Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #131

The Growth Newsletter #131

Read on demandcurve.com

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Hello and welcome to all you growth-loving founders and marketers.

This week we talk about leveraging the Unity Principle to build affinity, improving paid survey responses, and Ali Abdaal's lessons for success on YouTube.

Let's dive in 🤿

– Neal

1. Leverage the Unity Principle

Insights derived from Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini.

We're naturally attracted to and influenced by people who are similar to us, or a have a shared identity that we value.

For example, if I meet someone online who is from my hometown in Canada, or is from Ireland (because I have an Irish passport), or went through YC, or studied at the same university, or has an aussie shepherd—it immediately makes me feel closer to them.

This phenomenon is called the Unity Principle. Here are four ways to leverage it:

#1. Share personal stories to build affinity

The founder of a fitness startup can share a personal story of struggling with their weight.

The personal story creates a sense of shared identity (past struggle with weight). Other people with similar weight control issues can see themselves in the founder's story, feel a sense of unity, and are therefore more likely to trust the exercise program and sign up for it.

Just make sure the story is true.

#2. Highlight a cause you care about

Patagonia talks a lot about their cultural values like environmental activism, transparency,  and community:

If you value those things too, you're more likely to purchase a Patagonia jacket instead of a North Face jacket because you feel a sense of kinship with the brand.

#3. Loyalty programs or "group name"

Raise up and label your best customers with loyalty programs and special perks. 

Even better if you give members a special name. Like how Lady Gaga fans are called Little Monsters, or how Ship30for30 cohort members are called "shippers." If you give people a label they'll feel more connected to each other—and to you.

#4. Lean into geographical/cultural unity

Ryan Reynolds goes by the handle VancityReynolds on social media. "Vancity" is the nickname for Vancouver. 

I'm confident that due to this, Vancouverites (and Canadians broadly) have a stronger affinity for him because he proudly wears his Vancouver-ness. An easy way to get millions of people on his side without upsetting anyone in the process.

To learn more about the Unity Principle and more pre-suasive techniques, Katelyn Bourgoin created a great free, email course on how to Pre-sell with Pre-suasion.

2. Skill test people to improve paid survey responses

Insight from Bell Curve.

We recently ran a market research survey for one of our clients.

We used Survey Monkey to pay for respondents from their network, who were selected based on specific demographic (age, location) and firmographic (job) criteria, given the client's limited existing audience.

Honestly, the answers were pretty bad—most were unusable.

This outcome isn't entirely surprising, given that survey participants are typically paid per completed survey—they're incentivized to race through them as quickly as possible. Same goes for incentivizing people with $25 Amazon gift cards

To address the issue, we decided to do something unusual: We added a skill testing math question at the beginning of the survey. Nothing hard, just simple addition of two 2-digit numbers.

As we expected, this caused a huge drop-off at the start. But the quality of the remaining responses improved dramatically – they were well-thought-out and highly useful.

The working theory is that the question:

1. Weeded out those only interested in answering as fast as possible, or

2. Forced participants to briefly pause and reflect, setting a more thoughtful tone for the rest of the survey.

Either way, it significantly improved the results of the survey.

If you run incentivized surveys, consider adding some mental friction to the process.

3. Ali's YouTube cheatsheet

Insights from Ali Abdaal and illustration by Sachin Ramje.

YouTube is arguably the best social channel to grow a presence on. It's massive, it builds a ton of affinity, you generate ad revenue, and videos can get views for years (unlike a tweet).

If you don't know Ali Abdaal, he has over 4.5M subscribers on YouTube—and generated $4.6M in revenue and $2M in profit in 2022.

One of the main ways he's generated that revenue is by teaching people to grow on YouTube, here are his top 15 lessons after 6 years posting regularly:

News and links

News you can use:

• Twitter X: Elon plans to link business verification to ad spend; after August 7th, brands must spend at least $1k/mo in ads to keep their gold checkmark. In other X news, Tweets are now called Posts?

• Threads rolled out several new features like personalized feeds, post translations, and notification filters. However, since its early July launch, user engagement has unfortunately dropped by 70% 😿 

• TikTok announced a new option to share Text Posts on Feed and Stories. Whether this is meant to be a new Threads/X competitor or TikTok’s version of Type Mode in IG Stories is TBD.

• Instagram is experimenting with a range of AI tools including stickers, video editing tools, chatbots, and more. 

Community we recommend: Exit Five

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Join 3,500 members today and start with a 7 day free trial to poke around and make sure it's right for you.

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Something fun

From Scott Metzger.

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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