The Growth Newsletter - The Growth Newsletter #054

The Growth Newsletter #054

Hey, Julian here. This newsletter curates growth insights from the Demand Curve Slack community. It keeps you up-to-date on growth tactics.

 

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We're launching Growth Sprints

 

Growth Sprints are live, cohort-based courses taught by the world’s best marketers. Sprints will be focused purely on tactics you can implement immediately.

 

If you take 30 seconds to fill out this short form, we'll create sprints on the growth topics you want most, and give you early access to them when they launch.

1. Use backlink data to find your competition's affiliate partners

Insight from Swipe Files.

 

Instead of searching for affiliate partners from scratch, find out what's working for your competitors and start there.

 

Here's how:

 

Affiliate platforms often use standardized link structures to track conversions. If you know the specific URL naming convention, you can use a tool like Ahrefs to find out which affiliates are promoting your competitors.

 

For example, affiliate links for Acuity Scheduling always start with "?kw="

 

In Ahrefs:

1. Enter a competitor's URL into Site Explorer
2. Filter backlinks that include "?kw="
3. Sort by Traffic and see which affiliates drive the most volume

 

And links from the popular podcast hosting platform, Transistor.fm, begin with "?via="

 

 

Using this tactic, you can quickly create a list of relevant affiliate partners and backlink opportunities.

2. Launch promotions on unique holidays

Insight from Ariyh.

 

Startups that run promotions for big, national holidays are often disappointed by results.

 

Most brands are running promotions at the same time, and they're crowded out.

 

Instead of launching promos on major holidays, consider creating a promo around an obscure holiday.

 

The less popular the holiday, the less competition for customers' attention. So your promotions actually stand out and drive action. Research shows that this approach can lift your promo conversion by as much as 25%.

 

The key: Identify a holiday that’s relevant to your product and build a story around it.

 

BarkBox turned an otherwise unknown holiday, National Squirrel Appreciation Day on January 21, into a viral social media campaign.

 

3. Targeting tactics for Apple Search Ads

Insight from Rocketship HQ, hosts of the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

 

Half a billion people visit the Apple app store each week. These are highly motivated customers looking for one thing: apps. That means unlike general query search engines like Google, the Apple app store caters to high-intent customers ready to download an app.

 

But because of the way Apple’s targeting options are structured, many marketers fail to get results. Apps need to get the ad group structure and targeting right to truly capitalize on the potential that Apple Search Ads offers.

 

Here’s one way to get results from Apple Search Ads.

 

Make three versions of all ad groups (each containing a specific set of keywords) targeting:

1. New users
2. Returning users
3. All users

You might wonder why you should target all users in a separate ad group since you’re already targeting new and returning users.

 

That’s due to a little-understood nuance of Apple Search Ads:

 

If you target ‘new’ users or ‘returning’ users (or if you layer on any targeting parameters like age, gender, or demographics), Apple excludes certain sensitive categories of users, like users under 18, those with accounts from educational institutions, and folks who’ve turned off ads personalization, among others. If you fail to target all users, you’d be missing a considerable audience.

 

Targeting these users obviously widens your reach. But more importantly, it results in stronger economics—since few advertisers target these users, the competition tends to be lower and the economics much stronger.

 

By targeting all users in addition to new and returning users, you’ll cast a wider net and likely see much stronger performance and lower costs.

 

4. Quick tip to increase webinar signups

Insight from Growth Tools.

 

There are two drop-off points in every webinar funnel: registration and attendance.

 

When you promote a webinar through a partner's email list, you can increase the number of signups by around 40% using a clever one-click registration link: embed all the signup details into the link. You can do this with a third-party tool and by collaborating with your partner.

 

Here's how:

1. Sign up for One Click from Growth Tools (free)
2. Add your webinar details, partner email service, and success page URL
3. Click Create Link
4. Share the link with your webinar partner to use in promo emails

Brand new links

New landing page teardown: We're breaking down the methods used by the highest-converting webpages. We'll help you understand the copywriting decisions behind every section—so you can apply them to your startups and projects.

 

This week, we're breaking down Customer.io. In this teardown you'll learn how Customer.io optimizes its homepage for conversion through social proof and objection handling. Get the teardown here.

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Top product role: SuperLayer is a crypto venture studio building tokenized consumer products and applications on the $RLY Network. Led by team members who've launched multiple successful gaming and crypto companies, they're looking to bring on talented Foundering Product Managers to build these products from the ground up. In the role, you'll be both Founder and General Manager, leaning on the expertise of the core SuperLayer team to build the future of consumer crypto. Check out their jobs page or reach out to Olivia (owilliams@superlayer.io) if you're interested.

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Top growth role: Softr is the easiest no-code platform for creating custom web apps from Airtable, in minutes. 2x #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, they doubled their user base to 27k+ within six months, growing 50% MoM in revenue, with zero dollars in marketing. Softr is hiring their first Senior Growth Marketer who will join the early team to build up and drive their growth efforts. It’s a high-impact growth role at one of the fastest-growing no-code startups.

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Course we recommend: Janis Ozolins is launching a course that will show you how to explain ideas visually. Janis looks at visuals as a vehicle for effective communication (not fancy art). In the course, Janis will take you from fundamentals and idea generation to transforming those ideas into thought-provoking visuals (no design background required). You’ll receive direct feedback and continuous support in his private community and monthly office hours. Check it out here.

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CEO coaches: In our last newsletter, we asked you for top CEO coaches. Here's the list of recommendations from our community.

New marketing jobs

 

If you're looking for a top growth role, check out the opportunities below from our job board. Companies can post jobs here.

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Something fun

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.

 

Know of any top design agencies or freelancers?

Founders and marketers often ask us for design recommendations. If you know a designer or agency you'd recommend, reply to this email and let us know. We'll add it to our list and share with you in our next newsletter.

We read every reply.

 

Who's Demand Curve? We're who startups rely on for professional growth. We dive into your ads, funnels, landing pages and more. Take a look at our startup growth program. Or Bell Curve will grow your company for you. We've worked with clients like Microsoft, Segment, and Perfect Keto. Hire us here.

 

You can also apply for our advanced growth marketing Slack community. Come talk with the heads of growth of all major tech companies.
 

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with a friend! If this was sent to you by a friend, get the next growth report by signing up here.

 

— Julian, Nick, Grace, Joyce, Dennis, and the DC team.