it must be compelling.

• Title: Craft a compelling title with your target keywords. Though not a direct ranking factor, it's bolded in search results and should include a CTA.
• Description: Treat it like ad copy, hook their interest so they click.
• URL: Ensure it matches your target keywords. Avoid duplicate page structures and refrain from including years in URLs.

For example, if you’re targeting “blog post checklist” do “/blog-post-checklist”

Resources to help: 

• Above the Fold Playbook (teaches header + subheader writing)
• 10 Ways to Hook People
• All our copywriting tactics

#2. Schema markup

• Implement schema types like Article, BlogPosting, and Breadcrumbs so your content displays on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). If yours doesn’t, someone else’s will.

#3. Original images

• Every image should have a descriptive Alt attribute for SEO visibility and accessibility. Don’t just lazily say “image of UI.” Describe the key elements as if someone can’t see them.
• Break up or replace large amounts of text with visuals.
• Stock photos, no thank you.

#4. Content length:

• Aim for a minimum of 700 words, adjusting based on:
  • Competition: If competitors are at 1,000 words, make a more thorough article that’s 1,500+ words.
  • Query specificity: A shorter article is probably sufficient if the keyword is super specific. If it’s broad, like “brand marketing,” then a very broad and thorough article is likely required.

Don’t just add random nonsense like AI blog post writers seem to do. Instead, add contextually relevant sections and examples to round it out.

#5. Table of contents with anchor links:

• For longer articles (1,000+ words), add a table of contents to make it easy to jump to what they care about.
• Use anchor links throughout the content for easy navigation. Google indexes these, enhancing user experience (UX) and providing valuable data.

#6. Heading structure:

• Use only one H1—the title of the article, ideally with the target keyword.
• Add supporting text under each heading to add context.
• Use H2s, H3s, and H4s appropriately.
• Make headings compelling. You have to keep them interested.

#7. Internal links:

Internal links are extremely important. Many SEO experts say they’re more important than backlinks.

• Ensure every page has internal links leading to and from it. This aids in crawl efficiency and contextual relevance.
• If you have a long article targeting a high-level keyword ( ), each section in that article could link to another dedicated blog article (ex: top brand marketing examples, what is brand marketing).
• Aim for posts to have upwards of 7+ internal links by cross-linking related articles.

#8. HTML elements:

• Use lists, tables, and accordions to capture featured snippets. It also makes the article more legible and delightful of readers, increasing time on site and chance they terminate their search with your article (and maybe subscribe).

 #9. YouTube embed:

• Ideally, pair each blog post with a complementary YouTube video. Embedding videos act as backlinks and enhance visibility on both Google and YouTube.
  • Shopify grew their YouTube to 230k subscribers in 18 months with this strategy.

#10. Clear, compelling CTA 

• Add clear CTAs throughout the article to turn readers into leads. This can lead to better interaction metrics and conversions.
• Add contextually relevant lead magnets (email courses/PDFs) to each article.
• Add popup modals that trigger based on time on the page (a few minutes) or scroll depth (>50%).

To practice what we preach, here’s a helpful visual to go with it.

Use this checklist when creating blog posts and it’ll resonate with readers and search engines alike.

Thanks to our friends at Contact Studios for help with this one.

If it’s helpful, we collaborated with them to create 4 free blog post templates. They’ve used them to generate millions in organic traffic in the past 8 months.

Zero pressure, of course. You can easily write articles without them, but they’re a nice starting point.

Ad creative (imagery) is the number one way to make your ads profitable—or not.

Your job as a marketer is to:

1. Think out of the box
2. Draw inspiration from others
3. Make it clear what you sell
4. Make it hooky and to the point

Here are two great ad campaigns to learn from:

Chirps: Sharon, not Karen

2.4M views on YouTube and 5.6M views on Facebook.

And a lot of love in comments:

And it’s just an ad. An ad one of our team members saw on TV of all places.

What this ad does well:

• It starts in “TikTok format,” showing a woman yelling at people. This is a big “pattern interrupt” when you’re watching on a TV where everything has a high production value and is in a landscape format.
• It plays off of the popularity of the “Karen” meme, and who doesn’t love the spicy outrage from watching a Karen yell at someone?
• If you notice the comments on Facebook, many people are tagging their friends named Sharon. It's a perfect excuse to engage and spread it.
• It then switches to reality TV/documentary style with a dynamic back and forth between her, her Karen-like actions, and her husband’s take.
• It transitions to the product nicely and pitches it in a funny way that keeps you watching. It’s not a robotic ad read.

Gett’s black cab ads

Gett is an Uber competitor. They’re much smaller and can’t compete on speed, cost, brand recognition, or ad spend.

Here are the ads they made to display in London to advertise their taxi booking service.

For context: The ubiquitous taxi in the UK is the “black cab.” A big car that looks straight out of the 1950’s:

What these ads do well:

• They’re fighting a different fight. Uber and Lyft battle over cost, wait times, and ride options. They’re basically the same app. Instead, Gett focuses on the benefits of the quirky black cab: they’re big, they use bus lanes, they’re iconic, and they’re a great way to show up to a fancy event in heels.
• They’re funny, memorable, clever, and tongue-in-cheek. It leaves you with a positive association with the brand—which a lot of ads do not.

One of the most important metrics for an ad is memorability. It’s rare that someone sees an ad and immediately buys, particularly for in-person ads, but even digital ads.

Typically, people hear about a brand or product dozens of times when they don’t need it. Then a Trigger Event causes them to finally take action. They’ll typically buy the ones that first come to mind that they have positive associations with.

Creative, rhyming, and tongue-in-cheek copy help make you the one they think of.

Additional resources for ads

1. 52 growth tactics about Ads. And 55 on Copywriting.
2. Our popular Growth Guide’s Making Ads and Running Ads sections.
3. Browse our Ad Vault (a library of 164 curated ads) or the Meta Ad Library.
4. We can run your ads for you. Everyone on our ads team has 10+ years of experience.
5. I also recommend saving great ads to find as inspiration. Save them to Facebook, Instagram, Notion, mymind, or whatever tool you prefer.

What you don’t do is as important as what you do.

1 person businesses up to $1 trillion businesses have to decide what to focus on.

The smaller you are, the more important it is to spend precious resources on what matters. The larger you are, the more important it is to prevent a horde of people from doing a lot of the wrong things.

Many startups use the RICE prioritization framework, in which you rank each initiative on four factors (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort) and combine them into a score. Then, you prioritize the ones with the highest score.

Let's dive into the parts of RICE:

#1. Reach 

How many customers would see the change (product), or how many new potential customers would it reach (marketing)?

How to rank it:

• The exact # of people you expect (50, 1k, 50k). You’d need to assume “per year” or “per month” for all your answers.
• Or something like this:
  • Most/All = 10
  • About half = 5
  • A fraction = 2

#2. Impact

How much would it affect the business if it worked? For example, how much more revenue this year?

How to rank it:

• A 1-3 or a 1-5 scale
• Or something like this:
  • S (<5%) = 3
  • M (5-10%) = 5
  • L (10-20%) = 10
  • XL (>20%) = 20

#3. Confidence

How likely is it to work?

How to rank it:

• A percentage confidence like 10%, 25%, 50%, and 80%

#4. Effort

How much time, money, or energy it takes. This is the only “negative” factor. You want this to be as low as possible.

How to rank it:

• A 1-5 scale
• The number of hours, days, or number of person-weeks or person-months
• Or something like this:
  • Trivial (XS) = 1
  • Few Days (S) = 2
  • 1-2 weeks (M) = 5
  • 1 month+ (L) = 20
  • Quarter+ (XL) = 60

Note: Everyone does the scoring and calculation differently depending on how they want to weigh the different things. Some do Low, Medium, and High on each. Some do more complicated ones. The “Or something like this” values above are from this template made by Alexey Komissarouk, which I recommend.

An example

For example, if you want to decide between re-doing your drip email campaign for new subscribers to promote your product and adding a blurb to your weekly newsletter, everyone would have various opinions about which is better.

But let’s RICE it:

Based on this scoring, even though the drip email rewrite would have a greater impact at a higher confidence level, it’s still worth doing the newsletter blurb first because it requires minimal effort and reaches more people.

Now, the team can objectively agree to prioritize that.

This becomes even more important when there are 100+ different ideas rather than just two. It makes it far easier and more objective to choose.

As important, however,  is that everyone on the team can throw ideas to the list, and you can go through and RICE each one and choose the winners. Everyone can feel their ideas are heard, and they can understand why they aren’t chosen.

It becomes objective rather than subjective or personal.

And if people feel comfortable submitting ideas, they’re more likely to do so, especially when the ideas are a bit crazy. You’ll not only be better at prioritizing ideas, but you’ll also have a team that’s better at generating interesting ideas.

And interesting ideas are the ones that often move the needle in a big way.

Get the whole team involved. There is no bad idea. Just put it in the table and RICE it.

Again, I recommend this template.

If you want to go even deeper

RICE is great, but the 30 seconds of evaluation are often guesswork.

So, for larger, more sophisticated companies that have already picked all the low-hanging fruit, you should do an even deeper analysis. This is what Darius and Alexey call the DRICE framework—a Detailed RICE.

Here are the components:

• Hypothesis: Briefly explain the idea with justifications for its effectiveness.
• Impact estimate: A bottom-up financial model estimating the idea's impact. For example, Darius and Alexey’s article provides a more detailed impact estimate.
• Cost estimate: Roughly break down the idea into smaller tasks and estimate the number of hours/days/weeks expected from the team for each (with a buffer) plus additional costs like production or legal costs.

The same components as RICE, just more detailed. You might discover that the impact or cost is significantly different than you first anticipated.

Check out Darius and Alexey’s article for more detail :)

SEO articles are not “one and done.”

It’s an iterative process that depends on how well the article is ranking and its trajectory. 

First, here’s evidence of WHY you should consider this. SEO expert Tim Hanson updated some stale articles when he discovered they were trending downwards. You can see the difference they made:

Here’s Tim’s process:

1. Pop up Search Console every quarter.
2. Go through all your articles that are at least a few months old. Find articles that are trending downwards and add them to a list.
3. For each page on that list, apply the below changes depending on how they currently rank.

Ranking 1-7 and getting traffic

These are the articles doing well. They rank for their target keywords and get a decent number of eyes and clicks. Once an article gets 100+ visitors a week change your goal from SEO increases (views) to conversion increases (sign ups, purchases).

Consider things like:

• Adding CTA’s/signups/relevant next blogs
• Adding videos to go deeper
• Creating lead magnets and content upgrades
• Potentially adding more context to the article

Do not fundamentally change the concept of the content.

Google has placed it high for a reason, and that reason is usually the “feel of the whole blog”. Don’t change that. Changing that more often than not results in losing rank.

Position 8-25

Content ranking here is on the right track, but needs a little something extra.

Often the article is not addressing the actual search intent. Why are people searching what they’re searching for? Are you actually answering that question or just addressing it? Are you answer their next question?

You’ll want to add things like

• Core keyword in the H1/H2’s. You’re likely missing it
• Shorter paragraphs and bullet lists to making skimming easier (improve readability)
• More internal links
• More focus on the key search intent
• Expanding further to answer their “next question”

Pos 25+

Assuming the blog is at least a few months old, it’s likely stuck.

The most common reason why it’s stuck is it doesn’t match search at all. It’s not even close. Go and take a deeper look at the pages ranking for the keyword you’re going for. See what patterns they all follow.

How are they talking about the keyword/keyphrase you’re trying to rank for? More than likely you’re missing something obvious that 5+ pages on the SERPs are doing well.

The second most common reason why you’re not ranking? Likely word count. Check the average word count and make sure you’re matching that average. Shorter is unfortunately not considered better in SEO most of the time.

Pos 50+

Rewrite entirely. If you’ve been holding this position for your core keyword for 6-12 months. You likely need to rewrite the whole thing. No one is ever going to see this page.

Quick note

The problem with content marketing is that every time you publish something, you're giving yourself future homework to edit and update it in the future—especially if it's about topics that shift and update frequently. This can become quite unwieldy quickly.

It's one of many reasons we recommend less, but better content.

Some SEO resources

• Our past and future tactics about SEO and Content Marketing.
• Newsletters/blogs from SEO creators like Kevin Indig, Eli Schwartz, Backlinko, and Marie Haynes
• Some of our fave SEO tools: ahrefs, Semrush, Exploding Topics, and Surfer.

Tiny word changes can massively impact how people feel and react.

Our partner, Katelyn Bourgoin, and Phill Agnew (host of Nudge) coined the term “Wallet Opening Words.” Powerful words that cause people to reach into their wallets.

Here are some of my favorite lesser-known ones that are simple to implement:

Because bias

Simply telling people WHY you’re making a request is powerful. Even if it’s meaningless.

An experiment showed that 60% of people allowed the researcher to cut in line at the photocopier by saying “I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine?”

By simply adding "because I'm in a rush" raised compliance to 94%. Surprisingly, adding the obvious "because I have to make copies" also reached 93% when there was 5 pages, but had no change when they said it was 20 pages.

Specific prices

Specific numbers are both more believable and more memorable than round numbers. We’ve taken advantage of this by running sales for UNIGNORABLE for 37.5 hours vs 24 hours.

A study found that beggars received +60% more donations by asking for oddly specific amounts rather than the typical quarter, dollar, dime, etc.

Framing

There’s a classic psychological bias called “what you see is all there is.” We often take what is presented and evaluate it without bringing in all our knowledge about the world.

A powerful way this manifests is that you can control how someone perceives and experiences something by framing it a certain way. For example:

If you know the job your product does for customers (an indulgent snack), you can better frame it as being really good at doing that job (an unhealthy lassi). Whereas if you tried to frame your lassi as a healthier alternative to a milkshake, all the people seeking indulgent snack would go buy a milkshake.

Authority

Would you rather talk to a customer support person or the founder? Which would you more likely believe and reply to?

Turns out, letters from a dentist’s office saw a 54% reply rate when signed by the dentist, but only 18% when signed by the dentist’s secretary.

Emails that come from the founder will always perform better than emails that come from Bob the SDR. This donation request coming from Obama was the most successful email of his 2012 presidential campaign:

Present tense

People commonly write in past or future tense on websites and in emails.

But, present tense is far more powerful. A study found customer reviews using present tense receive 26.4% more upvotes and increase product purchase intent by 12.3%.

Studies also found that languages that use present tense to describe future actions (i.e. “I buy that tomorrow” rather than “I will buy that tomorrow”) are better at saving for the future because it feels more tangible.

Words are powerful

Just because you run a few ads or send a few emails that flop, doesn’t mean that no one wants your product or service. The words you choose are critical.

Here are some helpful copywriting resources:

1. Above the Fold Playbook: This will walk you through rewriting the most important part of your website: the beginning.
2. The Growth Guide: We walk through how to write copy for your landing pages and ads in this free guide to growth marketing. 
3. My copywriting articles: I have written a few free articles on copywriting ranging from copywriting frameworks and 10 ways to hook people.
4. Wallet Opening Words: This newsletter is a snippet of 5 of the 26.5 techniques that Katelyn and Phill cover in WOW.
5. Julian’s Guide to Writing Better: My cofounder Julian spent months developing his free writing guide after getting millions of views of his content.

52% of the Fortune 500 companies in 2000 went out of business by 2020. These are the world's largest companies with the biggest budgets.

And most of them died in just two decades.

Companies have two options to stay or become relevant:

• Sustaining Innovation. You make iteratively better products that you can charge more money from your current customers/market.
• Disruptive Innovation. You make products cheaper and more accessible for people outside your current market, which undercuts current products. Or you completely change the technology or form factor to make it way better.

Examples of this playing out

• Toyota emerged and made gas cars cheaper (which actually helped reliability). Ford had to decide if they tried to compete (#2) or make bigger and bigger trucks and SUVs (#1). Meanwhile, Tesla invested in electric, futuristic cars and became worth more than every other gas car company combined.
• Kodak made film cameras and focused on improving them each year. Nikon, Canon, Fuji, and Sony invested heavily in creating digital cameras and killed Kodak.
• Google focused on making more money from Search. Despite having more data to train AI than anybody else, a startup, OpenAI, creates ChatGPT and replaces the need for many Google searches because you can get nuanced responses.
• Lockheed Martin and Boeing made insanely expensive rockets and satellites. SpaceX emerged and made them way cheaper and reusable. It has already launched more satellites than all other companies combined (which is also acting to disrupt traditional Internet Service Providers with Starlinq).

If a company doesn't do #2, someone else will and kill them over time.

Most companies focus on #1 for a simple reason:

They’re made up of individuals trying to accumulate short-term evidence of achievement to demonstrate an upward life trajectory. This means more money, promotions, and awards.

And avoid evidence of incompetency, such as demotions, firings, or failure.

A company is a collection of individuals.

Individuals within the company all focus on accumulating short-term evidence of achievement. And profit this quarter or this year is king.

Employees and executive staff are often compensated with annual bonuses. Companies don't retroactively take that money back if the company fails 10 years later.

To maximize profit (and bonuses), they focus on improving current products for current customers and charge more money. An example of this is the iPhone. The iPhone 4 cost $199 to $299. The iPhone 15 costs $899 to $1599. Consumers are happy paying that because the iPhone 15 is so much better.

However, many companies neglect to invest in long-term, risky bets that could make their products cheaper and more accessible (but often worse) or completely different (and often better).

Startups are initially less profit-focused.

For them, short-term achievement is gaining any market share at all. And hungry, young founders are often driven by longer-term big payouts rather than short-term marginal gains.

Startups also typically can’t compete with incumbents on the best. But they can compete on different.

Startups are run by ambitious founders. Massive corporations are run by committees.

If it ever happens, it’s unlikely Apple will ever choose to disrupt the iPhone. iPhone sales are 52% of Apple’s revenue. Disruption could kill the cash cow.  

It will most likely be a startup that does unless Apple can maintain a culture of pushing disruptive innovation, even if it hurts in the short term. But I think that's unlikely now that a committee runs Apple.

Quick takeaway, you need both:

1. Sustaining Innovation to sustain or increase profit and keep customers happy.
2. Disruptive Innovation to stay or get ahead, and wow new or existing customers.

I recommend three videos and one article to dive deeper into these concepts:

1. Clay Christensen's TEDx talk and Harvard Business Review interview, which inspired this newsletter.
2. George Hotz's take on Lex Fridman's podcast, where he discusses the difference between companies that are "alive" and can pivot (ex: Facebook pivoting to Meta) and innovate and companies that are "dead" and cannot (ex: Google being so focused on Search that it missed generative AI). Here's the timestamp.
3. Clay Christensen's theory narrowly focuses on innovative disruption in making things more accessible and undercutting the market. Ben Thompson's 2013 critique of the theory says that's more true in B2B than B2C. Above, I discuss undercutting (Toyota and SpaceX) and drastic technological shifts (Tesla, digital cameras, OpenAI) as the two major forms of innovative disruption.

Classic maxim: If you want to increase a behavior, make it easier and more fun.

But this tactic flies in the face of that. It’s about intentionally adding friction in the form of:

1. Additional steps (more pages or more things to click or fill out)
2. More information or reading (more text, less images)
3. More decisions to be made (annual vs monthly, Pro vs Premium)

Here are examples curated by Ali Abouelatta of how adding friction increased conversions:

Additional steps + reading – Headspace

Headspace increased conversions by adding an intermediary page before the paywall to prime people with “why” they should subscribe.

Additional steps + decisions – Duolingo

Duolingo found that removing the 14-day pre-selected option increased retention. The pre-selected option is a quick “yeah, whatever, next!”

Having to stop and make a conscious decision causes you to take the goal seriously.

More reading + more decisions

Peloton used to have a super smooth one-click button to start their trial. Then they replaced it with a dense page with a lot to read. And you had to decide between two tiers. I suspect this did better because it highlights all the cool things you’re gonna to get, and you feel more in control.

People enjoy control.

So don’t just try to remove steps. Strategically make the process a little harder to get people to feel more in control and bought in.

The only way you find the best version is by experimenting.

Ali has a few more examples of Positive Friction here. I also recommend going through Growth.Design’s visual case studies.

If your product misses just a single piece of fixing someone’s problem, they often won't buy.

Let’s use the process Alex Hormozi details in $100M Offers to generate product ideas.

This is a quick overview. Here’s a thorough example I made.

1. Map out everything users need to do to achieve their goals or solve their problems.

For example with losing weight: Buying healthy food, cooking healthy food, resisting unhealthy food, choosing a gym, getting to the gym, choosing exercises, exercising regularly, preventing injuries…

Be thorough, you don’t want to miss anything. You only need to do this once.

2. Map out the problems (either real or imaginary) for each of them. For example, buying healthy food:

1. “I don’t know what to buy”
2. “It’s gonna be expensive”
3. “I’m not gonna like it”
4. “My family won’t like it”
5. “It’s gonna take a lot of time”
6. “I travel too much, I won’t stick with it”

3. Think of solution statements for each problem

Ask yourself, “What would I need to show someone to solve this problem?” Then, reverse each problem into solution-oriented language.

1. “I don’t know what to buy”: How to make buying healthy food easy and enjoyable
2. “It’s gonna be expensive?: How to buy healthy food without increasing your grocery bill
3. “I’m not gonna like it”: How to cook delicious healthy food
4. “My family won’t like it”: How to cook healthy food your kids will love
5. “It’s gonna take a lot of time”: How to buy and cook healthy food quickly
6. “Travel too much…”: How to get healthy food while travelling 

4. Write down specific ideas on how to achieve that solution.

There are various ways to solve every problem. Different ways require different amounts of your time and effort and have a greater impact for customers. As you’re creating solutions, use this to help you think through different ways you could help:

For example, for “How to make buying healthy food easy and enjoyable”

• In-person grocery shopping tour + lesson
• Selfie-style tour of a grocery store (live or recorded)
• Personalized grocery list
• Full-service shopping
• In-person lesson (not at store)
• Text/phone support while shopping to help them if they get stuck

Be as creative as possible, even if it’s not something you want to do. The next step is to trim. Let ideas flow.

5. Trim and stack.

Go through the list of solutions and figure out the rough costs to service. Remove all the expensive and low-value ones. Then remove low cost, low value. Ultimately, you want to optimize for things that (as quoted from the book):

1. They financially value
2. Cause them to believe they’ll be likely to succeed
3. Make them feel like they can do it with much less effort and sacrifice
4. Help them accomplish their goal and see the result they want with far less time investment

Here's a thorough example using our audience-building course, UNIGNORABLE.

Newsletters are ephemeral.

Once they're sent out, reads trickle in only for a few days. People do not re-read old emails.

If you put your newsletter on your website, you get additional longevity from people promoting it, bookmarking it, stumbling upon it, or finding it via Google.

Or, if you're lucky, you'll earn some backlinks with steady referral traffic.

But for that, it needs to be a thorough guide (like our Growth Guide and my 10 Ways to Hook People) or reference material, like Lenny Rachitsky's benchmark articles:

Our newsletter isn't conducive to any of those. It's 3 separate tactics in one edition. As a result, they receive little organic traffic after they're sent out. 

How we're solving that problem: The Growth Vault

Instead of hiding our tactics across 163 newsletter pages, we've created a searchable and filterable database of 435 startup growth tactics (and counting).

Not only does this provide additional value to subscribers, but it's also something:

1. People can bookmark.
2. We can share on social media.
3. We can launch on Product Hunt.
4. That can earn organic backlinks.
5. That can generate even more subscribers.

If you generate content on an ongoing basis, find better and better ways to package it and let people consume it.

Check out the Growth Vault.

The different stages of startup growth and the common tactics within them (click for a high-res image):

You use the different components of the race car at different stages:

1. Get the race car moving with Kickstarts and maybe a few Turbo boosts. These are the “things that don’t scale.” Good for bursts of growth, but aren’t scalable.
2. Then, invest in getting the Growth engine running. These are the self-perpetuating engines where growth begets growth (ex: profitable ads → more budget to run ads). Another name for these is Growth Loops.
3. Once your Growth engine is running, invest in Lubricants to help it run more efficiently and the occasional Turbo boost to boost growth. And consider adding Fuel to do it faster.
4. Next, invest in Mid-stage accelerants to expand the reach of that Growth engine.
5. Before you max out your first Growth Engine, experiment with and kickstart another Growth engine while continuing to Lubricate your existing growth engine(s).
6. Once the various Growth engines are running, create additional products, expand to new segments (e.g., enterprise), and grow revenue with current customers.

Lenny has a monster article about all these concepts. Dive into it here to learn more.