Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #081

The Growth Newsletter #081

Read in browser

Welcome to the 905 new marketers and founders who joined last week!

This week we're covering ad copy, product-market fit, and free trial conversions.

If you don’t find this valuable, you can permanently unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. If you like it, tell your friends to subscribe here.

Together with Paved.

Paved brought programmatic advertising to newsletters & upgraded it. With Paved, you can target specific audiences on multiple newsletters—or reach millions with a single email ad.

Try Paved Ad Network today and get a $150 ad credit.

Want to sponsor Demand Curve? Here's everything you need to know.

Get traction and scale revenue

The two biggest mistakes we see early-stage companies make?

1. Booting up marketing without a clear strategy
2. Not properly executing the strategy they choose

Simply put, they waste countless hours and dollars working on the wrong things, and in the wrong way.

In our Growth Program, you start by building an acquisition strategy—you identify the highest-leverage areas to focus on to grow your unique company.

From there, you’ll go deep on the tactics and channels to bring your strategy to life.

That includes:

• Overhauling your website, landing pages, and funnels to increase sales
• Running ads across select channels, which you’ll choose based on a framework for maximizing ROI
• Creating email marketing campaigns that turn leads into customers
• Turning new customers into loyal power users
• Establishing your pricing model
• And much more high-leverage growth guidance—all verified by our network of expert growth practitioners

Until August 31st, we’re offering 25% off the Growth Program. Get it for $900 upfront, or $187.50/mo for 6 months.

PS: We also offer bulk discounts for teams, VC funds, and incubators. Reply to this newsletter to find out more.

1. Use shorter ad copy for retargeting campaigns

Insight from Daniel Hegman.

Here’s a quick change that could increase Facebook retargeting conversions:

Shorten your ad copy.

Sounds ridiculously simple, and it is. But many marketers retarget with long-form ad copy—and it might be bringing down conversion.

Brainlabs ran a series of ad copy split tests for a fashion retailer. Short ad copy—copy that fit on one line on Facebook—consistently drove more clicks for retargeted users than long-form copy (64% vs. 36%).

Compare that to prospecting campaigns, where clicks from short-form and long-form copy were equally split.

The theory behind this difference:

• Retargeted users are often already aware of your brand and product. They’re higher intent and don’t need as much education, so they react better to shorter messages.
• New prospects need more education—so longer ad copy might be necessary.

Consider testing short- vs. long-form copy in a retargeting campaign to see if you get a similar conversion improvement.

2. Survey users to iterate toward product-market fit

Insight from Rahul Vohra (Superhuman) and Sean Ellis.

Founders dream of product-market fit (PMF).

But most of the advice you’ll find online reads something like, “You’ll know it when it happens”—a lagging indicator. This doesn’t help you understand what PMF really is or how to get there.

Sean Ellis, who ran growth in the early days of Dropbox and coined the term “growth hacking,” found that a simple survey can help you quantify PMF. Use it as an actionable, leading indicator.

Ellis’s survey technique has been used by companies like Slack and Superhuman to reach—and accelerate—PMF. 

Here’s how:

1. Survey users (ideally 100+) who have experienced the core product benefit. 

Ask: “How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?”

Group responses into three buckets:

• Very disappointed
• Somewhat disappointed
• Not disappointed

2. Measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.”

If your “very disappointed” segment is at least 40% of the total sample size, that’s a strong sign that you’ve found PMF. That percentage is based on Ellis’s research benchmarking nearly 100 startups.

If your “very disappointed” bucket is under 40%, there are a few additional questions you can ask to iterate toward PMF. Check out Superhuman's in-depth post for the full framework.

3. Convert more free trial users to paid customers

Insight from Databox.

Free trials are often touted as one of the best ways to get more SaaS leads. But if your trial users aren’t turning into paying customers, your acquisition model is broken.

To convert more users, try one (or more) of these strategies:

• Personalize onboarding. Send a welcome email when users sign up. Ask what they need help with. Or offer a one-on-one demo to show the full potential of your software—Funnel CRM shared that doing so increased conversions from 5% to 9%.
• Trigger support emails based on user activity. Adobe offers a 7-day trial for all its Creative Cloud apps. If users spend more time on a particular app, they’re automatically enrolled in a sequence focused on that app’s features.
• Offer a short feedback session halfway through the free trial. Resolve issues that users encounter. Communication platform Nextiva uses a 15-minute feedback session to uncover issues and offer support. The short time frame makes the ask feel like a small commitment—and gives Nextiva the chance to schedule another call at the end of the trial.
• Limit the features available during a free trial. Your product’s best feature should be easy to find and use during the trial. But to add intrigue, make secondary features visible but not accessible. This will entice users to upgrade to a paid account.
• Offer a discount at the end of the trial. Some users may not be fully convinced to sign up once their trial ends. In this case, you could try offering a generous discount off the first few months of your paid tier. Payment platform Dunnly offers as much as 60% off for 3-6 months after its free trial ends. It’s seen more fully paid conversions this way than by simply extending free trials—the discount weeds out leads who are reluctant to pay anything. And if users are continuously experiencing value in the discount months, they’re less likely to churn once they start paying full price.

4. New way for founders to raise growth capital

Sponsored by Republic.

Looking to raise money for your startup? Or know someone in your network who is?

Check out Republic—a creative way to raise capital.

Republic is an innovative new way to combine marketing goals with fundraising needs. Their platform helps founders raise money, engage their community, and market their company at the same time.

Through Republic campaigns, companies have tripled user bases, sold millions worth of product, gained press coverage, connected with VCs, and raised follow-on rounds at great terms. Companies on Republic have seen a success rate of over 90% and have raised over $1B since 2016.

It’s also fast and VC-friendly. You can start raising a round on Republic in minutes, and you can raise capital before, during, or after your venture round. In fact, companies on Republic have raised publicly alongside heavyweights like a16z, Sequoia, and Lerer Hippeau.

Apply here to get $1,000 worth of credit toward a fundraising campaign—only for DC readers.

News and links

News you can use:

• Meta released Advantage+ globally. Advertisers can use it to cut out manual ad creation and automate up to 150 creative combinations.
• Google announced some improvements to search results, like consensus-based featured snippets and context-heavier “about this result” text (found by clicking on the three dots next to a search result).
• LinkedIn is upping its visual-content offerings. What’s new: post templates, carousels, and the ability to add links to images and videos.
• The most popular social media platforms among US teens, according to a new Pew Research Center survey: YouTube (95% of teens use it), TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%), and Snapchat (59%). In a distant fifth place: Facebook (32%). 19% of teens are “almost constantly” on YouTube; 16% say the same about TikTok.

What we’re reading: Consumers admire mission-based companies, but do they buy from them? Only if the product’s good. In an essay for Buffer, Maddy McAllister described her experience launching Yewo, a jewelry company that would bring jobs to Malawi, where she lived. The mission came first; the jewelry itself was an “afterthought.” What she learned: “customers were attracted to a well-made, design-driven product and saw the mission and ethical story behind it as a bonus.” Her essay is an insightful account of what happens when product-market fit plays second fiddle. 

Top new marketing jobs

If you're looking for a top growth role, check out the opportunities below from our job board.

Something fun

From @workchronicles

Want more growth tactics?

We're giving away our entire back catalog of tactics to folks who refer two friends to this newsletter. Here's your referral link to share: https://sparklp.co/385a143f. You can track your referrals here. We'll automatically email you the password-protected tactics page once you've referred two people.

What did you think of this week's newsletter?

Loved it | Great | Good | Meh | Bad

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with a friend. If a friend sent you this, get the next newsletter by signing up here.

Who's Demand Curve? We’re who marketers and founders rely on to solve real marketing problems. We skip trends and fluffy stories and only share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content from the top 1% of marketers.

How we can help you grow:

• Read our free playbooks, blog articles, and teardowns—we break down the strategies and tactics that fast-growing startups use to grow.
• Enroll in the Growth Program, our professional course that will help you get traction and scale revenue.
• Hire our agency, Bell Curve, and we'll grow your startup for you.

• Engage with our audience by sponsoring Demand Curve.

See you next week.

— Nick, Grace, Joyce, Dennis, and the DC team.

Nick Costelloe

Grace Parazzoli

Joyce Chou

Dennis Buckley