Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #102

The Growth Newsletter #102

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Welcome one and all to the second week of 2023. This is when it starts to become questionable if saying "Happy new year" is still acceptable.

When do you think the cutoff date is?

But I digress, this week we cover the Pratfall Effect, nailing podcast performances, and the Fashion-AI-ista.

As always, if you don’t find this valuable, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. If you like it, tell your friends to subscribe here. It's the number one way to support the newsie.

–Neal

Together with Aircall.

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1. Top 6 sales goals that sales leaders are setting for 2023
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3. Tips for building a solid sales team culture to retain talent
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Get the report →

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

1. Win people's trust with imperfetion

Insight from Phil Agnew (Buffer & The Nudge podcast) and Neal.

Humans are funny.

We tend to prefer things (and people) that aren't perfect.

In a study by Professor Jo Sylvester at Swansea University, candidates who highlighted a weakness during an interview were more likely to be hired than those who didn't.

To put my speculation cap on, it's because it makes the person seem more genuine and believable. They were willing to show weakness, making it seem more likely that they were telling the truth about their strengths.

Phil Agnew decided to put this to the test for his podcast. He did two Reddit ad variations:

One highlighted the benefits of listening to his podcast.

The other very tongue-in-cheek highlighted the downsides of listening to his podcasts.

As you can see this led to a 4x higher clickthrough rate (and therefore a 4x cheaper CPC).

Note that Phil didn't follow the Pratfall to the full spirit, as he actually didn't talk down his podcast. Instead, he framed the benefits as negatives. Which highlighted playfulness and likely got people's attention.

So resist the urge to talk about how amazing you are all the time, and instead be playful and poke fun at yourself sometimes.

2. How to nail a podcast performance

Insight from Swipe Files.

"As the person being interviewed, it's entirely up to you to make it a podcast worth listening to or not. Treat it for what it is: A PERFORMANCE. You have to fight to keep listeners' attention through the whole interview. Bring your A-game like a musician or comedian would."

– Swipe Files

Podcasts continue to explode in popularity—making guest podcasting increasingly popular as a tactic for growth. 

Don't leave it up to the host to make it an A+ interview. Take ownership of the experience.

Here are five tips to step up your podcast appearances:

1. Treat it like a performance, not an interview. Bring energy by smiling and using vocal inflections. Enunciate your words. If you’re going to be on video, use hand gestures for a more dynamic visual.
2. Research the podcast(s) you’re appearing on by asking the host:
   1. Who is your audience?
   2. What are some of your most popular episodes?
   3. What topics will we cover? (Getting the questions in advance = even better)
3. Create a cheat sheet of talking points and send it to the host. It should be an outline with specific examples, not a script. For example, mine. Make sure to include:
   1. A 2-minute synopsis answering “Tell me about yourself”
   2. Your life background
   3. Why you do what you do
   4. How people can take action, e.g., sign up for your service or buy a product
   5. Your hottest takes or “spiky point of view”
   6. Books, podcasts, and resources you recommend
4. Prepare a few interesting anecdotes—telling stories makes for more entertaining and memorable interviews. Rehearse them with your friends so you can perfect the delivery.
5. Invest in good equipment, like a professional microphone. If doing video, get a solid camera and light like the Lume Cube.

Do the above and you'll far more likely dazzle their audiences and generate leads.

3. Here comes the Fashion AI

Insight from Karen X. Cheng and Grace Parazzoli (Demand Curve).

We’re still in the “look at what I made everyone!!!” phase of creating AI images.

Oh, look at that, an excuse to share some pancakes from the United Federation:

But we’re also aware of some of AI’s limitations.

For example, DALL-E is great for still images, but video is much harder to do.

So what’s an ecom brand on TikTok or Reels to do?

Fortunately, Karen X. Cheng figured it out. Check out her video.

She tested out different approaches to AI for video until she reached a solid workflow for fashion showcase videos:

Her workflow:

1. Shoot your video.
2. Use DALL-E to generate outfits. Erase parts of the outfit in your video, and inpaint over it. (Don’t erase the entire outfit—DALL-E will be able to match color and lighting better if you keep parts of the original.)
3. Use the program EbSynth by Secret Weapons to create consistency between frames. EbSynth is meant to turn paintings into animations, but after testing it out, Karen discovered that it works for clothes too.
4. Run the video through DAIN to blend the transitions between outfits—and create a slo mo effect.

(Sorry if you thought this tactic was going to be about stylish robots.)

4. Combat churn with in-app search

Sponsored by CommandBar.

Too many products suffer from low adoption caused by cumbersome onboarding and UI.

Product leaders are turning to in-app search to solve this.

Why?

Because search analytics reveals what users really want. And what they're confused about.

Highlighting what you need to fix, and which features to make next.

CommandBar enables you to add universal search, smart nudges, and timely help content to your product in minutes.

User-obsessed teams at Netlify, Gusto, and Shortcut use it. And Yoko Li from HashiCorp says it "made our users' in-app experience easier and faster."

Try it out →

News and links

News you can use:

• Microsoft is launching desktop-only app ads. If you already advertise on Windows products, consider testing these out to increase reach to high-intent audiences in the Microsoft Store.

• Reminder: YouTube recently updated their policy on profanity: If you use bad words in the first 8 seconds of a video, BOOM. Demonetized. While not breaking news, lots of creators' videos are getting demonetized without much notice.
• Nielsen is launching a cross-platform measurement product. Users will soon be able to track content/ad performance on tv and streaming apps across screens.
• Speaking of tv, TikTok videos with IMDb tags now link to details about the movie/show, plus other videos with the same tag. This means creators/brands who tag trending shows (or movies) in videos could see an influx of views over the coming weeks (by appearing at the top when people land on pages eg "Avatar" or "The White Lotus").
• Finally, today's the day our first cohort of Un-ignorable started! So excited to see what our first batch of creators accomplishes. Follow their journey on Twitter here.

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4. minisocial is accessibly priced, starting at $1.5k thanks to your discount 😉.

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*sponsored by minisocial

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 @dougboneparth

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

We share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content as we learn it from the top 1% of marketers. We democratize senior growth knowledge.

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.

• Check out our Sprints, short, video courses laser-focused on a topic in growth.

• Want to build an audience of buyers? Join the waitlist for the Un-Ignorable Challenge.

• Hire our agency, Bell Curve, and we'll grow your startup for you.

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See you next week.

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

Neal O'Grady

Grace Parazzoli

Joyce Chou

Dennis Buckley