Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #159

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The Growth Newsletter #159

Amazon mobile teardown. Personal researcher. Objection handling.

Happy pre-Valentine’s Day y’all! 

I hope you've enjoyed a week of Apple Vision Pro and Taylor Swift memes.

Now back to growing startups ;0

Topics for the day: Amazon mobile teardown. Personal researcher. Objection handling.

Let's dive in 💮

– Neal

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Why most ad agencies are bad for startups

How agencies normally work

• High fees and complex pricing hidden behind a lengthy sales process
• Long, binding contracts
• Weeks (if not months) of drawn-out onboarding
• Limited to the few channels their agency specializes in
• Lure you in with charismatic senior talent only to hand you off to a junior team
• Tons of meetings with fancy presentations to keep the retainer going

What startups need:

• Transparent, affordable pricing
• Flexible month-to-month contracts
• Fast execution and testing
• Ability to runs ads on any ad channel
• Full stack ads team (strategy, ads, creative, reporting)
• A partner that works how they do (mainly async with no "meeting bloat")

That's why we're creating the most startup-friendly ad agency.

Agencies also typically get worse as they scale. They bring on more junior talent, bureaucratic process, and charge more for less.

Which is why we're capping at 20 clients. We only have 4 spots left until we're no longer taking on new clients.

Learn more and apply here

1. Teardown of Amazon's mobile product page

Insight from us.

$1,400,000,000 is spent on Amazon every day.

They're one of the most heavily tested and optimized product page and checkout experiences.

First, let's analyze the smart stuff they do on a product page mobile view:

Quite a lot. And this doesn't even include one-tap checkout.

Here's an overview of the lesser-known things on there:

• Social proof: We value what others value. High, plentiful reviews. Amazon Choice. And 2k+ monthly purchases signal it's a desired, de-risked item.
• Small price in red: A price in a small font is interpreted as cheaper than a large font (the Numerical Stroop Effect). Red is also interpreted as cheaper, particularly by men.
• Requires effort: A small amount of effort towards something increases the likelihood of completion. Requiring a simple tap for the 20% off coupon likely increases conversion rates.
• Fitt's Law: In the image below, you'll see Amazon used to have the Sub/One-time toggle on the left-hand side. Fitt's Law dictates that large and close objects are interacted with more often. As most people are right-handed, putting important tappable elements on a mobile screen's right and bottom edges is key.
  • Note, for that reason, they may keep the Heart button on the left-hand side to discourage its use. They want people to buy now, not add it to their wishlist. But it's always nice to have the fallback action available.

2. Personalize cold emails and pitches with AI research

Insight from us, using Arc Search.

1. The best way to do outreach is to know the person personally. You know them and they know you.
2. The second best way is to know a lot about the person already. You can reference small details or commonalities.
3. The third best way is to do a lot of research into the person to find commonalities.
4. The fourth best is weak personalization from easy-to-grab details from Clearbit.

The way most do it? They buy a list and blast it with zero personalization or research. It's a numbers game with terrible conversion rates.

This is often the case with sales calls, too. The salesperson follows a script without personalizing anything to you or your business.

Here's a new way to research people using Arc browser's AI feature called "Browse for me:”

All I did was:

1. Download the Arc Search app
2. Type in "who is neal o'grady"
3. Then tap the "Browse for me" button

Within 3 seconds, it summarized my career, education, notable highlights, and links to learn more.

You can get Arc to perform any search for you, not just for people.

It's not perfect. And some of the details are out of date. But for 3 seconds, it's pretty good.

If you send an outreach message or hop on a sales call with someone, you'll have a much better chance if you understand who you're talking to first. It only takes a few minutes.

3. Always, ALWAYS, handle their biggest objections 

Insight from us. Image from Ulli Appelbaum.

This image summarizes this tactic perfectly:

Whenever you write copy, whether it's for:

• An ad
• Your homepage
• A sales email
• A pitch deck

Always anticipate and address people's biggest objections

Your offer and product should be bold and interesting. But people naturally think it's too good to be true. We’ve all been disappointed by false promises.

Or they're going to misunderstand and misinterpret. If you don't handle their objections, they will likely come to the wrong conclusion, leave, and never return because they've already ruled you out.

Examples of big companies we all know:

Of course, to handle objections, you need to know what they are, so:

• Ask your sales team.
• Talk to your customers. What questions do they ask? What hesitations do they have?
• See what they talk and complain about on Reddit, Quora, and social posts.

Then, handle their biggest objections upfront.

To learn more about creating landing pages that convert, check out our Landing Page guide and our Above the Fold Playbook.

News and links

News you can use:

• Google unveils Gemini, a rebrand of Bard, with a new paid tier.

• Meta announces new rules regarding labeling AI-generated content.

• TikTok is prompting users to add a search page to their phone's home screen.
• Twitter/X is developing "Articles" for long-form content.
• YouTube launches a new RSS feed integration to deliver podcasts.

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Want to be featured in front of 92,427 founders and marketers? Learn more here–booking for March 25th.

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Neal O'Grady

Justin Setzer