Bell Curve - Startup Growth Founders Playbook

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Table of Contents
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 4
INTRO ........................................................................................................................................................................... 4
WHO SHOULD READ THIS.................................................................................................................................................. 4
GROWTH HACKING DEFINITION .......................................................................................................................................... 5
WHEN TO HIRE BRAND MARKETERS .................................................................................................................................... 6
WHO IS BELL CURVE? ...................................................................................................................................................... 7
THE GROWTH FUNNEL...................................................................................................................................................... 7
SUCCEEDING AT ACQUISITION .......................................................................................................................................... 10
SUCCEEDING AT UNPAID CHANNELS .................................................................................................................................. 11
DON'T JUST FOCUS ON PAID ACQUISITION .......................................................................................................................... 12
THE MINIMUM VIABLE GROWTH PLAN ............................................................................................................................... 12
THE RIGHT GROWTH TACTICS FOR YOUR COMPANY .............................................................................................................. 13
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 2. LANDING PAGES ..................................................................................................... 15
LANDING PAGE VARIANTS ............................................................................................................................................... 15

HOMEPAGE APPROACH .................................................................................................................................................. 16
LANDING PAGE IDEATION PROCESS ................................................................................................................................... 16
VALUE PROPOSITIONS .................................................................................................................................................... 17
LANDING PAGE TEMPLATE............................................................................................................................................... 20
GETTING FEEDBACK ON YOUR PAGE .................................................................................................................................. 34
LANDING PAGE DESIGN .................................................................................................................................................. 35
LANDING PAGE TYPES..................................................................................................................................................... 36
ASSESSING LANDING PAGE CONVERSION ............................................................................................................................ 37
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 3. A/B TESTING ........................................................................................................... 39
LANDING PAGE A/B TESTING........................................................................................................................................... 39

SOURCING A/B IDEAS .................................................................................................................................................... 40
A/B TESTING AND THE GROWTH FUNNEL ........................................................................................................................... 41
WHAT TO A/B TEST ON YOUR LANDING PAGE..................................................................................................................... 41
PRIORITIZING A/B TESTS ................................................................................................................................................ 43
A/B TESTING BEYOND WEBSITES AND APPS ........................................................................................................................ 44
SETTING UP A/B TESTS .................................................................................................................................................. 45
ASSESSING A/B TEST RESULTS ......................................................................................................................................... 46
HOW TO SHARE RESULTS WITH YOUR TEAM........................................................................................................................ 49
HERE'S THE POINT ......................................................................................................................................................... 49
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 4. ONBOARDING ......................................................................................................... 51
USER ONBOARDING IS CRITICAL........................................................................................................................................ 51

ONBOARDING STRATEGY ................................................................................................................................................ 52
OBSTACLE IDENTIFICATION.............................................................................................................................................. 52
ADDRESSING OBSTACLES ................................................................................................................................................ 53
HERE'S THE POINT ......................................................................................................................................................... 58
VIRALITY ..................................................................................................................................................................... 58
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 5. AD CHANNELS ......................................................................................................... 62
Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 2

CHANNEL FIT ................................................................................................................................................................ 63
LEARN THIS MATERIAL MORE IN-DEPTH ............................................................................................................................. 67
THE TRIFECTA: GOOGLE ADS, FB, AND IG ......................................................................................................................... 67
HERE'S THE POINT ......................................................................................................................................................... 71
AD CHANNEL COMPARISONS ........................................................................................................................................... 71
HOW DO I MAKE ADS ON THESE CHANNELS? ...................................................................................................................... 86
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 6. MAKING ADS .......................................................................................................... 87
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE? .............................................................................................................................................. 88

COPYWRITING .............................................................................................................................................................. 90
SURVEYING FOR COPY IDEAS............................................................................................................................................ 92
MAKE COPY COMPELLING ............................................................................................................................................... 93
POLISH YOUR COPY........................................................................................................................................................ 96
HERE'S THE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................... 99
AD CREATIVE .............................................................................................................................................................. 100
WHEN TO REVAMP ADS................................................................................................................................................ 103
HERE'S THE POINT ....................................................................................................................................................... 104
BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 7. FACEBOOK ADS ..................................................................................................... 105

THE REALITY OF RUNNING ADS ....................................................................................................................................... 106
AD CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE ........................................................................................................................................... 109
AD SETS: SEGMENTATION ............................................................................................................................................. 112
AD SETS: TARGETING ................................................................................................................................................... 112
OTHER AD SET SETTINGS ............................................................................................................................................... 129
FACEBOOK NEWSFEED ADS W/ EXAMPLES ...................................................................................................................... 130
MONITORING AD PERFORMANCE ................................................................................................................................... 137
SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................................. 149
CONGRATULATIONS! ................................................................................................................................................... 151

BC: Growth Guide — 1. Introduction
Intro
This handbook teaches you to get customers to your site or app — and get them to buy.
It is widely recommended within Silicon Valley because it actually teaches growth marketing to a
professional level. It doesn't waste time with self-evident advice.
If you're skeptical of marketing advice, know that we are, too. This handbook is unique in that we have
four years of diverse data: We’ve run thousands of experiments to grow thirty different businesses
across dozens of verticals.
Read this intro page to understand which growth strategy may work best for your company.
Who should read this

This material applies to companies of every size and vertical.
We cover both introductory and advanced B2B and B2C tactics. Marketers of every skill level will
encounter new material.
Unfortunately, this handbook is dry — because in-depth growth is technical. So we recommend

bookmarking this and reading pages as they're relevant to your work.
If you're brainstorming startup ideas

It's important you learn growth hacking before deciding which idea to work on.
It will save you years of going down the wrong path. You should start by assessing whether your idea is
actually suited for profitable and scalable user acquisition.
In this handbook, you'll learn which ad channels you can expect to succeed for your business, and how
to increase customer purchase rates.
When you're done reading this, if you can’t foresee these strategies working for the startup idea you're
considering, you should consider scrapping your idea.
If you're a manager
It's critical that managers know what growth marketing entails so they can facilitate it.
Don't treat growth like a black box powered by your engineering and marketing departments. It's your
most important business function.

This handbook helps you prioritize growth marketing projects based on their likely profitability and
ease of implementation. Plus, it sheds light on a growth marketer's skill set so you can effectively
assess hiring candidates.
(Many companies unknowingly hire “growth experts” who are brand marketers experienced only in
creating brand voice and generating buzz. Unfortunately, brand marketers often lack knowledge of
user acquisition and conversion optimization. This handbook will help you avoid unintentionally hiring
them.)
Growth hacking definition
Growth hacking is simply data-driven revenue maximization.
Growth "hacking" is actually a silly term. (It also goes by performance marketing and growth
marketing.) We use it because it helps this handbook rank higher in Google.
Practice what you preach.
In reality, growth is not a series of "hacks." It's a rigorous methodology consisting of experimenting,
collecting data, and leveraging human psychology. All in pursuit of directly maximizing revenue — not
raising brand awareness or generating buzz.
Growth hacking versus traditional marketing

Growth marketing (which is how we will now refer to the discipline) differs from traditionally
undisciplined marketing in that growth marketing focuses on clearly measurable and directly
profitable marketing initiatives.
For example, growth rarely concerns itself with billboards, radio ads, conferences, and other difficult-
to-measure channels. (Try attributing a customer to the billboard they saw before signing up. Try doing
it when you have multiple billboards in a city.)
Growth leverages the scale and immediacy of the Internet to start small and discover how to make
customer acquisition measurable and therefore capable of being proven financially viable.
Growth hacking knowledge

Growth marketing accomplishes its objective by continually optimizing every step of the customer's
journey.
This journey includes the ads they see, the website they later interact with, and the product they
ultimately buy and engage with.

In other words, growth marketing involves three key disciplines:
• Customer acquisition gets people to your site.

• Software engineering improves your site. So that more people buy from it.
• Product management improves your product using the insights derived from your acquisition
and engineering experiments. So that customers keep buying.
Growth marketers must be familiar with all three disciplines. Or, at minimum, your team of growth
marketers must collectively address these disciplines.
However, that knowledge alone is not enough to be successful. They must also possess a few unique
skills.
Growth hacking skills

To competently span the three disciplines, a growth marketer must be:
• Creative when brainstorming compelling text and imagery for ads and webpages.
• Reflective when assessing what has been learned from creative experiments.
• Resourceful when scaling customer acquisition. The cunningness to piece together tactics
and idle resources can make or break an acquisition channel's success, such as Instagram ads
or traditional sales.
Let’s elaborate on that last point. Resourceful entails being aggressively proactive:
• Resourceful growth marketers don't stop finding, testing, and optimizing customer
acquisition channels. For example, when Pinterest releases a new ad format, they'll spend an
afternoon testing $500 in spend to uncover whether there’s new, low-hanging fruit to pick.
(We cover ad channels in this chapter.)
• Resourceful growth marketers don't stop running A/B tests to improve signup and purchase
conversion rates. They rethink their approach from scratch as often as they can. (We cover
A/B tests in this chapter.)
This handbook will help establish the disciplines of creativity and resourcefulness.
When to hire brand marketers

Counterintuitively, "brand marketing" is typically ineffective at actually shaping your brand. Plus we’ve
already mentioned it's not effective for growth marketing.
So, what is it good for? Keeping your message consistent and self-censored.
But most companies don't need to exercise this restraint early on. Because long-term public perception
is more so the result of having a product people love. Consumer love begets organic brand building via

word-of-mouth, and word-of-mouth supersedes the messaging your company pushes through brand
marketing.
So before you hire a brand marketer, hire another product manager to make your product more
enjoyable to use. And by extension more beloved.
When you're a mature company, consider hiring a brand marketer to maintain the aesthetic and tonal
consistency of your marketing. This will help you stay singular and differentiated if you're in a crowded
market.
But, before then, brand marketers typically slow growth marketing with arbitrary constraints. Consider
how if brand marketing dictates that all marketing materials must have red backgrounds with white
text, growth marketers won't feel empowered to experiment with different ad designs to uncover
what the data says is the best aesthetic to encourage ad clicks that lead to purchases.
Who is Bell Curve?

Bell Curve is a growth marketing agency. We’ve grown some of the largest SaaS and ecommerce
startups from zero to millions in revenue. We've worked with Framer, Envoy, Streak, Clearbit, Service,
Tovala, Perfect Keto, and many others.
We also offer a training program where we teach founders and marketers of all levels and backgrounds
how to be growth experts.
If you’re interested in working together, or just want to learn more, please visit:
http://www.bellcurve.com/
The growth funnel
Before you dive into this handbook, we want you to develop an intuition for which growth tactics are
likely to succeed for your company.
To do this, we must first introduce the growth funnel: the journey the customer takes while interacting
with your advertising and your product. These are the steps:
Acquisition → Conversion → Engagement → Revenue → Referral
Growth marketers know how these steps interrelate. For example, to spend marketing dollars
efficiently, steps later in the funnel should be optimized first. Consider how when Engagement
performs better, every dollar spent on Acquisition goes further.

So let's introduce each step.
(It's fine if some steps don't apply to your product.)
I. Acquisition
An acquisition "channel" is a place you source potential customers from. For example, ads, content
marketing, and sales are all acquisition channels.
Channels separate into two broad categories:
• Paid channels — Paid channels include advertising, paid sponsorships, and affiliate
marketing. Here, "paid" means you're paying for channel performance as it scales. For
example, for every click, ad impression, or referred sale, you're paying.
• Unpaid channels — Unpaid channels include content marketing, offline networking, sales,
virality, and PR. Here, "Unpaid" doesn't mean these channels are free to setup, but rather
you're not paying more as performance scales. For example, you'll pay for the labor to have a
blog post written. But the resulting SEO traffic doesn't cost you on a per-visit basis. This is
great — unpaid channels can have unbounded upside!
In an effort to keep this handbook lean and immediately useful, it focuses on the most popular paid
channel: Ads.
II. Conversion
When visitors are intrigued by what you're offering (either on your website or in-person), some of
them "convert" into registered users or paying customers.
"Conversion events" are the business-critical events along your product's growth funnel. For example,
a website visitor may first convert into a registered user. Then, after using your app for a while, they
might then convert into a paying customer.
This handbook teaches conversion through Landing Pages, A/B Testing, and Ads.
III. Engagement
So far, we've acquired users and converted them into registered users. But we also need them to
engage with us if they're going to ultimately pay us.
So, when a visitor converts into a user, handhold them through your product experience so they
become an educated user. Educated users are more likely to become engaged, repeat purchasers.
This handbook teaches engagement through User Onboarding.

IV. Revenue
Your revenue per customer can be maximized through reducing your costs, improving your conversion
rates, optimizing your pricing, and up/cross-selling other products.

This is a fascinating topic, but unfortunately pricing and cross-selling are outside the scope of this
handbook.
V. Referral
You need to make your product so good that customers do your selling for you. It's the most cost-
effective way to scale your business in the long-term.
Thankfully, you don’t need to be a viral consumer app to accomplish this. Many B2B companies grow
(albeit slowly) exclusively through word-of-mouth.
This handbook teaches referrals at the bottom of the User Onboarding page.
Tip — See the bottom of your screen for quick navigation links.
Growth funnel loops

The growth funnel's linearity — for example, going from A to Z — doesn't need to constrain a user's
journey toward conversion.
Their journey may in practice consist of repeatedly looping from A (advertising) to F (e.g. in-app
engagement) before they reach Z, which is where paid conversion occurs.
For example, if a user fails to Engage with your app, you might send them an educational email paired
with ads pointing to your content marketing. You can do this repeatedly until they're served the right
content that propels them to the next step.
We call this the Retargeting Loop. (We'll talk more about retargeting later.)
Here's another loop: the Ecommerce Re-purchase Loop. In it, a user first goes from A to Z. Meaning,
they bought your product. Afterward, you then email them a steep coupon to compel them to
purchase yet again.
In other words, you're getting them to repeat steps B to Z. (A is skipped because they already know
who you are.)
If you can trigger this loop repeatedly, you have a sound business model. And if you repeat this loop on
autopilot, you're said to have a subscription business.
The key takeaways are:

• Your marketing efforts should consider where in the funnel each user is, and what type of
message will best compel them to the next step in the funnel.
• It's often cost effective to repeatedly message a user ("in a loop") until your pitch or their
status in life is finally conducive to conversion.

• After a user has converted, consider how you can restart their loop — or alternatively direct
them toward a complementary growth funnel.
This handbook focuses on user acquisition and conversion, so strategies for re-engagement and
subscriptions are not covered. But we want you to know they exist.
Succeeding at acquisition
This guide focuses on the first two steps of the funnel: Acquisition and Conversion.
So let's introduce the cold reality of acquisition.
Succeeding at paid channels

Most companies never get paid acquisition channels to work. If they did, more companies would be
successful.
Specifically, most companies are unable to profitably acquire paying users through ad networks such as
Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google Ads.
If they do get one or more of these channels to work, it's a holy grail if paired with strong word-of-
mouth: Paid channels let you scale big and fast while (unpaid) customer referrals reduce the average
cost of customer acquisition.
Why is paid difficult to make work? Here's the criteria that determine success:
• Profit margins — How much profit you earn per sale is critical. Consider how it's hard to
acquire an ecommerce customer for less than $30 USD on Facebook or Instagram, which are
typically the cheapest ad channels. If you don't earn at least that amount in the lifetime of a
customer, these channels won't be viable. Note that SaaS companies have it worse: It's
usually at least a couple hundred dollars to acquire a customer.
• Addressable market size — Your market size matters. This is determined not only by how
many people want your product, but are actually capable of buying your product (e.g. aren't
geographically restricted), want your particular product, want it now, and can afford it. The
resulting audience is smaller than marketers estimate. And to scale Facebook and Instagram,
you'll want to advertise to at least a few million people. (This amount is not required to
successfully run ads — just ideal.)
• Degree of product demand — How badly does your addressable market want your product?
If your product is a non-critical nicety, you're at a disadvantage compared to, say, someone
selling health insurance to people urgently needing health insurance. In short, the more
people truly need you, or the more people are already buying your product category, the
better your pitch resonates.

To succeed with ads, your product must cross a threshold for all three criteria:
• Profit threshold — You must earn per customer at least as much as it costs to acquire a
customer from that ad channel. However, you can include the earnings generated from the
customers the paid-for customer refers.
• Market size threshold — You must have an addressable market big enough to be identified
en masse through the ad channel's targeting. (This depends on the channel.) Otherwise, you'll
saturate your small audience and not achieve scale.
• Product demand threshold — You want to sell a product category that people are already
buying or otherwise instinctively feel they should buy upon learning of it. To accomplish the
latter, you need a product that is extremely appealing.
You won't definitively know whether your product crosses these thresholds until you've spent a
statistically significant amount of money on each ad channel. This is often around $1,000-$2,000 USD
per channel.
(On the Ad Channels page, we’ll walk you through each.)
If you fail to pass these three thresholds and ad channels are therefore not viable, you'll instead be
relying on word-of-mouth, content marketing, PR, sales, and other unpaid channels that cost less per
customer acquisition.
That's completely fine. Succeeding at paid acquisition isn't a necessity. It's just helpful because it lets
you scale easily. And the only other easy channel to scale is virality. So if you can't make either work,
you're in for a longer growth journey.
By the way, here's a podcast interview where Bell Curve Partner Julian Shapiro dives much deeper into
this.
Succeeding at unpaid channels

Here's the success criteria for the four most effective unpaid channels:
• Search-engine-optimized content — Is your product something people are already Googling

for en masse? Then Content Marketing is viable. In fact, your core marketing competency
should now be optimizing content: Hire writers instead of ad experts. Write, write, write.
• Network effects — Network effects require users to recognize and care that they receive a
significantly improved product experience when they invite other people. This happens
rarely. It typically only occurs in social networks (e.g. WhatsApp) or broad business
collaboration apps (e.g. Slack, Dropbox). We cover virality-related topics at the bottom of
Onboarding.
• Word-of-mouth — WOM is the growth that occurs outside of your marketing efforts. It's
when people voluntarily advertise you to others. The criterion for word-of-mouths' success is

whether your product blow people's minds. If so, awesome, you will grow from word-of-
mouth, and it'll cost nothing — but it might take years to snowball into a large customer base.
To accelerate word-of-mouth, make it easy and fun for people to share.
• Sales — The criterion for sales success is whether you can get your ideal customers to talk to
you (e.g. via phone, email, or in-person). Note that sales only applies to companies with
significantly high profit margins (typically $1,000+) because the labor costs of researching,
pitching, and negotiating every sale must be recouped.
• Everything else — Of the remaining unpaid channels, most are often ineffective. Public
relations and social media, for example, typically only work for a handful of businesses (trend
exploiters and lifestyle companies, respectively). And those channels are outside the scope of
this handbook.
Don't just focus on paid acquisition

Even companies that do get ad channels to work don't often get them working at scale for more than a
few months.
Eventually, audiences may saturate and diminishing returns can kill profitability. So, you should plant
seeds for other channels to succeed in the long-term:
• SEO — From day one, write content for SEO. (If applicable.) It takes months — often over a
year — for content to reach the front page of Google.
• Product quality — Build an amazing product people can't stop talking about. Then further
incentivize word-of-mouth through referral programs or community building. These programs
cost relatively little and can work on autopilot.
• Funnel optimization — The better your funnel performs, the more you can tolerate
diminishing ad performance. So don't rely exclusively on ad optimization to reduce your ad
acquisition costs; also have the best-tuned website, onboarding flow, and up/cross-selling
experience so you receive every dollar possible from happy users.
We're ready to introduce the minimum viable growth plan everyone should pursue.
The minimum viable growth plan
1. Build an amazing product that naturally encourages word-of-mouth.

2. Kickstart word-of-mouth with paid ad traffic. Even if it's temporarily unprofitable.
3. Now, spend the majority of your marketing resources optimizing your growth funnel: At every
step, A/B Test conversion on the traffic you're paying for.
4. Once you have a profitable and streamlined funnel, it's time to scale. Aggressively test every
potentially viable channel.

The right growth tactics for your company
With our growth plan in hand, we're missing one thing: What our experience running growth for 20+
companies suggests is the best tactic for your business model.
B2C businesses
If you sell to consumers:
• B2C ecommerce companies selling physical goods — You'll most likely succeed with
Instagram Ads, Content Marketing, and PR. You might succeed with Pinterest Ads, Google
Ads, and Google Shopping.
• B2C mobile app — You'll most likely succeed with with Instagram Ads and Apple Search Ads.
You might succeed with Snapchat Ads, TapJoy, and referral programs.
• B2C SaaS app — You'll most likely succeed with Facebook Ads and Content Marketing. You
might succeed with Google AdWords and affiliate programs
• B2C (or B2B) bricks and mortar — You'll most likely succeed with Facebook Ads, Instagram
Ads, Yelp Ads, Content Marketing, and PR. You might succeed with Snapchat Ads, Google
AdWords, Google Display Ads, and affiliate programs.
Don't be overwhelmed by all those links. You can ignore them for now. This handbook will walk you
through most of them over the coming pages.
B2B businesses
If you sell to businesses:
• Niche B2B with high average revenue per user (ARPU) — An example of this category is an
enterprise software product charging $1,000+ per month. You'll most likely succeed with
Sales (cold email, networking, and LinkedIn messages) and lead generation through Facebook
Ads and Google Ads. You might succeed with Instagram Ads and Content Marketing.
• Broad B2B with high ARPU — For example, a software product charging $100 per month to
help run small business accounting. The previous bullet applies here too, with two tweaks: 1.
You might be able to defer sales in favor of ads. Ads are easier and faster to scale. 2. Content
marketing is likely to work, and should be prioritized.
• Niche B2B with low ARPU — For example, a software product for web developers that
charges $25 per month. Rethink your business model if you're wanting to make more than
$2mm USD per year, because you are unlikely to. Niche B2B businesses with low ARPU can
neither afford ad channels nor sales.
• Broad B2B with low ARPU — For example, a software product for marketers that charges $25
per month. You'll most likely succeed with Content Marketing and Google Ads. (And Apple
Search Ads if you're a mobile app.) You might succeed with a referral program.
Again, here's the link to the podcast interview where Bell Curve Partner Julian Shapiro dives much
deeper into this.

Continue to the next chapter
Landing pages
Homepages that compel visitors to sign up.

BC: Growth Guide — 2. Landing Pages
This chapter teaches you to write and design modern sites that convert.
We walk you through the template Bell Curve uses for today's largest startups. (Speaking of which, if
you're a junior marketer or founder of a startup needing to bring growth talent in-house quickly, see
our training program here.)
We cover how to structure your page, write copy, incorporate design, and maximize purchase
conversion. It's everything you'd want to know.
Why this is important

If you read only three pages in this guide, make it this one, A/B testing, and channels.
A great homepage isn’t a nicety. It’s your first impression. The better your first impression, the better
your customer acquisition efforts perform.
So treat it as diligently as you do your product itself.
Consider how around 75% of your site traffic will leave after only seeing your homepage.
That's what we mean by "first impression." So, don't waste it.
Not wasting it means following the proven template. Don't do something unique unless you have a
good reason to. The more you detour from this template, the more confused the average visitor will
be: You'll make it more laborious for them to identify what your company does and why they should
care about it.
In other words, the template makes what your company does self-evident. It prioritizes clarity, brevity,
and directness.
What it doesn't care about is design innovation. Instead, you should be innovative in the other areas of
your growth funnel — like your ads and your product features. But not your homepage. Typically,
people just want information quickly.
So don't stand in their way.
Landing page variants
Let's start by identifying three types of landing pages:
• Homepage — Your catch-all page for visitors of every type.

• Persona landing page — Where you tailor messaging to a specific audience.

• Product page — Where you dive into the details of a particular product.
These three pages can be structured identically; they share the template below. They differ only in
what is being pitched and which words and images are used to pitch.
Our focus will be on your homepage. Where it all begins.
Homepage approach
Think of a landing page's creation from the perspective of a visitor's likelihood to convert. (Conversion
is the term for proceeding to the next step in a growth funnel.)
We can think about conversion as an equation:
Conversion Rate = Desire - Labor - Confusion
In other words, to increase the rate of conversion, we increase the visitor's desire while decreasing
their labor and confusion.
Here's what that looks like:
• Increase desire — Entice visitors with how much value you provide. Create intrigue. Pitch
your product in a way that successfully resonates.
• Decrease labor — Reduce the work your visitors have to perform so they don't get tired or
annoyed and leave prematurely. How? Be concise and ensure every word and design element
is of value.
• Decrease confusion — Don't confuse visitors with obscure or verbose messaging. Ensure
every sentence can be easily understood. And make it self-evident which action they should
take next (e.g. signup or buy). Ensure the design of your action elements (e.g. buttons) are
unmissable.
The implication is that the first step in creating a landing page is not actually to design the page.
Instead, it's to first hone your message. You then back out from that message to what it is you should
say and, only at the end, what it should look like.
In other words, growth is not a design-first process. It's almost always messaging-first.
Landing page ideation process
A messaging-first approach to landing pages embraces the conversion equation:

1. First, identify the selling points that are most desirable about your product.
2. Next, identify the text and media that convey those points clearly and concisely.
3. Finally, design your page in a way that enhances the clarity and impact of #2
So, let's begin by identifying and conveying your selling points. In marketing jargon, selling points are
called "value propositions."
After this value prop creation exercise, we’ll introduce our landing page template.
Value propositions
One more marketing term before we dive into value props: "copy" is the marketing jargon for text.
We’ll be using it going forward.
Creating value props

A value proposition is a quality of your product that is matched with a benefit.
For example, your product may have the qualities of fast and secure. Below, we match fast with three
resulting benefits to create distinct value propositions:
• Quality: Fast, Benefit: Quicker output, Value prop: Get work done faster.
• Quality: Fast, Benefit: Greater output, Value prop: Get more work done.
• Quality: Fast, Benefit: Greater efficiency, Value prop: Save yourself time.
Each variation shares the same core quality — speed — but each articulates a unique outcome of
speed. In other words, a unique benefit.
Take a moment to chew on that before moving on.
One more example to make sure we got it. Let's take the quality of secure this time. And let's say the
product we're marketing is a messaging app:
• Quality: Secure, Benefit: Privacy, Value prop: Only your friends can see your messages.
• Quality: Secure, Benefit: Protection, Value prop: If your phone is stolen, your data cannot be
stolen.
It's a straightforward process. But, for some reason, most people don't do it. Almost every client we
have worked with simply wings their copy.
They don't dig to find the very best value props that motivates visitors to convert 3x better than the
next.

To harden yourself against this laziness, below is our process for systematically generating compelling
value props. Put another way, it's a process for coming up with the qualities and benefits you should be
focusing on.
Use this process whenever you're pitching anything.
Value prop generation

Let's use a live chat app (example) as our sample product.
As you follow these four steps to generating your props, refer to the green chart further down for
specific examples:
1. In column one, list all the non-desirable alternatives people resort to when they don't have
your product at all. Next, describe what makes each alternative bad. (Now scroll down to see
the examples below before continuing to the next point.)
2. Your list of what makes each alternative bad is now your starting point for generating value
propositions: In column two, write out how and why your product is better than the bad
alternative. (Scroll down for examples.)
3. In the third column, which is a separate brainstorming exercise from the first two columns,
simply list your most valuable customer personas. (Most valuable means they pay you the
most.) This third column is to remind you what audience you're pitching to. For each persona,
list the two product benefits they care most about.
4. Now, reduce the second column's list of value props down to just those that satisfy what the
top customer personas care about. In other words, use the third column to filter the second
column to your most valuable value props.
What should be left in column two are the value props you'll be using to pitch.
To recap, you identified them by finding the market pain points that resonate most strongly with the
personas most valuable to you.
Many readers find they need to re-read this chapter a couple times before they get it. Take your time
— it's important!
Bad alternatives How you do it better Best customers
Visitors leave the site Help more visitors get more Head of Marketing
• Lost sales questions answered by • Conversion rates
opportunities immediately handling • Traffic volume
objections via live chat.
Visitors read FAQ's Chief Revenue Officer

• They're long, boring Address objections • Reduce churn
Visitors email support proactively so you can • Increase ARPU/LTV
• Most don't bother better satisfy visitors and
close more deals. Head of Sales
• Increase qualified
leads
• Qualify leads
accurately
The cleverness of this process is in ideating value props by comparing your product to the bad
alternatives customers would have been stuck with if they didn't have you. Doing this ensures you
remain focused on the benefits that resonate with customers— instead of on those that customers
don't actually experience in the real world.
Perhaps more importantly, following this process ensures you're exhaustive in your value prop
brainstorming. You want to dig up the diamonds in the rough.
You'll learn to master copywriting on the upcoming Making Ads page.
Where to use value props

Think of value props as the ammunition that you collect to later disperse across a page. Specifically,
value props form your header, subheader, and feature paragraphs.
In short, value props are the selling points that increase a visitor's conversion desire.
You can of course also use your value props everywhere else you pitch your product:
• Ads
• Emails
• Sales calls
• And so on.
Try to be consistent with your use across those channels. Value prop consistency breeds familiarity.
Articulating value propositions

With value props in hand, you have to fully write them out before you can use them.
The trick to writing out value props is to say a lot with a little. This is the principle of information
density, which aims to avoid giving the visitor surplus labor in the form of too many words to read.
Here's how to write value props with high information density:

• Iterate copy until it can't be better — Don’t write a paragraph with the first phrasing that
comes to mind then never touch it again. Instead, write a dozen variations until you find the
most enticing and concise variation. To be sure, ask others to rank your best ones.
• Remove unnecessary words — Every word existing on your page must be necessary. If you
can remove a word without it reducing how enticing, clear, or useful a sentence is, remove it.
(Excess verbiage increases the visitor's labor, which triggers their impulse to skim.) A tip:
avoid clichés like revolutionary, incredibly powerful, best-ever, and so on. Other products
claim these qualities, so visitors are blind to them. It's better to specifically describe how
you're different.
• Don’t pitch everything — The more visitors are given to read, the less they read in total. So
don't trigger their reflex to skim. Instead, take an 80/20 approach: Always identify the two or
three sub-points that convey the most value.
Keep your refined value props on hand. You're going to be using them shortly throughout your page.
Counterintuitively, concise doesn't mean short

Every client we work with at some point asks, “Why is the landing page you made for us so long?”
Our answer: So long as every word provides unique and compelling value, it's okay to err on the longer
side. Length provides more surface area so that you can appeal to more customer types.
We don't use length to be redundant. We use length to be holistic.
Succinct doesn't mean short. It means a high ratio of ideas to words.

– Paul Graham
Landing page template
Finally, we've arrived at the landing page template.
Start with the following template and only detour away from it if you've already nailed its
implementation and want to A/B test variations:
1. Navbar: The top of the page — where your logo and navigation links are.
2. Hero: The main section at the top of the page, which includes your header text, subheader
text, and captivating imagery.
3. Social proof: Logos of press coverage or your well-known customers.
4. Call-to-action (CTA): Your signup button and a concise incentive to click it.
5. Features and objections: Your key value propositions fully written out.
6. Repeat your call-to-action
7. Footer: Miscellaneous links.

Here it is visualized:
We’ll walk through and thoroughly teach you each section. As we do that, keep PersistIQ.com open in
a new tab so you can follow along. Their site, which Bell Curve wrote and designed, roughly follows this
landing page template.
Element — Navbar
This is the first element at the top of your page:
All your navbar needs is:
• A logo
• Optional: Links to key sections on your homepage
• Links to the other pages on your site
• A call-to-action button (e.g. Signup)
The fewer links you have, the more your primary CTA stands out. So be selective.

In fact, if you're feeling bold, you can drop all links except for the CTA. This prevents visitors from being
pulled away to other pages that may not help them convert.
Element — Hero
"Hero" is designer jargon for the big section at the top of your page — what visitors first see before
they scroll down.
Your hero consists of your header text, subheader text, and often an image.
You must put a lot of thought into each of these. Nailing header copy has the highest impact on
whether people continue scrolling and reading. And it's the first place we put our value props to work.
But, before we do that, let's explore the hero's image.
Hero — Image
Let's start with hero's image.
The purpose of your image is to visualize the value prop described in the header and subheader.

The imagery should always reinforce the copy. It doesn't distract from it. Remember, messaging-first —
not design-first.
In practice, this means your image should typically show off the product.
Look at how the example above uses a literal screenshot of the product. That's typically what you
want.
If you're instead selling a physical good, show a picture of it. If you're selling services, perhaps an
illustration could be effective.
As another example, here's how Slack uses illustrations to show employees using their app:
In contrast, what you don't want is random stock photography of, say, a smiling woman at her desk.
There's zero value in that. People reflexively ignore generic imagery. So it just takes up precious space
in your hero. A wasted opportunity.
Note that this isn't just our subjective philosophy on page design. Extensive experimentation shows
conversion increases when visitors have an immediate visual understanding of what you're selling
them. Only makes sense, right?
Then do what makes sense — instead of just copying others' bad design habits.
That's actually the theme of this handbook: be literal, be specific, and be clear. There's so much fluff on
the web that you stand out simply by getting to the point.

In advertising, the greatest thing to be achieved is believability, and nothing is more
believable than the product itself.
– Leo Burnet
Hero — Header
Your hero section has two pieces of text: its header (the primary text) and its subheader.
Let's start with the header.
The header must be fully descriptive of what you're selling. Because, if the visitor doesn't understand
exactly what you do immediately upon landing, they'll either bounce out of laziness or skim-read the
rest of the page until they get the gist. Once they get that gist, they'll likely bounce anyway because
they're still too lazy to re-read the page from the beginning.
So, start with a good first impression. And that begins with the top of your page. Which means your
header text must be fantastic.
Here's the litmus test for whether your header is sufficiently descriptive: If the visitor reads only this
text on your page, will they know exactly what you sell?
The subheader, which we cover soon, must satisfy a related litmus test: If the visitor reads only the
subheader, will they know why they should care about what you sell?
Hero — Header — Be specific

Bad headers — found all over the web — are those that read like slogans instead of descriptions. For
example, "Improve your workflow!" or "Supercharge your collaboration!" are useless slogans.
If that's all you read on a landing page, you’d have no idea what the product actually is.
As in, you wouldn't know how the product accomplishes those vague aspirations.
And people critically want to know the how. And they want to know it immediately.
What does a good, descriptive header look like? Like this:

• For a website design tool — "Visually design and develop sites from scratch. No coding."
• For a grocery delivery service — "Groceries delivered in 1 hour. Say goodbye to traffic,
parking, and long lines."
• For a home rental service — "Rent people's homes. So you can experience a city like a true
local.”
Ahh. Now those help us understand what you're selling! We don't have to dig deeper.
And so we can immediately self-identify as someone who does in fact want this thing you're
advertising, which means we’ll have patience to read through the rest of the site to gleam the juicy
details.
Hero — Header — Writing it out
In summary, a header is written to hook visitors into your product through a description that explains
how you solve a problem people care about.
But you can't just throw in a value prop and call it a day. There's a specific way to write a great header.
Let's introduce the two-step copywriting process for writing headers:
I. Identify a value prop that conveys the product's core purpose

Find your product's representative value prop that's also the most compelling thing to talk about when
pitched by itself.
For example, here are some value props a video chat app may have:
• Chat with anyone quickly

• Chat on your phone, tablet, or desktop
• Auto-translate real-time conversations regardless of language
• Get transcripts for every conversation — emailed to you
Most of these are standard to many video chat apps. And your header is too valuable of a place to
highlight something generic. Instead, we’re looking for the value prop that’s the most compelling, yet
still fairly represents our product’s core value.
We think the auto-translate feature is amazing. Not only is that value prop differentiating the product
within a saturated chat app market, it's also representing the app's core purpose: the ability to chat
with anyone.
Turning this value prop into a header may look like: "Have auto-translated video chats with absolutely
anyone in the world."

In contrast, a value prop that doesn't represent the core purpose of the product would be "get emailed
transcripts." Is this a transcriptions service? No, it's a chat app. So don't put this value prop in your
header.
One more example of a bad value prop to highlight: "Chat with anyone quickly." A header for this may
read as follows: "Find someone to video chat with in less than 30 seconds."
This is not a good header because the product quality of speed isn't likely why people actually like one
chat app over another. Meaning, it's not compelling.
So let's revisit the good header examples from earlier. Notice how we highlight a representative value
prop in the first sentence of each:
• For a home rental service — "Rent people's homes. So you can experience a city like a true
local."
To summarize: Identify one product value prop that you can call out in your header to represent 1)
what makes you unique and 2) what you fundamentally offer.
This serves the dual purpose of generating intrigue while also being clear. In other words, it increases
desire and decreases labor.
Let that soak in before you continue reading. Most people overlook their headers.
II. State the high-level purpose

Now that we've intrigued visitors with a value prop, we need to finish the header text by also stating
why the value prop even matters.
Here are two examples of extending a header with the why:
"Riley texts your real estate leads for you — to automatically qualify them."
"Have auto-translated chats with foreigners — to have fun learning any language."
Or, once again, our examples from earlier. Notice the purpose that the second sentence always serves:
pointing out what makes the first sentence valuable.

• For a home rental service — "Rent real people's homes. So you can experience a city like a
true local."
Finally, for contrast, here are some bad header examples:
• Bad — "Forest App: Stay focused, be present." This is too much of a slogan.
• Better — "Forest is an app that prevents phone addiction. So you can focus on what’s more
important in life."
• Bad — "Payments made simple." There are tons of payment processing services. And this text
doesn’t explain why yours is better or even who it's uniquely for — companies, freelancers,
buyers, ecommerce sites?
• Better — "Start accepting payments in one click. No coding knowledge required."
• Bad — "Extend your software development team."
• Better — "Add senior remote devs to your team. Get higher quality for less cost."
Tip — Keep your header within 6-12 words so it reads quickly.
When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want
you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.
– David Ogilvy
Hero — Subheader
Now that your header explains what you do, use your subheader to describe how. People really like to
know the how. (Millions read Wikipedia for a reason.)
Specifically, how is critical to landing page conversion because it lifts the veil on what you do — to
prove you have thoughtful solutions to the visitor's real problems.
Plus, when someone learns the how, they become further invested in your solution.
For example:
• Real estate app subheader — "Our network of remote concierges monitor your email inbox
and respond to leads when you're too busy to."
• Video chat app subheader — "In real-time, our on-call team transcribes and translates your
words into over 20 languages."
There are two exceptions to this "explain the how" rule:
1. Self-evident products — If your product's how is truly self-evident (e.g. your header is "We
are a photography agency" or "We sell mattresses"), use your subheader to proactively

address visitors' major concerns or to differentiate yourself from competitors. Do this in a
single, concise sentence.
2. Obscure products — If people don't yet know much about your product category, use your
subheader to explain why what you sell is valuable to begin with.
Tip — Keep subheaders within 10-13 words. Otherwise they turn into paragraphs.
Element — Social proof

Now that you've succinctly described what you do and why, it's time to convey the credibility of
everything you do through social proof.
Your social proof section is a collage of logos showing off your press coverage and/or your most well-
known customers. Or if you're an ecommerce product, you can state how many customers you have (if
it’s an impressive amount).
Your goal is to make it seem like everyone in the world already knows about you, and to make the
visitor feel left out of all the excitement.
Effectively, that's the goal of social proof: creating intrigue by getting people wanting to be part of your
elite club.
Tip -- If you don't yet have noteworthy customers, provide your product for free to people at well-
known companies. Then place their company logos on your site if they wind up using you.
Element — Call-to-action
Your call-to-action (CTA) section is what prompts a visitor to continue to the next event in your funnel
— such as signing up or adding to cart.
Your CTA consist of at least two components: its header and its button.
CTA — Header
The CTA header summarizes what the visitor gets from signing up.
You want to specifically state what they'll get by clicking your button. For example, "Get a new logo in
24 hours."

In contrast, don’t use something high-level like "Get started with your free trial." They've seen that
copy so many times that they're programmed to gloss over it. It also doesn't actually remind them why
they should sign up.
As you repeat your CTA section throughout the page, use a slightly different header each time. This
way, if one header doesn't appeal to someone, the next might.
CTA — Button text

In keeping with our approach of "remind people why they came," make the CTA section's button either
a single action word, e.g. "Signup" or "Start," or use a verb phrase that describes what's about to
happen next.
Example verb phrases:
• See dashboard →
• Start trial →
• Browse listings →
Don't write sleazy "clickbait" CTA text like "Give me my free PDF!" That is, unless you're trying to
attract idiots as customers. (Some businesses — usually seminar series —genuinely may be.)
Visual contrast
While your CTA's copy is responsible for getting visitors to act, your CTA's design that's responsible for
getting them to notice they can act in the first place.
When designing your CTA, follow two rules:
• Stand out — Don’t let your CTA blend into the rest of your page. Use a background color that
contrasts the page's dominant colors. And make the CTA button a bit bigger than you think it
should be.
• Weight it — If you have multiple CTA’s on one page that aren’t all prompting the same action
(e.g. a signup), don't visually weight them the same. Instead, give visitors an idea of which
CTA entails a bigger commitment by making it bigger or more contrasted.
Element — Features and objections

If your hero section doesn't do enough on its own to get people to convert (it usually won't), it's the
job of your Features and Objections to deliver your product's complete sales pitch.
That's the part of the template we're at now.
To put this objective back into visual context, see where Features is:
The Features section spans the bulk of your page. It's your opportunity to proactively address a visitor's
concerns and skepticism about your value props.
This chapter contains multiple features. Usually 3 to 6. Each is simply a value prop paired with copy
addressing objections that arise upon hearing that value prop.
Specifically, each feature subsection consists of three elements:

• Header that states value prop
• Paragraph that explains the value prop and handles objections
• Image to reinforce the value prop
For example:

Tip -- If you're having a hard time deciding which value props and objections to highlight, study your
competitors' sites to learn how to differentiate yourself from what people already know about your
space.
Feature — Construct an ongoing narrative

The best feature sections carry a running narrative: Each feature ties back to the dominant value prop
pitched in the hero section.
For example, if your hero value prop is “We help you put down your phone so you can focus on the
rest of your life,” a description of your Push Notification Blocking feature could include a callback to
the header such as this: “… so that you put an end to the habit of constantly looking at your phone for
updates.”
Remember how back in school you wrote essays with this 5-paragraph format?
• Introduction
• Supporting paragraph #1
• Closing
In the introduction, you made your claim. Then you highlighted three pieces of evidence to support
that claim. Finally, your Closing summarized the argument.
Your landing page as a whole follows this very same structure:
• Introduction — Header and subheader. Make your claim here.

• Supporting paragraphs — Features/objections. Does each paragraph support your
introductory claim?
• Conclusion — Final CTA section.

You learn to write content marketing with narratives in this chapter.
Anyway, back to the Feature section: Let's dive into its three components.
Feature — Value prop header

Write a 3 to 5 word title describing the value prop. Don't use vague language like "Empower your
sales" or "Revolutionize your workflow." No, just bluntly describe the value prop so visitors can quickly
decide whether the value prop is relevant to them. And whether they should read the feature
paragarph.
Here are feature headers from the CinderGrill.com site:
• "Cooks and Sears"

• "No Prep or Cleanup"
• "Cooks More than Just Meat”
Feature — Paragraph
Either write a paragraph of three concise sentences or list a handful of bullet points.
Your goal is to concisely describe the feature and optionally address common objections if they're
important ones that often prevent people from converting.
By the way, here's a trick for having these paragraphs carry the overall narrative: Consider how the end
of every feature paragraph is a little break for the visitor to self-reflect: "Do I keep reading or leave the
site?"
You can circumvent that decision-making by concluding each feature with a hook that makes them
curious to keep reading. For example, you can end a paragraph with:
• But that doesn't actually work...

• But there's a big problem...
• It gets worse, though…
Then pick up that thread in the next feature section.
When should you go really in-depth?

If this is a complex or unintuitive feature for which going into extreme detail is going to help materially
improve conversion, either link to a separate page where visitors can learn much more or have a
button they can click to reveal additional details.
The latter is preferable because it keeps users in the flow of your current page.

Feature — Image
Features are paired with an image so that your page isn't a giant wall of text.
In your feature image, include a product screenshot or some relevant photography that demonstrates
the feature in action. Remember, don't just include meaningless eye candy. Visualize the feature in a
way that further reinforces the value prop.
Better yet, use an auto-playing GIF or SVG animation. It’s better to show than to tell.
Tip -- If you're showing a screenshot of your SaaS dashboard, and it's too small to easily read all its text,
recreate the screenshot in Sketch and exclude the non-essential UI elements and text.
Should I include a video?
Most explainer videos are terrible. They take too long to get to the point, they have derivative visuals
that people are numb to, and clichéd voiceovers.
So, visitors don’t finish watching them. This is a problem because visitors watch videos at the expense
of spending time reading more of your page.
Think about that: Remember, visitors only have so much attention to go around. So don't distract them
with something that converts worse than the rest of your page.

For most products and services, this means you're better off skipping a video.
The one foolproof reason, however, to include a good video is when you’re selling a physical or visual
product that's genuinely intriguing to see in action.
If your product qualifies, follow these rules:
• Get to the point — Explain your product in 5 seconds. Skip the preamble.
• Be brief — Try to keep your video to under 45 seconds. Ask friends which parts lose their
interest. Then cut those parts.
• Show off enticing features — Show the product in action from start to finish. Give viewers
the full picture, but time-lapse the boring parts.
• Be authentic — Drop the sales jargon. Sound like a real person.
• Audio should be optional — Many visitors will be on mobile without headphones, so don't
make audio required for the video to be understood. Use captions and make the visuals self-
evident.
• Conclude with a CTA — End the video by enticing the viewer to take action. Explain why
doing so will provide them value.
You can feature your video anywhere. For example, it can stand alone in the hero or, our preference, it
can complement a feature paragraph instead of an image.
Tip — To find video ideas worth stealing, watch the promo videos for the top-performing Kickstarter
and Indiegogo crowdfunding campaigns.
Diagrams instead of videos

If you don’t have a good reason to produce a video but do need to visualize something, diagrams are a
powerful alternative. A well-designed diagram can say in 5 seconds what took your video 2 minutes.
Getting feedback on your page

Once you have your landing page draft, pass it by two types of reviewers:
• People not in your market — Learn how appealing and comprehensible your copy is to those
who aren't familiar with your market or product. Do you give them enough context to want to
know more? This will help cover the common problem where your site over-assumes base-
level knowledge on behalf of your audience. This is important because there may be a lot of
people on the edge of your market who'd become customers if they merely better
understood why they should be.
• People in your market — Learn if your messaging is sufficiently unique and descriptive to
convince people high in intent to choose you over the competition.

For both of these audiences, ask them to assess these six criteria for you:
• Conversion — Are you willing to hand over your credit card and sign up right now? If not,
what would you need to see to get to that point?
• Interest — Rate how well the page sustained your interest on a scale of 1-10. What do you
suggest be rewritten or redesigned to help it better sustain your interest?
• Clarity — What’s unclear? What unanswered questions are you left with?
• Expansion — Did you find something awesome you wanted even more details on?
• Brevity — If you had to delete half the page's imagery and copy, which would it be?
• Disbelief — What triggered your “Untrue! That’s scammy sales speak!” reflex?
Copy and paste the above criteria into an email and ask as many people as you can.
Tip — These questions are relevant for requesting feedback on anything you write, including your blog
posts.
Landing page design

You want to expend some effort presenting your page in a visually appealing manner. It does help with
landing page conversion — by showing you're not amateur.
For example, instead of just listing your features in a grid or line-by-line, you can stagger them
(example). Or you can copy Intercom and blend unique imagery into the page’s surrounding white
space.
You can find more landing page inspiration over at GoodWeb.Design.
In short, your site has to look good enough that:
• It's enjoyable to visually skim.

• It looks thoughtfully put together.
• Each section is clearly structured and partitioned.
• It represents the personality of your brand.
How to design your site

We strongly recommend creating landing pages through a visual design tool like Webflow (the best,
but complex) or Leadpages (much easier to use if you're not already a developer). They allow you to
iterate quickly and avoid coding.
Despite being a team of engineers, we prefer Webflow over coding sites by hand. There's no point in
wasting time on that. Not for a landing page with purely static functionality.

Better yet, if you have the budget, pay a professional designer to create a landing page mockup for
you. Then recreate it pixel-for-pixel in Webflow.
To find a designer, head over to Dribbble and find someone whose aesthetics suit your brand. Contact
your favorites and convey the following:
• What your product does and why it’d be cool to work on. (Excite them to do it!)
• Share the text and images you've compiled as per the advice in this chapter.
• Provide links to other sites you’re looking to borrow inspiration from.
• Ask for their pricing and availability. (Expect $700-$3,000 per page from good freelancers —
depending on their country. Only consider an agency if you have a bigger budget and want to
be handheld on brand direction.)
• Have them read this chapter so they're in sync with what a job well done looks like. They
probably know little about growth
Tip — If you don't have the budget to hire a designer and aren't an experienced designer yourself, read
this series on design basics before you take a stab at it.
Mobile-first
Most consumer ecommerce purchases happen on mobile web. So, hire designers who can build an
amazing mobile-first website experience.
If dogs don't like your dog food, the packaging doesn’t matter.
– Stephen Denny
Landing page types

As we laid out earlier, there are three types of landing pages: your homepage, your product pages, and
your persona landing pages.
Homepages are what we’ve covered so far.
Product pages
If you sell multiple products, product pages supplement your homepage by going in-depth on each
product you sell. (Or each grouping of features your product offers.)
They can be identical to your homepage, save for two tweaks:
1. Rewrite the hero subheader to highlight the value prop most appropriate for why someone
would have clicked on this in-depth product page.

2. Increase the length of the Features section from 3 or 4 features up to 5 or 6. Go further in
depth on each now that you know which specific product or feature set the visitor is most
interested in diving into.
Persona pages
Persona pages (e.g. company.com/salespeople) are the pages you send ad traffic to.
Persona refers to the fact that ads are targeted to specific audiences, e.g. new mothers or young men,
and how those audiences should be served landing page messaging that best suits their interests.
Persona pages are nearly identical to homepages, save for two tweaks:
• Repeat the ad’s value prop — In the page's hero, repeat the value prop written in the ad that
the visitor came from. Consistency between ad and landing page copy reassures visitors the
ad didn't mislead them into visiting your site.
• Identify the audience — Bluntly call out the audience in your header, subheader, or feature
text. Reassure them your product is appropriate for their interests. For example, if your ad
was targeting salespeople, your hero header text could say, "Finally, a spreadsheet app built
just for salespeople.”
What we love about persona pages is they pull double duty as sales collateral: You can handily link to
these pages as pitch material when you're targeting these same audiences outside of paid ads.
Assessing landing page conversion

This is a quick primer on how to assess your page's conversion performance.
You assess performance by tracking a conversion event: an action a visitor takes on your site. Common
landing page conversion events include signing up, buying, and submitting an email.
For any given period of time, measuring conversion rate is seemingly a matter of:
[# of Visits Containing the Conversion Event] / [Total Visits]
But it's not this simple.

To meaningfully measure conversion, you should only count qualified visits:
• Visitors in geographies you actually service — Don't include people from overseas if they
can't purchase. If you do, you're deflating your true conversion!
• Unique visitors instead of total visits — If you're counting every visit in the denominator of
the equation, you're including return visits too. This doesn't make sense if someone can only
convert once (e.g. signup for an account). Consider how they might check out the site a few

times before converting. If so, don't let that deflate your conversion metric. Instead, count
the unique number of visitors in any given period. And make your period at least as long as
the average time it takes for someone to convert after first visiting your site.
You can track these performance metrics using Google Analytics. Many SaaS apps additionally use a
tool like Mixpanel for more granular, event-based data.
One more thing. Note that you want to track conversion over time from each source:
• Google searches (organic traffic)

• Content marketing (blog posts)
• Ads
• Social media
• Referring sites and press
If you don't track conversion on a per-source basis, then a big traffic spike from one with a particularly
low conversion rate will deflate your conversion average and you might mistake that as your business
doing worse than normal. When, in reality, one of your channels just needed optimizing.
In other words, never let the full distribution of your traffic distract you from per-source conversion
performance. Optimize sources individually.
In the next chapter, you'll learn to improve these conversion rates through A/B testing.
Continue to the next chapter

A/B Testing
How to improve landing page conversion.

BC: Growth Guide — 3. A/B Testing
Landing page A/B testing
This chapter teaches you how to continuously improve conversion rates on your site.
This process is called A/B testing. These are experiments that assess the improvement in conversion
rate (e.g. signup rate, checkout rate) from making changes to your site.
For example, you can rewrite the top half of your landing page. Or you can replace all your
photography with illustrations. Or you can cut your page length in half.
These are called variants. (They are the "B" variants in the term "A/B.")
You test variants against your baseline, which is simply your homepage before changes were
introduced. (Your baseline is the "A" variant in the term "A/B.")
There are free tools to manage all this testing logic for you. Your only job is to figure out what is
worthwhile testing and to create the required landing page material.
A/B testing is required

A/B's aren't a luxury for marketers with spare time; they’re the lifeblood of growth hacking. They're
the only way to scientifically improve conversion.
Here's how all marketers should adjust their approach: Don't waste time making the first iteration of a
page a 10/10. Start with an 8/10 then A/B test it to perfection.
Because you will never have an optimal page from the start. It is irrational to try.
Instead, defer to your A/B tests to determine what's better. If you have a proper A/B regimen in place,
it's the quickest, lowest-cost way to increase profits. Unlike ads, A/B tests cost nothing to run, and
often increase conversion by 50-300%.
We see this improvement with nearly all our clients. It only takes a few days of work. Yes, there are
severely diminishing returns to A/B testing after that. But that initial improvement is what makes or
breaks paid user acquisition being profitable.
Very often, it makes or breaks growth.
Topics
We’ll be covering:
• How to source A/B test ideas

• How to prioritize those ideas
• How to accurately assess the results of your tests
• How to educate your team using your results
How A/B testing works

Here's the testing cycle that we'll be covering in-depth:
1. Decide what change to make. What do you think might increase conversion?
2. Use Google Optimize (an A/B testing tool) to show half your visitors the change.
3. Run this test long enough to get a statistically significant sample of visitors.
4. Once enough data has been collected, Google Optimize will report the likelihood that your
changes caused a significant difference in conversion. If it caused a significant positive
difference, it's up to you to implement in the winning variant's changes into the existing page.
5. Log what you changed, why you made the change, and what the results were. This log helps
you avoid conducting overly similar experiments in the future.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until you run out of ideas. Never have downtime; every day of the year, an
A/B test should be running. Or you're letting your traffic go to waste.
We recommend Google Optimize for running A/B tests. It's free, full-featured, and conveniently
integrated into Google Analytics.
Sourcing A/B ideas
Source test ideas from these places:
• Support and sales teams — Team members who interact with your customers know best
what appeals to them. Ask what objections they commonly see, then proactively address
those objections in your landing page copy.
• User surveys — Poll users for their favorite features and biggest concerns. Weave these into
your landing page copy.
• Best ads — Your best performing ads have value props, text, and imagery that can be
repurposed for your site. In fact, you should run ads for the explicit purpose of finding your
most enticing text and images. (We cover this on an upcoming ads page.)
• Competitors' sites — Identify successful competitors in your space and mine their pages for
inspiration. Do they structure their content differently? Do they talk to visitors differently?
Test mimicking their style.
• On-site behavior — Use a visitor recording tool like Hotjar or FullStory to find patterns in
visitors' engagement: What are they clicking? What are they ignoring? And what does this
imply about the type of content that most appeals to them? Test giving your visitors more of
it.

• Past A/B successes and failures — We soon cover how to report your A/B successes and
failures. Be sure to revisit them for lessons that inform your new tests.
A/B testing and the growth funnel
Before we dive further into what to test, figure out what you're testing for.
Consider this: If you discover that an A/B variant motivates visitors to click a button 10x more, but this
button clicking behavior doesn’t actually lead to greater signups or purchases, then your variant isn’t
actually better than the original. All it's done is distract users into clicking a button more.
An A/B variant is only better when it increases your bottom line. More revenue is better than more
signups.
It's not hard to test a variant that A) decreases total signups by weeding out visitors who weren't
ultimately going to pay while it B) simultaneously increases revenue by better incentivizing potential
purchasers who were on the fence to pay.
So, if you're only monitoring signups as a metric of success, you'll miss this potential win. (Fortunately,
an A/B tool like Google Optimize monitors multiple metrics.)
In short, consider end-of-funnel conversion when assessing the results of an A/B test. That said, you’ll
actually be mostly testing early steps in the funnel. For two reasons:
• Bigger samples — Early steps in the growth funnel receive more traffic. Consider how more
people view your landing page than those who signup and use your app.
o Volume is important because we need sufficient sample sizes to run A/B tests.
Otherwise, our tests take weeks to conclude. And it often takes a few tests before you
find something significantly better.
• Less implementation — It's less work to change the text or images on your site than to change
your in-app experience. This is partly why landing page A/B testing is more common than in-
product A/B testing.
o While product changes are more likely to increase revenue since you're testing on
already-engaged users, product changes introduce bugs, confuse users, and impede
feature releases. Do them thoughtfully and sparingly.
This chapter focuses on landing page changes.

Enough preamble. Let's begin!
What to A/B test on your landing page
There are two types of A/B test variants. We call them micro and macro variants.

Micro variants are adjustments to your page's copy, creative, and layout. These are small, quick
changes. And, unfortunately, they're unlikely to have a huge impact.
Macro variants, on the other hand, are significant rethinkings of your page. Prioritize macros over
micros. Because changing the color of a button (a micro variant) never has more than 2-5% conversion
impact. But restructuring the entirety of your page (a macro variant) can increase conversion by 50-
300% if your original page hasn't been tested before.
It's doubly important to focus on big wins given every A/B test has an opportunity cost: There are only
so many tests you can run in a month because you're limited by how much traffic your site gets.
Let's look at examples of micros and macros.
Micro variants
Here is your surface area for testing micro variants.
• Text — Header, subheader, feature headers, feature paragraphs

• Imagery — Header image, content images, background images
• CTA — CTA button design, placement, copy
• Social proof — Try different company logos or different forms of proof
• Forms — Number of fields, field layout, and field copy
• Order — The order of your page sections
• Design — Spacing, color, and font styling
• Offers — Introduce time-sensitive discounts
Despite micros being deprioritized relative to macros, we’re including them because if you piece
together enough micros, you have yourself a macro.
That's a trick for when you run out of macro ideas.
Standalone micros that are actually worthwhile

When you run out of macros, these are the three micros with the greatest impact:
• Completely rewriting header and subheader copy — Header text is the first hook into your
product. So, if you've been unknowingly showing visitors unenticing text here, fixing it has an
impact. (We cover header copy on the previous page.)
• Reordering above-the-fold content — Every page has an "above-the-fold" (ATF) section. This
is what visitors see before scrolling down to reveal the rest of a page. The content placed ATF
determines whether visitors continue scrolling to learn everything they need to know to
purchase. So, micro-test content changes in your ATF section.

• Completely rewriting intro paragraphs on blog posts — You can A/B test your blog posts too!
Consider writing entirely different intros for a page then test which gets people to read more.
Macro variants
Macro variants require considerable effort: It’s hard to repeatedly summon the focus and company-
wide collaboration needed to do rethink your page.
But macros are the only way to see theforest through the trees.
Since the biggest obstacle to testing macros is simply committing to them, we urge you to create an
A/B testing calendar and rigorously adhere to it: Create a recurring event for, say, every 2 months. On
those days, spend a couple hours brainstorming a macro variant for a pivotal page or product step.
We generate macro ideas using five approaches:
• Mimic sections of competitors' pages — Find competitors with thoughtful, well-structured

pages. Then mimic some of their page sections. By "sections," we refer not to their words,
but to their layout tactics, such as charts, sliders, GIFs, and other means of displaying
information. (Do not rip off their site. Only take inspiration.)
• Write to a new persona — Tailor your value props and copy to, say, mothers instead of
teenagers. Perhaps you’re misidentifying your most valuable audience.
• Cut the page in half — Counterintuitively, having less content sometimes means more
content is ultimately read. Because visitors are less overwhelmed with information. Try
removing everything that isn't critical. Be hyper concise.
• Take a stance — Choose one value prop that you embrace more than competitors. Write a
page drawing that line in the sand; pick a narrow-minded fight and call out all the
competitors who differ from your one, true way. Show visitors they're either with you or
against you, and how being with you leads to a better outcome. For example, you're either a
smart subscriber to a meal delivery service or you're the type of person who wastes their
time and money on restaurants.
• Combine micros — Combine a half-dozen micros that work toward a singular goal, such as
reinforcing a value prop or compelling visitors to take a specific action.
To sanity check which of the resulting A/B ideas might actually resonate with visitors, consider passing
them through the Sourcing A/B ideas section from above.
Prioritizing A/B tests

An A/B experiment has an opportunity cost; you only have so many visitors to test against. So prioritize
your tests thoughtfully.

Use these five factors:
• Confidence — How confident are you the test will succeed? You can sanity check confidence
by better understanding users: survey them, monitor their on-site behavior, and study your
past A/B's. That said, sometimes crazy ideas perform best.
• Impact — If a tests succeeds, is it likely to significantly increase conversion? The less
optimized your landing page is to start — or the more macro your proposed test is — the
greater its potential impact. Higher impact tests should be run first.
• Implementation — How easy it is to implement? Would the test's implementation exhaust
team resources or introduce too much technical complexity? If so, deprioritize the test if you
have other strong ideas that require less implementation. (When it is time to run a high-
implementation variant, determine its minimum viable form that'll take roughly 20% of the
time to build but prove 50% or more of the conversion potential. If that succeeds, then take
the time to fully implement it.)
• Uniqueness — Is your new test a near copy of a previous one that failed? For example, are
you changing the color of a button further down the page after a previous button color
change higher on the page failed? (Granted, perhaps the page has changed enough since that
first test that this new button color test is worth doing... How confident are you that's the
case?)
• Brand consistency — If adding aggressive sales copy increases your signup conversion, but
you're a company that normally plays it safe, then perhaps going off-brand for better
conversion is not a good tradeoff. Sometimes, it's wiser to care more about building a brand
you're proud of than increasing your bottom line. If you're unsure whether an A/B
compromises your brand, poll other team members.
As you can see, A/B testing is a team-wide decision making process. Plan ahead.
A/B testing beyond websites and apps

A/B testing applies to all your business decisions. And many life decisions.
Consider how there are four possible outcomes for any decision:
• Achieving success and learning from it.

• Success without learning.
• Failure with learning.
• Failure without learning.
On that last point: If you experience failure and learned nothing, you wasted time.
Plan your big decisions in such a way that failure will teach you something new and profound about
how to make better future decisions. That way — even in abject failure — you can never truly lose.

Setting up A/B tests
So far, we’ve introduced two types of A/B variants (micro and macro), covered how to source ideas for
each, plus how to prioritize them.
Now let's get into the logistics of actually running these tests.
How many A/B tests to run

We recommend running one experiment at a time.
Otherwise, visitors can criss-cross through multiple simultaneous tests if they change devices (e.g.
mobile to desktop) across their visits. (A/B testing tools don't diligently track users.) This makes
experiment results murky if not meaningless.
However, within one experiment, you can have several variants all testing a change on the same
baseline page. Each variant receives the same amount of proportioned site traffic to test. Google
Optimize will handle all this A/B testing logic for you.
After enough visitors have seen the experiment that your testing tool is confident which variant is best,
you can end the experiment, decide if you want to implement the winner, then start a new
experiment.
Parallel versus sequential testing

A/B tools test your variants in parallel. Meaning, your original page and its variants run at the same
time. (The tool will randomly assign visitors to one or the other.)
If you were instead to manually run variants sequentially — meaning, one variant for 5 days followed
by another variant for next for 5 days — the varying traffic sources and days of the week won’t be
controlled for. This sullies the results.
So use A/B testing tools as they are intended to be: only run tests in parallel. (This is their default
behavior; there's nothing you have to do.)
Consider only targeting new users

When setting up tests, consider who should be excluded from seeing them.
For example, consider only showing the experiment to visitors seeing your site for the first time.
Otherwise, not everyone will arrive with the same knowledge: Some have previous expectations and
data, which affects how they react to your variant.
To target just new users in Google Optimize, follow Example 1 in these instructions:

Assessing A/B test results
You've run your tests. Now you have to make sense of the results.
When assessing results, look for four things:
• At minimum, you tested on your lowest-intent audience.

• You've achieved sufficient sample size.
• You're focusing on end-of-funnel performance.
• You're writing down hypotheses for why your test succeeded or failed. So your insights can
inform future tests. Increasing revenue is just one benefit of A/B tests. Another is increasing
your efficiency at coming up with great tests.
Let's walk through these.
Varying audience intents

When running A/B tests to improve conversion, you'll quickly get diminishing returns on conversion
gains for your higher-intent traffic (e.g. organic search, referrals, and word of mouth). Because those
are the visitors who came looking for you on their own merit. The onus is simply on you to affirm you
sell what they're expecting, and to not scare them off.
In contrast, for paid ad traffic, A/B testing has the potential to provide larger returns. These are
medium-intent eyeballs at best — usually people who errantly clicked your ad. They're looking for
excuses to dismiss your value props and leave.
So, this is where A/B testing shines: it's more effective at significantly improving the conversion rate of
low-to-medium intent traffic — through a more "read-baity" page.
When we run A/B tests on paid traffic, we can often improve conversion rates by 2-4x. That can make
or break the profitability of ads. It's a big deal. However, when we A/B test with organic traffic, perhaps
we see 1.5-2x improvements at best. (Assuming the landing page was good to begin with.)
Here’s the takeaway: If you only A/B against high-intent traffic, you may not notice a significant
improvement and may mistakenly dismiss the test as a failure. When this happens, but you're
confident the variant has potential, retry the test on paid traffic. That’s where the improvement may
be large enough to notice its significance.

Sample sizes
Statistics dictates that we need a sufficiently large sample to confidently identify a boost in
conversion.
The math is very simple:
• To statistically validate a 6.3%+ conversion increase, a test needs 1,000+ visits.

• To statistically validate a 2%+ conversion increase, a test needs 10,000+ visits.
This means that if you don’t have a lot of traffic, the opportunity cost is too great to run micro variants,
which tend to show conversion increases in just the 1-5% range. If it takes you weeks to hit 10,000
sample visits, you'll be poorly spending those weeks waiting for likely nothing more than a tiny change.
If you instead run macros, they have the potential to result in 10-20%+ improvements, which is well
above the 6.3% threshold. You can determine big macro winners quickly.
Below is an example of an experiment we ran for a client (using Google Optimize):

Read the docs (parts one and two) to learn how to interpret these results.
Above, our page had 1,724 views throughout the testing period. There was a 30% (29/22)
improvement in our test variant over our baseline (the original page).
This 30% number is likely inaccurate, by the way. It's just a reference for the variant's maximum
potential. We don't yet have that many sessions to validate this conversion improvement with pinpoint
certainty. But 30% is good enough to validate that we improved conversion by at least 6.3% (the
number from earlier).
Here are those numbers again:
• To statistically validate a 6.3%+ conversion increase, a test needs 1,000+ visits.

• To statistically validate a 2%+ conversion increase, a test needs 10,000+ visits.
Pay attention to the Google Optimize column labeled Probability to be Best. If a variant’s probability
exceeds 70% and has a sufficient number of sessions (e.g. 1,000 and 10,000 as we indicated above),
the results are statistically sound, and that variant should be considered for implementation.
Now you have to decide if the labor and the potential externalities of implementation are worth a 6.3%
(or possibly much more) improvement in conversion.
Sample sizes and revenue

What if our results weren't conclusive? What if we didn't surpass a 70% certainty?
Had the experiment revealed merely a 2% increase, for example, we would have to dismiss the sample
size of 1,724 views as too small for the 2% to be statistically valid.
We would have either ended the experiment and logged it as having a neutral outcome, or we would
have continued awaiting the full 10,000 sessions. If, after 10,000 sessions, the 2% increase held, we
would have concluded it's likely valid.
But, as mentioned in the previous section, if you have little traffic to begin with, perhaps don't risk
waiting on a small, 2% change. The opportunity cost is high.
Unless that 2% increase is tied to a revenue objective (e.g. purchases) as opposed, to say, people
signing up. (If it were just a 2% increase in signups, shrug it off.)
Point being, the closer an experiment's conversion objective is tied to revenue, the more worthwhile
it is to patiently await small conversion boosts.
Related, check out this video explaining why most published research is wrong.

Don't implement negligible wins
Don't implement A/B variants that only win negligibly. (Define "negligible" relative to business
outcomes you care about.)
In the short-term, this may appear benign. But, in the long-term, it may introduce unforeseen funnel
consequences that can be difficult to pinpoint in retrospect.
This happens all the time.
How to share results with your team

Sharing is caring.
We use a task management tool, like Asana, to keep track of the A/B tests we’re running and
considering in the future.
For every test we run, we note the following in an Asana task:
• Conversion event — What we’re optimizing for, such as clicks, views, or time on site.
• Before and after — We include screenshots and descriptions of what's being tested.
• Reasoning — We explain why this test is worth running. We refer to the earlier prioritization
criteria: confidence, impact, implementation, uniqueness, and brand.
When the test finishes, we additionally make note of:
• Start and end dates — Products change over time, so have a timeline anchor.
• Results — The change in conversion, and whether the result was neutral, a success, or a
failure. (We rely on Optimize to determine confidence intervals here.) If it was a success, we
note whether the variant was then actually implemented into the site.
• Sample size — As reported by the A/B testing tool. Let's hope it was big!
• Discussion — 1) What, if anything, can be learned from the result? 2) Also, were there
confounding issues (e.g. a big, strange traffic source that wasn't excluded from the test
audience) that could have dirtied the results?
Keep Asana tasks neatly organized and refer to them before running more tests.
Here's the point

Three A/B testing takeaways:
• All marketers know about A/B testing, but few do it. Because it requires reinventing the
wheel and team collaboration. But you need to be doing it. It's higher-leverage and cheaper
than most marketing initiatives.

• Focus on macro variants until you run out of ideas. When resorting to micro variants, focus on
those that directly impact revenue (e.g. purchases) instead of conversion objectives earlier in
your funnel (e.g. signups).
• Diligently keep track of A/B results and reference them when ideating future tests
Next chapter
Onboarding
How to onboard users so they fall in love with your product.

BC: Growth Guide — 4. Onboarding
User onboarding is critical
Welcome people into your product in a way that excites them to become lifelong customers.
Excitement is achieved through delightful onboarding experiences.
You could have the world's best landing page, but if your onboarding experience is poor, people fall off
before actually buying from you.
"Onboarding" is the user's experience between:
• Signing up.
• Becoming an engaged user.
This experience consists of two phases:
• Their first use — Everything the user experiences immediately upon signing up or buying for
the first time. If you lose them here, odds are you'll lose them forever.
• Plus, follow-on engagement — This includes the (1) messaging (emails, push notifications)
that keep them engaged, plus (2) your sales and support outreach.
These phases are unique to new users. New users must be treated differently than established
customers.
In this chapter, we cover the first phase. You'll learn:
• How to make onboarding enticing

• How to move the user along your product journey
• Referrals and virality
A brief warning
Most SaaS apps lose 95% of their new users after 90 days. That is insane.
When you lose a user's interest during onboarding, your first impression is complete, and they typically
never return.
During onboarding, nearly everyone is skeptical of your product. Consider how many services they sign
up for each month. And how many services waste their time with marketing tricks and poor products.
Yet, onboarding is usually the most half-baked aspect of SaaS products. You get spammed with tooltips
then dumped into a boring dashboard.

Why? Because there’s often no individual on a tech or marketing team who's responsible for it. Either
there are marketers acquiring users or product managers developing features. No one is sitting in
between to onboard those users.
But, onboarding is a feature unto itself. It warrants resources dedicated to its thoughtful design,
development, and optimization.
Onboarding strategy
To create an onboarding experience that helps people fall in love with your product:
1. First, identify your product's value to the user.

2. Then, map out the user's journey toward that value.
3. Identify the obstacles that exist along the way.
4. Address them.
You address obstacles by making them:
• Educational
• Enticing
• Low friction
• Optionally, productive
Before we learn to address obstacles, let's learn to identify them in SaaS products.
Obstacle identification
Most obstacles will be obvious to you. They are the steps in a user's journey that:
• Require the most work.

• Are the most boring to complete.
But some obstacles are hidden. To identify hidden ones, record users using your app: You can literally
record people's browser activity using a tool like Full Story.
Watching recordings reveals — in context — the interaction patterns users fall prey to when using your
app.
Here's an example of a bad interaction pattern: A user often creates then immediately deletes new
projects. Hmm.
What are they really trying to accomplish? Was there an intermediate feature they wanted to
momentarily access? If so, how about extract that feature to stand alone so they don't waste their time
with fake project creation?

You've found a hidden obstacle — unnecessary friction that analyzing analytics data alone would have
been unlikely to reveal.
More broadly, user recordings reveal where people spend more time than they should. And what
causes them to get stuck and give up.
Study as many recordings as you can and write down the obstacles you identify.
Getting more value from user recordings

Removing obstacles is step one. Step two is funneling users into the best experience.
Configure Full Story to track purchase events so you can compare the average onboarding journey of
users who purchased versus those who did not.
Then, optimize your onboarding flow to usher more people toward mimicking the behaviors of those
who purchase.
Example: Twitter
Twitter studied their users' onboarding behavior and discovered that if a new user doesn’t Follow at
least a handful of Twitter users immediately upon signing up, they’re much less likely to return in the
near future.
Twitter therefore redesigned their onboarding to force users to follow a minimum of five people. And
they ensure this process is low friction: They show you celebrities you're likely familiar with from topics
(e.g. sports, movies) you indicated you liked.
Recordings versus analytics

When identifying obstacles, we recommend watching recordings instead of cherry picking analytics
data because analytics lack the context of the user's full experience.
Further, analytics often require the pre-configuration of tracked events a priori. This leads to false
conclusions, and it reduces the chance of discovering the unexpected.
So, begin onboarding obstacle identification by watching a significant sample of recordings. Then, refer
to analytics to support hunches you acquire from recordings.
Addressing obstacles
We have an idea of the types of obstacles we're looking for. Now let's address them.
As a refresher, our goal is to make onboarding enticing and frictionless. And, optionally, to make it
educational and productive when appropriate.
I. Onboarding should be educational

When someone signs up, the in-product experience must immediately answer:
How do I get value out of this product?
If the answer isn't self-evident, elucidate it with one of these assistive experiences:
• Integrated walkthrough — Walk the user through one feature at a time while having them fill
out their profile or create a sample project in the process. This way, they're not empty-
handed after your (likely boring) walkthrough. For example, if you’re building a website
design tool, have them choose a starting template to tweak as they walk through your
product.
• Sample data and tooltips — Or, if using your product is straightforward, you can place users
directly into the dashboard. If relevant, provide pre-filled values and content to play with
wherever they are expected to enter their own. This way, you don't force them do
meaningless work to see how your product functions. Pair this sample data with callouts
pointing out product features and their value. Be sparse with callouts. One or two is enough.
More than that gets ignored.
• Video — Only if (a) your product's value can be enticingly visualized or (b) you have a
complex product requiring detailed explanation, then coerce the user into watching a video
demonstrating how to use your product. Keep the video short, get to the point immediately,
skip the sales fluff (they've already decided to try you), and use captions so that audio isn't
required.
• Full course — If your product is really, really complex, you can consider developing a video
course like Webflow's. You should be worried if this is required.
Remember, these assistive onboarding experiences should concisely answer:
How do I get value out of the product?
If your product is dead simple and does not require user education, simply skip the educational
experience. Don't waste people's time giving advice they already know.
II. Onboarding should be enticing

Onboarding should never be just educational or enticing. It should be both.
When you educate new users, entice them with value props so they're willing to put up with the
education. Tease them with how amazing life will be once they are done.
To do this, start by identifying the magical moments in your product — where the user gets maximum
value. Maybe it's receiving a payment, finding a date, or killing an enemy tank. Then, visualize these
outcomes during the onboarding experience.

For example, look at how the scammy "dating" site, Ashley Madison, does it. They visualize your end
goal (“finding women”) through blurred background photos while asking you to painstakingly enter
your profile details.
They're teasing you with their magical moment while putting you through a slog.
This principle extends to your entire customer journey: Don't ask someone to do something until
they’ve previewed the value they’ll get from doing it. For example:
• Want someone to read your boring tooltips during a walkthrough? How about wait until they
engage with a feature before you explain it. That's when they'll care.
• Want someone to download your Chrome extension? Wait until they've become hooked by
your web app. Then prompt them to adopt your whole ecosystem.
• Want someone to read your lengthy ebook? Wait until they've read one of your short,
fantastic blog posts.
• Want someone to signup for your newsletter? Don't ask them immediately upon visiting your
site. First, let them learn you're worth subscribing to.
That's how you get people to take action.
Write out your pitch if you have nothing to visualize
If you have nothing enticing to visualize during onboarding, either short-form or bullet point the value
they'll get.
For example, if you’re a service that helps people quit smoking, tell them how many other people
successfully quit smoking using the service:
“About 15% of those who finish registering then complete the course. Don’t be one of the
quitters, because if you complete this program, you have a whopping 85% chance of quitting
smoking for life. This is your opportunity.”
III. Onboarding should be low friction

The previous two onboarding principles — education and enticement — matter most at the very
beginning of your onboarding experience. The next two principles — friction and productivity —
matter equally throughout the entire experience.
Let's begin with friction.
During onboarding, it must be clear what the next step is:

Okay, I understand how to use the product. But, what should I do first?
Not only should each next step be obvious, it should appear low-friction: it must be easy and quick to
perform.
That's how you build momentum that propels users toward the end of your journey.
Start by listing every action users take toward purchasing. For a website design tool, users might follow
this path:
1. Enter their email and password.

2. Create a sample site.
3. Fool around with the design tool.
4. Invite team members.
5. Fully build a site.
6. Enter their credit card.
7. Publish the site.
Next, reduce friction at each step by applying these principles:
• Reduce choice anxiety — Hand-hold users through anxious moments. Any form field that
requires users to put a lot of thought into their input (e.g. a dating profile bio) should be
accompanied with suggestions on how to fill it out, e.g. “Describe your unique interests and
explain why you're passionate about them.” And explain the outcome of filling each non-self-
evident input. For example, if you have a share button for inviting coworkers, say, "If you
invite coworkers, you can instantly share your work without having to manage back-and-forth
emails." Ahh, so that's why we shouldn't ignore this button!
• Reduce total workload — Only ask for what you need. For example, consider pre-filling form
inputs with your best guesses as to what the user would enter, then prompt them to correct
each guess. Another tactic: Defer asking for input until you require it. Do you really need their
full name to create their account, or can you request that after they’re engaged? (Once a user
is engaged, you can get away asking them for a lot more.)
• Reduce perceived complexity — You can reduce the perceived complexity of onboarding
tasks by visualizing what needs to be done using GIFs: Break the task into steps and visually
demonstrate each. This approach covers how everyone likes to learn: visual, incremental, and
structured.
In summary, remove friction along the path to purchase.
V. Onboarding should be productive

The lengthier your onboarding, the more important it is that it doesn't leave users empty-handed at
the end of it.

For example, if you’re an email app, have your walkthrough guide the user through cleaning up their
inbox. This way, users accomplish something they care about while learning to use your app. It leaves
them with a small dopamine hit. It delights them.
Another example: If you’re a project management app, have your walkthrough leave users with the
scaffolding required to share their project with team members.
Nothing is more validating than receiving a product's value within minutes.
Onboarding examples
When Bell Curve Partner Julian Shapiro was VP of Marketing for Webflow, they developed the
following onboarding.
First, they learned who the user was so they could customize their experience:

Next:
• Once a user completed registration, Webflow threw them right into the design tool so they
could get their hands dirty experiencing the power of our app. The Webflow team didn’t want
to intercept this experience with a long, boring video or tutorial.
• But, after 30s, Webflow knew users would get overwhelmed by the complexity of the
interface, so they forced open a menu to automatically reveal our video course. Each video
walked users through the steps necessary to becoming a power user.
• The very first video was just a 60s timelapse of a site being built in Webflow. This showed the
power and simplicity of the app. Webflow was visualizing the end goal. And the video was
enticing to watch because users saw a site go from blank canvas to beautiful, full-featured
page in just a few steps.
In other words, Webflow gave users an immediate tease of the product's value. Then they capitalized
on user intrigue by introducing education.
UserOnboard.com
For more examples, we suggest going through the onboarding examples at UserOnboard.com. Kick it
off with this one. It's one of the best we’ve seen.
Here's the point

• Your onboarding should answer: "How do I get value out of the product?"
• Assume users are skeptical, lazy, and impatient.
• Onboarding is an amazing, high-leverage opportunity for you: If you nail the experience, you
can instantly turn a user into a loyal customer.
Virality
We'll conclude with a brief discussion of virality. Because the triggers for virality surface during the
onboarding experience:
• From the referrer's perspective, you're often prompted to invite your friends and colleagues
after signing up for an app.
• From the referee's perspective, onboarding is one of the first things you experience after
clicking an invite link.
It's time to focus on the latter: Consider how, as the person being invited, you didn't come to the
product because you necessarily had prior interest in it. Rather, you were prodded by someone into
checking it out.
This means you're even more out of touch as to why you should bother using the app. The app's
onboarding experience is therefore doubly critical.

Consider how a referred user should not be directed to a signup page that immediately instructs them
to claim their referral reward. First, pitch them on why they should even care to use the product and
claim the reward.
Types of virality
To get users to invite others and to compel invited users to purchase, focus your efforts on the most
appropriate viral channel for your product.
There are three types of viral channels:
• Inherent virality occurs as a function of the product’s use. For example, to pay someone with
PayPal, the payment recipient needs to first join PayPal. And who's not going to signup to get
paid? No wonder PayPal's user base exploded.
• Word-of-mouth happens when users are overjoyed then proactively recommend your
product.
• Artificial virality is a contrived reward system (e.g. cash, access) for referring others.
Inherent virality
Inherent virality is the best virality for explosive growth. It's possible when either:
• Users use your app to transact or collaborate with others.

• Users use your app to create content that is intended to be shared.
Your product either falls into one of those two categories or it doesn't. If it doesn't, inherent virality is
not going to happen.
The power of inherent virality is you don't have to artificially incentivize users to refer — they're going
to want to do it on their own.
Word-of-mouth
The second best virality is via word-of-mouth. It's a measure of how good your product experience is.
And it's proof that product experience is growth marketing.
Many successful companies have never spent a dime on advertising. Instead, they built something
people couldn't stop talking about and sharing.
Word-of-mouth's potential for your business is a function of how large your market is. If you only
service 10 customers per month, you are unlikely to see runaway word-of-mouth. The law of large
numbers isn't on your side, so you'll need to introduce artificial virality: coerce your few customers into
referring at a very high rate.

Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum, every company should be earnestly pursuing word-of-
mouth virality.
Artificial virality
Artificial virality boils down to knowing when to prompt for it and knowing how to best reward users.
Here's when a user is most receptive to referring others: when they've experienced a dopamine hit
from your product. This happens when they get value from the product.
During these moments, make it frictionless to invite others — and consider providing an incentive.
(A common incentive is the dual-ended reward, in which both the referrer and the referee are
rewarded. Usually this takes the form of account credits or a discount.)
Artificial virality has modestly succeeded for some companies. But it's rarely a slam dunk. Because
most of your users simply don't care about earning a little bit of cash. They didn't sign up for your app
to make a few bucks. Plus, they're jaded by the flood of over-marketed offers they see on the Internet
every day.
So, instead of offering cash, we recommend doling out rewards in the form of your product's primary
value proposition. Meaning, provide greater access to the product.
For example, when referring someone to Dropbox, you're rewarded with more gigabytes of storage.
Storage is a more tangible, more immediate, and more relevant value proposition to you than getting
$25 in credits to redeem at a later date.
After all, you signed up for Dropbox because you need to store files. Leverage this user need instead of
waving a couple hours' of minimum wage in someone's face.
Even if the cash and the storage are equivalent in value, our minds favor the storage.
However, if you don't have a product that can be doled out in chunks (e.g. GB's, videos hosted,
matches swiped), the cash reward needs to be significant:
• For example, if you're a subscription service, offer the service for free for many months. Not
just one month.
• If you're ecommerce, offer the product for free when someone refers X people.
Otherwise, most people aren't strongly motivated by an offer for a bit of cash.
Optimizing virality
When measuring and optimizing virality, focus on three metrics:

• The lag time between when a user signs up and refers someone.
• The number of referrals made per user.
• The signup percentage of those who received an invite.
If you multiply the last two numbers together, you get your Viral Coefficient. A viral coefficient above 1
is an indicator of viral potential. If you couple this with a short lag time, you experience explosive
growth.
And if users are paying you instead of just signing up for free, congrats.
Next chapter
Ad channels
How to choose the right ad channel (e.g. Instagram, AdWords).

BC: Growth Guide — 5. Ad Channels
A channel is any place where users are acquired.
A channel can be either:
• Paid — Ads, sponsorships, and affiliates

• Unpaid — Content marketing (SEO), PR, referrals, and sales
Ad channels are the most scalable, reliable, and broadly applicable channel.
Companies just launching tend to see the most channel traffic in this order:
1. Ads (and/or sales if B2B)

2. Word of mouth and referrals
3. Content marketing
4. PR
5. Everything else
As a healthy company matures, its largest channels tend to re-order as follows:
1. Word of mouth and referrals

2. Content marketing
3. Ads
4. Everything else
Ad channels covered
This chapter compares the major ad channels and explains when to use each:
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Google Ads
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Snapchat
• Reddit
• Display ads
In the next couple sections, you'll then learn:
1. How to make quality ads.

2. How to run ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Once you've read these three pages, you'll be able to run ads well on any channel.
Channel fit
Use four criteria to prioritize which channels to test:
• Affordability — LinkedIn, for example, is very expensive.

• Audience fit — B2B services, for example, don't perform well on Snapchat.
• Audience volume — Is enough of your audience on that channel?
• Ad fit — Does your product's pitch lend itself to the channel's ad format? (A Snapchat ad
looks very different from a Twitter ad.)
Let's dive into these critical factors.
I. Channel cost
Every channel has an associated ad cost per click (CPC), which in part determines its affordability.
(A channel's CPC is determined by how in-demand its ads are by advertisers.)
One-time purchases
The higher your gross margin, the more channels you can afford to experiment with.
If you're selling a cheap $10 item, you will not succeed with ads. Facebook and Instagram (FB/IG),
which are the most reliable ad channels, can't drive e-commerce sales within North America and
Western Europe for less than roughly $15.
So you need to be making at least $15 in gross margin per basket. And, you'll of course want to make
more to account for volatility — and profit.
FB/IG are the cheapest. Often by a lot. So this $15 floor goes even higher on other channels. If you
have low margins, look instead to unpaid channels such as SEO.
Subscriptions
Here's how to calculate if a channel is affordable for your subscription company:
• Let's say you're paying $2 per click on your Facebook ads.

• And that 1.25% of those clicks (i.e. visitors to your site) then purchase your product.
• So, it costs $160 to acquire a customer. That's your cost per acquisition (CPA).
• Next, let's say you bill customers $40/mo for your product. And that customers leave after 5
months of use on average. That means you earn $200 per user. That is your average revenue
per user (ARPU).

Assuming near-zero marginal cost to service a customer, you have $40 of room between what it costs
to acquire them and how much they ultimately pay you.
Simple, but not easy

For both one-off purchases and subscriptions, the rule of thumb for healthy, sustainable ad spend is
your CPA should be no more than 1/3 to 1/2 your ARPU. So this example fails the rule — cutting it too
close to sustain long-term acquisition.
But there's a hidden factor: follow-on organic growth. If you can measure how many of your paid-for
customers referred others for free, you can calculate the additional revenue rightfully attributable to
your ads.
At Bell Curve, clients constantly underestimate how many follow-on purchases our paid traffic is
responsible for. One solution is taking attribution seriously: survey customers aggressively. Get them to
tell you where they heard about you.
However, what matters more than breaking even on acquisition is how quickly you earn back the cost
of acquiring a customer. If this payback period is too long, you will run out of money trying to scale.
Channel costs
Below, channels are ranked by their rough cost per click for U.S. audiences:
• LinkedIn — $12-$30 per click, plus audiences don't convert very well post-ad-click
• Twitter — $4 per click
• Instagram — $2.50 per click
• Google Ads — $2+ per click, variable per keyword
• Facebook — $1.25 per click
• Pinterest — $1 per click, but audiences don't tend to convert well post-ad-click
• Snapchat — $0.40 per click, but audiences don't tend to convert well post-ad-click
These numbers vary wildly depending on audience, ad quality, and more.
When you can't afford a channel

Once you've tested and discovered a channel isn't profitable, you have three options:
• Optimize your funnel — Increase ad and website clickthrough rates. This decreases CAC. You
can test new ad copy, A/B test landing pages, and introduce coupons.
• Buy users — If you're comfortable temporarily burning cash, you can buy users near-cost to
fuel traction. These users constitute the sample needed to A/B test your funnel. And there's a
small chance they'll ignite runaway word-of-mouth.

• Abandon the channel — This is normal. Most channels don't work for most companies.
Usually only FB/IG or Google Ads work. And nothing else.
II. Channel niches and expectations

Every channel has a degree of audience fit for your product. The greater the fit, the greater the ensuing
conversion rate when they reach your site.
This fit therefore also determines a channel's affordability. Because it's easy to get people to click an
ad, but it's hard to get only the right people to click.
And you're billed either way.
For example, a channel may be twice as expensive per ad click as the next, but if its audience converts
three times better on your site, it's a more affordable channel.
So what determines audience fit? Four factors:
• Expectations — What type of content do users expect to see on the channel? On Instagram,
for example, one may expect aspirational photography. On Snapchat, perhaps it's memes. On
Facebook, Buzzfeed-style videos. Whatever users' content expectations are, you're bound by
them: If your product doesn't lend itself to that content type, it will look even more like an ad.
And suffer a low clickthrough rate.
• Granularity — Facebook provides granular control over who you target. Down to people's life
events — like who recently had their birthday. In contrast, on reddit, you can only target by
people's interests and device types. That's not granular enough to make reddit work for many
businesses. Because you're targeting too broadly, which attracts many ill-fitting clicks. And
that's expensive.
• Demographics — Distribution of age, gender, location, and lifestyle choices.
• Technographics — Division of mobile versus desktop.
Fortunately, you can target nearly anyone through FB/IG and Google Ads. Most demographics. Most
technographics.
But, on many other ad channels, niche audiences have a foothold. And your product is either suited to
them or it's not. For example, consider how enterprise executives may not use Snapchat. Or, how
teenage gamers may not use LinkedIn.
So, to summarize: For your ads to reach scale, you're at the mercy of both your product's market size
and that market's targetability across ad channels.
III. Channel scale

The last criterion for prioritizing channel testing is whether enough of your audience uses that channel.
Let's compare audience volume across a few channels:
If you have low gross margin per customer, you'll need many customers to generate meaningful
revenue.
So if your volume-hungry product isn't a fit for the larger channels that feature your audience, you'll
have a hard time scaling ads.
Saturation
There's another volume-related consideration: saturation.
Saturation occurs when a channel's audience is tired of seeing your ads. Your ad clickthrough rate then
plummets, and in turn your cost per customer rises.
The smaller your audience, the quicker you saturate it — spend being equal. The solution is to suppress
your daily ad spend, which is a tradeoff of volume for longevity.
(We talk more about saturation on the upcoming Facebook Ads page.)
Stay up to date
The above channel fit criteria are subject to change. Because channels evolve. They release new ad
units and sometimes overhaul their targeting.
The onus is on you to monitor the channels and periodically re-assess their fit:
• Bookmark the channels' announcement pages. Here they are for Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter, Google Ads, and LinkedIn. Set a reminder to check them quarterly.
• Subscribe for updates to this guide. We’ll alert you when I've added new channel insights.

Learn this material more in-depth
At Bell Curve, we use the techniques in this handbook with some of the fastest-growing companies in
SaaS and ecommerce. And we now train you to learn growth to our level. Check it out:
bellcurve.com/training
The trifecta: Google Ads, FB, and IG

Your ad channel testing should typically begin with Google Ads and Facebook.
Instagram and Facebook (FB/IG) are rolled into the same platform. So everything we say about
Facebook ads equally applies to Instagram ads.
Their massive audiences and precise targeting make them viable for many products.
However, how you target audiences on these two platforms is very different. But complementary.
Every business should pursue both to capture their full audience.
(Other channels, such as Pinterest, reddit, Snapchat, and LinkedIn, may also play a part in your
strategy. But they often aren't viable due to poor post-ad-click purchase rates.)
Different types of targeting

What nearly every ad channel has in common is demographic targeting (e.g. language, geography, and
gender).
So that’s usually your first step toward excluding ill-fitting segments of the population: avoiding
demographics who don't buy from you.
But, that's not enough of a filter to make your cost per customer acquisition maximally efficient. So,
every channel also offers a unique set of criteria that reflects its users’ engagement with that platform.
You use this criteria as a proxy for pinpointing the users most likely to buy from you.
For example, Facebook users may list their marital status and work history. Therefore, Facebook lets
advertisers target users based on marital status and work history. And maybe you're selling something
best suited for married people.
Or, on Google Ads, users search with keywords. So Google lets you target ads based on keywords. For
example, married people search for "anniversary gift ideas."
There are important implications to this distinction: profile versus keyword targeting.
Let's explore this.

Facebook targeting
First, brief context on how Facebook and Instagram targeting works.
On Facebook, users fill out their profiles that they then enrich by sharing articles and Liking businesses,
products, activities, and people.
Users also browse the web at large — visiting thousands of sites containing Facebook's tracking code,
which Facebook monitors to infer even more of your interests. Ones you never even expressed on
Facebook itself.

You can then roughly target users based off all of this data.
The job of a skilled Facebook advertiser is to determine which of these targetable criteria is most
closely associated with their ideal audience.
For example, people interested in fashion may Like a fashion blog on Facebook. So, perhaps that's how
you'll target ads for your clothing company.
Now let's compare Facebook's targeting to Google Ads.
Facebook versus Google Ads targeting
Certainly, there's no more direct way to target an ideal customer for a men’s fashion company than to
show ads to people searching right now for "men’s clothing."
And that's exactly why Google Ads perform so well: People are signaling interest in your product, and
it's on you to not drop the ball while pitching yourself.
In contrast, on Facebook, you’re performing profile-targeting: Your audience size is limited by the
number of Facebook users who happened to express prior interest that overlaps with your market.
And you're merely approximating that overlap.
Further, Facebook has a timing problem. You may have Liked something related to fashion two years
ago — or maybe just this morning. In the eyes of Facebook's targeting capabilities, they're conflated
into the same degree of interest.
So you're betting on an audience's current overlap with your product.
In contrast, with Google's search ads, people express their desire to buy a car right now through a
query like "buy Toyota vs. Honda". It doesn't get clearer than that.
And people who are interested now are more willing to actually buy — instead of just window shop.
This means they're more cost-effective to target. Fewer wasted clicks.

We call search's targeting type behavior targeting. As in, someone is performing the behavior of
searching for what they want. You then target based on that behavior. This contrasts Facebook's
profile targeting, which uses profile and past engagement data as a proxy for someone's current
interest.
In the dichotomy of profile versus behavior targeting, Pinterest and Google Ads stand alone as the two
major behavior channels. They're both largely built around search. (There's also the less effective Bing
and YouTube ad channels.)
Behavior versus profile targeting

While behavior targeting is effective, it's not a panacea: You’re at the mercy of how many users take
the time to proactively search for what they’re interested in. Not everyone wanting to buy clothing
necessarily searches Google for it.
For example, some clothing buyers skip web searches altogether and instead directly peruse their
favorite blogs, ask friends, or walk into stores.
In other words, if you target exclusively via behavior channels, such as Google Ads, many potential
customers will never see your ads. Worse yet, potential customers who would actually buy from you
but for whom buying is not currently top of mind won't be searching the web at all.
That's why profile targeting nicely complements Google Ads: With profile Facebook, if you can target
someone likely to be a good fit for your product, you can bring them up the ladder of product
awareness through ad copy and your website.
You have the potential to expand your immediate market.
Channel targeting and saturation

There's one more way these two targeting methods are complementary: saturation.
• Profile saturation — The downside to profile targeting is having a potentially fixed audience
size that tires of your ads: If you target everyone on Facebook who Likes Tom Hanks, that
audience isn't getting significantly bigger every month.
• Behavior saturation — With behavior targeting, you can never saturate your market. (You're
only bounded by the size of the market.) Because your market is constantly shifting, so it's
not the same people who are subject to your ad overexposure. Every moment, it's made up
of people currently signaling their entry into the market. Those who are no longer interested
don't continue searching.
Put simply, Google Ads is better for targeting people who currently want a product like yours, and
Facebook is better at targeting people who aren't necessarily looking to buy now but are a perfect fit
you could massage into buying your product.

That's why we've taken so much time to discuss targeting types: You have to balance your expectations
and your budget. Most businesses neglect this.
Here's the point

Three ad channel takeaways:
• Most channels either won't be home to your target audience or can't be run profitably.
Channels that are a fit may have too small an audience for you to meaningfully scale. So test
ad channels defensively: Be cautious with your budget, don't beat a dead horse, and double
down on what is working.
• Finding a way to track follow-on organic purchases may provide the missing data needed to
justify continued channel spend.
• FB/IG's success is not indicative of Google Ads' success. Their users are targeted differently.
Use these channels complementarily.
Ad channel comparisons
Google Ads is simpler to master than Facebook and Instagram (FB/IG). So we dedicate an upcoming
page to FB/IG. You'll come to understand it as well as we do. To learn Google Ads, we recommend
starting with their official guide.
For the rest of this section, we assess the pros and cons of the remaining major channels. You'll learn
when to use each.
Even if these channels sound like a poor fit, we recommend testing each eventually. You never know,
and the growth rewards are too great to bury your head in the sand.
You'll learn a lot about growth by reading the entirety of these collapsed sections.
B2C versus B2B companies

First, a few thoughts on the difference between B2C and B2B companies.
B2C's relatively low margins prevent many ad channels from being viable.
This is why subscription B2C businesses are better than one-time-purchase B2C businesses: With
subscription, you pay once to acquire the customer, but they continue paying you for (hopefully)
months to come.
The burden rests on your product's quality to keep them paying. If it's a high-quality product, you can
earn a lot more than from only charging once upfront.

This is also why hardware companies should integrate a subscription component: The Nest security
camera, for example, charges monthly to keep recordings in the cloud.
However, B2C companies have a big leg up over B2B: On average, they have bigger addressable
audiences. (There are more consumers than there are businesses.) This is important because most ad
channels can't effectively target employees. Channels lack good "firmographic" data (business and
employee details) to target by.
So B2B advertising is a relatively expensive spray and pray approach.
Meanwhile, most ad networks are built from the ground up to precisely target B2C demographics.
Especially Facebook and Instagram.
Keep these differences in mind as you explore the following channels.
Instagram ads
Instagram (IG) is the best profile targeting channel. This mantel recently belonged to Facebook, but
people are engaging slightly less with Facebook ads.
IG users convert the best after clicking ads. And clicks are reasonably priced.
It's an especially good fit for mobile apps and ecommerce goods. But it's generally a poor fit for B2B
SaaS and enterprise companies — especially if your site or web app isn't mobile-friendly. But if you can
afford a $200 CAC, it's worth aggressively testing.
For many of our clients, Instagram is their only profitable channel.

Instagram is part of Facebook

On Instagram, you target audiences and create ads just as you do on Facebook. In fact, you advertise
on both through one dashboard. (Facebook owns Instagram.)
Their difference is in their ad formats: Ads look different on Instagram, so you should rewrite and
redesign content accordingly. (We teach ad creation in the next chapter.)
Like Facebook, Instagram supports profile targeting. This means saturation will occur. (While people do
search Instagram, most IG consumption occurs through passively browsing your feed.)
Large audience
Instagram has more users than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest combined. This means if you get
Instagram ads working, they'll sustain a higher daily spend than other channels (except Facebook).
Further, there's a sizable 18-24 audience that's engaged with Instagram but not Facebook. So if you
target this demographic and you're only running Facebook ads, you'll fail to capture the attention of
your total audience.
That said, people of all ages use Instagram. And every age clicks ads and can convert on your site,
including 65+. We have 65+ working for several clients.
Users are in the right mindset

IG audiences are engaged. They're looking for interesting, new content.
This engagement carries over to the post-ad experience: IG users are more likely to convert on-site.
More so than Facebook mobile users of the same demographics.
Because users open IG for the purpose of having their attention grabbed by something new. They're
open to discovery and distraction.
What a lovely time to shove an ad in someone's face.
(In contrast, on Facebook, users are expecting content from familiar friends. So, ads from companies
they've never heard stand out like a sore thumb.)
For this reason, (good) Instagram ads significantly outperform Facebook mobile ads for ecommerce
goods and app installs.
Buried text means self-evidence is important

Notice how in the above image of an Instagram ad, you have little room to pitch your product through
text. Because the text component of the ad unit is buried at the bottom and is given little focus.
This means your ad performance hinges on how well your image or video grabs someone's attention
for the right reason: the underlying intent to purchase.

If you're selling a product that is not self-evident through imagery alone (e.g. a backpack versus auto
repair), you need to put text on top of the image to describe what you're selling. Or use the IG video ad
format to show your product in action.
Whatever you do, don't be obscure with an IG ad — or people will scroll past it.
Not a fit for desktop software

IG is almost entirely accessed on mobile. That makes it a good fit for ecommerce goods and mobile
apps, but a poor fit for desktop SaaS software.
Even if a visitor could sign up for your service on mobile then return on a desktop via an email
reminder, it's rarely cost-efficient to introduce such friction into your funnel.
For desktop software, stick with Facebook desktop ads and AdWords.
LinkedIn ads
LinkedIn offers profile targeting. Like Facebook, several distinct ad units are offered.
Some units are impossible to make work, and others perform okay at best. But if you're a B2B company
earning a lot per customer, you should test LinkedIn ads.
LinkedIn offers uniquely granular company and employee targeting. So, when these perfectly fitted
visitors reach your site, they convert acceptably. (Worse than FB/IG, but better than many other
channels, including Twitter, Snapchat, and display ads.)

LinkedIn economics
Unfortunately, LinkedIn ad clicks are so expensive ($12-$20 USD), that they're only affordable if you're
selling high-priced products or services.
In fact, if you don't earn over $10,000 USD in the lifetime of a customer, you probably cannot afford
LinkedIn ads. That's an honest conclusion from seeing millions of dollars spent on LinkedIn.
This threshold unfortunately rules out most B2C companies not selling financial products, vehicles, or
homes. And many B2B companies.
What works on LinkedIn

The B2B companies seeing the best LinkedIn performance offer educational and job opportunities.
Because that's largely why people visit LinkedIn in the first place.
(A common theme emerges in this chapter: Your best channels are those frequented by users with pre-
existing intent to discover products like yours.)
The types of landing pages that work well for LinkedIn are also atypical: email-restricted content (e.g.
guides, whitepapers) and webinars outperform traditional "Signup now!" pages.
Fortunately, if you earn a lot per customer, you can afford the hand-holding involved in providing
prospects with marketing materials to encourage sales conversations.
And, as mentioned, each LinkedIn visitor is likely valuable. Because, you can narrowly target LinkedIn
ads to just your very best audience fit. The power of LinkedIn is its unrivaled "firmographic" data.
That's the B2B corollary of demographics.
Meaning, on LinkedIn, you can target by a company's industry, employee count, location, and more.
Plus, you can target employees based on their roles and seniority.
You can even target just employees working at a whitelist of companies you supply.
You can't do this on FB/IG. Facebook's firmographic data is sparse and stale. Because Facebook users
don't rigorously maintain their work history on their profiles. (Why would they? That's what LinkedIn is
for.)
If you're targeting niche industries or niche job titles, LinkedIn is your best bet.
LinkedIn's ad units
LinkedIn offers well-differentiated ad units. Experiment with multiple to uncover a fit:
• Text Ads — LinkedIn's right-hand-side Text Ads are garbage. Clicks on these are expensive and
the ensuing on-site conversion is poor. These ads allow for just a few words of text, so people
clicking them have little context before seeing your site.
• Sponsored Content — However, LinkedIn's Sponsored Content ads are okay. They appear in
users' feeds. Like Facebook and Twitter, they also consist of an image or video surrounded by
complementary text.
o We’ve seen decent clickthrough rates on these ad units, but the cost per click is
prohibitive. (If you're paying, say, $15 per click, and your on-site conversion rate is 2%,
that's $720 per sales lead.)
• Lead Gen — LinkedIn also offers Lead Gen Forms. They prompt LinkedIn users to opt into
providing their email or phone number within the ad itself. Meaning, users skip visiting your site,
and LinkedIn notifies you to follow up directly with them.

o This approach doesn't make that much sense. It's more productive to first educate
prospects with interactive materials on your site. Plus, if they visit your site, you can
later retarget them.
• InMail — LinkedIn also offers direct message ads and promoted "InMail." You use these ad units
to reach out directly to LinkedIn users through their inboxes.
o These can work, but many people don't respond. So limit yourself to recipients who are
the best fit. This ad unit is too expensive to take a spray and pray approach.
o To increase your response rate, write messages that are legitimately relevant to the
prospect, e.g. "Because of who you are in {industry}, and your accomplishments {X and
Y}, I thought you'd appreciate this offer..."
o Make the message feel like it belongs in their inbox. Skip the sales fluff. Write like you're
talking to a friend.
Pinterest ads
Pinterest ads don't work for most companies.
You have the greatest chance at making them work if you're selling fashion, food, or furniture goods,
and if your product lends itself to eye-catching imagery.
And if you're predominantly targeting women. Because that's most of the audience.
In other words, Pinterest can (modestly) work for some B2C ecommerce goods.
However, Pinterest is a much broader fit if you exclusively use it for retargeting, which is the tactic of
showing ads to uncoverted site visitors to get them to return and buy.
Retargeted visitors convert at a much lesser cost than new visitors, so you can sometimes make
otherwise weak ad channels newly viable through retargeting.
And, in Pinterest's case, their targeting is granular enough to place it among the better weak channels
still worth testing.

Pinterest targeting
On Pinterest, you can target users based on the content they typically engage with (e.g. fashion,
furniture) or the keywords they're currently searching.
In other words, you can intercept people's searching behavior with ads. So, like Google Ads, Pinterest
has behavior targeting! And Pinterest's behavior targeting can refer a sizable amount of traffic. Double
yay! We growth marketers need as many behavior ad channels as we can get. They're the saturation
antidote.
Unfortunately, while Pinterest's cost-per-click is low, its users generally don't convert once they arrive
at your site. They bounce without signing up. (Same with Snapchat.)
We chalk this up to the way Pinterest users interact with "pins:" They rabidly open new tabs then later
return to them while forgetting why they opened your random website. And they leave instantly.
Time-on-site for Pinterest traffic is bad.
Plus, some users click on pins so quickly that they'll sloppily click ads unknowingly.
The antidote is to therefore straddle the line between two objectives:
Blend in, but don't mislead. Or get billed for clicks that don't convert.
When to use Pinterest

We've found mediocre (at best) ad performance when three conditions are met:
1. Your audience skews toward 24 to 35-year-old females. Pinterest is 80% female and 60% 24-
35.
2. Your product is in a category Pinterest users organically search for en masse, e.g. fashion and
furniture. Even if you're a step removed from a popular category (i.e. you sell chair
accessories instead of actual chairs), you can still have difficulty making Pinterest ads work.
You want to match exactly what's being searched for.
3. Your product lends itself to visually enticing imagery that fits alongside organic content. Like
on Instagram, there is little room for text on Pinterest ads. It's all about self-evident visuals.
Twitter ads
Like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is mostly a profile targeting channel.
It saturates.
(While Twitter does offer behavior targeting, most Twitter users don't use the platform by searching.
They skim their Following feed.)

Due to its high cost and poor performance, Twitter is a bad ad channel.
However, it's a great brand marketing platform — if you're an enterprise wanting to stay top of mind
with potential buyers. But, this handbook doesn't teach brand marketing, so we won't dive into that.
Here's what makes Twitter a bad growth channel: It's over twice as expensive per click than Facebook
and Instagram, and people who click also convert at a worse rate on your site. Further, it has far fewer
engaged users than FB/IG, so it saturates quicker.

(The reason for Twitter's poor on-site conversion is probably similar to Facebook's reason: You don't
open Twitter to find new products and experiences. You're looking for news, discussion, and media
pertaining to the people and topics you care about.)
It gets worse. Twitter is redundant: Its ad units don't offer anything special over other channels'. And it
doesn't open doors to new, large audiences. Because most people in developed countries who are on
Twitter are also on Facebook or Instagram.
So if you have FB/IG working at scale, Twitter is unlikely to open doors to profits.
There is, however, a redeeming feature of Twitter.
Twitter's redeeming feature

Twitter has a huge array of niche interests you can target audiences by. For every lesser-known
company, interest, or person, you can target people who Follow them.
On Facebook and Instagram, you're unable to target cultural interests with this specificity: You can only
target interests that have reached a threshold of public interest. For example, if a newspaper's
Facebook Page has fewer than, say, 25,000 Likes, they won't appear as a targetable option when
making ads.
And even if they reach the threshold, Facebook might still not make them targetable.
So if you're selling to a niche audience that can only be accurately identified based on who they Follow
on Twitter, then Twitter is worth testing.
But it'll still only work if you earn a lot per customer. We’re talking thousands of dollars.
As a reference point, in the last four years, the only time Twitter ads worked was for a client earning six
figures annually per customer. This client had fewer than 500 companies in the world who were a fit
for their product. And we noticed that employees at those 500 companies followed the same few
influencers in the space.
So we targeted those influencers' followers and got a few to turn into sales leads.
In short, most companies should skip Twitter for growth marketing. Those who can justify it are
typically Fortune 500's emptying their brand marketing budgets.
For that, it's effective. Twitter ads are much better than banner ads.
Similar to Facebook

One more thing. Twitter conveniently shares Facebook's newsfeed ad format. This consists of text on
top, an image or video in the middle, and more text underneath.
So, if you port your best-performing ads from Facebook, they should also be your best performing ads
on Twitter. (Controlling for audience, that is.)
This saves you time and money on re-testing ads from scratch.
Also like Facebook, Twitter has a healthy mix of desktop and mobile users. So it's theoretically suitable
for every product type — from ecommerce, to mobile apps, to B2B desktop software.
Reddit ads
Reddit ads are typically a waste of time. Their targeting granularity is too broad to be effective, or too
niche to be scalable.
Skip reddit ads unless your product appeals very broadly (e.g. underwear, credit cards) or you can
squeeze enough revenue out of the tiny niches that exist on reddit.
However, reddit is undergoing a massive shift in both their product interface and ad platform
capabilities: They're increasing the news feed's emphasis on videos and GIFs. And they're planning to
show video ads alongside that multimedia.
If these upcoming video ads perform anything like video ads do on Facebook, they may be effective. So
we’re waiting to see. This section will remain brief until then.
How reddit advertising currently works

Like most modern ad channels, reddit ads are native: they look like organic posts and are differentiated
by a subtle "promoted" label.
Targeting works on either an interest- or subreddit-basis.
Interest categories include Travel and Technology, for example. These show your ads to redditors
whose browsing behavior falls into these categories.
Unfortunately, such targeting isn't narrow enough to home into your best-performing, profitable
audiences: Putting aside how ineffectively broad an interest like "Technology" is, you typically need to
narrow B2C audiences via gender and/or age to make ads cost-efficient.

And reddit doesn't offer gender and age targeting. (Because their users don't provide them with that
data.)
Your alternative is subreddit targeting, which runs ads within the niche subcategories that organize the
site's content, e.g. foreign films or StarCraft.
In some cases, there's short-lived potential in subreddits — if you earn a lot per customer and can
therefore extract meaningful revenue from just a few visitors.
But, subreddit targeting is fundamentally broken too: Niche subreddits don't have many active
subscribers. So they saturate quickly. And the very niche subreddits can't be targeted in the first place,
because reddit disallows ads in subreddits below a certain subscriber count.
reddit is the worst thought-through ad platform of all the major social networks. We’re glad to see
they're now doing something about it.
Snapchat ads
Snapchat ad clicks are cheap, but the on-site conversion is terrible.
Snapchat users do not take out their credit cards. They're coming for free stuff. Even the wealthy
adults who use the platform.
Expect 5-10x worse on-site conversion rates than what you'd get from a well-targeted FB/IG campaign.
This is a shame because the ad creation experience on Snapchat is wonderful, their support is top-
notch, and their targeting criteria is sufficiently granular.
However, their ad platform is new, so we’re expecting improvements in the near future.
Snapchat's current use

The only effective use we've seen for Snapchat is real-time retail targeting: Snapchat lets you target
users within 0.3 miles of any physical location.
So, if you're a retail business that lends itself to impulse purchases (e.g. restaurants, entertainment),
Snapchat may be a fit. Capture everyone walking by on their phones.
Otherwise, like Twitter, Snapchat is only suited for brand marketing: In fact, if you're an enterprise with
money to blow, Snapchat is likely better than Twitter for brand exposure. They offer better persona
targeting (e.g. new mothers, gamers).
Display ads

Display ads are the banner ads you see across the web.
They perform terribly.
People don't click banner ads anymore. They haven't for years. And those who are weird enough to
click banners aren't usually the people who then buy on your site.
However, display ads are still good for cheap brand marketing. As in, advertising not first and foremost
to get clicks, but to stay top of mind with potential buyers.
Consider how Verizon and T-Mobile perennially spam every site on the web with banner ads. They
aren't getting a lot of clicks relative to their ad spend. But they do it because they want to stay top of
mind when your phone contract expires and you're considering a new provider.
Or consider how movie studios aggressively spam sites with banner ads before a film's release. The
same idea is at play: You're not expected to click the ads then convert on the spot. Studios are merely
hoping you keep the film in mind when you're bored next weekend and stumble into a mall.
If you decide to run display ads, do it through Google Display Network. It provides the most granular
targeting and is therefore the most cost-effective when run well.
Display ads work for retargeting

Display ads are modestly effective at retargeting.
(Retargeting is showing ads to visitors who've been to your site. To get them back.)
But you shouldn't actually use them for retargeting. Because Facebook and Instagram retargeting
hugely outperforms display ads in cost per conversion.
So there's no point in wasting money here. In fact, doing so competes for the attention of the same
eyeballs being retargeted via FB/IG, causing your retargeting audience to get over-exposed to your ads.
They saturate quicker.
Every time we've tested display retargeting concurrent with FB/IG retargeting, FB/IG costs rise without
any net benefit to the business.
All other ad channels

Curious about other channels? Go experiment.
There are a ton, although few that are as big or as effective as those we've covered.
It’s the job of a growth hacker to rigorously test new channels. Routinely and exhaustively. You should
be spending a third of your time doing that. Keep yourself in a position to discover pleasant surprises.
Finding just one channel that's profitable could make or break your business.

How do I make ads on these channels?
In a couple sections from now, we teach you how to run a professional ad campaign on Facebook and
Instagram.
In learning FB/IG, you'll understand concepts underlying every other ad channel.
First, though, the next chapter explains how to write and design good ads.
Next chapter
Making ads
How to write and design ads that people want to click.

BC: Growth Guide — 6. Making Ads
This chapter teaches how to create ads for social media networks (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) — at a
professional level.
The goal: Get cost-effective clicks from your ideal audience.
You accomplish this goal through an ad's copy and creative.
"Copy" is a fancy word for text. The distinction between copy and everyday text is that copy is carefully
selected for a trackable outcome. Such as articulating a selling point. Or getting someone to click a
button.
Whenever you refer to marketing text, refer to it as "copy" and treat it with the attention-to-detail it
deserves. Because, in growth marketing, words are your highest-ROI weapon. They cost nothing yet
each one affects conversion.
"Creative," meanwhile, is jargon for multimedia, such as images and videos.
On most social networks, ads consist of both copy and creative. A Facebook video ad, for example,
contains a video creative surrounded by copy above and below.
Importance of copy
Copy and creative determine the clickthrough rate of your ads. Just a 25% improvement in clickthrough
rate can make or break profitable paid user acquisition.
Ad copywriting is critical work.
Yet most marketers wing it. Many delegate copywriting to junior social media hires. As if writing ad
copy is like writing a clever Tweet. It’s not. It's more than that.
No one becomes great at writing copy without months of practice.
So that's what this section teaches you: Systematic copywriting tactics for practicing generating great
copy. We'll walk you through designing great creative too.
We'll cover:
• The full copywriting process

• Tactics for making copy compelling
• How to take advantage of an ad's secondary copy
• Principles for designing ads

Who is your audience?
Before you write copy, know who you're copywriting for. This makes all the difference.
Consider our Ladder of Product Awareness (LPA) below. The LPA illustrates how aware and in need an
audience is of your product.
Everyone you advertise to will be somewhere on this ladder:
Great storytellers have the ability to fascinate everyone with their narrative; they don't settle on
relating only to their core audience (i.e. the first step of the ladder).
However, the closer someone is to step 5, the more time, energy, and money it takes to move them up
the LPA so that they’re receptive to your ads.
So, only if you've already exhausted audiences on Levels 1-4 (unlikely) should you attempt to move
people up from the bottom. That’s a luxury problem. Until then, focus on writing increasingly appealing
copy to those higher up on your ladder.
Ad channels and LPA

Let's consider how the LPA affects copywriting on two categories of ad channels:
• Google Ads (plus Bing, YouTube, and Pinterest)

• Facebook and Instagram (plus Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn)
This is the behavior- versus profile-based targeting distinction discussed previously.
LPA and behavioral-based targeting

On Google Ads, LPA identification is straightforward: You detect the ladder positioning of a search by
identifying how niche its keywords are.
For example, a search may contain "used cars" or "used Toyota SUV's." The latter is higher up on the
LPA. These people know specifically what they want: Toyotas.
How you write an ad for these two queries should therefore be different.
For example, if you're a company selling Toyotas, consider:
• "Used cars" queries should be shown ad copy explaining why Toyota is the best brand for
second-hand car purchases. By addressing the why, you move the searcher up the LPA.
• “Used Toyota SUV's" should be targeted with copy highlighting specific product details that
would grab the searcher's attention, e.g. "$18k gets you a 2014 Toyota with just 20k miles!"
(Because they already want what you have, don't waste words moving them up the LPA —
just grab their attention with details they're looking for.)
You typically want to try running both types of ad copy simultaneously. And everywhere in between.
See how well the general public responds to your value props at various steps on the ladder. If you can
get people lower on the LPA to click and convert, it expands the size of your audience. And helps you
scale via ads.
LPA and profile-based targeting

Let's move beyond Google Ads.
Non-search ad channels, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, don't have keywords for you to identify
someone's position on the LPA.
When switching from behavior-based targeting to profile-based targeting, you rely on someone's
profile details as a proxy to determine someone's LPA position.
For example, how would you distinguish whether a Facebook user suffering from male pattern
baldness is or is not aware that drugs like Rogaine and Propecia help your hair regrow?
There's no way to know unless they Like Rogaine's Facebook Page or have shared Rogaine articles on
their profile. Then you could target them based off this behavior.
But very few people will do either. Most people don't Share or Like business-related posts on
Facebook. Most of what they share is personal or cultural.
On Google Ads, you simply target people searching for "hair loss products."

So LPA identification on social networks like Facebook and Instagram, which don't primarily surface
feed content based on searches, is messy and requires insight.
Often, you should write more generalized copy than you would for search ads. This entails being
wordier than usual to include context for those lower on the LPA.
For example, you may need to simultaneously address:
• Why the problem you address is in fact worth solving.

• Why your problem is worth solving now.
• Why your way of addressing the problem is better than alternatives.
• What next steps the viewer should take to convert.
Here's the takeaway: Always ask yourself before writing ads, What does my audience likely already
know? Write copy accordingly. Don't be out of touch and don't alienate.
With this basic understanding of the LPA, you're now ready to learn copywriting.
Copywriting
It's not hard, and it's not a black box.
Ad copywriting process
Before diving into copy tactics, let's identify copy's role in ad creation:
1. First, you generate ad copy variations.

2. Then, you run ads with your most promising copy variations.
3. Once you've assessed ads' performance, pause those that perform poorly.
4. Now, with your best-performing ads, test wildly different copy ideas on a recurring basis.
Because you'll never land on the best variation from the get-go. Always try to beat your best
performing copy.
It starts with generating your first set of copy variations. Let's learn how.
Generating copy variations

There are four steps to writing copy:
1. Brainstorm what to write.

2. Write it down in a particular way.
3. Make it compelling.
4. Make it concise.
I. Brainstorm 1) value props and 2) common concerns

This step generates talking points for your copy.
First, list out all your value props — the benefits your product provides. To do this, follow the process
outlined on the Landing Pages portion of this handbook here.
Second, bullet point every trepidation, disbelief, and question your audience will likely have upon
hearing your pitch. You're going to proactively address them.
II. For each value prop and concern, write a sentence resolving it
See some examples here.
III. Make copy compelling

Now make your copy a bit wordier by injecting compelling factoids. Factoids are your opportunity to
pique your audience's curiosity. (In the coming sections, we'll explore tactics for doing this.)
IV. Make copy concise

Identify the copy you believe will most motivate conversion. Then rewrite these as concisely as
possible. Audiences lack patience for rambling ads.
Putting it together
This seems like a lot, and it is. But it's a straightforward and reliable process.
Here's an ad resulting from these steps:

With this process in hand, your next step is to learn how to actually articulate your value props on a
sentence-by-sentence basis.
So let's dive into articulation tactics addressing Step III (make ad copy compelling).
Surveying for copy ideas
In Step 1, generating value props by yourself may not uncover much.

So, combine your brainstorming with customer surveys to uncover hidden gems.
When surveying, seek three insights: language, concerns, and priorities.
• Language — How do users describe your product to a friend? What non-marketing language
do people use to communicate your product to others? Borrow this language to break
through your over-written, salesy copy. For example, you may define your product category
as “pre-owned vehicles.” But don’t people actually say (and thereby Google for) “used cars?”
Yes, they do, so then that’s the language you should be using in your copy. Talk like people
talk.
• Concerns — What nearly prevented them from purchasing? Which competitors were they
considering? Or, if they haven't purchased yet, what deterred them? Concerns (and value
props) are the lifeblood of copy. Addressing them proactively often makes for the best copy.
So ask users what deters them from your product.
• Priorities — How do they rank your value props? Do certain demographics care more about
one value prop over the other? Then highlight the appropriate value prop when talking to
each: If males respond better to value prop A, split your targeting across men and women so
men see A and women see B.
I don't actually know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do
something, though, it seems to me you should use their language.
– David Ogilvy
Make copy compelling
You have your list of value props and concerns. But how do you turn them into copy?
Below are our tactics for turning ad ideas into words. Each of your ad ideas can follow one of the four
tactics below. Once you've done that, you proceed to the final step in the ad copywriting process:
making the copy concise.
I. Articulate the problem, solution, and benefit

For this first tactic, the goal is to be wordy in pursuit of being descriptive.
Being descriptive means adding enough context to our problem and its solution that people along
many steps of the LPA can identify with our pitch.
We're writing copy that identifies the problem, explains how we solve it, plus clarifies what the benefit
of solving it is.

For example: "Kip makes therapy more effective by helping you track your weekly progress through
self-assessments. No more guessing whether you're improving."
Or, "Streak is a CRM that lives inside Gmail. So you can stop switching between browser tabs when
working. Plus, it automatically pulls contact information out of Gmail for you. No data entry and no tab
switching. End result? Efficiency."
We identify the problem, the solution, and the benefit. (The order doesn't matter.)
If you solve a complex problem, or a problem for which few people are high up on the LPA, it's okay if
you have to use many sentences to fully present it. Go in-depth!
Unfortunately, only Facebook ads provide space for plenty of copy.
II. Highlight differentiation

In this alternative tactic, you write copy variations highlighting how you stand out from your
competition.
For example:
• Are you the only dog food company endorsed by the SPCA? Say so.
• Are you the biggest, cheapest, fastest, or highest-quality product in your space?
• Are you the only product using a patented, game-changing technology?
Lead with what makes you unique. Add additional details if important.
III. Ask a pressing question

This tactic involves writing copy in the form of a question.
For example, turn a factoid into a question with an intro, e.g. "Did you know..."
Did you know airlines will pay you ~$135 if you get delayed?
But only ask questions that actually pique curiosity; do not ask questions that make people think,
"Yeah/no, who cares."
Instead, ask questions that prompt responses like, "Wow, I didn't know that" and "No, tell me more..."
For example, this is a bad question:
Do you like saving money?

Sure we do, so what...? We're not going to keep reading your ad if that's your dumb hook.
Below is a better question that makes me think, "No, tell me more."
How well does your site rank in search engines?
Hmm. Not sure. We'd like to know.
It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.
– David Foster Wallace
IV. Match a value prop to an audience

When people see themselves in your copy, they are more likely to click.
In other words, the more targeted your copy, the better conversion will be.
That's why this fourth tactic focuses on appealing to just a subset of your audience. A subset can be
delineated by demographics (e.g. age, gender, job), behaviors (e.g. eat out a lot, play video games),
and more.
You appeal to them by tying your product to a quality used as an excuse to namedrop them. There are
infinite qualities you could highlight. Here are a few:
• Cost — "The only full-featured, 4K camera that’s affordable [quality] on a student’s [audience
namedrop] budget."
• Powerful — "The only language learning tool with the advanced [quality] features
hardworking students [audience] need to master French, Chinese, and more.”
• Simple — "The analytics tool powerful enough for developers [audience] but built with a
super intuitive [quality] interface for marketers [audience]."
• Fast — "The only delivery service with a guaranteed delivery time of 60 minutes [fast] — for
people who make last-minute dinner decisions [audience]."
• (Above, we're defining a subset based on behavior instead of demographics.)
• Quality — "Extremely high quality shirts for people who obsess over details."
Additional qualities include effective, beautiful, automated, and so on.
Whichever quality you choose, ensure it's one your ideal customers would actually care enough about
to purchase based on. When someone buys a camera, for example, they don’t care much if it arrives
overnight (the fast shipping value prop). They care about its power or cost. So those are the qualities
you should focus on.

One of our favorite books summarizes research into how to convince people to do things. We
recommend it to understand the reasoning behind our tactics.
Polish your copy
When employing any of the above tactics to turn value props and concerns into copy, you also want to
keep two optimizations in mind: word order and hooks.
Word order
Try to place the keyword describing your product at the beginning of your copy.
Let us show you an example first, then we'll explain why:
• Keyword at the beginning — "Looking to rent retail space? Rent luxury locations in your city
by day, week, or month."
• Keyword at the end — "Rent by day, week, or month — that's the flexibility thisopenspace
brings to retail space rentals.”
Here's why placing your keyword at the beginning is better: People skimming the first few words of
your ads (everyone always skims!) will immediately identify your product category ("retail space"). This
quickly shows them the ad is for them.
(Assuming you're targeting the right audience to begin with.)
In contrast, the second piece of copy says a whole lot of nothing until you finally get to the keyword,
"retail space." Consider how "Rent by day, week, or month" could be about anything — and many
people won't bother finding out what that thing is because they won't bother reading all your copy.
You didn't immediately hook them.
Word order is important.
You can also polish word order on a sentence-by-sentence level: The first sentence in an ad's opening
paragraph should describe what the product is.
In summary, get to the point immediately.
Adding hooks
One more optimization technique for honing your copy: Pique your audiences’ interest by adding a
concluding sentence that either:
1. Makes them curious by withholding information, e.g. "Click through to see how little we
charge to redesign your entire website."

2. Offers significant, inarguable value, e.g. "We are 10x cheaper than the service you're using
now. No catch. There's absolutely no reason not to switch."
Yes, hooks bloat your ad copy. But they are net beneficial to your clickthrough rate.
Sanity checks
Lastly, make sure your ad doesn't suffer from:
• Not twisting the knife enough — help the reader feel the pain you solve
• Disjointed sentences that don't logically follow one another
• Value props that are too non-specific (or using clichés and expressions)
When we teach people how to write copy, those are their most common errors.
Make your copy concise

Your final step is to eliminate needless words. We’ll just share this:

Here's the summary
We recommend writing this summary down:
1. First, you brainstorm value props and concerns.

2. Then, you write short sentences to address each one.
3. Next, you use one of the four tactics to convert the sentence into long-form copy.
4. Then, you polish your copy through word order and hooks.
5. You conclude by making your ad as concise as possible.
That's how you reliably write great ads. We’ve honed this process over four years.
Extra ad copy: Social proof

Most ad channels, including Facebook Ads and AdWords, provide space alongside an ad's primary copy
for supplementary copy. A few extra words you can sneak in.
We like to use this space to provide social proof: external validation that your product is as good as you
claim it is. We've concluded social proof reliably increases clicks. (But is secondary in importance to
explaining what your product does in the first place.)
Social proof can take many forms. It depends on your product:
• Boast customer count — "Over 5,000 dog lovers rely on us."

• Highlight customers — "Used by Microsoft, Salesforce, and IBM."
• Plug reviews — "5 stars in the App Store" or "Best-reviewed San Francisco Thai restaurant on
Yelp."
• Press quotes — "Bell Curve is the world's leading growth agency." — TCN
Extra ad copy: Call-to-action

The call-to-action (CTA) is the button or link that takes the audience to the next step in your funnel:
• For most products, the next step is the landing page.

• For B2B companies, it may be a lead capture form.
• For mobile apps, it's often the app store.
Your CTA copy is as important as the rest of your ad's copy.
For instance, if you use spammy CTA copy (e.g. "Click here to get your HUGE discount today!"), you will
decrease your CTR.
And if you use vague CTA copy like, "Continue…," you may fail to call attention to the CTA to capture
clicks from OCD people skimming your ad as it scrolls by in their feed. This is a real problem. Especially
on video ads, which distract from the CTA.

Effective CTA copy begins with a verb that teases what the audience will encounter on the next step in
the funnel: Will they watch a demo of the product? Or try it?
A verb is important because it indicates that an experience proceeds the ad click — as opposed to
suffering through more boring copy on a generic landing page.
Consider the verbs below. After the verb, we tease the ensuing experience:
• Watch the product in action…

• See the high-res photos…
• Browse the full inventory…
• Experiment with our demo…
• Play our first level…
CTA and the growth funnel

Avoid verbs that tease the final conversion event in the growth funnel. We're not yet coercing users to
buy, order, trial, or sign up.
The audience doesn't yet have enough confidence in our product or enough context on what it
provides to convert. All they've seen is your ad. They still have to be romanced by a landing page
before they'll hand over an email address or credit card.
Never forget that visitors should be handheld through the entire growth funnel:
Acquisition → Conversion → Engagement → Revenue → Referral
Don't skip steps. The purpose of an ad is typically just to get people to your landing page. Then the
landing page does its own converting from there.
Ad creative
Creative is marketing jargon for an ad's multimedia — its image or video.
Most ad units, including Facebook's and Twitter's, provide space for both copy and creative. (Whereas
Google Ads is often just text-based advertising.)
To optimize a creative for conversion, adhere to two content rules:
• Depict the product in action. Don't beat around the bush; literally show the value.
• Say what the product is. Add text to reinforce what exactly is being advertised.
In other words, don't be vague.

Next, adhere to two styling rules:
• Keep the design purposeful. Don't arbitrarily slap stock photography together.
• Match the design to the surrounding aesthetics. Consider the page that the ad will be
featured on. What does it look like? Match it so you look less like an ad.
The rest of this chapter covers these four principles. Then we're done with copy and creative, and we'll
show you how to make professional ads on Facebook and Instagram.
For advice on optimizing video creative, see the video section of Landing Pages.
I. Literally depict the product in action

Step one of ad design is to ask, How can I most literally depict the product in action?
We’ve confirmed this principle across thousands of ads.
Avoid visual abstraction. Being literal is key to conversion. Abstracted imagery is typically aspirational
imagery (two people sitting on a beach), and aspirational messaging is only suited for brand marketing
— not conversion.
Examples of literal depiction:
• If you're selling software, show a decluttered screenshot of the dashboard instead of an

abstract vector illustration of your services.
• If you're selling services, show the service in action, e.g. a dog walker walking a dog instead of
an image of a happy dog.
• If you're selling a physical good, show it in use and overlay a closeup photo of it.
Given the volume of ad exposure everyone is subjected to, people lack the patience and motivation to
guess what your ad is selling. So, remove the ambiguity and just show them the goods.
We want consumers to say, "That's a hell of a product" instead of, "That's a hell of an ad."
– Leo Burnett
II. Say what the product is

Say your ad creative depicts a group of friends at dinner, but those friends aren't doing anything in
particular.
Is it clear what's being advertised? Maybe it's an alcoholic beverage? Or an app that helps you find
clubs? Or maybe the ad is for the club itself?
Who knows.

Not all ad channels clearly foreground ad copy next to its creative. So sometimes it's squarely on the
shoulders of your creative to be independently self-evident.
And, since most viewers don't read complementary copy when it does exist, it's actually helpful to add
copy onto the creative itself.
Sprinkle a few words describing what the product is. But, first and foremost, try to use imagery that is
self-evident.
If your ad doesn't clearly specify what's being sold, you'll attract clicks outside your target audience.
Because ill-fitted people will click out of curiosity or confusion. And you'll be billed for this.
III. Be purposeful
The second rule of creative design is to be purposeful with visuals.
Many (most?) companies see poor performance from online advertising. So do not blindly copy visual
tactics from popular ads thinking they're necessarily effective.
For example, never show a random businessperson smiling next to a computer. What is that even
about? That can be an ad for anything. It's not purposeful. It's generic.
Instead, select imagery with purpose. Every visual asset (e.g. a person, product, logo) should help
depict the product in action or clearly depict its value.
Beware logo placement

Don't place your logo at the top of an ad. People regularly scan ads from top to bottom, so whatever
imagery you place at the top bears the burden of motivating users to continue carefully looking down.
If the first thing they see is corporate iconography, they're reminded this is an ad instead of the organic
content that they came for.
IV. Match surrounding aesthetics

Don’t design an ad before knowing how it'll look in its published form.
On Facebook, for example, your ad may appear as a Newsfeed story alongside organic stories. Just like
organic stories, your ad consists of an image, surrounding text, and a CTA button.
The goal is to ensure your creative isn't too contrasted against real, organic stories that it's reflexively
identified then dismissed for being an ad.
In fact, when we design Facebook ads in Sketch (a Photoshop alternative better suited for non-
photography), we start with a screenshot of the Facebook Newsfeed. We design the ad with
surrounding context in mind.

You might be thinking:
But don't I want to stand out as much as possible?
Nope. That worked when banner ads ruled the web and people hadn't yet built up a reflex to ignore
them. Today, non-elderly people are decent at pattern matching ads from organic content.
Something standing out in the middle of a feed is often dismissed — not given extra attention.
That said, we’re not advising you blend into the surrounding content like wallpaper. You want bold
imagery and brand presence. But, you also need to look like you belong on the site: Mimic as much of
the surrounding colors, font, spacing, and so on.
If Facebook's design is predominantly blue, for example, then maybe red would stick out too much. If
Instagram is predominantly square, then maybe horizontal ads would stick out too much. And so on.
This is what ad testing is for. Try everything.
Match surrounding content

On a channel like Pinterest, where your ad appears among dozens of highly differentiated images,
you're in less danger of being dismissed as an ad because it's harder to stand out.
But, you still should contextually blend into the content surrounding your ad.
For example, if you're targeting Pinterest audiences searching for "steak," ensure your ad isn't, say, a
celebrity chef holding up a plate of steak. That would be fitting for a magazine cover, but for Pinterest?
No, on Pinterest, you typically see close-ups of dinner plates with steak on them. Not magazine
promotional art.
So, blend in just like that. Then, with this organic style as your creative basis, place copy on the image
with a subtle contrast that blends in without screaming "ad!"
When to revamp ads

Even if your ads perform well, whenever the following occur, create new ads:
• Audience fatigue — When users on profile-based channels (e.g. Facebook, Instagram,

Twitter) tire of your ads, clickthrough rates drop and customer acquisition costs rise. Respond
by finding new value props and new creative to intermix ads that significantly differ from
what came before.
• Product changes — When your product's value props change, create new ads to pitch what's
newly offered and to target audiences that newly fit your product.
• Cultural events — Be on alert for events that are important to your audiences (e.g. holidays,
seasons). Piggyback on them when appropriate.

• New channels — Be on the lookout for social networks newly releasing ad products. When
dating sites and messaging apps, for example, gain traction, they often release an ad platform
to monetize themselves to their community. That community may contain audiences you
previously had a hard time targeting on other channels! Snapchat, for example, is the latest
big social app to introduce self-serve advertising.
• New ad units — Be on the lookout for existing ad platforms releasing new ad units. Facebook
and Instagram release new ad units on a near quarterly basis. They have video ads, offer ads,
lead generation ads, canvas ads, and much more. Test every new ad unit to see if you can find
a high-converting fit.
• New multimedia — Across all channels, video ads tend to outperform image ads across. So if
your company generates new video marketing materials (e.g. case studies, promo videos,
launch videos), it's worth testing making ads out of them.
• Market and LPA migration — If you're in a hot market where consumer savviness is rising,
more people may be on a higher step of the LPA today than when you first ran your ads. So
you'll want to test brand new ads to more accurately target this LPA-climbing audience. For
example, if you're selling a virtual reality headset and the Oculus Rift has been out for either a
month or a year, there's a significant difference in how much the public now knows about
virtual reality.
• Competitors become popular — If your market becomes saturated with competitors, you
may want to double down on copy that highlights what differentiates your product — even if
it's at the expense of spending fewer words explaining the problem you solve. Because,
thanks to your competitors, now more people know about the problem to begin with.
Here's the point
Three ad creation takeaways:
• Copywrite deliberately. If you wing copy, you lack a reliable process for iterating on copy that
works.
• Ad copy should be concise, but not at the expense of forsaking compelling hooks.
• Ad creative should be literal, minimalist, and contextually appropriate.
Next chapter
Facebook and Instagram ads
How to professionally run Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns.

BC: Growth Guide — 7. Facebook Ads
This chapter teaches you the strategy behind running top-performing Facebook Ads campaigns. It is a
complete guide that covers everything you need to know.
And it includes plenty of examples.
You're actually about to learn every principle for running ads on any channel: from budgeting, to
audience selection, to retargeting, and more.
We'll be using Facebook as our example channel, but this advice applies to all channels.
And since Instagram Ads are published through the Facebook Ads dashboard, nearly 100% of the
advice in this chapter applies to Instagram.
Ad blockers
No early stage startup founder should be using ad block on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social
network.
Seeing other companies’ ads is valuable. It’s passive competitive analysis, which helps you better
understand how to stand out.
Why Facebook ads?

Facebook ads perform remarkably well because:
• They command attention — Their ad units are big and bold. They're injected right into the
Facebook Newsfeed. They're impossible for people to ignore.
• Rich targeting — Facebook targeting's breadth and specificity is unparalleled. You can easily
narrow in on the audiences most likely to buy your product.
• Ad exposure — Facebook ensures audiences aren't spammed with advertising. And that users
avoid seeing too many ads from the same advertiser. Because of this sensitivity to ad
overexposure, Facebook users don't yet despise seeing ads!
• Has the potential to work for every business — Facebook Ads are suitable for B2C, B2B,
software, and hardware companies. We’ve never had a client who couldn't at least find an
audience on Facebook. (Perhaps not an affordable audience, but a converting audience
nonetheless — if they were willing to pay a lot.)
o Facebook Ads even work for B2B enterprise targeting. We run them for Lambda Labs, a
client of ours to target niche audience of just a few thousand people. As long as you can
afford a $200+ customer acquisition cost, it's worth testing for B2B.
• The reason Facebook Ads work for all businesses is rather simple: People who work at
businesses are humans. Humans use Facebook. It doesn’t matter if you advertise to a human on
a work-related (e.g. LinkedIn) or non-work-related website. A lack of business context has never
been a deal breaker for ad conversion.

The reality of running ads
Expectation: Fatigue
Fatigue is a real problem with Facebook and Instagram ads: Fatigue means audiences are tiring of
seeing your ads on repeat. As a result, CTR's drop, CPA's increase, and your campaign's total lifetime
shortens. Possibly to no longer than a few weeks.
These types of businesses have especially small audiences and will therefore fatigue quicker: Niche
products, enterprise B2B products, and geography-restricted services.

Here's why fatigue happens: Facebook is already nearing total adoption in developed countries; hordes
of new people aren't signing up for Facebook every week. So, unless you're targeting developing
countries that are only now joining Facebook en masse, your audience isn't necessarily going to expand
month over month. It's fixed.
Eventually everyone in your audience sees your ad. Then they see it on repeat.
This happens sooner than you think. Because, as we'll learn, Facebook may limit your ad to just a
subset of your target audience. (A subset that its algorithms know is most likely to click your ad.) So
while they kindly save you costs, they expedite fatigue.
If you're willing to prioritize volume over speed of user acquisition, you can delay ad fatigue by
lowering your daily budget to the degree that not everyone in your audience sees your ad once daily.
We'll cover this later.
Expectation: Audience size

If you're targeting audiences based on demographic or profile criteria that people don't regularly shift
in and out of (e.g. gender, age), your fixed audience size may only ever expand once consumer trends
increase the total interest in your product.
For example, say a new fashion comes into style and you're an apparel company well-suited to take
advantage of it. Congrats, your potential audience just got bigger!
Or, say your largest competitor spends big on national advertising to move millions of people higher up
your mutual LPA. Congrats, your audience just got bigger.
But, in contrast, if you're targeting all people who work in sales jobs in the U.S., how many people do
you think are newly falling into that demographic each week? Not enough to keep your audience
growing at a rate that outpaces fatigue.
Expectation: Revenue per user

The best approach in defending against ad fatigue actually has nothing to do with Facebook or even
your market. It has to do with your business: Have a high LTV.
LTV stands for lifetime user value. It's the sum of how much you earn per average user throughout the
duration of their engagement with your business.
Say, for example, you're a SaaS product that's used by customers for an average of 6 months before
people leave. And, say, you charge $10 per month. Your LTV is $60.
Or, if you're an ecommerce business, say the average customer purchase up to 3 times throughout the
lifetime of your company so far. And let's say the average order price is $100.

Then your LTV is $300.
Simple, right?
So here's the cool thing: You know how much you can pay to acquire a new user through ads based on
your LTV. The rule of thumb is that you should pay no more than 1/3rd of your LTV to account for
expenses and overall variability.
So now you have some idea of whether you're running ads profitably.
But even cooler is that if your LTV is much higher than just a 3x multiple of your current cost per
customer acquisition (CPA) from ads, then fatigue isn't currently a roadblock for you.
Because fatigue simply means that people are tiring of your ads to the extent that they click less often
— not that they don't click at all.
They will still click, but it'll just cost you more. But if you have a lot of legroom for that cost to go up,
then you're still in the green.
If you have enough LTV legroom and if your audience is nearing 10 million or higher, you can likely run
for Facebook ads for many months.
Expectation: Facebook ads versus Instagram ads

Instagram has a large young audience that's not as engaged on Facebook. On average, the audience is
both more technical and more willing to engage in an ecommerce transaction.
These two plusses combined with Instagram's highly visual feed make it perform better than Facebook
(lower cost per acquisition) for most ecommerce goods. Just make sure your site is mobile optimized
— because Instagram traffic is all from mobile.
Takeaway
So now you understand what we meant by the opening sentence of this chapter: The best approach in
defending against ad fatigue is having a high LTV.
Increase your LTV by increasing your revenue per user. Do this by charging more, improving on-site
conversion rates, adding more products for customers to purchase, and improving your customer
referral rate.
In summary, this goes back to what we said in this handbook's intro: the more optimized the end of
your growth funnel is, the more efficiently you can spend on acquisition.
Before we start

There are three pieces of housekeeping before we start this Facebook ads guide:
• Open our ad management spreadsheet and click to the URL Builder tab. This tab helps you
name and organize your Facebook Ads. Reference it as you read this chapter.
• Before you can create your first Facebook campaign, you’ll need to make a Facebook Business
page. It’s free. Go do that now if you haven’t.
• You then create a campaign from your Business page. When you do so, Facebook asks for the
campaign's marketing objective. Choose Conversions (or App Installs — if you’re advertising
for mobile).
And here's an acronym cheat sheet:
• CPM — Cost-per-thousand. How much you pay per 1,000 ad impressions.

• CPC — Cost-per-click. How much you pay for each ad click.
• CTR — Click-through-rate. Percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it.
• CPA — Cost-per-action. The average amount spent to reach a conversion goal.
• LTV — Lifetime value. How much revenue the average user brings you.
• B2B — Business-to-business. A company whose product caters to other businesses.
• B2C — Business-to-consumer. A company whose product caters to consumers.
• SaaS — Software-as-a-service. A company whose product exists in the cloud.
This chapter provides a tremendous amount of knowledge, but you should implement knowledge for it
to stick. So if you're not ready to start a Facebook or Instagram campaign, we suggest you skim the
remainder of this chapter for now ✌
Ad campaign structure
As discussed on the Channels page, here's the structure of an ad campaign:
Campaign → Ad set → Ad
• Campaign — Create one campaign per product or per product category you’re advertising. For
example, you'd have one campaign for your men's jacket line and one campaign for your
women's jacket line. Or one campaign for your enterprise SaaS product and one for your small-
to-medium business product.
• Ad set — If, for example, you're selling men's socks, you may have two valuable audience
segments: young men and middle-aged men. For each, you may pitch distinct or overlapping
value props, such as "quality", "beautiful," or "unique."
o You then create one ad set per combination of value prop and audience segment. This
keeps your targeting and messaging controlled so the set's ads can find the best wording
and imagery for pitching the value prop to the audience segment.
• Ad — Within an ad set, create one ad per combination of unique copy and imagery.

Keep this hierarchy in mind as we go through the coming sections.
Ad campaign lifecycle
First, we want you to have a high-level view of how campaigns are executed.
Here are the steps to setting up a campaign:
1. Setup conversion pixel

Working with an ad channel always begins by setting up the channel’s conversion pixel (linked is
Facebook’s). This is the JavaScript code snippet that reports conversions occurring on your site back to
the channel.
This is how the channel knows which ads are ultimately performing best — since cost-per-click is just
an intermediary metric that isn't necessarily correlated with conversion.
2. Determine budget
Set your budgets for each set high enough for your ads to individually reach 3,000-5,000 impressions.
You need a significant sample size like this for your cost-per-click (CPC) to stabilize. CPC is how you
determine in the short term which ads perform best.
Unless you've used a channel before and you know how much your audience costs to target, you can't
predict this budget upfront. So start with a few hundred dollars per campaign, watch your metrics
daily, and scale the budget as needed to reach 3,000-5,000 impressions for ads showing high
clickthrough rates relative to your others.
As you see consistent CPC or CPA numbers that are financially viable (we'll talk more about this),
incrementally increase your budget as high as you're comfortable with.
3. Create initial ad sets and their ads

For each audience segment (e.g. mothers, software engineers, men under 40 with any job title), create
an ad set for every value prop you want to individually pitch them.
For each ad set, create ads presenting the same value prop in distinct ways — through differing copy
and imagery.
The more distinct ads you have, the less frequently users on profile-targeted channels see the same
ads on repeat, so the longer it takes for them to tire of your product!
4. Monitor
Check the ad channel's dashboard once daily to see which ad set audiences, ad set value props, and ad
copy/imagery combinations perform best.

If you've reached a significant sample size of 3,000-5,000 impressions, turn off the ads with much
lower click-through-rates (CTR’s) and/or cost-per-customer-acquisitions (CPA’s) relative to the others
in its ad set.
If some ads perform much worse than their siblings and they've only reached, say, 1,500 impressions,
you can turn those off too instead of wasting money on them.
5. Optimize
Begin tweaking your highest-performing ads with changes to their copy and creative. Similarly, tweak
your ad sets' targeting settings.
Duplicate your ad sets and ads (keep the old ones running) when you do this. You want to see how
your tweaks simultaneously compare to their originals.
Build the habit of archiving all your work so you can look back at your costly-to-acquire advertising
data when setting up new channels in the future!
When tweaking, you're ultimately looking to lower your CPA numbers and to increase total conversion
volume.
Depending on your total audience size, as your ads continue running for weeks and beyond, audiences
will tire of seeing your ads and will increasingly turn a blind eye to them. Your CTR’s will steadily drop.
At this point, your realistic goal may not be to drastically improve CPA's through minor tweaks, but to
prolong your current CPA: keep your ads fresh by switching them up and running at least 4 or 5 per ad
set.
If your ongoing optimizations cannot prolong your CPA’s at financially acceptable levels (they should be
below one third the average amount you earn from a customer's lifetime engagement with you), it’s
time to pause your campaign.
In a few weeks' time, you can resume the campaign (as-is). Audiences will be less tired of you. Like
unplugging a router and plugging it back in, this often actually works.
6. Run ongoing experiments

As you're optimizing the campaigns that already work, you should also test brand new targeting, value
prop, copy, and imagery combinations.
Your work never ends.
If you don't continually experiment, we guarantee you're leaving better CPA's and conversion volume
on the table. And your audiences will sooner fatigue of your ads.

We recommend setting aside 10% of your budget for weekly or bi-weekly experiments.
7. Retarget
Segment people who visited your site but didn’t convert into a separate audience. (Using conversion
pixels, every major channel allows you to easily do this. These are called "customaudiences.") When
retargeting your custom audience, you can hit them with a unique set of ads that appeal to their
newfound awareness of your product and its benefits.
Consider, which new angles can you pitch them to tip them over the edge?
We talk a lot more about retargeting on the upcoming Facebook Ads page. Hold tight!
Ad sets: Segmentation
Here's when to create an ad set.
Ad sets are the level at which you group ads by the value prop they pitch plus choose a unique
audience for that value prop.
On Facebook, it's critical you don't group multiple value props into a single ad set.
Because, when you launch your ads, Facebook begins assessing the CTR for all ads in a set then stops
serving the worst-performing ones.
So, if you have ads pitching multiple value props in the same ad set, even the slightly lesser-performing
value props may never be seen by your audience.
This isn't acceptable: Audiences need to be pitched a product from multiple angles so that your
messaging stays fresh. Even if some value props perform worse, it'll boost performance in the long run
to not have audiences see the same value prop on repeat.
Ad sets: Targeting
Beyond housing a value prop, an ad set also targets an audience.

Let's run through the criteria by which Facebook allows you to target audiences.
Targeting's effect on ad costs
A quick note on the cost impact of the audiences you target.
Although the key ad metrics you're tracking are cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA), this
is not actually how Facebook bills you under the hood.

Facebook calculates its CPC pricing based on the number of impressions it took to lead to the click. And
the cost of each impression varies significantly based on the total advertiser demand for that audience
member.
This is based on their demographics and interests.
Some audiences are more expensive due to key demographics (e.g. education, age, geography) that
advertises broadly prefer.
Businesses targeting, say, lower-to-middle income 40 to 60-year-old women in rural American states,
will be paying much less per impression than businesses targeting mid-twenties software engineers in
major municipalities.
In short, for some businesses, cost-per-impression will be disproportionately expensive.
Targeting: Geography
Geography is the biggest demographic determinant of cost-per-impression. It's also the criterion that
most limits your total audience volume.
So let's begin our ad set targeting with a discussion on geography.
First, note you'll probably want to select the "People who live in this location" dropdown option. This is
in contrast to people who "are in" or "were recently in" your list of locations. Usually, the purpose of
targeting by geography is to show your ad to people who have homes in that location and live there
most of the year.
Second, know that countries split into three unofficial advertising "tiers:"

Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3
Australia Austria Brazil

Canada Belgium South Korea
Denmark Czech Republic India
France Estonia
Germany Finland
Netherlands Hong Kong
Norway Ireland
Sweden Israel
United Kingdom Italy
United States New Zealand
Poland
Singapore
South Africa
Spain
Switzerland
• Tier 1 — These are the most expensive countries to target. (They cost within 20% of each other.)
They're expensive because their populations are more likely to buy higher priced goods online.
So they're most in demand by advertisers.
o Of these countries, target all the ones your business is capable of servicing. Then
examine your ad performance to determine which perform poorly. Remove them.
• Tier 2 — This is the next tier down. Their populations are less likely to speak English fluently,
which limits their appeal to most big-budget advertisers. Plus they're less likely to have high
purchasing power — or are simply less likely to purchase goods online.
o Only target these if you have a specific reason to do so or feel like experimenting.
• Tier 3 — One tier down, you should only target these countries if you have a specific reason to
do so. And you generally only want to target their capital cities; avoid wasting money on the
outskirts that are less likely to be able to afford your goods.
• Remaining countries — The unlisted countries generally have negligibly small populations or are
developing countries with negligible purchasing power, Internet access, and/or buying intent.
Always begin by targeting countries you believe are most likely to convert. This keeps your spending
efficient while you test your initial set of ads. Over time, you'll add or remove countries based on the
performance you see. (We’ll cover this soon.)
Targeting: Language

Explicitly target English speakers if you're targeting countries where the majority doesn't speak English.
(Or target English anyway just to be safe at the expense of slightly narrowing your audience volume.)
If you are targeting an English-speaking country such as the US or the UK, leave this field blank. The
odds are nearly everyone seeing your ad can understand English well enough to get the gist and
consider whether they want to convert.
If you do explicitly target "English," you're missing out on Facebook users who have their UI language
set to something other than English but do in fact speak English.
Targeting: Gender and age

As you can see in the screenshot above, Facebook (and most ad channels) allow you to restrict
targeting by gender and age as well.
Unless you have a specific reason, avoid restricting by these criteria for your initial ad set tests. Instead,
keep your targeting broad then parse your ads' performance by the gender and age groups of the
people who converted.
Because you always want to let the data tell you who to target. Don't go on gut feel. See which
demographics had the lowest CPA then refine your targeting from there.
That said, there is a rule of thumb: For most products that aren't explicitly targeting a younger
demographic, targeting ages 22 to 50 keeps you within the bounds of those who are most likely to
make Internet purchases.
Targeting: Devices
Country, gender, and age are the first major targeting decisions. Usually they're self-evident decisions
— you should have some idea of who's eligible to buy your product.

The next broad and rather self-evident targeting decision to make is device types: desktops (and
laptops), smartphones, and tablets.
Here's what this restriction looks like in the Facebook Ads Manager:
If you're advertising a mobile app, obviously advertise to mobile devices.
Facebook allows you to target just Android or iPhone devices, which is critical to spending efficiently if
your app is in only one of those app stores.
For web-based products and services that are also accessible via mobile, it's worth testing mobile
targeting too because, if the CPA's are acceptable, it'll expand your audience volume. Many people
only use Facebook on their phone.
Mobile targeting for non-mobile apps

When you target mobile devices for non-mobile apps, be cognizant of three things:
• Potentially weaker paid conversion — Compared to desktop users, mobile users may be less
likely to take out their wallets. It's more of a pain to enter your credit card details on your
phone. Or to navigate your signup form for that matter.
• B2B vs B2C — During work hours, mobile Facebook users are particularly unwilling to sign up
for B2B services. They're on their phone because they want a break from work. So B2B
companies will often wind up excluding mobile targeting.

• Site responsiveness — If your site isn’t legible and browsable on mobile, conversion rates will
plummet. Further, if your signup flow is a multi-step hassle (e.g. one with many form fields)
mobile users will have even less patience than desktop users.
Even if you can't check off all three considerations, it may still be worth targeting mobile as a means of
extending your total audience volume. (If your audience is small to begin with). In this case, try to do
whatever you can to at least get an email (or lead submission) from the mobile visitor so that your
ensuing email marketing campaign can try to convince them to fully sign up and pay.
If you discover mobile devices are profitable for you, but you'd like to better optimize their targeting
and creative for the mobile experience (good idea!), duplicate your ad sets so you can target desktop
and mobile independently.
Targeting breakdowns
The targeting criteria we've covered so far can all be assessed within the Facebook Ads Manager
dashboard.
Meaning, if you target multiple genders, ages, and countries in a single ad set, Facebook will let you
"breakdown" your CPC and CPA metrics by each of these criteria so you can compare how they
individually perform.
But, for the remainder of the targeting criteria we’re covering, Facebook will not allow you to perform
breakdowns. This means each of the upcoming decisions you're going to make must result in a new ad
set so you can track that decision's performance across its alternative values.
Targeting: Profiles
With your demographic and device targeting in place, your next step is determining your primary
means of profile targeting:
• Profile data — Either target the attributes of people's Facebook profiles via:
o Their interests (e.g. food, fashion, photography).
o Their behaviors (e.g. frequent flyers, high-end diners).
o Their job titles (e.g. engineering, sales).
• Lookalikes — Or, target "lookalike audiences," which are tailored audiences Facebook
algorithmically generates for you based on your sample list of customers.
As mentioned, because the Facebook Ads dashboard doesn't let you filter by interest and lookalike
targeting, you should create separate ad sets for each group of interests, behaviors, job titles, and
lookalikes.

Let's begin with profile data targeting then we'll move onto lookalikes.
Targeting: Profile data

Here's an incomplete preview of the profile data Facebook allows you to target:
1. Profile data: Interests

Facebook determines user interests based on Pages Liked and links shared.
Examples of interests include:
• Activities and initiatives — Fishing, drawing, video games, veterans' support, etc.
• People and entertainment — Tom Cruise, Barack Obama, Rick and Morty, etc.
• Companies and organizations — Nike, Nintendo, Red Cross, etc.
Capitalism reality check: Most features Facebook releases are designed to learn more about you. Did
you think Facebook's introduction of News Stories was purely about getting you to spend more time on
Facebook? Nope. It was also about tracking which stories you click on so they can tailor your ad
targeting.
Our motto for interest targeting is keep it niche.
Because a common mistake novice Facebook advertisers make is targeting high-level interest
categories, such as Food, Web Design, or Marketing — instead of their niches such as BBQ, Responsive
Web Design, and Digital Marketing, respectively.
Consider this: If someone once Liked "Food" on Facebook, or some other broad topic, that's a very
weak indicator that they're food fanatics. Which is probably what you actually want to target to
increase conversions for your cooking appliance ads.
The other problem with broad targeting is that it makes it hard to know which niches are performing
best. As we mentioned, Facebook won't breakdown interests for you. So unless you explicitly target
Indian food and Japanese food in separate ad sets, you won't know which cuisine-based interest is
converting best.
As another example, if we were advertising a web design tool, we could target people who like related
niche products like Sketch and Invision. These people will probably convert better than those who
Facebook lumps into the "Web Design" category of interests.
This tactic ties back to the Ladder of Product Awareness from Ad Copywriting: Anyone who likes niche
design tools is on an elevated step of the LPA. They likely know more about web design than someone
who once shared a blog post about web design.

One more example because of how important this is: If you're targeting golf fans, don't target people
who like Tiger Woods. Everyone likes Tiger. Target people who Like one of the lesser-known golfers.
Those are the real golf fans.
Are you an ecommerce business? Then target the Facebook Pages of similar
products. To generate a list of these, browse your product category on Amazon!
2. Profile data: Job titles

Either in conjunction with or alternative to interest targeting, you can also target people based on their
job title or job category.
Examples of job titles include Digital Marketing, Software Engineer, CTO, etc.
Examples of job categories include Sales, Marketing, Business Operations, Computers and Technology,
etc.
Unfortunately, there are endless variations in how people title their jobs on their Facebook profile, e.g.
Salesperson, Sales Associate, Sales Manager, and so on. Fortunately, after we enter just one of these
titles into the Facebook ad set creator, related job titles appear. Spend a few minutes checking off the
relevant ones.
Job targeting is typically reserved for B2B companies who know the exact job types that most benefit
from their product.
Otherwise, if you're a B2C company, it’s generally more efficient to rely on interest targeting. It leads
to much bigger audiences. Because few people bother to list their work details on Facebook. And if
someone doesn't list them, you can't target by it!
(This is why LinkedIn is a great channel for B2B advertising. We discuss this on Channels.)
Capitalism reality check #2: You know how Facebook keeps nagging you to fill out your profile data?
It's not because they want to help your friends to know more about you. It's because they want more
data advertisers can target you by.
3. Profile data: Behaviors
You can also target Facebook users based on their "behaviors," which are categories Facebook lumps
users into based on their online and offline activity.
Examples include:
• Users who recently purchased a car

• Users who donate to charities

• Users who frequently purchase goods online
• Small business owners
Facebook appears to regularly improve the quality of these audiences. So they're definitely worth
testing. (Just remember to make a new ad set for each one!)
Here's our rule of thumb with behavioral targeting: If we’re targeting a behavior with a large audience
(>5 million people), we’ll pair it with interest targeting to reduce it to under 5 million.
Because if the audience is that big to begin with, it's probably too loosely defined to convert well.
(Facebook will estimate your audience size for you during ad set creation.)
Targeting: Lookalikes
So we're done with the first type of Facebook audience targeting: profile data.
This next type is quite neat.
It consists of dynamically generating audiences: You provide Facebook with a list of email addresses of
people. Then Facebook algorithmically analyzes them for commonalities, e.g. demographics and

interests. They then search for these commonalities among a broader audience to piece together a
tailored list of 1 million or more Facebook users who would be ideal for you to target.
(Facebook does a great job with lookalikes. We’re always impressed by the audience quality. So it's
always worth testing lookalikes alongside interests and behaviors.)
The initial list you provide Facebook is called a "seed" audience. It'll typically be your existing userbase
exported through your email marketing tool, such as MailChimp.
You want your seed to be the most down-funnel audience you have that's at least 1,000 people. Down-
funnel means closer to the purchase conversion event. So if you don't yet have 1,000 purchasers, back
one step out to registered users. If you don't yet have 1,000 registered users, back out to an earlier
event such as add-to-cart (if you're an ecommerce company). And if you still don't have that, you can
go off your website visitors.
The list Facebook then outputs back to you is called the lookalike audience.

After you've uploaded your seed audience, you're presented with a slider to choose how broad you
want Facebook's audience extrapolation to be. (See the above image.) Stick with the default value of
1%, which is 2M people for U.S. audiences.
You should consider going up to 5M only if your product broadly appeals to most consumers, e.g. food
and apparel. Otherwise, your lookalike's focus will be diluted.
That's actually all there is to the lookalike generation process!
But, before uploading your seed audience, there are two things to keep in mind:
Seed size
If your seed audience is smaller than 1,000 people, you won't be giving Facebook enough data to
significantly identify commonalities.

Conversely, if your list is much bigger than 5,000, you're probably not segmenting out your best users
(those with the highest LTV). Think about it: Wouldn't you much rather have a lookalike generated
from your best users than from the average of your users?
So keep your seed audience to your best 1,000+ users.
Customer segmentation
Don't lump all your users into one seed audience if their purchases vary greatly.
For example, if you're an apparel company, don't generate a seed audience from a combined list of
men and women customers. They are vastly different apparel consumers and should be targeted
separately.
Instead, generate seeds for each gender then independently target the ensuing lookalikes.
(Remember to ensure you have at least 1,000 people in each seed.)
Lookalikes: Sourcing seeds audiences

You can provide Facebook with a seed audience in one of two ways: contact data or real-time web
traffic.
Contact data consists of uploading a CSV of email addresses or phone numbers. Because this is a one-
time process (although you can add to this list later), this source is considered static.
Compare that to this next seed source: real-time web traffic. Here's how it works: You tell Facebook to
create a lookalike out of the people who visits a particular set of pages on your site (such as anyone
who views your post-checkout page if you want to narrow in on converted users).
You define your set of pages using Facebook conversion pixel.
Real-time traffic has the benefit of constantly accruing more traffic for Facebook to analyze. So we
recommend using these instead of customer email exports.
Not every contact will match

Regardless of which seed source you use, Facebook will not be able to find a profile for every contact.
Even if all your contacts are on Facebook, they might have signed up for Facebook with a different
email address than the one you have on file.
(Especially if you only have their work email!)
This is why we suggest at least 1,000 people for seed audiences. It buffers against low match rates.

Audience overlap
Once you've generated multiple lookalikes, you're at risk of producing overlap between them.
Oftentimes, the overlap is up to 40%.
If you then targeted identical ads to both lookalike's ad sets, 40% of your audience would be getting
double-spammed! The end result is higher CPC's.
To isolate against overlap, use Facebook's audience exclusion feature during ad set creation: exclude all
other lookalike audiences from the current lookalike ad set.
Here's a walkthrough of setting up a lookalike audience within Facebook Ads if you want to dive
deeper.
Ad overexposure
You want to prevent ("exclude") people who've already clicked your ad from seeing it again within the
ensuing 3 days. You also want to prevent people who have yet to click from seeing your ad more than
once per day.
This gives people a break from your messaging, and boosts conversion in the long run.
If you forget to do this, here's what happens:
• Audiences mentally block out your ads. Future advertising will be less effective.
• Audiences will use Facebook's ad blocking features to permanently hide all your ads from
their Newsfeed. As we'll learn, Facebook considers this a negative engagement signal, and
will penalize your ad for it: Your ad will be doomed to fewer impressions.
Here's how you setup 3 day exclusions: Use the Facebook conversion pixel to create a custom audience
that logs your real-time web traffic for the past 3 days. This audience will then be available in the
Exclusions dropdown list when you edit ad sets.

And here's how you prevent people from seeing your ad more than once per day: Keep your ad set's
budget lower than it could reach daily (this is bounded by your total audience size) so that it takes
longer for each person to see your ad again.
In other words, use a purposefully low budget as a throttle on impressions.
When you modify your ad set's budget, Facebook estimates what percentage of your total audience
will see your ad daily. In general, aim for 10% or lower.

Ad settings
Here are the remaining settings you can configure per ad set:
Setting: Scheduling
The times of day your ads are shown.
• B2B — If you're a B2B company, you'll typically want to deliver your ads during the Monday to
Friday 9-5 timeslot to avoid spending inefficiently.
o We've found B2B CTR's to decrease up to ~25% outside of work hours.
o Plus, your sales team will be off work, which means they'll have longer turnaround times
for lead outreach. That'll hurt close rates.
• Technical requirement — To enable ad scheduling, you'll need to switch your campaign's
budget type from daily spend to campaign spend.
o Switching to the latter entails setting a lifetime budget and end date for the campaign
and letting Facebook determine how much is spent daily.
o This is a real hassle: Each time the campaign ends, you have to extend the deadline and
proportionally increase the budget to maintain your previous daily spend.
Setting: Platforms

Facebook owns multiple "platforms," including Facebook proper plus Instagram.
• Don't run Instagram and Facebook ads in the same campaigns. Treat them separately since
their ads are displayed differently and the user behavior across platforms differs.
• If you're targeting desktop devices on Facebook, only keep the Feed ads option checked.
These are the ads that show up in the Facebook Newsfeed. Ignore Right Column ads as they
convert terribly. No one clicks them, so they're only useful for brand marketing — and
sometimes retargeting (which we cover shortly).
• If you're targeting mobile devices, you'll see the Audience Network option. Test it out. These
are Facebook's third-party mobile app partners that display your ads within their apps.
Sometimes these perform very well.
Setting: Optimization for ad delivery

You can have Facebook algorithmically optimize your ads for Conversions or Link Clicks. Default to
Conversions and choose the event that happens at least 25 times per week per ad set. That provides
Facebook with enough data to optimize based on the audiences most likely to perform that event in
your funnel.
Doing this puts Facebook in the driver's seat: You're letting them show your ads only to demographic
segments and platforms (e.g. Instagram versus Facebook) where your audience is most likely to
convert.
They base this on the data they track from your conversion pixel: You choose an event you're tracking
(e.g. lead, sign up, purchase) that occurs frequently enough (a few dozen times per week) that
Facebook can extrapolate user demographics from.
This means your total audience size shrinks. Because Facebook will only serve your ads to the best-
performing segment of it.
This is a good thing if you have a huge audience (well over a million) and need ways to reduce it so that
you run ads cost effectively.
Other ad set settings

Setting: Conversion window
We’re not going to get too into the weeds on this one.

• Here's where you can specify the window during which a website visitor is counted as having
view-through converted after being served your ad but not clicking it.
• We like to set this to "7 days click and 1 day view." This will count a conversion as anyone
who clicked your ad then converted within 7 days. Or anyone who merely saw your ad and
converted within a day.
Setting: Bid amount

Keep Bid Amount set to its default value of Automatic to have Facebook automatically determine what
the optimized cost per 1,000 ad impressions (CPM) should be.
Facebook will be better than you at figuring out the balance between A) not overbidding for
conversions from disproportionately expensive audiences and B) not underbidding such that you don't
get any impressions at all.
That said, there's one good reason to switch Bid Amount from Automatic to Manual:
• First off, we always start with Bid Amount set to Automatic because we can't predict what
the average CPM is for an audience. (An audience's averaged CPM varies significantly based
on how much the audience members are in demand by other advertisers.)
• Once ad performance data trickles in, we may switch from Automatic to Manual to bound our
CPM bid: If our CPA's are high and we want to pay less at the expense of lesser conversion
volume, then we'll set our target CPM below the audience average.
• We'll start with a 20% decrease and continue decreasing daily until we reach a profitable CPA.
• At some point, you won’t be able to keep doing this — you'll be bidding so low that you'll
barely get any impressions. So consider this a last resort in CPA reduction. Your primary
resorts should be improving your targeting, ad copy, and landing pages!
Setting: Delivery type

This is the speed at which Facebook delivers your ads.
• You can show your ads as quickly as possible ("Accelerated"), but this is only optimal for a
time-sensitive product sale ending the same day (e.g. a Black Friday sale).
• Otherwise, stick with "Standard:" By having your ad impressions spaced throughout the day,
Facebook will deliver ad impressions at cost-efficient times.
Facebook Newsfeed Ads w/ Examples

If you use an ad blocker, disable it for Facebook.com. Beginning today, you want to see
Facebook Ads: You'll watch for copy and creative ideas to steal.
A Facebook Newsfeed ad consists of several components. And there are infinite ways to tailor each.
For the sake of simplicity, we’ll share the template we use for 90% of our Facebook ads.
We recommend you similarly standardize your ads. Standardization makes A/B testing individual ad
components more manageable. There's less variation to account for.
Let's run through the components that make up the Facebook's Newsfeed Ad. Then we'll take a look at
a few Facebook ad examples.
Newsfeed ad: Text and Media

The Text component of the Newsfeed ad unit appears above the creative.
In two clear and concise sentences, describe the problem you solve or the value of the product you
offer. You can be a bit wordy here in service of contextualizing the problem. But do not ramble on
about all your features and value props.
Stay focused on the best.
Examples from our clients:

• For Clearbit (a sales prospecting tool) — "Need to track someone down? Enter any company,
and we'll show you the employees' email addresses."
• For Webflow (a visual site design tool) — "Design sites visually. Get all the power of coding
without any of the engineering hassle."
• For Kip (a therapy service) — "We've found the best 14 therapists in San Francisco. If you
have ongoing challenges, talk them through with an expert who deeply cares."
• For Vanhawks (bikes) — "Our tech bike raised $1,000,000 on Kickstarter — because it's
amazing. We built lights into the handlebars that light up to indicate when to turn."
Further, Facebook Newsfeed Ads can either contain an image or a video as their creative. In either
case, your choice of multimedia serves the same two purposes: grab the visitor's attention then get
them to read your Text.
For more advice on ad copywriting and creative, read the Ad Copywriting page.
Videos

Facebook video ads often perform better than image ads. And, even if they only perform on-par,
they're at least an alternative ad type to keep your ads fresh!
Here's what you need to know about running video ads — on any ad channel:
• Optimize the placeholder image — Video ads allow you to use a static image as a placeholder
before someone hits the play button. Treat this placeholder with the same attention to detail
as you would a standard image-based ad: optimize it for conversion with all the same
principles.

• Get to the point ASAP — Remember, unlike TV advertising, audiences aren't being forced to
watch your video ads. They're skeptically opting in, which means you better entertain them
immediately to retain their attention: Make the first 5 seconds extremely interesting and try
to keep the video under 30s total.
• Prioritize demos over lifestyle marketing — When aiming for conversion, prioritize demoing
the product over broad lifestyle marketing: Show the product in action and skip the fluff. For
SaaS software, this could mean a screen recording of the product. For physical products, this
could be a 360 of the product followed by close-up shots of it in action.
• Use closed captioning — Never design ads that only work when audio is enabled. Assume
users won't have headphones and that they'll be relying on in-video text overlays and/or
closed captioning to summarize any non-self-evident value props. Facebook provides a closed
captioning feature. It's really easy to use.
Newsfeed ad: Headline
This text appears below your ad's creative (i.e. image or video).

If there's no text in your image, enter your primary ad copy here. (Read how to generate ad copy on
the Ad Copywriting page.)
If you do have copy in your image, consider using this component to provide social proof, such as how
many customers you have, who your marquee clients are, how many app store reviews you've
received, and so on.
If you have none of these metrics to show off, instead pitch a secondary value prop.
Examples of social proof:
• "Used by Zendesk, Salesforce, and Optimizely."

• "5/5 stars in the Google Chrome store!"
• "Over 5,000 photographers love us."
Examples of using a secondary value prop if you lack social proof to share:
• Clearbit: "The most up-to-date email address database in the world."

• Kip: "Vetted therapists with proven track records."
• Vanhawks: "A carbon frame for better impact resistance. Stay safe."
Newsfeed ad: Display URL (optional)

This is the cosmetic display URL that reassures visitors they'll wind up on your company site when they
click your ad. (In contrast to some unrelated, spammy destination.)
Just enter your domain name — as opposed to your full landing page URL — to keep this element
looking clean.
Newsfeed ad: Real URL

This is your real landing page URL.
To track ad performance in your web analytics tool, each ad should have its own URL parameters
("UTMtags"). These will help you associate individual ad clickers with long-term user behavior, such as
LTV, instead of just short-term conversions.
Use our ad management spreadsheet to automatically generate clean UTM tags.
Newsfeed ad: Link description (optional)

This is the final piece of text you can include in your ad. Of all the text components, this is the least
read by audiences. So don't put your most important text here.
Our recommendation is to use it to address a significant product objection you know hurts conversion
rates. Otherwise, if you have nothing critical to say, leave this section blank so your ad appears less like
a cluttered mess in someone's Newsfeed.
Less clutter means your other text components get more focus!
Newsfeed ad: CTA button

This is the button at the bottom of the ad that people click to visit your site. (They could alternatively
click the ad's image, which is more common.)
Generally, you should only use the "Learn More" and "Shop Now" CTA texts. And only use Shop Now if
you're an ecommerce site. All other CTA texts convert worse.
Important: Do not use the "Sign Up" CTA if you're a SaaS product. This will hurt your CTR. Consider
how signing up would be very committal at this stage. Visitors don't yet know nearly enough about
your product!
Monitoring ad performance
Phewww. We're done with ad setup.
We hope you had a chance to run ads and that you saw lovely performance.
As you begin monitoring your ads, you'll need to keep track of several key metrics.
Monitoring: Metrics
You can monitor your ads in either Facebook's Ads Manager or Power Editor. The latter is better
optimized for working with many ads at once.
You monitor your ad performance in the Facebook Ads Manager. It's the default screen you arrive at
on when you log into Facebook Ads.
The default reporting columns in the Facebook Ads Manager are not ideal. We recommend using this
process to customize them as follows:
• Ad Set Name
• Amount Spent
• Delivery — The status of your ads. This warns you of ad rejections.
• Reach — This is how many distinct people saw your ad (any number of times).
• [Your conversion event(s)] — Once you setup conversion tracking, monitor it here.
• Cost per [conversion event(s)]

• Unique Outbound Clicks — "Outbound" means clicks that lead to your landing page (as
opposed to clicks that lead to your Facebook Page).
• Cost per Unique Outbound Click (All) — This is your CPC.
• Unique Outbound CTR (All)
• Frequency — How many times each Reached person has seen your ad.
• CPM — We covered this in the Bid amount section. It's how much you're paying per thousand
ad impressions.
Once you've configured these columns, click the Columns button once more and choose "Set as
Default" to save your selections.
Feel free to further customize your columns however you wish. (Study the Facebook Ads
documentation to learn the various columns.)
Ultimately, what matters most is that you're tracking your cost per conversion. Your conversion event
is usually acquiring a customer, which is your CPA.
Videos
When assessing the performance of your Facebook video ads, there are unique metrics to monitor,
including Video Watches at 50% and Video Percentage Watched.
Video Watches at 50% is your key metric for determining how many engaged watches your video
received. This is a reflection of how enticing the thumbnail image and first 15 seconds of the video are.
Optimize for this metric to increase the volume of landing page clicks that'll then be taken by people
watching your video.
Video Percentage Watched is the metric that indicates the quality of your video: The more people who
watch to the end, the more consistently engaging the video is.
If you routinely test new edits of your videoss, this is the metric you want to keep an eye on to
determine whether the edit was a success.
On average, the longer your video, the smaller Percentage Watched will be. Don't expect a lot of
people to watch the entirety of your 3 minute epic.
Monitoring: Breakdown analysis

To meaningfully assess your ads in the Ads Manager, you need to wait until you have at least 2,000
Reach per ad (number of people who've seen your ad). That tends to be a sufficient sample size for
comparing one ad's CTR to its siblings in the same ad set.
When this Reach is achieved, perform a breakdown analysis by clicking the Breakdown button next to
the Columns button in the dashboard. Then select the demographic criteria you want to segment your
ad report by.

If you notice very bad CTR's for certain genders, age ranges, devices, or regions, consider removing
them from your ad set's targeting.
You can later return to targeting these demographics with ads better tailored to them.
Until then, focus on what works in the short-term so you can prove to yourself that Facebook is going
to be a positive-ROI acquisition channel for you. And that you're successfully creating compelling ads.
Note you create different ad sets to show different ads to different devices (because targeting happens
on the ad set level), but within an ad set, you can break down performance results by different ad sets.
Without having had to create multiple ad sets.
Continuing this theme of "targeting happens on the ad set level," keep in mind Facebook does not
allow you to perform breakdowns by interests, job titles, or behaviors. Therefore, to assess the
performance of sub-audiences within those targeting criteria, you should create different ad sets for
each.
In the "Other ad set settings" section, we discussed optimizing Facebook campaign for
Conversions. If you choose this option, you don't have to manually filter out your worst
performing audience segments because Facebook will do it automatically. Although it waits
for a larger sample size than 2,000 Reach.
Monitoring: CTR versus CPA

When tracking paid user acquisition performance, we study two sets of metrics:
• Ad metrics — An ad's impressions, video views, and clicks.

• Site metrics — A landing page's page views, time on site, and conversions.
Site metrics are ultimately more important than ad metrics because they're further into the growth
funnel. They're closer to the conversion event we care about.
So we must not overvalue fantastic ad metrics without factoring in that weak site metrics may be
neutralizing them.
For example, you could write incredibly enticing ad copy that generates an enormous amount of clicks
— by promising something your landing page doesn't deliver on.
Great CTR, bad CPA. But all that matters to your revenue is CPA, so what's the point?
Conversely, you may have ads with low CTR because you're targeting tiny niches, but the few who do
click are highly likely to convert — and at higher purchase prices.

The takeaway here is don't aim for clicks for the sake of them. Attract audiences your product can
satisfy.
Therefore, we only concern ourselves with ad CTR when we're determining which ads within an ad set
are performing relatively worse. Shut those off.
Monitoring: Site metrics

Ad channels' reporting dashboards report ad engagement. But it's the job of our on-site analytics tools,
such as Google Analytics or Mixpanel, to report site engagement.
That said, once we've installed an ad channel's conversion pixel, their ad dashboard will report on-site
conversions we configure.
But their dashboards still don't tell us the full story. We don't know how many pages and which pages
visitors viewed while on our site. And we don't know which non-conversion events they took on our
site (e.g. viewed our demo video).
You want to know this. You should know which audiences are most engaged with your value props.
These are worth disproportionately putting time into optimizing.
Unfortunately, it's confusing how one gets the most out of Google Analytics. We’re not afraid to say it
overwhelms us to this day. The way it tracks data isn't always clear, so we wind up doing some
inferring — frankly, guessing — to tie all the data dots together.
At minimum, arm yourself with an in-depth knowledge of how the interface works. Go through the
free Google Analytics Academy.
Monitoring: Reporting
Ad reporting consists of configuring email digests and setting performance thresholds.
Daily emails
For each campaign, we recommend setting up a Report that emails you a daily summary of the Ads
Manager column data you specified earlier.
In these reports, you're looking for CPA's that are becoming unprofitable (i.e. greater than one third
your LTV) and whether CPC's are trending upward or staying flat.
In either case, you'll need to return to your ad set's targeting and your ads' copy and creative to
improve performance.
Automated rules

Facebook handily offers a feature entitled Automates Rules that turns off ads, ad sets, and campaigns
when they hit performance thresholds you deem unacceptable.
This helps you avoid the stress of checking your ads every few hours. Instead, when things are going
south, rest assured Automated Rules will stop you from losing money.
Then, whenever you next have spare time, you can go back in to optimize your ads.
Conveniently, the metric thresholds you specify take the average of the last few days to ensure that
normal intra-day performance variability doesn't falsely trigger your rules.

Don't set up Automated Rules for new campaigns you're still experimenting with. Only use rules to
safely scale campaigns that are already working. Otherwise, your ads will constantly be stopped and
restarted by the algorithms, which will prevent you from accruing sufficient sample sizes to know how
well your ad tests are doing.
Monitoring: Social engagement

In addition to monitoring your CTR and CPA, monitor your ads’ social engagement.
Just like an organic Facebook Newsfeed post, Facebook users can Share, Like, and Comment on your
ad. So, they can either positively (a Like) or negatively (an Angry emoji or reporting your ad) react.

Negative social reactions hurt your ad's Relevance Score, which is the metric Facebook uses to
determine whether your ad is appealing to audiences. Ads with higher Relevance Scores are shown
more often and charged at a lesser CPM cost to you.
Because Facebook cares a lot about ensuring audiences see ads they like.
Therefore, when creating ads, be cognizant of avoiding negative reactions:
• Don't be too inflammatory with your copy, e.g. don't smacktalk competitors.
• Write level-headed copy; don't make hyperbolic claims.
• Ensure you're targeting audiences likely to be receptive to your value props. Don't advertise
prom dresses to duck hunters.
If you target receptive audiences with compelling copy, your ad may will receive positive reactions,
such Likes and supportive comments. When this happens:
• Your Relevance Score increases, which means your ad is shown to more people. In turn, this
means ad overexposure will take longer to occur.
• The positive engagement doubles as social proof for your business, which helps boost CTR
and possibly conversion too.
Be careful not to modify existing ads when running new ad experiments, because modifying ads resets
their social engagement.
Just like you can delete dumb comments on your organic Facebook posts, you can delete them on your
ads too. Be vigilant about this because they hurt conversion. We check our comments daily through
the Business Notifications page.
Facebook retargeting ads

Most people who visit your site will not convert.
These non-converters aren't a lost cause, however.
In fact, they're the best possible audience to target because they already know who you are. So your
ads can narrowly focus on explaining why they should use you instead of pulling double duty also
explaining what you do. Ad focus improves CTR.
(These non-converters are on a higher step of the Ladder of Product Awareness.)
Advertising to non-converters in this fashion is called retargeting.

As long as these visitors were well-fitting audiences to begin with, retargeting is always worth your
time: Retargeted conversions tend to cost much less than prospecting conversions (first-time
targeting).
In fact, to not setup retargeting is to lose out on a single digit boost in your monthly conversion
volume! So, this isn't optional. Be prepared to spend perhaps an additional 15% on top of your
prospecting budget to cover retargeting costs.
Retargeting: The process

On Facebook, a retargeting campaign is created similarly to a prospecting campaign. There are a few
differences in your audience setup, value props, and landing pages.
We’re going to walk you through each step.
Retargeting: Audience setup

Setting up retargeting audiences is a bit convoluted. But it's not hard. Bear with us.
To maximize the efficacy of retargeting campaigns, we must create up to four custom audiences using
the Facebook conversion pixel.
1. Create a real-time traffic audience — First, using the conversion pixel (linked above), create an
audience from visitors to your site over the past 90 days.
a. If you had a lot of traffic during that period (tens of thousands or more), you can
segment or further refine this audience by narrowing into those who spent in the top
25% of time on your site.
b. These visitors are particularly valuable as they read most of your landing page copy.
They're likely further up the LPA.
2. Create a 3-day exclusion audience — Next, create another custom audience from your website
traffic. This time, constrain it to visitors from the past 3 days.
a. You will use this audience to exclude 3 day visitors from your 90 day visitors list. This
way, you'll target people who've recently been to your site but not so recently that they
wouldn't want to hear from you again just yet.

3. Optional: Create a video viewer audience — If you've been running video ads, also create a
custom audience from Facebook users who viewed at least 50% of your videos.
a. As with website visitors in the top 25% of time spent, these people have context as to
what your product does — even if they didn't click through to your site. They are
similarly qualified for retargeting.
b. This is yet another reason to run video ads over image ads: Even if you're doing a bad
job enticing people to click to your landing page, at least you can retarget video viewers
with new value props that move them further up the LPA.
c. In contrast, with static image ads, you can't retarget people who looked at your image
for a few seconds.

4. Create a converted exclusion audience — Create this fourth and final custom audience from
your site's converted visitors.
a. You can define a converted visitor as someone who triggered a custom JavaScript event
on your site, or as someone who saw a particular page on your site that is only seen by
those who've converted, e.g. a post-checkout Thank You page.
b. When retargeting, always exclude those who converted so you don't waste ad spend.
Or, if you're selling a product that can in fact be sold multiple times, create separate ad
sets to target the converted with different products and value props.
Retargeting: Ad set targeting

Here's where these custom audiences come together. You'll create a new ad set that:
• Includes A) site visitors B) 50%+ video viewers (if you run video ads).
• Excludes C) 3 day visitors and D) converted visitors.
Got it? If not, take a minute to consider the logic.
Now, there's one last thing to do when setting up a retargeting ad set: For Bid Amount, select Daily
Unique Reach (DUR) instead of the default value of Conversions.
This will instruct Facebook to only show your ads up to once per day per user. This avoids annoying
your audiences. And DUR ensures every single user on your list sees your ad.

In contrast, with Conversion targeting, Facebook will restrict targeting to just the subsets of your
audience its algorithms believe are most likely to convert.
We don't want that. We want exposure to everyone on our handcrafted retargeting list. We know they
are familiar with our company and are therefore higher on the LPA. Plus, the audience is unlikely to be
so large that we can afford to limit it.
You can also pair Daily Unique reach with an artificially low daily ad set budget to further throttle ad
exposure. The less spammed your retargeted audiences are in a given week, generally the better their
CPA's will be in the long run!
Retargeting: Value props and landing pages

Since your ads failed to convert retargeted visitors the first time around, don't show them the exact
same ads again!
Instead, pitch them new, complementary value props.
Further, if you want to go above and beyond when optimizing retargeting, not only should you show
new ads, you should also show new landing pages. Right?
Specifically, have pages that separately focus on each value prop you're newly pitching: If you couldn't
get visitors to convert with a broad focus, try going narrow.
Summary
Create campaigns, ad sets, and ads
• Campaigns — Create one prospecting campaign and one retargeting campaign for each product.
• Ad sets — Within every campaign, create one ad set per combination of value prop and
audience targeting.
o Keep your initial targeting broad to leave room for pleasant discoveries. And use a 3 day
exclusion audience to avoid inefficiently over-exposing people to your ads.
• Ads — Within every ad set, create ads that pitch the value prop with a unique combination of
copy and creative.
o Create as many ads as you think are good. If you can't brainstorm at least 5 ads per set,
you're probably not giving them enough thought. Refer to the Ad Copywriting page.
o Optionally assign URL's to your ads with the help of our ad spreadsheet. (If you're just
informally running a few ad sets and are not assessing their individual performance in a
web analytics tool, you can skip URL generation to keep things simple.)
Monitor performance

• Ads — Around ~2,000 Reach per ad is the point at which you have a sufficient sample size to
determine whether you should turn off ads with low CTR's relative to their set siblings. Ads with
CTR’s 30-40% less than their siblings should be turned off.
• Ad sets — Use Breakdown analyses in the Ads Manager or Power Editor to inform you of which
gender, geographies, and age ranges perform relatively poorly. Do this once each ad set has at
least one ad (preferably more) that has attained over ~2000 Reach.
o To reduce costs, consider removing the weak demographics from your targeting.
Optimize
• Ad volume — Over the medium-term, you want to maintain at least 5 high-performing ads per
ad set to prevent audience overexposure to any individual ad. For each ad, iteratively tweak
copy and creative to improve performance over time. Optimization is never complete.
• Ad tweaks — When tweaking ads, only change one component at a time (e.g. the image or the
Headline text) so you can identify what exactly resulted in the performance change.
o Create a new ad every time you make a major tweak. It's the only way to keep historical
performance cleanly catalogued.
• Ad set performance — If all ads in a set are performing poorly (high CPC's or high CPA's) once a
sufficient sample size has been reached, turn the ad set off. Unchanged ads don't magically
perform better with time.
o Come up with new value props to pitch and/or new audiences to target.
• Ad fatigue — Once ad fatigue sets in and your CTR's correspondingly decrease, artificially cap ad
frequency by lowering your daily ad budget.
o Then as fatigue continues becoming harder to keep at bay, and your CTR's and CPA's
reach unprofitable highs, pause the corresponding ad sets for a ~5 weeks. Give your
audience a break. Then try turning them back on. This often provides a little boost.
Retarget
• Setup your retargeting campaigns with the custom audience combinations and the Daily
Unique Reach Bid Amount.
• Retargeting campaigns should have unique ads that pitch new value props.
• If you feel like going above and beyond, you can also design new landing pages that focus on
pitching these new value props.

Congratulations!
Now you know most of what we know about acquiring customers. It took us four years to acquire this
knowledge. Then another four months to articulate it.
As we learn even more working for our clients, we update our learnings through our growth marketing
course. It represents the most up-to-date representation of our findings.
The course also covers all of the paid and unpaid acquisition channels that weren’t explored in this
playbook.
If you’d like to work with us, or simply learn more about how we help companies grow, please check
out the following links:
• Bell Curve’s Growth Agency – http://www.bellcurve.com/

• Bell Curve’s Growth Training Program – http://www.bellcurve.com/training

Bell Curve - Startup Growth Founders Playbook

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LANDING PAGE VARIANTS ............................................................................................................................................... 15

BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 3. A/B TESTING ........................................................................................................... 39

LANDING PAGE A/B TESTING........................................................................................................................................... 39

BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 4. ONBOARDING ......................................................................................................... 51

USER ONBOARDING IS CRITICAL........................................................................................................................................ 51

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 2

BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 6. MAKING ADS .......................................................................................................... 87

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE? .............................................................................................................................................. 88

BC: GROWTH GUIDE — 7. FACEBOOK ADS ..................................................................................................... 105

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 3

Who should read this

Unfortunately, this handbook is dry — because in-depth growth is technical. So we recommend

If you're brainstorming startup ideas

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 4

Growth hacking definition

Growth hacking is simply data-driven revenue maximization.

Practice what you preach.

Growth hacking versus traditional marketing

Growth hacking knowledge

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 5

• Customer acquisition gets people to your site.

Growth hacking skills

When to hire brand marketers

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 6

Who is Bell Curve?

The growth funnel

Acquisition → Conversion → Engagement → Revenue → Referral

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 7

Channels separate into two broad categories:

This handbook teaches engagement through User Onboarding.

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 8

Growth funnel loops

The key takeaways are:

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 9

Succeeding at paid channels

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 10

Succeeding at unpaid channels

• Search-engine-optimized content — Is your product something people are already Googling

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 11

Don't just focus on paid acquisition

The minimum viable growth plan

1. Build an amazing product that naturally encourages word-of-mouth.

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 12

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 13

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 14

Why this is important

So treat it as diligently as you do your product itself.

So don't stand in their way.

Landing page variants

Let's start by identifying three types of landing pages:

• Homepage — Your catch-all page for visitors of every type.

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 15

Our focus will be on your homepage. Where it all begins.

We can think about conversion as an equation:

Conversion Rate = Desire - Labor - Confusion

Here's what that looks like:

Landing page ideation process

A messaging-first approach to landing pages embraces the conversion equation:

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 16

Creating value props

Take a moment to chew on that before moving on.

Content originally produced by Julian Shapiro at www.julian.com 17

Use this process whenever you're pitching anything.