Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #094

The Growth Newsletter #094

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Welcome to the 1,165 founders and marketers who subscribed this week!

Neal here, but this edition’s insights were 100% sourced by our lovely writer, Joyce. I’m very lucky to have three great writers helping source insights each week, so 👏🏼 to Joyce!

This week we’ll be covering domain typos, engaging lurkers, and SEO back doors.

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Together with AppSumo.

Black Friday is this week! But it can be hard to hear about all the deals out there.

Luckily, AppSumo has compiled some of the hottest software deals for your business. You’ll get an extra 10% off already discounted lifetime deals, helping you save up to thousands of dollars a year in subscription fees.

They're also giving away lifetime access to Zapier, Dropbox, Notion, and Evernote, plus a weekend at Noah Kagan’s house every year for life! Giveaway runs November 1-29.

Get the deals and enter here.

Want to sponsor Demand Curve? Here's what you need to know (booked out 8+ weeks).

1. Buy domain typos ⌨️

Insight from Damon Chen and Demand Curve.

Have you ever fat-fingered "gogle.com" or "dacebook.com?" You probably have and never noticed. Google and Facebook own those domains too.

Typos of your domain likely happen all the time—by customers trying to visit your site and people trying to recommend you. 

For example, Damon Chen’s "testimonial.to" was incorrectly written as “testimonials.to” in a viral tweet. Meaning it didn't get a lot of the traffic it should have.

An easy fix: Buy the most common typo domains—they're normally pretty cheap. Then set up redirects to your website. Simple as that.

(Google also does this to prevent fraud. Imagine a fake Google that suggested nothing but scam websites that millions of people visited because of a common typo.)

Two tips to keep in mind:

1. Use Search Console. Look up the typos people enter to find your site. You don't need to buy them all—choose the most common ones.
   
2. Consider popular domain extensions. If your site ends in something like “.io” or “.ly”, it might be worth buying the more common “.com” version that people often default to.

(Big companies generally own most country domains too—apple.ca, apple.co.uk, etc.)

2. Engage community lurkers 👀

Insight from Rosie Sherry.

Only 20-30% of members of online communities post and send messages. The rest are either inactive or simply lurking.

Lurkers are NOT inactive. They participate by reading and validating content by liking it. They just don’t post content or comment.

To make your community feel more lively, the biggest lever is to engage lurkers. Not acquiring more members.

Here are six strategies to engage lurkers:

1. Send them a DM. Make them comfortable by starting a casual conversation—for example, ask where they’re based or another easy-to-answer question.
2. Create a space for newcomers. It can be intimidating to jump into a space where people seem to already know each other. Create a group or channel specifically for newcomers. It'll help ease them into your larger community ecosystem.
3. Encourage and celebrate introductions. Create a culture of celebrating introduction messages. When new members are rewarded for participating, they'll likely do it again.
4. Acknowledge first posts. When someone posts for the first time, reach out to thank them for their input. This encourages continued engagement.
5. Incentivize posting. Lenny Rachitsky’s community is rewarded for engaging because he shares the best conversations in his weekly community newsletter. 
6. Allow anonymous posting. Not everything can be discussed with your identity on display. Example: The Superpath community lets people ask for career advice anonymously—in case a coworker/manager happens to be in the same community.

3. Create SEO “back doors” 🚪

Insight from Ahrefs.

Zapier is the best-known automation platform.

Despite its popularity, many people don’t understand all it can do. It’s a little too multi-purpose for its own good. It's also not known outside of the tech community bubble.

This is why Zapier takes a “back door” approach to SEO.

In other words, Zapier:

• Creates content explaining one of its product’s use cases.
  • Example: Using Zapier to automate time tracking.
• Finds popular keywords related to that use case,
  • Such as “time boxing” or “Pomodoro technique.”
• Creates content for those keywords, with a link to the explainer content. This link acts as the “back door” to Zapier’s product.
  • Zapier’s article on Pomodoro timer apps targets keywords related to the Pomodoro technique, which receive more than 175,000 searches per month. It also links to Zapier’s article about time-tracking automation.

It may seem weird for Zapier to write about the Pomodoro technique. But someone using the Pomodoro technique can be even more efficient by using Zapier.

Using the back door strategy, Zapier can attract a wider audience than if it were to simply target keywords related to automation. Not everyone knows that things CAN be automated.

All kinds of companies can try this strategy but it’s most helpful to those that offer an innovative solution—something that isn’t well-known enough to have many Google searches.

It also works for companies with multi-purpose tools, like Airtable and Notion.

4. Send emails when people are in their inbox 📧

Sponsored by Inbox Mailers.

Imagine you pop open Gmail, and you have a long list of emails to go through. Classic.

A few seconds later, a new email pops into your inbox. Exciting.

You're probably way more likely to immediately open it rather than the long list of stale ones.

Inbox Mailers does just that. Rather than send an email blast to your entire list at once, you can send triggered emails when your subscriber is actually in their inbox.

This strategy can lead to open rates of 50-70% and improve overall deliverability. And, with better deliverability, you’ll see a higher sender score, better inbox placement rates, and an increase in your overall email metrics.

DC readers can see how it works in this free ebook.

News and links

News you can use:

• It’s official: Instagram users with professional accounts can now schedule posts up to 75 days in advance directly in the app.
• A few updates from YouTube: Businesses can set a Target frequency goal for their ads so viewers don’t see them too much (and develop ad fatigue). The Google Ads Reach Planner also forecasts how Video Action campaigns will perform.
• Previously limited to the UK and countries in Southeast Asia, TikTok Shop is finally coming to the U.S. The app’s seller center now lists North America as a region for businesses to register—just in time for the holidays.
• Since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the decentralized social network Mastodon has added nearly 500,000 new users. If social is part of your growth strategy, it’s worth checking out.
  • What’s your take on Mastodon? Whether you think it’s a passing fad or has potential staying power, reply back to let us know.

Newsletter we love: Department of Product

Any good growth marketer gets involved in product development. 

Department of Product is a weekly selection of product news, analysis and tools from around the world to help you stay in the loop with what it means to build products today.

Platform we’re loving*: Insense

Getting UGC video ads and setting up influencer partnerships only takes 7-12 days through Insense. They’re a creator marketplace where you can get a steady flow of authentic UGC starting at $50/video, and manage multiple collaborations at once.

We teamed up with Insense to get you $200 platform credit for UGC until Nov 22. Book a free strategy call to claim the offer.

P.S. As a bonus, here’s a free creative brief template download from Insense that will speed up your UGC ads production even more. 

*Sponsored by Insense

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 @jeremywins

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Who's Demand Curve?

We’re on a mission to help make it easier to start, build, and grow companies.

We think a lot of marketing content out there is outdated, fluffy, or scammy. We share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content as we learn it 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 marketing course that has helped 1,000+ founders 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.

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

Neal O'Grady

Grace Parazzoli

Joyce Chou

Dennis Buckley