Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #082

The Growth Newsletter #082

Read in browser

Welcome to the 759 new marketers and founders who joined last week!

This week we're covering influencer copywriting, SaaS surveys, and ad creatives.

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 Vidico.

Quality video content racks up engagement and conversions. But creating great video content isn't easy.

Vidico is the production company that helps you acquire more customers through video. They make the production process ridiculously easy, and you get effective videos to communicate your product’s value props.

Vidico is offering a free video strategy session so you can learn exactly what kind of video content is right for you. No commitment—you'll walk away with insights about what's working in your space, and suggestions from video pros that have worked with brands like Square, Spotify, and Airtable.

If you decide to work with Vidico after, you'll also get $500 off your first video project.

Grab your free strategy session here.

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

Growth Summit 2022

We’re gearing up for this year’s Growth Summit. You're invited to join us for the most advanced virtual event for growth professionals.

Here's what you can expect:

No fluff—just 15+ hours of insights from top growth professionals and startup founders. Learn from marketers like Brian Dean of Backlinko, Jack Butcher of Visualize Value, Shaan Puri of My First Million, Amanda Natividad of Sparktoro, and dozens more.

You can get in for free by inviting three of your colleagues. Simply add your colleagues' emails when you register and we'll handle the rest. Or if you don’t want to invite others, you can just pay $500.

Claim your free ticket.

1. Tap influencers for copywriting inspiration

Insight from Rochi Zalani and Demand Curve.

Here’s a shortcut for refining your product copy:

Find out how influencers are promoting your competitors’ products. Then take the best aspects of their language and use it in your copy.

Influencers are experts when it comes to driving engagement and action from their audiences. And people who follow your competitors’ brand ambassadors are likely in your target audience as well.

By studying how these ambassadors talk about products—and how their followers respond—you can find out what resonates.

To find sponsored ads for your competitors, use Google. This way, you can look up public posts tagged with both #ad and the name of your competitor. You can also look up specific keywords from post captions. Some example search strings:

• site:instagram.com #gymshark #ad
• site:instagram.com @walgreens #ad
• site:instagram.com #neutrogena #ad hydro boost

Example: Look at this sponsored post from a beauty influencer. It’s a goldmine of copy ideas for skincare brands.

2. Run better SaaS customer surveys

Insight from Grow and Convert.

For SaaS startups, surveys are critical.

They’re how you find out what customers actually want, instead of building products, growth strategies, and business models on assumptions and beliefs.

But in practice, we’ve found that running surveys are a lot like meditation—everyone talks about it, but few actually do it.

Those that do run surveys often make these repeat errors:

1. They don’t ask questions that get to the heart of customer decision making and product-market fit.
2. They don’t segment the results. They lump everyone together, for less-revealing findings.

Here’s how you can fix both.

Questions to ask

Use this survey template from PMF Survey to get started, recreating it in whatever survey platform you prefer, like Typeform.

Here are some possible questions—alter them based on what you’re trying to learn about your customers.

• How did you discover [X product/company]?
• How would you feel if you could no longer use X?
• What would you use as an alternative if X weren’t available?
• What’s the primary benefit you’ve experienced from X?
• Have you recommended X to anyone?
• What type of person do you think would benefit from X?
• How could we improve X to better meet customer needs?

Segments to break out

• Most active and loyal users
• Infrequent users
• People who signed up for your service or a trial but never used it

If you split out those three segments, you’re more likely to gain insights into why customers are active in your product. And why they churn.

3. Ad creatives for customer acquisition

Insight from Nik Sharma.

Before Apple’s update, you could focus your ad efforts on targeted, bottom-funnel creative. Low-hanging fruit.

But these days, that doesn’t fly—ads should focus on educating.

Given the update, marketers can’t pinpoint the funnel stage where prospects might see specific creative. To work around this, your creative needs to educate and sell—each piece should answer:

• What is the problem that you're solving?
• What is the brand and product?
• Why do I need this and how will the product improve my life?
• How can I trust you to be the best option?
• How do I get it right now?

This is why UGC does so well for customer acquisition—a satisfied customer naturally addresses all those questions above, and the content itself is social proof.

These ads efficiently build brand equity on the back of the performance media dollars.

Cadence does a fantastic job with this through their ad creative (also on a scrappy budget).

The best ads don't feel like ads at all, so make your ads come off friendly, helpful, aspirational, or educational.

4. On-trend industry news in 5 mins

Sponsored by Marketing Brew.

🤳 Can an AR filter really improve brand awareness?

🎤 Why are streaming advertisements so loud?

🛍 What do viewers really think about shoppable ads?

💔 When an influencer couple breaks up, what happens to their brand deals?

🤖 How much should graphic designers worry about DALL-E 2? 

There are a lot of questions on marketers’ minds right now—and analyzing the latest trends can be a full-time job in itself. 

Marketing Brew does the hard work for you, dropping a quick-to-read, free newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Covering essential topics from influencers and advertising to social media and more, Marketing Brew never misses a beat. 

Get the answers you've been looking for along with the ones you haven’t even thought of yet. Upgrade your game alongside a growing community of over 265K marketing professionals. 

Check it out here.

News and links

News you can use:

• Say hello to Shopping Ads from TikTok. The new advertising suite offers three ad formats: video shopping ads, catalog listing ads, and live shopping ads.
• Shopify merchants, rejoice. Pinterest recently introduced hosted checkout, a feature that lets users buy goods and check out without leaving Pinterest—but only for stores powered by Shopify.
• Lots of news from Google: For starters, it’s offering more connected TV ad buying options in Display & Video 360. And beginning as early as this week, you can expect a major algorithm update called the “helpful content update.” Next week, product reviews get their turn with an update.

Cool event this week in San Francisco

Interested in how AI can empower marketers?

This Thursday, August 25th at 4-7pm at The Battery in SF, join for AI 101 for Marketers:

In an exclusive fireside chat with Jason Seeba (CMO, mParticle) and Alex Holub (CEO, Vidora) you'll learn the fundamentals of AI, its value for marketers, and how it can supercharge your customer data and marketing stack.

Enjoy hearty hors d’oeuvres, bespoke cocktails, and good conversation with other marketing leaders on the stunning rooftop of The Battery.

Space is limited so be sure to RSVP here.

Not in the Bay Area? No worries. They're throwing similar events in Los Angeles (Sep 22), New York City (Sep 29), and London (Oct 5). Register here.

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 @citycyclops

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