The Growth Newsletter - The Growth Newsletter #056

The Growth Newsletter #056

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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Registration is open for Audience Building

 

Quick reminder: Registration for our Audience Building live course is now open. Learn how to build an engaged audience directly from Sahil Bloom. Sahil grew his audience to over 400,000 people within 18 months. In the course, he'll share the process that's driving his growth.

 

Course dates are January 18 - January 21, 2022. We're already at 60% capacity and we're expecting to sell out shortly. You can grab your seat before we fill up here.

1. Design and optimize ad creatives for dark mode

Insight from Gummicube.

 

Dark mode is becoming more available across all apps, browsers, devices, and email inboxes.

 

Some surveys suggest that 90%+ of users prefer dark mode wherever it’s available. Even if the 90% is overestimated, it’s safe to say that a large percentage of users experience the internet through dark mode.

 

So if you’re designing ad creatives solely with light mode in mind, your ads’ CTRs might be taking a beating.

 

Why? Colors appear differently. With dark mode turned on, contrasting ads originally created for light mode may blend in.

 

To earn more users’ attention, consider designing and optimizing ad creatives for dark mode:

• Use a patterned or textured background to keep your ad from blending into the surrounding site.
• Choose a color other than black or white for your creative’s background; this will make it stand out in both light and dark mode.
• If you’re showing a product screenshot that blends into the surrounding site, consider adding a frame along the edges of the creative to make it stand out.
• Avoid using thin font weights, which are less readable against a dark background. (Visibility worsens when viewed in dark mode.)
• Create different versions of your existing ads to test colors opposite to those currently used.

2. Consider these additions to your product pages

Insight from ProfitWell.

 

Common belief: Pricing pages should be as simple as possible. No bells, no whistles, no anything that can draw attention away from the “buy” CTA.

 

But instead of thinking strictly about how much is on your page, think about how much value and friction each element adds.

• Value: Reaffirm that your product is worth buying. Overcome last-minute objections.
• Friction: Minimize confusion and distraction.

What that means in practice is that you can have more elements on your pricing page—as long as each one adds value and reduces friction.

 

Here are four that might fit the bill, depending on your product and audience:

• Live chat: Some companies only include live chat on their homepage or landing pages. But for high-priced items where customers might have questions before converting, we suggest testing live chat on product pages. You can instantly connect with prospects, resolve their final objections, and optimize your pricing based on the common questions you get asked.
• FAQs: Semrush’s pricing page helps prospects overcome common objections like levels of commitment (“can I cancel my subscription anytime?”) and investment (“what is Semrush’s refund policy?”) Google Workspace has a “Top Questions about Google Workspace Pricing” section on its product page, with questions about plans and users. If you’re aware that users are often struck with questions when they reach your product pages, don’t make them load another page to get those questions answered.
• Social proof: Testimonials, media mentions, or customer logos confirm that your brand is trustworthy and your product is popular. They often prove to be the tipping point for on-the-fence prospects.
• Word counts: Most companies keep their pricing page word count to 200-600 words. You should highlight your unique benefits and most valued features, but if your feature list is huge, consider linking to it instead of putting everything on your pricing page.

 

3. Boost discoverability of new blog posts by adding relevant internal links

Insight from Ryan Law.

 

There's often a significant time delay between posting a new blog post and when it actually starts generating traffic.

 

But you can reduce this time by signaling to the search algorithm that a new page is high quality and should be indexed quickly.

 

A simple way to kickstart this process: Link to the new article from existing high traffic pages.

 

Here's how to quickly find high-quality opportunities for internal links:

1. Use Google to run a site search for the topic of your new article. In the search bar, type: site:yoursite.com "topic" For example: site:mparticle.com "data governance"
2. This query will return all pages on your site that have that keyword in them, ranked by relevance.
3. Open the first one in your CMS, quick-find the keyword using "control/command + F". Highlight the first time the keyword appears and hyperlink it to the new blog article.
4. Repeat this process for the top 10 internal pages that have this keyword.
5. Once all 10 internal backlinks are complete, go to Google Search Console and enter the URL of the new blog article. Under URL Inspection, click Request Indexing to ensure the page and associated links are crawled as soon as possible.

You can use this same process for content pillar pages that link to internal blog articles relevant to the keywords mentioned. Backlink hygiene helps search engines understand what your website is about and increases the likelihood that readers click through to multiple pages of your site.

 

4. Focus on reducing checkout form fields, not just checkout steps

Insight from Baymard.

 

Nearly one out of every five users abandon their online purchase because the checkout process is “too long or complicated.”

 

But research shows that it’s not the number of checkout steps that takes the greatest toll on users—it’s the number of form fields. Why? Users increasingly shop on phones where they struggle to navigate between mobile forms and inefficient keyboards.

 

Below are a few simple but effective tactics for minimizing the number of fields in the checkout process:

• Use a single “Full Name” field rather than separate “First” and “Last” names. Users tend to type their full name into the first name field anyway.
• Hide Address Line 2, Company, and Coupon fields behind a link. These fields generally apply only to a minority of customers.
• Use city and state auto-detection based on zip code. Besides reducing the number of necessary form fields, this auto-detection feature eliminates potential typos in city names and helps users avoid scrolling through long state drop-downs.
• Hide separate fields for billing address. By default, assume that customers’ shipping address is the same as their billing address. Provide a pre-checked checkbox (“My billing and delivery information are the same”) that users must uncheck to reveal separate billing address fields.
• Encourage users to create an account at the confirmation step—not at the beginning of the checkout process. Since they’ll have already filled out necessary user information in the earlier steps, creating a unique password won’t be so fatiguing. (Whereas if you nudge users to create an account at the beginning of the checkout flow, it feels like a tedious extra step.)

Brand new links

Top growth roles: Our agency, Bell Curve, has some awesome roles that we’re looking to fill. We’ll pay well, give you autonomy, and you’ll work with a great team (all positions are remote).

 

Open roles:

• VP Growth Strategy: We’re looking for a serious growth leader to lead our strategist team and our business. Details here.
• Growth Strategist (Paid Media): We're looking for a paid media expert to create full-funnel growth strategies and work with our expert network to execute them. Details here.
• Account/Project Manager: You'll work alongside the Growth Strategists to push projects forward and build relationships with our clients. Details here.
• Copywriter: You'll work with us as a strategic and tactical copywriter—someone who can write copy that sells. Details here.

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For CEOs: If you feel like you could use more CEO friends, check out 3F. It's a peer group program that organizes small groups of high-caliber CEOs. Groups meet once a month for 90 minutes to discuss their biggest problems. The program is run and facilitated by our friend Noah Shanok (former founder/CEO and coach). Learn more here.

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Top growth job: Meez is hiring a Head of Growth. Launched in 2020 by entrepreneur, chef, and restaurant industry veteran Josh Sharkey, Meez is the all-in-one recipe tool for culinary professionals. Since launching one year ago, they've grown ~2000%, 70% of which came from organic growth. And they're expecting to grow at least 200% in 2022. They're looking for an experienced marketer and first principle thinker who's capable of designing and operationalizing a sustainable growth machine—one that will help them empower chefs worldwide to cook faster and work smarter. Apply here.

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Recommended read: Niya Dragova wrote an incredible guide to equity compensation for tech employees. Equity compensation has changed drastically over the last decade. This is the most insightful guide we've found on the subject.

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

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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 Traction and Growth Programs. 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.
 

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