THREAD: Read this if you're new to ads. Here's how to make each ad channel work.

E.g. Facebook, Instagram, Google, Snapchat, Pinterest.

(from our experience running ads for 400+ startups)

IMPORTANT. We're growth marketers. We believe that you should test most channels (in time). This is an 80/20 to help you prioritize which you might want to test FIRST based on your business.

2 types of ad targeting:

Behavior: Serves ads to people searching for your product. Better for conversion, but audience size is limited to ppl searching for you.

Profile: Uses social profiles/engagement to serve ads. Conversion is lower, but audience size is less restricted.

Top channels ordered by average cost/click for U.S. audiences (LinkedIn being most expensive)

1. LinkedIn
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. Facebook
5. Google Ads
6. Pinterest
7. Snapchat

We'll dive into each (and a few more)

LinkedIn offers uniquely granular company and employee targeting (firmographic targeting)

Clicks are expensive. Most companies won't be able to afford LinkedIn ads.

Good fit: B2B companies earning *thousands* per customer.

Poor fit: anyone earning < $10,000 USD in LTV

THREAD: How to grow your startup through referrals, and word of mouth.

(Actionable tactics from working with 400+ startups)

Here's the truth: Your startup most likely won't make a video and go viral like Dollar Shave Club.

So instead of trying to "go viral," focus on acquiring customers through fans who already love your product.

There are 3 ways to grow through your current customers:

1. Product-led growth: Your product is built for sharing.

2. Word of mouth: Users proactively recommend your product to friends.

3. Referrals: You create an incentivized reward program.

Let's dive into each 👇

Product-led growth.

It's powerful: You don't have to artificially incentivize users to refer—you simply empower them & get out of their way.

E.g. To pay someone with PayPal, the payment recipient needs to first join PayPal—they're incentivized to sign up to receive their cash.

Product-led growth is possible when ppl use your app to:

• Transact or collaborate w/ others (PayPal, Dropbox, Zoom, Slack). These products are only effective when others use them with you.

• Create content intended to be shared w/ others (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Cameo)

THREAD: How to get users to use your app 👇

Most SaaS apps lose 95% of new users within 90 days. That's insane.

They tend to lose those users during onboarding—when a first impression is made.

Here's how to avoid this.

After reading this thread, you'll know how to welcome users into your product in a way that motivates them into being lifelong customers.

Here's the 80/20 on onboarding:

Start by visualizing your user's journey toward experiencing value from your product—this is the reason users sought you out.

Then:

• Identify the obstacles that come up along the way
• Address those obstacles in your onboarding flow

How to identify obstacles:

Some obstacles will be known to you. They're onboarding steps that:

• Require a lot of work
• Are boring

Record these.

Other obstacles are hidden. To find them, observe users using your product:

• For SaaS apps: Record users' in-app activity using Hotjar
• For physical goods: Run a study. Watch customers use your product

User behavior reveals the NONobvious broken paths taken in onboarding

THREAD: How to make ads that get clicks.

(For Facebook and Instagram)

You'll learn:

• How to write ads for your audience
• Frameworks for messaging
• How to design ads

Copy & creative.

Copy = Text that is carefully crafted for a specific outcome.

Creative = Term for multimedia, such as images and videos.

Together, they determine the click-through rate (CTR) of your ads—a 25% difference in CTR can make or break paid acquisition.

Know your audience before creating ads.

The Ladder of Product Awareness (LPA) illustrates how aware and in-need an audience is for your product.

Focus on writing appealing copy to those higher up on the ladder, since it requires less time and energy to convert these people.

Steps to writing ad copy:

1. Identify the product's benefits and your audience's concerns.
2. Write a pitch addressing each.
3. Make the pitch compelling.
4. Make it concise.

Here's an example of an ad that checks all of the boxes.

You can use one of these copywriting frameworks to write purposeful ads:

1. Articulate the problem, solution, and benefit
2. Highlight your differentiation
3. Ask a pressing question
4. Match value props to audiences

One tweet on each 👇

THREAD: 10 significant lies you've been told about marketing:

On email marketing, ads, and referrals.

"Send a welcome email immediately after signup"

Don't. People will reflexively discard it as spam.

Instead, delay your welcome email by 15-45 mins.

The delay removes the subscriber's mental connection between signup —> your email, bypassing the reflex to ignore.

More opens.

"Only highlight your best product reviews"

Imperfect reviews can generate MORE sales than 5-star ones.

When a review weighs cons versus pros yet concludes the product was worth purchasing anyway, people see it's authentic & REAL.

So don't bury slightly negative reviews.

"You have to send a newsletter every week"

Most newsletters shouldn't be sent weekly.

High cadences force newsletter writers to rush and publish lower quality information.

Instead, consider only sending when you truly have value to add.

"Your startup needs a great referral program"

The referral programs that grew Airbnb & Dropbox don't work for most companies.

Instead, find your *social loop*:

E.g. An eCom pet store should get dog owners to post photos of their dogs on IG w/ you tagged.

THREAD: How to improve your startup's conversion rate through A/B testing.

We've consolidated learnings from running 1000s of A/B tests for companies like Segment, Microsoft, and Tovala.

A/B testing = the science of testing changes to see if they improve conversion.

This thread covers:

1. Deciding what to A/B test
2. Prioritizing valuable tests
3. Tracking and recording your results

Testing makes or breaks growth.

We've worked with companies that were failing to convert their traffic.

But after three months of landing page A/B testing, they got traction.

The key: They continuously made their messaging more clear and their offer more compelling

Every day of the year, a test should be running—or you're letting traffic go to waste.

A/B testing isn't about striving for perfection with each variant. It's about iteration.

The A/B testing process

1. Decide on and prioritize high-leverage changes
2. Show some % of your visitors the change
3. Run it until you reach a statistically significant sample size
4. Implement changes that improve conversion
5. Log design/results to inform future tests