• Conduct customer, market, and competitor research

Welcome to Growth Program
This program is designed for startups that have a great product
and some initial customers. You might feel like you've crossed
the threshold and have product-market fit—or you're at least
showing early signs of it. Now it's time to focus on acquiring
customers consistently, profitably, and at scale. To do that, you
need a system in place that repeatedly generates customers.
We call this a growth engine. Throughout this program, we
give you actionable tactics that have proven to work. So you
can apply them to your business—immediately.
Program Overview
As you go through the program, you’ll develop a growth
strategy and testing roadmap tailored specifically to your
business. And you'll execute on that roadmap to produce real
growth results. This includes everything from rewriting landing
pages and optimizing your funnel, to launching multiple
acquisition channels and building a system to continuously
identify high-impact growth opportunities.
so you know exactly what you're building, who you're
building for, and how to position your product.
• Create value props so you can communicate your
value to prospective customers. This will make all of
your marketing messaging and copywriting
easier. This will be your first touchpoint with your
growth advisor.
By the end of this section, you'll have everything you need to
create a customer acquisition strategy.
Part 3: Acquisition Strategy
Now for the fun part. You'll create and submit to us a customer
acquisition strategy and we’ll design your tailored schedule for
going through the program. This is a milestone project that
will set your roadmap for the rest of the program. The
schedule will look something like this:

Your learnings will help you drive growth well beyond your
time in this program. In short, you'll do everything that a Head
of Growth (or growth agency) would do. And if you are a Head
of Growth, then our course should make your job a bit easier.

With all that said, it’s very important that you complete the
Growth Principles module first. You’ll fill out a key intake form
that will give your growth advisor context on your company’s
profile and goals. They’ll use this information to tailor their
feedback on all projects, starting with the Value Props
project where you’ll first meet your advisor upon submitting
it.

Part 1: Growth Principles

Before you work on acquiring customers, we'll teach you the

core theory. You'll start by learning how to think about
growth—and why growth is important. Then, you'll internalize
key growth concepts and frameworks. We'll explain how
companies grow.
This will set you up for success. After you read this section,
you'll realize that growth is a process—and you'll already be
ahead of 90% of founders and marketers who jump from tactic
to tactic.
Part 2: Growth Fundamentals
At this point, you'll know why and how companies grow. Now,
we'll help you build your own growth foundation.
You'll:
We'll show you how to create an optimal growth strategy—
prioritized based on your resources and constraints. Then
you'll set up and launch a growth channel and start acquiring
customers. This section covers acquisition channels in-depth.
For each channel, we'll cover:
• How the channel works
• What types of companies the channel works for
• Channel strategy
• How to build and launch the channel
• How to analyze your results and iterate
We'll help you prioritize the channels that are most likely to
work for you. So you'll only need to work on the sections that

2
apply—and avoid wasting time on channels that aren't a great Important note: we recommend disabling your ad blocker for
fit. the course. You may have issues loading certain readings or
projects (particularly in the Google Ads modules)—turning it
Part 4: Conversion & Experimentation off will solve the issue.

We'll help you create a process to turn leads into customers.

And ideally, make it repeatable so each new customer brings Growth Phases
you additional customers.

You'll: Next Steps

• Create and optimize landing pages and onboarding
flows.
• Build an email marketing engine that works on your
behalf, 24/7.
• Take a data-driven approach to see where people are
getting stuck in your funnel. Then, we'll brainstorm
fixes and intelligently prioritize them.
In the next reading, you'll create a copy of the Acquisition
Strategy Project template and then start reading through the
first chapter of the curriculum—Growth Principles. This is
where growth begins.
Alright! Let's get started.

Let's now cover some common questions on how to navigate

the program in the next reading.

How to work through the program

Within each module, you'll find Readings, Projects, and

Additional Resources.

The project is usually the most important part of each module.

It's where you actually do the work to build and scale your
growth engine. It’s not just practice or more reading. It’s where
you execute your growth strategy. You'll set up channels, write
emails, and optimize your landing pages. The projects are
where you put the program content to work.

3
1.
GROWTH
STRATEGY

4

Project: Copy the Acquisition
Strategy Template
Make a copy of this Adquisition Strategy Template and
bookmark it.
This is an ongoing project that will accompany the first few
modules and culminate with you picking a list of acquisition
channels to test. You'll read some theory, and then
contextualize the information for your company using the
template. Think of this as a worksheet that will help you
concretize your growth goals, constraints, and plan of action—
all in one handy document.
Here's an example of a completed Acquisition Strategy.
Don't worry if it looks long. You will be filling out the doc in
small chunks at a time. You’ll see instructions in specific
readings on when and how to fill out the doc.
Next steps
Continue onto the next reading in Growth Principles. You'll be
prompted to fill out Part 1 once you reach the "Project: Define
your Five Fits" reading in the Growth Fundamentals module.
Finally, you'll see instructions on how to submit the completed
doc at the end of the Acquisition Strategy module. While you
aren't required to fill every part of the template aside from
Part 5, we highly recommend doing so to get a holistic view of
the growth strategy.
Growth Principles
What Is Growth?
"A startup is a company designed to grow fast. ... The only
essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with
startups follows from growth. ... You have to know that growth
is what you're after. The good news is, if you get growth,
everything else tends to fall into place. Which means you can
use growth like a compass to make almost every decision you
face." -Paul Graham, investor, founder of Y Combinator
Growth is a widely used word, but it's often misunderstood. At
Demand Curve (and for the rest of this training), we define
growth as the output from executing specific marketing
activities. Growth is an output. It’s the Master Output. The
most important outputs for a startup company are revenue
and customers. Therefore, everything we'll cover in this
program will be directly tied to these two outputs. So if
revenue and customers are growth outputs, what are the
inputs?
The inputs are the marketing tactics and strategies you're
going to learn in this program. Think of these tactics as levers
that control a big machine. If you pull them in the wrong order,
the machine isn't going to do what you need it to do. But when
you get them right, you'll build a growth engine that will
consistently get you more customers and increase your
revenue.
Throughout this program, you're going to learn what each
lever does and which ones you should be pulling. For example,
let's say you think your company should be running Facebook
ads. Before committing to that channel, you'll need to
understand the inputs of that activity (money, time, resources)
and the desired outputs (more revenue and customers). We'll
teach you exactly how to identify, prioritize, and execute on
these growth marketing activities in future modules.
Once you understand the underlying mechanics of how growth
works, you'll realize that there are far fewer ways to grow a
company than most people think. The strategies you'll learn in
this program will allow you to generate results, regardless of
the industry, country, or size of your startup.
The type of growth you're going to learn throughout this
program is strategic, experimental, and logical.
Growth is not about:
• Jumping from one tactic to another in search of a
spike in traffic or revenue
• Spreading your limited resources thin across multiple
strategies and channels
• Frantically rushing to a new strategy or channel
because others are getting results
Growth is not about being reactive. Growth is about being
proactive and putting your effort toward activities that are
proven to align with your business model, market, brand, and
product.
Using growth frameworks like the Five Fits, Major Growth
Lanes, and Growth Loops, you'll learn how to grow your
startup, regardless of your growth experience.
Why Growth Matters
5

We work directly with thousands of startups. We're in a unique
position to gather information significantly faster than an
individual marketer or agency. Our work also gives us unique
insight into why some startups seem to grow effortlessly,
while others fail to get off the ground.
There's a commonly held belief among founders that the
number one cause of startup failure is a poor product. We've
seen our fair share of companies that fall into that category.
But there's another reason that doesn't get as much attention.
Peter Thiel says it well: “Most businesses actually get zero
distribution channels to work. Poor distribution — not product
— is the number one cause of failure.”
Failory, a company that studies why businesses failed, reports
the following:
Their study concluded: "Marketing mistakes were by far the
most common [type], and they were generally speaking the
most deadly with 69% of all mentioned marketing mistakes
being fatal." Marketing is often at the root of startup failures.
Our method puts the market first. You aren't trying to find a
market for your product; you're trying to build a product for a
specific market. But there's another important framing that
makes it even more apparent how critical marketing is to
getting traction. When we read the studies above, it's easy to
assume that the startup did in fact get their product in the
hands of the right market. But what if the startup doesn't have
a clear understanding of their market in the first place? Or
what if they know their market, but they're struggling to
leverage marketing channels to reach the right customers?
This program focuses on helping startups acquire customers
and think more strategically about growth. You'll write
landing pages, design ads, launch channels, etc. But more
importantly, we'll help you approach your market in a
holistic, validated way.
Guiding Principles of How to Approach Growth
So far, we’ve talked about what growth is and why it matters.
Now we’ll turn to a few key principles to bear in mind as you
develop your own growth strategy. These principles are
essential to remember because they’ll keep you focused on
strategy, productive learning, and achievement. Here are the
five principles we’ll cover: 1: Focus is key 2: Try fewer channels
for more concentrated growth 3: Growth = learning 4:
Leverage compounds 5: The staircase of growth
Focus is key
Summary: Focus on strategy. Not ad hoc attempts to grow.
We see too many teams spread themselves thin. They write
tweets, draft email newsletters, publish guest blog posts, etc.,
without clear knowledge of how these activities will lead to
customers and revenue. To establish focus, we're going to
help you identify and perform repeatable activities that drive
meaningful results for your revenue and customer base. You
won’t be able to find those meaningful growth activities
without testing them. Which leads us to the next principle.
Try fewer channels for more concentrated growth
Summary: Focus on getting a few channels right, to avoid
getting a lot of channels wrong.
We work with lots of founders who have adopted the
mentality that they should always be "doing more"—and doing
more faster. Especially when it comes to growth. Startups that
have hardly started marketing tell us about 10 different
channels they'd like to test. Or they ask us how they can
implement a sophisticated experimentation program so their
team can start churning out at least 20 experiments a month.
Or, on the other side of the equation, they'll excitedly tell us
how they found a channel that's consistently and profitably
generating new customers, only to immediately follow it up
with how they think they should start testing more channels in
order to "diversify." We understand where these founders are
coming from. Intuitively, it makes sense to test as many things
as possible to figure out what works. But this mentality has
some pitfalls.
Why “more” isn’t better in acquisition strategy
In the world of personal finance, we're taught that
diversification is the name of the game. Why? Because you're
trying to reduce risk by spreading your money across stocks,
instead of putting it all in a few stocks that you hope will take
off. You're probably not in a rush—retirement might be years
down the road. So diversification serves a great purpose: It
reduces risk and increases security.
Contrast that with your typical startup. You don't have 30
years. You may have enough capital to only last six months.
This is an entirely different ballgame. You likely can't survive
6
on 10% annual growth rates. You need more significant
growth, faster.
To do that, you're going to need to concentrate on only the
channels that are most likely to work for you. They’re the ones
that will kick-start your growth. It’s riskier to try too many
channels at once than it is to pick the ones that are best suited
for your product, launch them, and evaluate their performance
for continued optimization.
Fewer channels means more concentrated investment, too
It takes a lot of work (and often money) to get a single channel
to work. You're competing with many other companies for the
attention of your market. Many companies have entire teams
dedicated to one channel alone. To give yourself a chance to
succeed, you need to give a channel the time and attention it
requires.
Here's what goes into launching a single channel such as
Facebook ads:
• Prepare for launch: You'll conduct research, design
ad creatives, write copy, set up your ad account, build
your campaigns, set up pixels and conversion
tracking, create landing pages, and more.
• Launch: You'll likely be spending at least
$2,000/month (and more if you want to accelerate
your learnings). Plus, you'll be closely monitoring and
optimizing results. This takes time. And since you're
new to this, there will be a learning curve. Things
often take longer than expected.
• Iterate: If your initial test looks promising, you'll
invest more resources into putting together new
creatives and campaigns on an ongoing basis, as well
as continually analyzing results and optimizing. You
may also want to increase your spend to, say, $5,000
or $10,000/month.
Imagine if you tried to test four other channels at the same
time. Each channel requires its own research, ads, tracking,
and so on. Plus, now your initial cost has increased 5x. And
once you launch, you'll have 5x as many channels to analyze,
optimize, and continue creating new assets for. This often
leads to subpar results since your time and budget are spread
so thin. You can't give each channel the attention it requires.
Imagine that you test all five at once and do end up finding one
that works. Great, right? Possibly, but not if it took six months
of slow, watered-down results to get there. Now you've
burned through a good chunk of capital. You may not have
enough in the bank to begin investing heavily in and scaling up
your winning channel.
Our intention isn't to scare you into thinking growth is
impossible. But focus matters. Especially in the early stages of
a company's life. Let's move on from hypotheticals to how we'll
help you apply this concept throughout the program.
Acquisition channels
We're going to teach you our strategy and research
framework, which will help you identify the one or two
channels with the greatest chance of success. Your advisor will
also pull learnings from thousands of companies to identify
those similar to yours and which channels worked for them.
This is a major shortcut. You won't need to test dozens of
channels. We'll help you jump straight to the ones best suited
for your company and goals.
Experiments & A/B tests
Early on, when you have limited resources, site traffic, users,
and time, you have to be exceptionally thoughtful and
intentional with what you decide to test. Why? Again, because
we need big wins. Squeaking out 5% improvements isn't going
to cut it. Here's a simple but powerful chart to illustrate the
point:
Large companies have tons of traffic and can collect massive
sample sizes. This allows them to run lots of A/B tests that may
only move the needle by a couple of percentage points. But a
1% improvement is significant for a company like Google
(which explains their famous experiment in which they split-
tested 40 different shades of blue on a single toolbar).
It also allows them to be less thoughtful with what they test. If
you can launch and conclude a test in a single day, it makes
sense to lower your bar.
Startups don't have this luxury. Whatever we prioritize, we
need to have high conviction that it will produce major results.
Growth = learning
Summary: Apply all learnings—from successes and failures—
to future growth initiatives.
7
A good growth strategy emphasizes feedback loops. These
allow you and your team to quickly learn what’s working and
what needs to be improved. Growth is data driven. You’re
going to learn how to apply the scientific method to your
activities: hypothesis, test parameters, observation, and
analysis.
Most founders and startups struggle to learn from a failed
experiment.
Let's look at some examples:
• You launch an ad campaign, but it yields few new
signups.
• You launch a new feature, but it doesn’t improve your
customer retention rate.
• You create content for a new channel, but hardly any
sales come through.
If you can't understand WHY each failed and HOW to ensure
that it doesn't fail again, you've learned nothing. The opposite
can also be said: If something is working but you have no idea
why or how to continue growing it, you don't really have a
strategy. You simply got lucky. You'll learn how to create a
growth strategy that includes systematic experiments. Being
systematic will help you know whether or not your
experiments are worth continuing. You'll also learn how to
prioritize which activities to focus on. You'll find out how to
collect the right kind of information to know when it’s time to
double down, or when to move on to the next experiment.
Leverage compounds over time
Summary: Focus on high-leverage activities for compounded
growth.
How do startups with only a few people experience explosive
growth and win out against established industry players that
are hundreds of times bigger? They apply an extreme amount
of force to a single point of leverage. Leverage is what allows
tiny companies to create massive change.
Leverage compounds, meaning that the high-leverage
activities you do today will allow you to do more with fewer
resources in the future. And as you learned in the last principle
(growth = learning), those who learn fast begin generating
compounding effects earlier. Therefore, to create maximum
leverage, you'll want to learn as fast as possible in the
beginning, so you can turn that knowledge into growth, and
growth into leverage. Our program focuses on only high-
leverage activities. We know your time is valuable, which is
why our program focuses on HOW to execute high-leverage
activities. Soon you'll have a growth strategy that will keep you
laser-focused on the opportunities with the highest likelihood
of producing meaningful results.
The staircase of growth
Summary: Continuously optimize your business model for
your channel.
Growth often occurs in a step function, like stairs going
upward. Here's how it works:
• You'll get a growth activity to work well. You'll be
acquiring new customers consistently, and your
revenue will steadily increase.
• Then, for seemingly no reason in particular, growth
will begin to slow. You'll see all your growth outputs
plateau.
This tends to occur when you reach the upper ceiling of a
channel, market, or tactic—you've reached all the possible
customers that a single channel can reach. This is a sign that
you're ready to take a step up the staircase to the next level of
growth.
For example, let's say you're selling a pool toy, and you start
by selling door-to-door in your hometown. You know there are
10,000 pools within your town. The ceiling of selling using
door-to-door as your growth channel is about 10,000 sales.
Once you reach that point, you'll have to find another way to
reach pool owners. (You'll learn about conducting market
research and the specifics of each growth channel in later
modules, so don't worry about the details of this example.)
Now let's fast-forward: You've begun selling your pool toy
through Facebook ads. You've now sold over 100,000 units,
and things seem to be going well. But then you hit a plateau
again. Was it because of a market ceiling? Considering that
there are over two billion people on Facebook and over 10.4
million residential swimming pools in the US alone, it's highly
unlikely that you've hit a ceiling.
What's more probable is that you've hit the point of
diminishing returns. We'll explain this concept in more detail
when you learn how to scale a growth channel that's working.
But essentially it means that you're going to need to optimize
your business model to match the channel you're selling
through. In future modules, we'll share ways to identify
whether you're going to need to find a new strategy, and how
to pivot when the time comes.
Common Growth Myths and
Misconceptions
Before moving on to your first Growth Program project, we
want to take a moment to debunk a few common myths about
growth marketing. Giving any credence to the following myths
could undermine all your growth efforts, so it’s important to
acknowledge them for what they are: unfounded theories. By
rejecting the following myths, what we’re really doing is
8
reaffirming an actual growth marketing truth: Real, lasting
growth takes strategy, not luck.
Growth hacking
Around 2016, a term started to circulate around the startup
and marketing worlds: growth hacking. Essentially, growth
hacking was the act of identifying and exploiting methods to
get a lot of traffic to your site in a short amount of time. Some
"growth hackers" touted their methodology as leading to
immediate startup success. While we appreciate the exercise
of running quick experiments to find new ways to grow, there's
nuance that's important to address. The word hacking has
taken on multiple meanings that can create confusion. We
believe it leads people to think there's a single tactic that can
100x your growth overnight, and it's your job as a marketer to
go find it. That's a myth. The main reason we think this is worth
clarifying is because "tactic hunting" contradicts our first
guiding principle of growth: Focus wins.
Bouncing from hack to hack without establishing repeatable
and sustainable practices isn't an effective or enjoyable way
to run a business. We don't refer to our work as growth
hacking, or ourselves as growth hackers. Beware of those who
try to sell you on the idea that a single hack can turn your
business into an overnight success. Anyone promising a way of
getting significant growth quickly is likely quickly getting rich
off you. Instead, we'll teach you how to test ideas quickly, but
we'll also set realistic expectations about what kind of growth
to expect and how long it will take. This brings us to our next
misconception: chasing silver bullets.
The silver bullet fallacy
A "silver bullet" is a metaphor for a single activity that will
guarantee victory. Similar to growth hacking, the silver bullet
fallacy is the idea that a single marketing activity or channel
will automatically lead to exponential growth. After running
thousands of experiments on every single channel and working
with over a thousand startups, we can confidently say that we
have yet to see a single example of a silver bullet. Growth is
hard. Yes, that's a scary statement. But because growth is hard,
you'll gain a competitive advantage when you get it right.
Startups that chase silver bullets might get some short-term
wins, but growth will likely stop there. They'll lose in the long
run unless they take a more thoughtful and strategic approach.
Therein lies your opportunity: If you can grow purposefully
from the start, then you'll hold a competitive advantage. A
solid growth engine doubles as a barrier that keeps your
competition from stealing your customers.
Growth misconceptions and the startup traction
dilemma
We've covered why marketing is such a critical component of
a startup's success. But the concept of marketing or customer
acquisition isn't a secret. So why do marketing problems
continue to be a primary reason for startup failure?
We have a few possible explanations:
1. Bootstrapped startups simply can't afford top marketing
talent. The best agencies, consultants, and full-time
marketers can easily cost $10-15k/month. If hiring isn't an
option, founders must resort to learning marketing
themselves. It can be done. But it's often a long and risky
process. It can take months (if not longer) to sift through
the countless articles, blogs, and guides to determine
what's high-quality AND relevant to your business. Then
there's the issue that even some of the best materials fail
to teach you exactly how to execute. They may be useful
for pointing you in the right direction, but rarely will you
find resources that take you all the way through strategy
and step-by-step implementation.
2. It's hard to know what true marketing talent looks
like. It's not just bootstrapped startups that struggle. Even
well-funded companies that can afford top talent often
struggle to get traction. How is that possible? One
consistent pattern we've seen is companies lacking the
internal expertise to identify good marketing talent. The
truth is that just because an agency or consultant is
expensive doesn't mean they actually know what they're
doing. It takes having at least some growth knowledge to
effectively vet growth talent.
3. Top-tier marketing talent is hard to come by. And finally,
regardless of funding or even expertise, it's flat out hard
to hire top talent because they're in high demand (and
they know it). They're either making big-time salaries at
later-stage companies, or they're running their own
businesses.
None of this is meant to scare you into thinking all is doomed.
There are amazing agencies and full-time hires out there (and
we can help you find them). But we feel it's important to
explain all of this because:
a) it shows how important it is for founders/startup
teams to develop in-house expertise.
b) it explains exactly why we built this program.
Strategy based on real growth principles, not myths
We'll pair you with a growth advisor to provide the strategic
guidance and mentorship that are normally confined to only
the best (and most expensive) agencies and marketers. Our
curriculum gives you everything you need to execute at a
professional level. Our goal is to help you build a strong
growth foundation and get results for your company.
By completing the Growth Program Curriculum and executing
the projects:
9
 • You'll have designed, built, and implemented an The Five Fits Framework
acquisition strategy that is actively attracting new
customers to your startup.
Growth isn't just about marketing channels, conversion rate
• You'll have a playbook for adding new acquisition
optimization, or any other stand-alone function. Growth is
channels and a roadmap for scaling them when the
holistic—it comes when the individual parts of your startup are
time is right.
working together, in harmony. This is easier said than done.
• You'll have the knowledge to thoroughly vet new
That's why we use something called the Five Fits Framework to
marketing talent. map exactly how the different components of a company "fit"
• You'll put your startup on a trajectory that will attract together to drive (or hinder) growth.
top, in-demand talent.
• And you'll have the knowledge and toolset to lead
your company's growth efforts yourself.

We hope this makes you even more excited about your

decision to join Demand Curve. If none of the above is new to
you, then that's great—we did a good job with our own
marketing efforts.

Growth Fundamentals

In the last module, Growth Principles, we

discussed why growth is important. In this section, we'll
introduce frameworks and concepts that
explain how companies grow. After this module, you'll have
the same frameworks that the most elite growth marketers
use to systematically grow some of the biggest businesses in Founders are often floored by how powerful this framework is
the world. for decision making. The Five Fits Framework allows you to:

Once you understand these fundamental frameworks, you'll
be able to look at your startup through a new lens: a lens of
growth. This will allow you to make seemingly challenging
decisions in a structured and informed way. The fundamentals
we'll cover are the core of this program and apply to all
business models.
By the end of this module, you will have a solid understanding
of the following concepts:
• Figure out how your startup will grow.
• Skip months or years of trial and error by investing in
the right strategy early on.
• Reverse-engineer how competitors and other
companies grow (and see why some are able to grow
and others aren't).
• Identify when, why, and if you should make a change
within your startup, and how to run experiments with
purpose.

Your foundational fits will set you up for success or failure

• The Five Fits Framework: how five core components
of your company will determine your ability to grow
rapidly and consistently
• The Growth Funnel: the path your customers take
from knowing nothing about your business to buying
from you
• Acquisition Loops: a framework for understanding
why certain channels produce exponential growth,
while others result in only linear or inconsistent
results
• Growth Process: a simple system for ensuring that
every action you take is done purposefully, with the
goal of gaining knowledge to drive growth forward
down the road. It won't matter how hard you work or how
clever your tactics are. If your fits are broken, growth will be
incredibly hard.
What is the Five Fits Framework?
You've probably heard of the concept of "product-market fit":
when your product aligns with the needs of a market. You may
even be familiar with the concept of "channel-product fit":
when the channel you use to acquire customers works well
with the product you're selling. These are two examples of
"fits."

After reading this module, you'll understand critical
frameworks that explain what separates the fastest-growing
companies from the rest. And more importantly, you'll be able
to apply those concepts to your startup.
The team at ed-tech company Reforge took these concepts a
step further by explaining that there are four fits that
determine the growth potential of a product. We've built on
10
their framework and added a fifth component (brand). Here
are all five:
1. Your market: whom you choose to serve
2. Your product: what you sell
3. Your business model: how you make money
4. Your brand: how you present yourself to your market
and the world
5. Your acquisition channel: how you get new
customers
Each component has a direct relationship with the others. For
example, you might have the best product, wealthiest market,
most attractive brand, and highest-margin business model. But
if you can't figure out a way to consistently and repeatedly
acquire new customers, your startup will likely fail.
We use the term "fit" to describe the relationship between
each of the five key components. In the rest of this article, we’ll
go through how market relates to each of the other four
components. We’ll look at how market fits with product
(Market-Product Fit), model (Market-Model Fit), brand
(Market-Brand Fit), and channel (Market-Channel Fit). We’ll
then consider the relationships between product and channel
(Product-Channel Fit) and model and channel (Model-Channel
Fit). Each fit relationship is a testament to just how intertwined
marketing is with every other element of your business and its
ecosystem. Any fit that’s not a strong one reduces the chances
of growth and success.
Market-product fit
Definition: how your market fits with the product you sell.
Looking back at Failory's report on why startups fail, we see
that the most common reason is a lack of product-market fit
(34%).
Note: Product-market fit and market-product fit are
interchangeable. While it's just a matter of wording, we prefer
the latter because it serves as a reminder that when building a
product, everything starts with the market. Not the other way
around.
Founders often prioritize creating a product over choosing a
market that's in need of a solution. That's a mistake we've seen
thousands of times.
• Startups build a product they think is wonderful.
• They never find a market that has a need for it.
Even well-funded startups can crash if they don't consider the
market they're selling to before building a product.
Take Quibi, for example. The mobile-only streaming service
raised nearly $2 billion (yes, with a B) but shut down only seven
months after launch.
One of the primary reasons for this meteoric failure was a lack
of market-product fit. The target market—people with
smartphones who watch content—was massive, and yet Quibi
was only able to acquire about 72,000 paying customers. Why?
Because the problem they were looking to solve wasn't severe
enough for users to switch to Quibi from YouTube or TikTok,
where they could watch videos for free.
Conversely, the media startup Patreon was able to build a
product that their target market—YouTubers who need to find
ways to monetize their content—found valuable from day one.
Patreon's founders were creators themselves. They intimately
understood the problem they were trying to solve and whom
they were solving it for. These market insights were based on
feedback from real users and the market—not assumptions.
Patreon started with the market. They didn't build a product
and then start searching for customers.
Market-model fit
Definition: how your market fits with your product’s business
model
Your market will also dictate your pricing and business model,
and vice versa.
There are two major business-model factors we like to focus
on:
1. How much you charge: What is the lifetime value or
average revenue per year each customer generates?
2. How and when you charge: Do you charge a monthly
subscription? Do charge a one-time, upfront
payment? Or do you offer a free trial or freemium
option?
Then there are a few key market-model factors:
1. Market size: How many potential buyers are in your
market?
2. Buying power: How much is an individual within your
market able to spend?
3. Willingness to pay: How motivated are they to
spend?
Inevitably, your business model will cause friction between
your business and your customers. Your goal is to minimize
that friction.
How much you charge & market size
First, we need to look at the relationship between how much
you charge and the size of your market. If your goal is to build
a massive company, you're unlikely to succeed if you're
11
targeting a small market and charging a small amount. This
diagram from founder and investor Christoph
Janz demonstrates our point. There's a tradeoff between the
number of customers you need to acquire and the price you're
able to charge.
If you have a small market size AND low average annual
revenue per customer, that's a market-model fit issue
(especially if your goal is to build a large company). This seems
like an obvious concept, but it's something startups often get
wrong. That's likely because they think their market is bigger
than it really is, and/or they think they'll be able to charge
more than they really can.
Buying power & willingness to pay
Another critical concept: The relationship between your
market's buying power/willingness to pay and how much you
charge. Your market may desperately want your product, but
if they simply don't have the budget, then nothing else
matters. You must adapt your model for your market's buying
power. On the flip side, you may be targeting a market with
deep pockets, but it's their willingness to pay that will
determine how much you can actually charge. How much do
they need and value your product?
How and when you charge
Finally, how you charge your customers is important. Some
products are totally free to use (Twitter); others offer a
freemium plan (Grammarly and Spotify); some offer monthly
or annual subscriptions (Netflix); and some require big one-
time payments (buying a car). Each model has its own level of
friction. The lower the buying power and willingness to pay,
the more friction you'll create by requiring big, upfront
payments. You'd likely find more success by lowering your
prices, while simultaneously using a low-friction model like
freemium or subscription. Alternatively, if your
market does have high buying power and willingness to pay,
you can employ a higher-friction model, such as six-figure
annual contracts or big one-time payments.
Market-brand fit
Definition: how your market fits with your product’s brand
A "market" is a group of individuals who have certain
commonalities. A strong brand appeals to those
commonalities. We define "brand" as how you communicate
with your market. This includes colors, typography, design
style, imagery, and the language you use.
Sure, you make the creative decisions. But your brand is
ultimately your market's perception of your startup. What do
your brand elements, and your brand as a whole, make people
think—and feel? Those kinds of connotations can be extremely
powerful. Think about your own favorite brand. Why do you
like it? Chances are, the number one reason is that you love
the product. But right below that, you may realize how much
you love the brand. And maybe the brand is what made you
want to use the product in the first place. Maybe you felt a
special connection with it because of how it looked and
sounded. (This thought exercise applies to music too. Sure, you
might love Beyoncé’s music [her product] but for most people,
it’s who she is and what she stands for [her brand] that lead to
Beyhive membership. Her market loves her brand.)
Example of market-brand fit: Betterment
Let's look at how Betterment, an investing and savings app,
was able to find market-brand fit. We'll focus on the language
they use in their communications and marketing. Betterment
had to overcome a key emotional hurdle: People are
intimidated by personal finance. They're skeptical of
companies trying to manage their money. So they were
intentional in how they crafted their messaging. They kept it
professional and friendly, using approachable language like
"meet the app" and "inspiration." If Betterment's brand were
silly, unprofessional, or unfocused, they'd have a hard time
winning the trust of their market.
Brand and other fits
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Your brand needs to align with your market. But it's also critical
that your brand align with the other three components:
• Brand-model fit: E.g., Mercedes-Benz is a premium
brand. They don't sell cars for $15k. If your brand is
highly exclusive, your business model shouldn't
diminish that exclusive nature.
• Brand-product: Your product experience is an
extension of your brand. How your product looks and
works influences your brand perception.
• Brand-channel: Your brand could determine how you
approach certain channels, and it could even help you
rule out channels. If you operate in a very serious
industry like cybersecurity, you might want to avoid
informal channels like TikTok or Snapchat. If your
brand is family-oriented, there are many "adult"
placements you wouldn't want your brand seen on.
And if your brand is all about sustainability, you might
rule out resource-intensive channels like direct mail.
As you can see, brand touches every aspect of your business.
We recommend starting with finding market-brand fit, then
allowing your learnings to shape how you approach the other
brand fits.
Market-channel fit
Definition: how your market fits with your customer
acquisition channels. Your market will influence which
channels you pursue.
As we discussed in the market-brand fit section, your market
will have expectations depending on the industry and product
category. If you're selling payroll software to municipalities
with over a million citizens, you have a very small market to
sell to: the purchasing department and financiers of select
cities. It would make little sense, from a communications
standpoint, to try to reach those people using Snapchat ads.
Why? Two main reasons:
1. The channel isn't targeted enough: Snapchat will
allow you to target your ads to specific locations, but
it won't allow you to target the specific employees of
a city. This means that if you run Snapchat ads, most
viewers will fall outside your target market.
2. The channel context doesn't align: It's possible that
your target market has Snapchat, but that's definitely
not the channel they expect (or want) to see work-
related content on. Seeing an ad for payroll software
on a non-business app might make them hesitate to
trust your brand with something as serious as payroll.
Just because a channel exists doesn't mean you need to use it.
That's why it's so important to truly understand your market.
Deep customer research will uncover key insights such as
where potential customers spend time offline and online, how
they purchase products like yours, their buying intent on
various channels, and other channel-related clues. Having
these insights allows you to identify optimal channels, cut the
rest, and hone your messaging to each specific channel. We'll
show you exactly how to do that in later modules.
Product-channel fit
Definition: how your product fits with your customer
acquisition channels. The product you sell must also align with
the channel you sell it through.
Let's continue our payroll software example from the last
section. Because your market is small, you'll need to charge a
lot for your product to generate revenue and grow. In order to
charge a lot, your product must be robust. Your sales cycle will
be pretty complex, as the buyer is going to need to make sure
your product is perfect for them before signing off on a large
purchase. Because the product is expensive and the sales cycle
is complex, you'll need to choose an acquisition channel that
allows you to communicate product information effectively
with your target market. In this example, a channel like
Facebook ads wouldn't allow you to convince your buyer to
make a large purchase. Users are scrolling too quickly and
absorbing too little information for such a complex product.
Direct sales would probably make the most sense.
As a rule of thumb: The more complex your product, the more
direct and hands-on your acquisition channel needs to be.
The other important thing to consider as you find your
product-channel fit is that channels are usually out of your
direct control. Google's SEO algorithm changes, and the price
of ads fluctuates. What is in your control is your product. So it's
smart to build your product for the specific channel(s) you
want to leverage. Since channels aren't in your control, you
must be able to adjust your product over time to work with
your chosen growth channels.
Model-channel fit
Definition: how your business model fits with your customer
acquisition channels. Your business model will limit the
acquisition channels that are worth testing.
Let's say you charge $100,000 up front for your product. That's
a lot of money, and it will require extensive communication
with a prospective customer to close the deal. Your customer
isn't going to feel comfortable paying you $100,000 after
seeing a few ads and reading the FAQs page on your site. You
need a more context-rich channel, like sales. Luckily, with such
a high contract value, you'll be able to afford such an expensive
channel. Your model-channel fit will be strong.
Here're a couple of other rules to consider:
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 • The more expensive your product, the more direct
and hands-on your acquisition channel needs to
be. You’ll likely need multiple touchpoints to
communicate the value of your product and get
customers over the high price point.
• The more friction there is in your product is, the
more hands-on your channel needs to be. Low-cost
channels like virality can work for free products
because there’s virtually no friction—there’s no cost
to enter the product. Complex, high-friction
products—like most B2B tools—will require higher-
touch, context-rich channels like content and sales.
You should also pay attention to the unit economics when
considering your model-channel fit. The cost of acquiring a
customer will vary drastically based on your channel:
• Product virality has a very low cost.
• Content marketing is typically next in line.
• Paid marketing comes next.
• Then sales.
Note: Sales is can be broken down into two sub-
categories: inbound sales and outbound sales. With inbound,
you pair sales with a second channel lane—usually content or
paid marketing. The secondary channel produces your lead
gen while your inbound sales team turns those leads into
customers. Outbound sales relies on your sales team to
produce both lead gen and the conversion of those leads. On
our cost spectrum, inbound sales is generally lower-cost than
outbound. To drive growth profitably at scale, you must have
a business model that produces significantly more revenue
than the cost of your channel.
For example, an ecommerce store whose average customer
spends only $30/year will struggle to afford to acquire
customers through ads. It will likely cost more than $30 to
acquire each new customer. Similarly, a B2B company with an
average customer value of $500 will struggle to make
outbound sales work. Since sales labor isn't cheap, it usually
costs more than $500 to close a B2B sale.
The five fits summary
There's no such thing as a "perfect fit." It's not fixed, and it's
not something you ever "finish." Markets are always changing,
products come and go, and channels are constantly in
flux. Our job as startup and growth leaders is to design
foundations using these fits as our guiding light, and then
consistently optimize the fits as we experiment and learn.
We put a lot of emphasis on the five fits because they set the
stage for what really matters when it comes to growth. Far too
many people get caught up in channel strategy, tactics, and
A/B testing. None of this matters if your foundation is broken.
And yet all those things will be significantly more effective if
your foundation is strong.
This framework serves as a shortcut for figuring out which
marketing channels you should pursue. When you're just
starting to think about customer acquisition, there are
seemingly endless channels and tactics to consider. But once
you start thinking about your strategy through the lens of the
five fits, it becomes clear that there are actually very few ways
to approach customer acquisition—and you'll be able to
confidently ignore the rest.
The Growth Funnel and Acquisition Loops
The Five Fits Framework helps us to visualize WHY certain
startups grow, but it doesn't explain HOW they do it. For that,
we'll introduce two new frameworks:
• The Growth Funnel
• Acquisition Loops
The growth funnel
A typical growth funnel consists of five stages:
• Acquisition: how you find new people who are
interested in your product
• Activation: how you turn interested people into
customers
• Retention: how you get people to purchase your
product again or continue using it
• Referral: how you get customers to tell their friends
about your product
• Revenue: the money you generate from all these
activities (which will ideally be much higher than the
costs associated with doing the work)
A simple acronym to remember this is AARRR. AARRR funnels
help you visualize how customers progress through the
buying and product experience. This is useful for identifying
where people are getting stuck and, therefore, where we can
optimize.
But the funnel framework also has some limitations. Like the
Five Fits Framework, the AARRR funnel doesn't fully illustrate
how customers and resources flow throughout your business
to drive growth. The funnel makes it seem as though growth is
linear. As though there's a finite end point. That isn't the
case—especially not for startups that have developed a
scalable growth engine. To fill this gap, we'll turn to another
framework: acquisition loops.
Acquisition loops
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An acquisition loop explains how a scalable and repeatable
growth strategy—the kind of strategy we'll be helping you
build throughout this program—acts as a self-perpetuating
flywheel (or "loop") to produce exponential growth.
A simple acquisition loop looks like this:
Unlike the funnel, your customers don't move linearly. Instead,
they produce an output that you're able to reinvest right back
into a growth system, which leads to even more customers.
Product virality is a well-known example of a "loop." Someone
signs up for a product like Twitter —> they have a great
experience and invite a few of their friends —> those friends
sign up and end up inviting friends of their own. If enough
people share Twitter with their friends, and enough of those
friends sign up and share, then it's possible for the product to
grow exponentially.
Sales is another channel that has a looping mechanism. You
hire a salesperson —> they go out and close deals that produce
revenue —> that revenue is used to hire another salesperson,
who then closes more deals and produces more revenue. The
loop repeats.
This isn't to say that you're guaranteed to experience
exponential growth just because you hire a sales team or have
users who are sharing your product. Far from it. For now, we
just want you to be familiar with the concept of loops so you
understand how some companies have been able to design
systems that produce seemingly effortless growth. Growth
that looks like the solid line instead of the dotted one:
Growth Process
As we've hinted, growth requires experimentation and testing
to see what will work for your specific startup.
Experimentation comes in different forms.
• For your five fits, experimentation will help you adapt
when changes inevitably happen in your business.
• For your growth funnel, experimentation can help
you figure out why users are or aren't behaving in
intended ways.
• For your acquisition efforts, experimentation can
involve testing different channels or tactics within a
particular channel.
Although the outcomes of experimentation will look very
different for each of the frameworks, the way you'll conduct
your experimentation is standardized. Think back to the loop
mechanism that powers acquisition. Loops are important
because we can reinvest outputs (users, customers, and
revenue) back into the channel, increasing growth.
The growth process is the same, except instead of revenue, the
outputs are learnings and information. The growth process
guides everything we do. And, if leveraged properly, it leads to
a competitive advantage.
15
Since growth is hard and all companies are competing for the
same eyeballs on many of the same channels, how do you win?
You win by accelerating your learnings. The more you learn
and the faster you learn it, the better you can compete and
build defensibility.
Throughout the program, we'll help you analyze your results,
extract learnings, and determine how to apply them. This will
be an ongoing process both during your time in the program
and beyond.
Market and Customer Research
Questions answered in this module
• Why do market research and customer research
matter?
• How do I figure out who my target customers are?
• What are the methods for doing market and customer
research?
• How do I perform customer research for my product?
Why you need to understand your market
New founders often start out thinking, “Our market is huge!
Everyone will buy our product!”
The reality: there’s a specific market for every product. And
selling to them—versus everyone in general—is a key
distinction.
Before we dive in, here’s how we’ll be using the terms
“market” and “customer” throughout this chapter:
• Market: the broad group of people interested in a
product, including both buyers (customers) and
sellers (your brand and competitors)
• Customer: the people most likely to buy your
product, which make up a smaller, more segmented
part of your total market
Next, every company needs to do market and customer
research:
• Pre-launch: Research validates market demand for a
potential product. It also uncovers new problems that
need solving.
• Post-launch: Research guides companies toward
improving their existing product, getting more
customers, and retaining current ones.
Note that research is especially important for early-stage
companies facing “market risk”—that is, when you’re not sure
if anyone wants your product enough to pay for it.
Here’s a quick framework to find out if you should be focusing
more on market and customer research:
1. Do most customers know your product’s main value
props?
2. Do people group your product accurately with the
right competitors?
3. Are people who rejected similar products willing to
try yours?
4. Do customers recommend your product to others?
5. Would customers be upset if your product suddenly
disappeared?
If you’ve answered more than one question with a no, there’s
probably some disconnect between your brand and your
target customers—and you need to do more market and
customer research to align them together.
Your brand is ultimately a reflection of how the market views
it, not how you view it.
Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework
There are many ways to structure your customer research, but
we recommend using the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework.
According to this framework:
• Customers are users that hire products for a specific
job.
• Products help complete a user’s job.
• If the product does the job well, users will hire that
product again. Otherwise, they’ll fire it and hire a
different product.
According to the JTBD framework, companies should ask,
“What job are people hiring my product for?” This is a
customer-centered approach, where companies design
products around meeting users’ real-life needs, aka jobs.
Many companies instead use their competitors to guide
product development. They ask, “What would make my
product better than the competitors?” Example: local hotels
try to outdo one another by providing better amenities and
customer service.
But, consider Airbnb. Part of its success comes not from
offering better amenities or customer service than hotels, but
by excelling at a job hotels don’t complete: providing stays
with more local personality.
The JTBD framework further helps to understand what exactly
the job is so you can build a better product.
For pre-launch companies, that means using this framework
to validate market demand.
16
 • What problems do people encounter and hire
products for?
• What job needs to be done that no good products
exist for? (DIY solutions by users are often a sign of
unfulfilled jobs.)
For post-launch companies, the JTBD framework helps
pinpoint where and how your product provides the most
value.
• What exactly is the job your product should be hired
for?
• And how can you optimize your product for that job?
JTBD and your ideal audience
The JTBD framework defines your ideal audience as more than
a list of demographics. Indeed, categorizing users based on
certain traits can be helpful, but it also limits your
understanding of who benefits from your product.
So who is your ideal audience? These are the users who:
• Face the problem your product addresses
• Would pay to solve this problem
• Are unhappy with a competitor
• Have an urgent need to switch to you
Here’s a framework for identifying your ideal audience based
on how users view your problem:
1. Urgency: How quickly do they want to solve it?
2. Agency: How willing are they to solve it?
3. Ability: How able are they to solve it?
Your ideal users have high urgency and agency and low ability.
They can’t solve their problem on their own and are motivated
to solve it quickly.
Take Shopify for example.
All kinds of businesses use Shopify—there isn’t just one
demographic or industry it’s useful for. But its ideal audience
is mostly made up of small businesses and entrepreneurs who
don’t have tech backgrounds and want to easily sell products
online. These users:
• Want to begin selling goods online asap (high
urgency)
• Have the means and desire to invest in an all-in-one
selling platform (high agency)
• Don’t know how to set up an ecommerce business on
their own (low ability)
Compare that to less-than-ideal customers, who include:
• People who only want to sell products locally (low
urgency)
• Casual hobbyists and craftspeople—to them, selling
things is more for fun (low agency)
• Experienced programmers who can create an online
shop from scratch (high ability)
Job requirements
Using the JTBD framework, the product revolves around the
job, which is a task with both functional and emotional job
aspects:
• Functional: The practical physical requirements that
get a job done
• Emotional: The underlying desires and emotions
required for jobs to feel complete
You must define both to understand your job that needs to be
done.
Consider DoorDash.
• Functional: Quickly order food delivery online.
• Emotional: Convenience and security, thanks to the
app interface and contactless payments. Many
people don't want to call a restaurant or interact with
a delivery person.
Your product must fulfill both functional and emotional jobs
that need to be done—or customers are less likely to hire it.
A real-life example of the JTBD framework
The company Twine creates software to help companies stay
organized. In 2019, it seemed to be doing well—it had happy
customers and consistent growth.
But despite Twine’s “success,” its team struggled to focus
because customers were using the product in many different
ways. This made it difficult to decide which features were most
compelling and which new product features should be
prioritized.
To determine what exactly to focus on, Twine’s team used the
JTBD framework. They:
• Interviewed their most active users
• Studied sales call notes and CRM data
• Analyzed customer support tickets and app usage
This helped Twine’s team find where customers found the
most value in their product. It also uncovered how customers
viewed their own needs and the kind of language they used to
17
describe the product—which Twine quickly made changes to
accommodate in both its product and marketing.
Today, Twine focuses on the most important jobs its users
want to hire for: centralizing team info, integrating tools, and
connecting different people.
Method Best for
Live interviews Getting deeper insights
Surveys Collecting info more widely
Field research Observing real-life behavior
Existing customer data Finding common trends among current leads and customers
Market analysis Understanding whether competitors complete users’ jobs
There are different levels of insight attained with each—so by
using a balance of these methods, you’ll get richer data and a
more rounded understanding of the job customers are hiring
for.
Let’s explore each of these.
Interview prospects and customers
Though more time-consuming and expensive than other
research methods, live interviews get more nuanced insights.
You can dig deeper to find out users’ authentic concerns, how
they perceive existing products, and whether these products
actually complete the job they’re hired for.
Remember that the job is the centerpiece of the JTBD
framework, so the goal of your interview is to uncover what
exactly the customer is trying to accomplish. In other words:
How do customers decide to solve their problem? How do they
decide for or against specific solutions?
Here’s a template script to help guide your interviews. We’ve
organized questions into four phases:
1. Exploring: What exactly is the problem? What
conditions led to this problem?
2. Considering: What did the user do to look for a
solution? What criteria did they use to judge different
products?
3. Deciding: How did the user decide on hiring a specific
product?
4. Consuming: How did the user make their purchase?
Important note: As you interview users, focus on the how, not
the why. Asking why someone behaves a certain way doesn’t
lead as well to accurate answers because we tend to justify
actions with new info learned later on. For less biased answers,
ask how users arrived at a decision.
How to determine your product's job
The original JTBD philosophy is built upon using interviews for
customer research. User interviews are important, but they’re
not feasible for every company because of budget and
resources. Instead, we recommend using a mix of research
methods to find out your product’s job.
Challenges
Costly, time-consuming
Less depth and detail
Hard to implement
Limited to users familiar with your product
Limited depth without insider knowledge
Survey customers
Surveys have less nuance than interviews, but they’re cheaper
and easier to run. You can build them using Survey
Monkey or Typeform then find respondents through social
media, online communities, or your existing customers.
Pre-launch companies that want to validate their market and
better understand a problem should ask survey questions like:
• What is your relationship like with [topic/problem]?
• Are you using multiple products?
• What’s the final outcome you’re looking for?
• How important is solving this problem to you?
Post-launch companies should use surveys to find out the
value customers get from their product. Ask these three
questions:
1. What’s the main benefit you get from our product?
2. How can we improve our product for you?
3. How would you feel if you could no longer use our
product?
o Not disappointed, somewhat disappointed,
very disappointed
Pay attention to the last question. If most people answer “not
disappointed,” it’s a good sign that your product doesn’t quite
get a job done or that the job isn’t that important to them. Your
goal should be to have more people who would be very
disappointed if they could no longer use your product—
research shows that if 40% of users respond “very
disappointed,” your product probably satisfies market
demand.
Do field research
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People aren’t always aware of their motivations. Instead of
getting someone’s thoughts about how they might behave,
observe them in their natural environment to capture real user
behavior.
Examples:
• Set up screen recordings using Loom to observe how
someone does a task online. Ask users to talk out loud
through their thought process.
• Use a heatmap tool like Hotjar to track how users
interact with your website, like what they click on or
point to with their cursor.
• Find and attend industry-relevant events. Take notes
on how people behave, like which booths at a
conference get the most visits.
• Assemble a focus group to discuss topics relevant to
your company/product. This is especially useful for
B2B customers because focus groups simulate
multiple stakeholders.
Review existing customer data
The data you already have about your customers can clue you
into what job they’re hiring your product for—and whether
your product is succeeding at it. This data includes:
• Customer behavior and usage data
• Notes from sales calls
• Customer support tickets and emails
• User reviews and feedback
Look for trends in this data, such as:
• Who your current customers are: What kinds of
customers use your product more actively? If your
product is used by different types of customers, is
there one industry, job title, etc. that’s more
common?
• What customers are using your product for: Is it the
core value prop you advertise? What features do
customers use most?
• Where your product meets expectations and where
it falls short: What features do users praise the most?
What new features or improvements do they ask for?
And what features are they most unhappy with?
• How your product makes customers feel: What
emotions do satisfied customers use to describe their
experience with your product? What about
unsatisfied customers?
Study the current market
Although you can’t tap into other companies’ databases, you
can use the other research methods to study your competitors:
• Interview or survey people who use competitors’
products. Use Slack, Facebook groups, etc. to find
them.
• Observe and record competitor products in action.
• Read reviews and social media posts about your
competitors.
The goal here: find out what jobs competitor products do. Do
they fully complete the job they’re hired for? Is that job the
same as your product’s? Would customers fire your product to
hire theirs?
Important note: Market analysis isn't about comparing your
product’s features with another company’s and trying to
imitate or outdo them. Doing this takes away from the user’s
needs—companies end up developing product features that
are nice to have but irrelevant to the job.
Looking at other products, you may realize that your perceived
competitors aren’t actually competitors because they’re doing
a different job. This can help clarify your own product’s job and
what exactly it’s competing against.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once described how Netflix
competes with not just other video networks but also playing
board games and drinking wine—any activities that help
people relax (Netflix’s real job).
Leveraging your market and customer
research
Once you’ve collected market and customer data, transform
your research into actionable insights to begin making
optimizations. Here are three ways to leverage your data:
• Customer personas
• The customer/market profile
• The customer journey map
These are the deliverables that result from all the research you
did in this chapter. With these in hand, you can begin making
decisions—and getting the rest of your team on board.
1. Customer personas
Customer personas are fictional user profiles that represent
your ideal audience and are based on your research. While the
other frameworks listed below can also accomplish this, we’ll
focus mostly on personas in this program. You can create them
using our template.
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Personas tell the story of different types of customers at the
moment they encounter a problem—aka the job that they
need to hire your product for. Giving detail to these stories
helps to identify customer pain points and personalize your
marketing for better performance.
A persona for the online learning platform Skillshare might
sound like this:
Emily is a high school teacher who likes to dabble in art. She’s
interested in honing her graphic design skills, with the goal of
starting a freelance business later on. However, she's reluctant
to take classes that require meeting in person or at certain
times because of her work schedule.
Customer personas help you understand why someone
considers your product—and the potential objections that you
should proactively address. For example, the Emily persona
tells Skillshare’s team to emphasize how their online classes
are self-paced.
Even without doing customer research, you can brainstorm
potential personas for your company. One of the best ways to
come up with these personas is by looking at your current
customers.
Identify your top customers and then drill into who they are.
(If you have customer email addresses, you can use services
like Clearbit Enrichment to input their email and collect more
information about them and their company.) For example:
• What's their job title?
• Are they at a certain level of funding?
• Did they experience any major life events recently?
• Did someone find you through a support forum
because your competitor's software wasn't cutting
it?
Look for patterns and trends in your data. Then bucket your
customers based on what you learn—each group should get its
own persona.
Important note: Your current customer data makes a great
starting point for creating personas, but you should still do
market and customer research. This way, you won’t leave out
any currently untapped segments of your audience.
2. Customer/market profile
The customer/market profile is a concept we’ve developed to
aggregate all the important aspects of your market research,
including:
• The job that needs to be done (the problem your
product solves)
• Your customer persona
• Your customer’s buying power and constraints
• How competitors and alternative solutions stack up
against your product
Here’s an example of one we created for Demand Curve:
Use our template to create your own. Share it with your team
and help them understand who you’re building your products
for.
3. Customer journey map
Many people think of the customer journey as a linear jump
from point A to point B: someone sees an ad and then buys
your product. In reality, this path zigzags, and it can be
especially long for B2B companies.
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the
customer’s process to hire your product to get a job done.
Think of it as a timeline of the customer’s decision-making
process.
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It includes the same four stages used in the JTBD interview
process, as well as a loyalty stage that comes last and focuses
on what’s done to retain customers.
How customers’ goals and activities change throughout
their buying journey
• How customers feel at different points in their buying
journey
• Important touchpoints between you and your customers,
which either move users forward or end their journey
Besides describing what customers are thinking and feeling
throughout their buying journey, the customer journey map
also accounts for how your company behaves in each stage.
The point is that, just like your customers, your company
shouldn’t be doing the same thing (like only sending discount
codes) throughout the journey.
Look for pain points in each part of the customer journey, not
just when users are facing a problem for the first time. The goal
is to understand how your company and product fit into the
larger context of a customer’s life.
How to apply customer research to your
marketing and product
Once you’ve identified the job that your product should solve,
you can apply your insights to optimize your marketing funnel.
Stage + Psych Elements
• “There’s so much demand for my products—I bet I could sell even
more online”
Exploring • “I’ve heard Shopify can help you open an online store even if
you’re not a tech expert”
• “Shopify is the first result in Google when I look for info about
starting an online shop”
Considering • “I’ve noticed some of my favorite stores say they’re ‘powered by
Shopify’”
• A close friend recommends Shopify
• Shopify’s website includes case studies and real-life examples
Deciding
• Receiving an exclusive Shopify promotion via email
We recommend the psych framework here, which comes from
growth expert Darius Contractor. Though Darius uses the
framework for landing page optimization, it’s applicable to the
entire marketing funnel.
Applying the psych framework is easiest for companies that
have a customer journey map. Looking at the customer’s
timeline and your research, consider:
• What barriers exist when users try to learn about your
product?
• How long does it take for users to go through the
signup/purchase process?
• How long does it take for users to get their job done
after hiring your product?
• Where might users become the most excited or
frustrated in their journey? Why?
The ultimate goal of the psych framework is to identify friction
along the customer journey—and then get rid of it for
maximum user “psych.” According to the framework:
• A user’s experience with a brand and product affects
their emotional energy.
• You can think of and measure emotional energy as
units of “psych.” The highest level of emotional
energy is 100 psych.
• Poor marketing/product elements lower users’ psych
while good elements raise it. Someone with 0 psych is
exhausted by the experience, and will not continue
using it. High levels of psych lead to continued use.
• Companies must optimize their marketing and
product to preserve users’ psych, not drain it.
Here’s how that might look in practice—once again, we’ll use
Shopify as an example.
- Psych Elements
• Misconceptions and doubt about the potential ROI of setting up
an ecommerce shop
• Administrative work attached to opening a store, e.g., registering
your business
• “Shopify ads are appearing everywhere”
• Shopify competitors have compelling social media posts
• Downloadable resources on competitor blogs
• There’s no free plan available
• A negative YouTube review about Shopify
• “The signup process asks for so much info”
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• Easy-to-read guides and video tutorials
• Beginner-friendly templates
Consuming
• A customer success manager reaches out to offer help
• A fast email response from customer service
Loyalty • Lots of easy integrations with Shopify
Not all psych elements are in your control, like when people
encounter a problem for the first time in the exploring phase.
Some elements are also inherent to the problem or the
market, like if there’s a large number of competitors for people
to pick from.
Despite this, the psych framework is great for identifying
elements that are within your control, which may have been
overlooked otherwise. You may find that negative psych
elements outweigh the positive in one stage, meaning more
optimization work is needed.
Focus on your customers, not your product
Many founders justify focusing on their product and its
features by claiming that the product will sell itself. We’ve seen
this across all niches and industries, including new trends like
blockchain, AI, and the Internet of Things.
But to hold people’s interest, new features and technologies
aren’t the most important thing. Novelty only gets you so far,
especially as competitors catch up.
The biggest takeaways for market and customer research:
• The problem your product solves is what makes your
company important to customers.
• Without understanding this problem, you won’t be
able to identify your target audience.
• Use the JTBD framework and research to find out the
problem your users most want to solve. Then build or
refine your product based on your findings.
Cheat sheet - Market and Customer
Research
We’ve summed up the most important insights about market
and customer research into a concise cheat sheet. Consider
this a checklist for you to reference while doing research and
implementing your findings.
• Receiving too many emails from Shopify
• “Shopify SEO is hard to figure out”
• Transaction fees reduce revenue
• Limited customization options
• Transaction fees
• Limited customization
• Speaking with a rude or unhelpful support team member
Step 1: Collect customer and market data
To find out what jobs customers are hiring your product for,
use a combination of research methods:
1. Interview users to get deeper insights.
2. Use surveys to tap into larger audiences.
3. Do field research to observe real-life behavior.
4. Analyze your current customer data for trends.
5. Study your competitors’ products, customers, and
reviews.
The most important questions your research should answer:
• What is the problem people are hiring your product
for?
• How do people decide to solve their problem?
• What criteria do people use to judge different
products?
Step 2: Leverage your research
Three ways to leverage your research findings:
• Create customer personas to help visualize your
audience as individuals.
• Use a customer/market profile to summarize your
research in one place.
• Map out the customer journey to identify user pain
points and behaviors throughout different stages of
the buying process.
Step 3: Improve your marketing and product
Apply your research to your marketing and product using the
psych framework.
• Run through each stage of your customer journey
map to find negative psych elements that discourage
people from moving on.
• Mark where these negative elements happen in the
journey.
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 • Then optimize your marketing and product to reduce
them.
Not all psych elements are within your control, but using this
framework helps to identify those that are.
Project: Customer personas (Acquisition
Strategy Part 2)
In this chapter, we identified a few different ways to leverage
your market and customer research, including customer
personas. While we also encourage using the
customer/market profile and customer journey map, we’ll
focus more specifically on customer personas.
You’ll come up with a few different personas in this project and
then dive more deeply into two. Even if your company already
has an internal persona doc, start from scratch following our
structure and see if you come up with something different.
Go and complete Part 2 of your Adquisition Strategy Template
You'll find the instructions on the template itself. But some
extra tips never hurt:
• Whether or not you have existing customer data,
write a paragraph describing each persona in the
Customer Personas doc.
• Get extremely specific about the persona you’re
targeting. For example, instead of saying “Property
managers”, say “Property managers at companies
that have been on the market for more than 30 days
(i.e., that they’re having trouble renting).”
• Also name each of your personas—this way, it’ll be
easier to refer to different segments of your
audience. It’s always better to go into more detail
rather than less. We can always back into a broader
persona and take away details.
Competitor Research
Questions answered in this module
• Why should I do competitor research?
• Which competitors should I study?
• How do I find the right competitors to study?
• How do I leverage competitor research for growth
insights?
Overview
Many founders think competitor research is important for
staying ahead of rival companies. That’s true—but early stage
companies don’t need to worry about losing customers if
they’ve never had them in the first place.
Instead, competitor research matters because you can use it
to grow your business. Specifically, you can use competitor
research to:
• Validate your growth strategy. Researching
companies similar to yours can help fast-track major
growth decisions. Chances are, whatever business
model or acquisition channel works for them could
work for you.
• Disrupt the market. By studying established
competitors, you can find new ways and
opportunities to compete against them. Consider
how Netflix went from mail-order DVD rentals to
online streaming to edge out Blockbuster.
• Guide your product messaging and value
props. When you understand how competitors
market their brand and product to customers, you’ll
be better able to differentiate yours.
• Identify and vet growth experiments. Source new
growth ideas based on what you observe in your
competitors’ strategies. Depending on the
competitor, you may have more certainty that a
specific tactic will or won’t work.
All are crucial for accelerating your growth, but we’ll cover the
third and fourth bullets in more detail in our Value Props and
Experimentation modules.
You can, of course, also leverage competitor research for
product insights. However, since our program focuses on
acquiring customers, we won’t dive into competitor research
for product development. Instead, we’ll focus on how to find
the right competitors for growth insights and how to actually
do the research.
Why do competitor research?
Well-established competitors have tested maybe dozens of
iterations to find the best ways to grow their companies. You
can get these learnings in a much shorter time if you know
where to look. Even better, doing this research is relatively
cheap, making it a low-cost way to get growth guidance and
source ideas.
That said, there’s one big caveat:
Competitor research shouldn’t replace your own
experimentation and customer research. No matter how
similar your product and business model are, there’s no
guarantee that what works for one company will work for
yours.
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Not to mention, you can’t perfectly recreate all growth
strategies, especially from older companies. Many businesses
found early success using techniques and ad channels that are
much more saturated today.
But the goal of competitor research isn’t to clone someone
else’s successful business strategy. It’s to understand at a
macro level what worked for companies similar to yours so
that you can better prioritize the growth channels with the
most potential. While you can’t replicate your competitors’
results, you can get more conviction about which strategic
direction to move in.
One final note before we dive in:
Don’t spend too much time doing this research. Take notes on
your findings, but don’t put together a comprehensive
research report. Instead, take the next step and act on your
findings.
Understanding your competitors
Most problems can be solved in a variety of ways. Chances are
some of your competitors approach the same problem you
tackle in a different way or solve it for a different group of
people.
Because of this, there are two kinds of competitors:
• Direct: Companies that target the same customer
base as you and use a similar solution to solve the
same problem.
o Example: Uber and Lyft are direct
competitors. People can consider either for
hailing rides.
• Indirect: Companies that sell something similar to
your product but target a different audience, or target
the same audience with a different product. There are
a few different types of indirect competitors, which
we’ll get into later.
Direct competitors aren’t the only ones you should research.
Indirect competitors, specifically those with a similar business
model and audience, are just as important.
But direct or indirect, not all companies are dedicated to
growth experimentation—which means not every competitor
will be worth studying. To filter out these companies, grade
them based on their quality, rigor, and relevance.
Quality
Low-quality companies won’t get you very far in terms of
growth learnings. For more practical insights, focus your
research on high-quality companies. You can judge companies
using these three metrics:
1. Revenue: High revenue often speaks to a company’s
growth success, even if they’re not profitable. If company
revenue data isn’t publicly available, fundraising makes a
good proxy. Look for companies that have received lots of
funding from reputable investors.
2. Size: Quality companies tend to be bigger, since a larger
company size may mean that whatever they’re doing is
working well enough to bring on more employees. A good
rule of thumb for judging size: look for businesses that
have expanded beyond their founders. From our
experience, startup teams that have grown to 30-50+
people tend to be more developed and of higher quality.
3. Growth track record: Companies that have had long-
term, sustainable growth, like Amazon and Uber, tend to
provide more reliable growth insights than early stage
companies. Why? There may be hidden factors behind
early stage companies’ success or external factors out of
their control.
o Consider how the social audio app Clubhouse
took off in its first year, with nearly 10 million
downloads in February 2021. Two months later,
downloads dipped by 89%. Given its short-lived
growth, Clubhouse probably isn’t so reliable for
growth insights.
The best companies to study hit all three: high
revenue/funding, a team with employees beyond the
founders, and a consistent history of growth.
Important note: Company quality is less important when
you're trying to define or optimize your value props and brand
messaging. In this case, other early stage companies are better
for research, especially those receiving a lot of press or that
have raised some money.
As new companies, these startups usually haven’t grown much
yet, so they’re not useful for getting growth learnings—but
there’s a reason they’re getting attention. Study them to find
out their value props and get inspiration for how to
differentiate your own. (We cover this in more detail in our
Value Props unit.)
Rigor
We use “rigor” to describe how dedicated a company is to
growth experimentation. Competitors that clearly invest in this
are better for your research because they’re not just taking
guesses—they’re using the scientific method to figure out
what works.
You can find out a company’s level of rigor through these three
indicators:
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1 Public experiment results: Some companies, like Pinterest
and Uber, have blog posts dedicated to experimentation. Do a
quick site search of your competitors and phrases like “A/B
test” and “experiments” to see if any of this is public.
2️ Growth roles: Check out competitors’ LinkedIn pages to see
if there are team members or open positions dedicated to
growth, experimentation, or CRO. This includes not only
growth marketers, but also engineers and data scientists.
Bonus: Some job descriptions also give away a lot of
marketing/product strategy, even future plans—in other
words, lots of free insight.
3️ Experimentation software: Use BuiltWith to find out what
paid analytics and experimentation software companies are
using on their website. Look at BuiltWith’s Detailed
Technology Profile tab to see whether/how long this software
has been active. Companies that are dedicated to
experimentation often invest in more software and are
running it on an ongoing basis.
Not all companies openly share about their growth
experiments, so how dedicated one is to experimental rigor
isn’t always obvious. Prioritize studying businesses that show
at least two of these three
indicators.
Relevance
Remember that competitor research isn’t only about looking
at direct competitors—you should also study indirect ones.
Some indirect competitors are more relevant to your company
than others. Here’s how to classify them:
1. Different solution: Companies that solve the same
problem for the same customer, but in a different way.
Example: Workout subscription programs like DailyBurn
offer a different solution from gym memberships. They
target the same audience but offer an alternative solution
to getting in shape.
2. Different problem: Companies that solve a different
problem for the same customer using the same solution.
Example: Uber Eats sells to the same customers as Uber
using the same technology, but it solves a different
problem (food delivery).
3. Different customer: Companies that solve the same
problem in a similar way, but for a different set of
customers. Example: Tinder and Raya are both online
dating apps, but while Tinder targets young singles in
general, Raya focuses more on celebrities and high-profile
people.
Indirect competitors with a different solution tend to be the
most relevant and worth researching. That’s because even
though your solutions are different, having the same problem
and customers means these competitors face the same
consumer mindset and psychology as you. The tactics that
work for them are most likely to work for you as well—study
them to find out why their solution might appeal more to
customers than yours.
Competitors with a different problem but the same solution
and customer are next best for research because they may be
a threat to your company, especially if they leverage their
product to enter your space. Consider how Uber tapped into
its drivers to launch Uber Eats, a competitor to DoorDash and
Grubhub.
Finally, competitors with different customers are usually the
least relevant. If their strategy applies to an entirely different
market (one with a different psychology), you shouldn’t expect
it to work for yours.
How to identify the right competitors to
study
• Talk to your leads and customers. Ask what other
companies they’ve considered or used.
o Important note: It’s possible your leads will name
companies that aren’t actually competitors. This
might mean that your brand positioning or value
25
 props aren’t very clear. You may be emphasizing
the wrong features, or you might be pitching to
the wrong audience.
• Look through online directories like Crunchbase, Product
Hunt, and G2. Search by topic/category and keep
narrowing down to find both direct and indirect
competitors.
• Break down your user’s workflow. Look at how your
target audience handles the specific problem your product
solves. (Get insight into this process from doing market
and customer research.) Break this workflow into smaller
tasks and different products that complete each task.
Here’s an example of how that might look for someone
writing an article.
The products that appear most frequently or carry out the
same tasks as yours are probably competitors.
• Google your target keywords. See what websites rank
highly for your target keywords in Google’s search results.
Chances are you’ll find both direct and indirect
competitors, although there may also be a few companies
from a completely different niche. For example, if your
company sells a productivity app that tracks time,
searching “time tracking software” shows other
companies doing the same thing, like Toggl and My Hours.
The results also show roundup posts listing other potential
competitors.
How to actually do competitor research
To guide your research, we’ll be applying the same framework
to the competitors you’ve identified to find out more about
their growth strategies. Use our competitor research
template to record your findings.
The first step is getting a high-level overview of who exactly
these competitors are. This basic info gives background and
context about the amount of time and resources it took for
your competitors to reach their current stage.
Use Crunchbase, LinkedIn, or Owler to find this info, including:
• Founding year
• Founder
• CEO
• Location(s)
• Number of employees
• Investors/funding
• Revenue
• Number of customers
Also try Googling press releases and interviews with your
competitors’ execs—you can often find revenue data this
way. Then move on to finding out your competitors’ growth
tactics, specifically by studying their landing pages, ads, and
content marketing. We’ll walk you through this—but
remember that your research here shouldn’t be overly
concerned with uncovering finer details like your competitors’
monthly ads budget. It’s more about finding what messaging
and channels successful companies similar to yours are using,
so you can better plan out your own growth strategy.
Landing pages
The easiest place to start with researching any competitor is
their website. Pay attention to how they describe their brand
and products, specifically their:
• Problem: The pain point your competitors focus on
solving. How do they relate this to the user?
• Features: The design and tech behind their product.
What features do they emphasize the most?
• Pricing: How much they charge. Are any segments of
your audience priced out? Do they offer different
pricing plans?
• Perks: The bonuses that come with the product, like
early access to new features, an exclusive Slack
community, etc. What makes these perks appealing?
The point of studying your competitors’ websites isn’t to do a
feature-by-feature product comparison with your own.
Instead, consider how they’re communicating their product’s
value. What story does your competitor tell? How do they
describe the benefits of using their product? And how do they
position their product relative to others?
For example, here are some notes about Otter.ai based on its
website.
26

• Problem: The main pain point Otter.ai addresses is
note-taking at meetings.
• Features: Otter.ai emphasizes its live and automatic
transcriptions, note-taking, and meeting analytics.
• Pricing: There are two broad pricing categories for
individuals and businesses, plus a specialized plan for
those in education.
Otter.ai sells a voice transcription software, but its brand
messaging focuses on how the company improves productivity
by making information more accessible—and doing so cost-
effectively. Its biggest benefits: efficiency and convenience.
Interestingly, it doesn’t refer to competitors or claim to be the
best transcription service out there. Instead, it positions itself
as a necessity alongside other remote communication tools
like Zoom and Google Meet.
A/B tests
While browsing your competitors’ pages, you might notice URL
parameters, like:
http://www.example.com/?optimizely_opt_out=true
This may be a sign of an ongoing A/B test—something worth
noting because it means your competitor is trying to optimize
some aspect of their site.
If you notice this, open the same URL in your browser’s
incognito mode. Refresh until you see the page visually
change. Then take screenshots to compare the variants. Use
them to find and reverse engineer whatever hypothesis
they’re testing. That might be:
• New value propositions
• Different product imagery
• Social proof, e.g. testimonial videos instead of written
quotes
Even though you can’t see the results of their A/B test, you can
consider whether the same variables are also worth testing on
your site.
Ad channels
Another benefit of visiting your competitors’ sites: getting
retargeted. Browse social media and elsewhere without an ad
blocker to see what retargeting ads appear for your
competitors.
Pay attention to the ads with the most comments and
reactions. This might reveal which ads are shown most often—
potentially the most successful ones.
Besides retargeting ads, also dig into Google,
Facebook/Instagram, and LinkedIn to find out what other
campaigns your competitors are running. Consider:
• Which platforms are they advertising on?
• What users do they target?
• Where do their ads send users? Sales pages, blog
posts, etc.
If your competitors have focused on a specific platform, it’s
worth checking out that platform’s upcoming competitors—
you might find lower CACs with these new channels. For
example, many consumer brands are focused on TikTok rather
than Facebook because it’s cheaper and less saturated.
27
Google search ads
To find out what keywords competitors target in their search
ads, use Ahrefs.
1. Enter your competitor’s URL.
2. Scroll down to find Paid Search in the sidebar. Click to
expand the menu.
3. Click PPC keywords.
Ahrefs also shows the top landing pages competitors’ search
ads lead to if you click Top landing pages. This is helpful for
understanding how companies are segmenting users based on
value props and audience type.
For example, Ahrefs’ data shows that Vrbo targets travelers
interested in vacationing in the South, especially Florida. It
targets several location-specific keywords and directs users to
a corresponding targeted search page, like one specifically for
Gatlinburg cabin rentals.
Facebook ads: The Facebook Ads Library shows any company’s
active or inactive Facebook or Instagram ads. Search the name
your competitors use on their Facebook Pages. You’ll find their
ad copy and creatives, even different versions of each ad if
they exist. Click the See Ad Details button to find these details.
You can’t see ad comments or reactions but you can find out
what competitors are testing and get ideas for your own ads.
For example, we can see ClickUp is testing different video ads
with the same copy, and trying social proof in another ad’s
copy.
LinkedIn ads
To see what ads companies are using on LinkedIn:
1. Go to a business page. Click on Posts, and then Ads. You’ll
see all your competitor’s ads.
2. To view any ad’s original post and engagement, click the
three dots in the corner of the ad. Then click Copy link to
post. You’ll receive a notification about the link being
copied to your clipboard—click View Post.
Also click on them to find out what kinds of landing pages
competitors are sending their paid traffic to.
Content marketing
SEO: Use Ahrefs or Semrush to find out the top keywords
your competitors rank for, plus estimates for how much
traffic each of their pages get. Although they’re not always
accurate, these estimates give clues on what landing pages
and blog posts drive the most visitors to your competitors.
Take a look at the top-performing pages and how they’re
structured.
• What types of keywords do they rank highly for?
• What is the goal of the content—to educate,
entertain, sell, or something else?
• Who is the content written for?
Ahrefs’ Top Content option also shows which pages have
received the most backlinks. Don’t fixate on the specific
number of backlinks; instead, consider what themes are
common across your competitors’ most popular pages.
For example, several of Zapier’s top blog posts are listicles
about productivity apps.
28

Ahrefs’ data on social performance isn’t as strong, so
use BuzzSumo to find out which pages have gotten the most
shares. Here’s Zapier again, with different blog posts getting
lots of traction on social media.
You can then cross-check these pages in Ahrefs to find out their
organic keywords—a great way to find the sweet spot of
content topics that have high search volume and reader
interest.
Brand awareness
Use Google Trends to find out how branded searches for your
competitors have changed over time. These charts act as rough
proxies for how well a company is doing. If searches for a
company’s name are going down, their awareness may be
declining, which could mean their growth efforts are failing.
On the other hand, more recent branded searches might mean
their growth tactics are working—but you should always take
this with a grain of salt. There could be other reasons outside
of a company’s control for why branded searches have spiked.
For example, you can see that happen for WeWork in fall 2019,
when its IPO failed.
Still, Google Trends’ data can be a helpful barometer for
understanding how a company’s brand awareness has grown
over time. A steady decline is also worth studying as a
cautionary tale for what might have gone wrong.
Social media
When studying competitors’ social media, it can feel
overwhelming to look through so many channels. It’s also
tempting to fixate on vanity metrics like likes and followers—
but these numbers are often misleading because companies
can pay to inflate them.
We don’t recommend an intensive audit here—the goal is to
find out if organic social media is worth pursuing as a growth
strategy. Focus on answering these three questions:
1. Are competitors using social media? This isn’t just about
whether they have an Instagram page. Do they actively
post new content? If companies last posted more than six
months ago or do so very sporadically, it’s a good sign that
they’re not really investing in social media. Or, if they used
to create a lot of YouTube videos but no longer, then it
may mean that the ROI wasn’t there.
2. If competitors are active on social media, how are they
using it? Which platforms do they use? Do they partner
with influencers? Skim through your competitors’ active
channels to get an idea of their messaging and the nature
of their content. For example, some companies focus on
creating educational content like HubSpot’s YouTube
channel. Others provide entertainment, like BarkBox’s
Instagram.
3. How do users respond to their content? Avoid putting a
lot of weight on followers and likes. Instead, look at
comments on your competitors’ active channels.
Companies can buy comments, too, but it’s easier to
identify fake ones (usually a single word or only emojis).
See if users are leaving meaningful comments. If so, what
is the consumer sentiment? A few quick ways to identify
the most popular content on some channels:
o Twitter: Use SocialBearing to look up your
competitor’s Twitter handle. It’ll return an
analytics page. (Click Load More to see more
data.) Scroll down to the tweets and click the Sort
tweets by dropdown menu. Sort by retweets,
favorites, and so on to see which tweets got the
most interactions.
o Instagram: Study competitor accounts on
desktop. You can’t easily sort posts but you can
hover your cursor over them to see how many
likes and comments they’ve received. Study
posts with the most comments.
o YouTube: Go to a channel’s videos, and click the
Sort by dropdown menu. Sort by “Most popular”
29
 to see which videos got the most views; then click
to see their comments.
o TikTok: You can’t sort a TikTok account’s videos
by likes, but the view count is shown on each
video thumbnail in their feed. This number is
insightful in itself because it tells you which
videos grabbed users’ attention. Look for those
with the most views; then click to see its likes and
comments.
Remember: The point here isn’t to dissect your competitors’
social media performance, but rather, see whether users
actually care about it. Authentic user comments are a good
barometer for this because only the most engaged people will
respond.
For example, let’s look at the ecommerce company
Beardbrand. Its website shows it uses Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and YouTube, so we’ll quickly scan through each.
• Facebook/Instagram: BeardBrand regularly posts the
same content on these two connected channels. Only a
few posts get reshared by Facebook users. Some
comments are specific to BeardBrand’s products; many
others are enthusiastic reactions to BeardBrand’s videos.
Instagram Reels get a lot more thoughtful comments than
static image posts.
• Twitter: Also an active channel, but a quick scroll through
the feed shows a pretty low level of user engagement
(very few replies or retweets) on the majority of tweets.
This tells us that Twitter probably isn’t a great platform for
reaching customers.
• YouTube: Sorting BeardBrand’s videos by newest shows
that it releases new videos every day, with a lot of recent
content in portrait orientation (probably repurposed from
Facebook/Instagram). When you sort the videos by
popularity, you can see that the most viewed are
landscape videos—and receive way more views than on
any of their other channels. BeardBrand’s top videos also
receive thousands of comments, with many users showing
appreciation, even gratitude.
Overall, BeardBrand’s organic social content is casual, friendly,
and encouraging. Looking at all of its active channels, YouTube
clearly generates the most genuine user engagement. The top
videos are mostly barber transformation videos and tutorials—
not very promotional compared to the other channels, which
announce giveaways or new products.
While we can’t see BeardBrand’s conversions from organic
social, this quick audit tells us video content in this niche may
be most effective, especially on YouTube. It also looks like
users respond most to inspiring or educational content.
Cheat sheet - Competitor Research
We’ve summed up the most important insights about
competitor research into a concise cheat sheet. Consider this
a checklist for choosing which competitors to study and while
doing research.
Step 1: Identify competitors to study
• Ask leads and customers what other
companies/products they’ve considered.
• Look through Crunchbase, Product Hunt, and G2.
• Break down your users’ workflow to see what
products match each task’s needs.
• See what companies rank highly in Google for your
target keywords.
Step 2: Grade competitors
Judge which competitors are worth researching based on their
quality, rigor, and relevance. Here’s how to judge them.
30
Quality: High quality companies generally: • Look through your competitors’ active social media
channels and see how often users post authentic
1. Generate lots of revenue (or have raised a lot of comments.
money).
2. Have teams that have evolved beyond their founders. Acquisition Strategy
3. Have a consistent history of growth.
In the previous modules, you learned about the foundations of
Rigor: Filter out competitors that do not meet at least two of
growth and the key frameworks that explain how the most
these criteria.
successful startups are able to grow.

1. Publicly share their growth experimentation efforts.

You also learned how to conduct and implement customer
2. Hire dedicated growth marketers and data scientists.
research, and you identified the key value props that you'll use
3. Use experimentation software (find this out using
in all your marketing efforts.
BuiltWith).
In this module, we'll focus on the most important startup
Relevance: The best competitors to study, in order of
activity: acquiring customers. Your ability to acquire new
relevance to your company:
customers consistently and efficiently is one of the biggest
competitive advantages you can have as a business.
1. Direct competitors (same problem, customer, and
solution)
This module will teach you the fundamentals of customer
2. Indirect competitors with a different solution (same
acquisition that apply to all different acquisition channels and
problem and customer)
business models. You'll learn the exact growth strategy
3. Indirect competitors with a different problem (same
framework we've used to grow some of the top companies in
solution and customer)
the world.
4. Indirect competitors with a different customer (same
problem and solution)
At the end of this module, you'll know:

Step 3: Collect growth insights
Research competitors’ landing pages, ad channels, and content
marketing for growth insights.
Landing pages
• Study your competitors’ sites for their brand
messaging and to see if any A/B tests are being run.
Ad channels
• Use Ahrefs to find out their paid search keywords and
ad landing pages.
• Use BuzzSumo to see which pages have the most
social engagement.
• Look at competitors’ Facebook and Instagram ads
using Facebook Ads Library.
• View their ads on LinkedIn.
Content marketing
• Use Ahrefs to find out their organic keywords and the
pages with the most backlinks.
• Look up competitors in Google Trends to gauge their
brand awareness.
• The two major customer acquisition models
• The difference between scalable and unscalable
channels and how to leverage each
• How to identify your company's stage of growth and
what it means for your customer acquisition strategy
• That there are surprisingly few ways to drive
customer acquisition at scale (and you'll learn what
those are)
• Our framework for developing growth strategies, and
for evaluating and prioritizing acquisition channels
Most importantly, you will leave this module having
identified the optimal growth strategy for your startup, as
well as the top channels you should begin testing.
Let's get started.
The Two Major Customer Acquisition
Models
At the highest level, there are two ways companies acquire
new customers:
1. Channel-led growth
2. Product-led growth

31
We call these "acquisition models." They're systems that are
built to drive acquisition for your startup. We'll define both.
Then we'll explain how each relates to your company.
Channel-led growth (CLG)
A company with a channel-led growth model is one that
mainly uses marketing and/or sales channels to acquire
customers. A channel is simply a method by which you reach
target customers.
For example, many ecommerce brands focus heavily on
advertising on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to
acquire new customers. They're using a channel-led growth
model. (Facebook and Instagram paid ads are the channels.)
B2B companies that use large sales teams to find and close
new customers also leverage a channel-led model. In this case,
direct sales is the channel.
Later in this module, we'll cover each channel in depth and
help you choose the right one for your startup.
Product-led growth (PLG)
The other major way to acquire customers is through product-
led growth. Product-led growth primarily leverages the
product itself to acquire, convert, and retain customers. PLG
typically applies to software. If your product is a physical one,
it will be very difficult to have a product-led model.
Slack is a famous example of a company using a product-led
growth strategy. Slack's existing users get value when their
peers are also on the platform. So users invite their friends and
co-workers and pull them into the product. Once these new
users sign up, many of them end up loving the product, and
they then invite their own networks to sign up. This beautiful
cycle continues over and over again.
Another company that executes a product-led growth strategy
is TikTok. Users of the platform can share videos they love with
friends, regardless of whether they have a TikTok account. At
the end of each video, TikTok displays other recommended
videos but only allows users to watch them on the app. This
design encourages people to share videos, which in turn gets
new people to download the app—no "channel marketing"
required.
This leads us to an important concept that we covered earlier
in the Growth Fundamentals module: acquisition loops. The
compounding, self-fueling cycle (or "loop") highlighted in the
two examples above is a key feature of true product-led
growth. It's difficult to crack, but the rewards are great if you
can.
So which model is better?
Startups are quick to ask whether one model historically
performs better than the other, and which one they should
ultimately pursue. The answer isn't black and white.
• Not all products are designed for PLG: There are
fundamental traits that must be present in a product for
your startup to have the potential for a PLG model. For
example, highly complex enterprise products are unlikely
to succeed with a PLG approach. Sales and customer
success teams are necessary to demonstrate the value of
the product and help customers with implementation,
onboarding, and training. The product alone isn't able to
drive the full process.
• CLG and PLG aren't mutually exclusive: Even companies
that are a fit for PLG still need a way to get early users to
try their product. Early-stage companies can leverage
marketing channels to build momentum that will kick-
start PLG. But even later-stage companies will layer on
marketing channels to accelerate and scale their product.
Alternatively, CLG companies can apply PLG tactics to
augment their core acquisition channels. An example of
this would be launching an incentivized referral program.
It won't be the main growth driver for the company, but it
will allow them to squeeze more out of their core
channels.
• Acquisition loops aren't limited to just PLG: Channel-led
strategies can also produce acquisition loops. While not
every marketing channel has the potential to generate a
loop effect, there are a few that can. We'll explore them
in the Scalable Channels section.
• PLG requires exceptional market-product fit: For a
company to rely primarily on PLG, they need strong
market-product fit. There's no way around it. But early-
stage companies need customers in order to measure and
optimize market-product fit. It's a chicken-and-egg
situation: Startups need to use marketing channels to
build an initial stream of customers before concluding
whether they have market-product fit. CLG allows
startups to acquire customers and validate that they're
ready for PLG.
• CLG is quick to launch: This is both a blessing and a curse.
CLG tends to generate results faster than PLG. But it also
lends itself to more competition and provides much less
defensibility against those competitors.
• PLG is more defensible in the long term: If a company can
succeed with a PLG approach, it will reap some critical
rewards such as high defensibility and significantly lower
customer acquisition costs.
As you can see, there's no definitive right answer.
Most product-led companies will still need to use marketing
channels to reach their target customers. For early-stage
companies in particular, a channel-led approach is generally
32
necessary to at least kick-start growth. As such, our focus Channels that have these two characteristics are called
throughout the program will be on executing channel-led scalable channels. If they don't have both characteristics, we
growth tactics. refer to them as unscalable channels.

But we'll also help you identify whether a PLG approach could Let's take a closer look at high volume and compounding.
be a fit for your product.
High volume
Let's get into specific channels to help you determine which is
right for your startup. The first critical factor is a channel's sheer reach. Platforms like
Facebook and Amazon have made it easy for startups to use
Scalable vs. Unscalable Channels paid advertising to reach millions of people. Search engine
marketing allows you to tap into Google's billions of daily
search queries. Previously, that kind of scale was possible only
In the previous section, we discussed the two ways startups
through TV, magazines, or national news coverage.
acquire customers: product-led growth and channel-led
growth. The primary focus of this program will be on the
That said, there simply aren't that many high-volume
channel-led model.
platforms out there. You’ll read a lot about Google, Facebook,
and Amazon in this program for a reason: They’re among a
In this section, we'll dive deeper into channel-led growth and
small selection of platforms that reach a high volume (billions)
the differences between scalable and unscalable channels.
of users.
More specifically, we're going to pull back the curtain to show
you that there are far fewer ways to scale customer
If a key criteria of scalability is high volume, should you ignore
acquisition than most people think.
smaller channels? Not at all. For early-stage startups, lower-
volume "unscalable" channels can be effective and often
This is important to understand for a few reasons:
necessary to build momentum. We'll explain this more in our
discussion of unscalable channels below.
1. It helps to demystify growth and acquisition. Many
founders and new marketers find themselves
If you're already acquiring customers and you're ready to
overwhelmed by the seemingly endless array of marketing
accelerate growth, scalable channels are going to be critical to
channels, tactics, and "best practices."
your success.
2. It will help you stay focused early on. Fear of missing out
is real when you think there are hundreds of channels you
could be using. Knowing that 95% of them aren't a fit for Compounding
your business makes it much easier to focus.
3. You'll produce meaningful results much faster. Many The second characteristic we look for when choosing a channel
startups waste precious time and resources on channels is its ability to compound your marketing efforts.
that were destined for mediocre results from the start.
Understanding the potential of each channel will ensure Compounding simply means that each new customer or user
that you're not spending time on the wrong opportunities. helps to acquire more customers. This is an acquisition loop,
which we covered earlier. It's a key ingredient in the most
We'll now walk you through why there are so few scalable scalable channels.
channels and what sets them apart from their unscalable
counterparts. Take, for example, organic content marketing on search
engines. New visitors come to your site by clicking a link to your
blog post. Some will read your post and decide to buy your
Scalable channels
product. As revenue comes in from these new customers, you
can reinvest by paying a writer to create more content, which
There are many channels, but only a few of them are scalable. will help you acquire more customers.
These types of channels have two critical things in common:
The key: each new customer helps you acquire additional
1. High volume: They allow you to reach a lot of people. You customers.
can acquire many customers and use the channel for a
long time.
2. Compounding/looping effects: They have a self-fueling
mechanism that allows you to repeatedly reinvest the
outputs of the channel (revenue or new users) right back
into it to produce more growth.

33
 The high-scale channels fall on the far right of the matrix. But
if we look closely, we see that nearly all of them, with the
exception of paid marketing, take a significant amount of time
to generate a return on investment ("Time to ROI"). Unscalable
channels can have lower initial investment costs and get you
results faster.

And remember, for our product-led strategies (product virality

and user-generated content), we're dependent on having a
significant number of users in the product to kick-start growth
in the first place.

This brings us to the most important reason why unscalable

channels matter: Early-stage companies need customers as
soon as possible.

Unscalable channels Not only do they need the revenue to pay their companies'
costs, but startups also need people using the product so they
can assess their market-product fit before scaling their growth.
It's worth reiterating that scalable channels aren't the only
channels you can use to acquire customers, but they're the
only channels that will enable you to build a large company— Unscalable channels are useful for later-stage companies too.
quickly. There are tons of other channels that can help you Eventually, even high-scale channels will begin to saturate.
grow yet don't match our criteria for scalability. We'll refer to They'll still be effective, but their growth rate will hit a ceiling.
these as unscalable channels. Adding unscalable channels is one way to supplement scalable
channels.
Some common unscalable channels are:
Understanding Your Startup's Stage of
Public relations (PR) Guest blogging
Speaking Growth
engagements
Asking friends &
Engaging in online communities Organic social media As described earlier, scalable channels are ideal because they
family
Partnering with influencers or allow you to reach a large number of your ideal customers. And
Event marketing Affiliate marketing they compound over time. But what we've found from helping
brands
over a thousand startups grow is that it's not always realistic
to start off with a scalable channel.
While unscalable channels alone won't be enough to build a
huge business, they can help you gain traction. The following
diagram helps to visualize this: Depending on the stage of your startup, you may need to
start off with an unscalable channel to begin acquiring
customers right away.

As our growth program moves from foundational concepts to

tactical execution, it's important to note that the stage of your
startup will affect the growth channels you focus on.

Let's explore the four growth stages:

• Launch
• Traction
• Growth
• Scale

Launch

Startup stage: You're just starting out. Maybe you just

launched a product. This is simple. Your focus should be on

34
getting customers to use your product to assess market-
product fit. We advocate for whatever it takes—which often
includes doing things that don't scale. Your initial customers
will help you adapt your product so you can pursue traction
(and scalable channels).
Traction
Startup stage: You have a flow of customers coming from
unscalable channels. Now it’s time to find a scalable channel.
Main focus at the traction stage:
• Learn from your first users. Adapt product as
necessary.
• Test scalable channels.
Growth
Startup stage: You're actively acquiring customers using a
scalable channel.
At this stage, your startup is starting to show real growth. You
have an effective team, and you’re consistently acquiring new
customers. Most, if not all, of these customers are coming
through the one scalable channel. As you continue to grow,
you may need to abandon low-leverage unscalable channels to
reallocate efforts toward higher-leverage channels that
support your primary scalable channel.
Main focus at the growth stage:
• Double down on the single scalable channel that's
working to acquire customers.
• Abandon unscalable channels to reallocate resources
toward the scalable channel.
Scale
Startup stage: You're approaching the ceiling of your primary
scalable channel.
Your startup has matured and is beginning to look like a real
business. Various processes are in place that allow you to grow
your scalable marketing channel consistently. You likely have a
whole team dedicated to your primary scalable acquisition
channel.
But you're beginning to notice a plateau in the number of
customers you're able to acquire through that scalable
channel. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and your
team is focusing on smaller optimizations.
Those optimizations matter, but if you're going to continue to
grow or accelerate your growth, you'll need to implement
another scalable acquisition channel.
Focus at the scaling stage:
• Optimize existing scalable acquisition channel.
• Allocate resources toward finding a second scalable
channel.
• Invest in multiple unscalable channels that
complement your existing and new scalable channel.
Stages of growth summary
Regardless of your stage of growth, focus on the task at hand.
If you're still looking for traction, that means being diligent
with your growth process and learning as much in as little time
as possible.
But once you find a scalable channel that works for you, it's
smart to take the leap and go all in on that channel.
It's important to double down on a single scalable channel for
as long as you can. It's not easy. It will take time, resources,
and effort to get your primary acquisition channel working at
full capacity. Once you find one that works, the ROI from
continuing to scale that channel will likely outweigh
investment in new, unproven channels. Now we'll narrow the
focus of the program to help you choose your first scalable
channel.
The Major Acquisition Lanes
While there are many different "channels," there are only a
few acquisition "lanes." Lanes are simply broad umbrella
categories that channels fall into. For example, "paid
acquisition" is a lane that consists of Facebook ads, Twitter ads,
Instagram ads, Google Search ads, and all other paid
advertising channels.
After helping over 1,000 startups grow, we've found that
there are only four major acquisition lanes that drive scalable
growth:
• Paid acquisition
• Content acquisition
• Viral acquisition
• Sales acquisition
We'll introduce each and highlight a few particularities that
make them unique. After discussing the four acquisition lanes,
we'll revisit unscalable channels to consider how they relate to
acquisition.
35
Paid acquisition
Paid acquisition refers to any channel, tactic, or marketing
activity in which you're paying for new customers, traffic, or
exposure. Advertising channels are the most popular form of
paid acquisition. Affiliates and most influencer campaigns also
fall under paid.
Note that we mostly cover digital paid acquisition channels.
However, traditional forms of paid acquisition, like billboards
and TV ads, are also options. We'll give a high-level overview
of them in a future lesson.
Advantages
• Short feedback loop between experimentation and
results
• Strong control over the channel's outputs like price,
volume, and target audience
• You can get started with very low budgets
Disadvantages
• Highly competitive
• Takes a lot of effort to maintain performance over
time
• A "reverse economies of scale" effect: Things get
more expensive/inefficient at scale
Company types that work best
• Products with moderate lifetime value (LTV) or high
average revenue per user (ARPU). Low-value products
likely won't be profitable, and expensive ones
generally struggle to convert via ads alone.
• Products with very short sales cycles
• Visual, aesthetically appealing products
• Products with simple value props
• Products serving large markets
Content acquisition
Content acquisition refers to acquiring customers by showing
them content that directly or indirectly relates to your product.
There are three broad categories of content acquisition:
1. Editorial SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is a
method of publishing on your website about topics that
get searched on search engines like Google. Over time,
Google will begin sending traffic to your site if the
algorithm deems your content to be high quality. This
traffic has no direct cost, but it will require you to
editorialize your content to fit within the search engine's
constraints.
2. User-generated content: User-generated content (UGC)
is content that your users create on your behalf. For
example, the vast majority of content on YouTube is not
created by YouTube. With UGC, content is created at scale
without increasing your production costs. UGC can be
distributed in two ways:
1. SEO distribution: Similar to editorial SEO, UGC
SEO relies on search engines to send traffic to the
content created by your users. LinkedIn profiles
are an example of SEO-distributed UGC.
2. Viral distribution: UGC that's distributed by the
user who created it is called viral UGC. A tweet
that's seen by millions of people is an example of
viral UGC.
3. Viral content: Viral content spreads via sharing, not
through search engines. It's a fairly unpredictable
strategy, but content can be designed with the channel in
mind to increase the likelihood of it being shared.
Here's an example of what a basic content acquisition growth
loop might look like:
36
Advantages love a product so much that they invite their
friends and family. Word of mouth takes place
• Doesn't always require direct cash investment—only outside of the product experience.
costs time to get started 2. Pull virality: This is when users of a product invite
• Scales well others because doing so increases the value they
• Less intrusive than paid advertising get out of the product. Slack—or pretty much any
• Create once, distribute forever other collaboration tool—is a great example of
• Traffic compounds over time this. For someone to truly get the full value out of
Slack, they need their co-workers to join as well.
• Allows your users to become your biggest growth
So users "pull" in others to maximize their own
mechanism
utility. Pull virality applies to every social media
platform, too. Instagram isn't much fun if you're
Disadvantages
the only one using it.
3. Push virality: Push virality involves existing users
• Expensive at scale exposing (not inviting) others to the product
• It can take a long time to get results through natural usage. This applies to both
• At the mercy of search engine algorithms physical and digital products. Every time
• Competition (especially SEO) can be insurmountable someone walks around wearing their AirPods,
they're exposing the product to other potential
Company types that work best customers. On the digital side, take Superhuman,
an email service. Every time a Superhuman user
• Product's usage enables user content creation sends an email, it says "sent via Superhuman" in
• Products or problems that have existing search the footer. Again, the users aren't directly inviting
volume their contacts to Superhuman. But they are
• Complex products or spaces in which education is creating awareness each time they use it.
needed
• Spaces or industries in which thought leadership,
trust, or validation is required
• Products with access to (or the ability to create)
proprietary data

Note: While all three strategies can be very effective, we'll

primarily focus on editorial SEO and viral content. Editorial SEO
and viral content are channel-led strategies, whereas UGC is
product-led and therefore outside the scope of this program.

Viral acquisition

At its core, virality means that growth is driven by users of a

product spreading the word and inviting others to use the
product as well.
Advantages
People often assume that virality is simply word of mouth. But
there are actually several forms of virality. We'll examine the • Super low cost
two major categories:
• Scalable
• Leverages the most trusted way people buy:
• Incentivized virality: As the name suggests, this is when recommendations from their friends
users get an incentive (e.g., money, product features,
exclusive content) in exchange for inviting others to the
Disadvantages
product. The referral programs ("invite a friend and get
$10") made famous by the likes of Dropbox, Airbnb, and
Paypal are all examples of incentivized virality. • Very difficult to get right
• Organic virality: Organic virality can be broken down into • Hard to control or influence
a few different sub-categories: • Requires a critical mass of people to take effect
1. Word of mouth: Good ol'-fashioned word of
mouth is a classic type of organic virality. Users Company types that work best

37
 • Products that gain utility with every new user (e.g.,
networks, social products)
• Products that are innately fun or social
• Products that are simple with a broad appeal
Sales acquisition
Sales tends to fall outside the growth marketing scope, but it's
one of the top channel-led strategies. Why is it so powerful?
Because it too, like every strategy mentioned above, is
scalable. A salesperson works to find and close new customers.
Revenue is captured from those customers. And that revenue
can be directly invested into hiring more salespeople, which in
turn leads to more revenue.
Sales consists of two parts:
1. Lead generation: Lead generation is the act of
searching for people or businesses that fall into your
target audience. The goal of lead generation is to
identify a prospective customer and find a channel to
directly reach them through. Once a "lead" has been
identified, it's then passed to the direct sales team to
make first contact. Lead generation is typically done
through content marketing, paid marketing, or cold
outreach.
2. Direct sales: Direct sales is the process of turning
leads into customers. Direct sales can happen over
the phone, in person, and sometimes over email. It
often involves educating and negotiating with a
prospect until a deal is finalized.
Advantages
• Allows for very niche targeting at scale
• You can create systems that lead to a repeatable and
predictable acquisition engine
• Unlike other channels, messaging can be tailored in
real time, which can lead to a higher likelihood of
closing a sale
• You're able to develop a personal relationship with
your prospective customer
• Allows you to explain your product in great detail
Disadvantages
• Very expensive
• Requires constant hiring, training, and up-skilling of
your sales team
Company types that work best
• Products with long or complex sales cycles
• Expensive products
• Products that require training to use
• Products that require custom quotes or
configurations
Unscalable channels
Unlike the acquisition lanes we just highlighted, unscalable
acquisition channels won't compound in effectiveness over
time. They can't make use of their outputs and are typically
only effective for a short amount of time.
For example, public relations (PR) is only effective when
publications are writing about your startup. A single mention
in a highly regarded publication might lead to a few hundred
signups, but it will only be visible on the main page for a few
hours before getting replaced by another post. Each new PR
write-up will require the same amount of effort to get
published, and the results from one campaign can't be directly
reinvested into future PR campaigns.
Advantages
• Many are cheap
• Can supplement scalable channels
• Helps to kick-start scalable channels
• Less competitive
Disadvantages
• Doesn't have scale potential
• Many are one-offs and not repeatable
Company types that work best
• Early-stage companies looking to get an initial flow of
users and customers
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 • Companies looking to augment their primary scalable
channel
How to Identify the Right Acquisition
Channel
Now that we've introduced the primary lanes that startups can
use to scale their customer acquisition, it's time to help you
narrow your focus to a single acquisition channel.
You might already have a specific channel in mind based on
previous efforts or the descriptions earlier. Even so, we
recommend completing this section using the prioritization
framework we'll show you. This will ensure that you've
considered all aspects of the decision before committing.
We'll walk you through an active exercise, so make sure you
have a way to record your responses.
Acquisition channel prioritization framework
Step 1: Define your goals
Every startup has a different goal. Maybe you want to build a
product that's used by millions of people each day. Or maybe
you want to create a lifestyle business that's modestly
profitable. It's a choice that all startup founders must make.
Since we're going to start with one primary acquisition
channel, write down what you're trying to achieve through
that channel. Imagine it's the only channel your customers
come through.
Be specific:
• How many customers do you want to acquire per
day/week/month/year?
• Do you need to acquire customers in a set amount of
time? How long? How many customers?
Step 2: Define your constraints
Every startup will have a different set of constraints to work
within. We'll help you identify all your constraints so you can
write them down.
The most important constraint that you'll need to address is
which acquisition lanes are most likely to work for your
startup.
As we demonstrated in the Major Acquisition Lanes section,
certain lanes work only when paired with specific business
types. Go ahead and review each lane description to decide
whether or not the lane is "open" to your startup. Be honest
with yourself as you select lanes based on your product, target
market, and business model.
Once you've identified which lanes might work for you, define
all other constraints, such as:
• What kind of budget do you have to spend on
acquiring customers? Can it be increased? Will it be
refilled once spent? Who's in charge of that budget?
• What results are required? Is there a time limit?
• Who's available to work on growth projects? Do they
have dedicated time and resources?
• What resources are available? Can more resources be
acquired over time?
Now that you've defined both your goals and constraints, most
of the prioritization has already been done for you. That's
because most channels have a very specific set of
requirements in order to be effective. For example, a small
acquisition budget will rule out most paid channels with high
customer acquisition costs.
As we've mentioned before, channels are not in your control.
Only your startup is in your control. That's why we need to
align you with a channel that will give your startup the greatest
chance of predictably acquiring new customers—even with
your constraints.
Step 3: Use the evaluation framework
With your goals and constraints well documented, we can
evaluate each individual channel. There are six criteria that we
assess for each channel:
• Scale: How much of your target audience is on the
channel. A channel may offer amazing targeting, but
if few people in your target market are on it, it won't
be useful.
• Targeting: How easy it is to reach your target
audience. Your target market might use a specific
platform, but if there's no way to specifically target
them, then it's not that useful.
• Effort: How difficult it is to launch and maintain the
channel. When assessing effort, we'll factor in both
the amount of time and level of expertise needed.
• Time to results: How quickly you can expect to see
results from the channel. Remember, the purpose of
the channel is to acquire customers. That's what we
mean by "results." Metrics like impressions and
engagement don't matter unless you're acquiring
paying customers through your channel.
• Intent: How likely it is that people on the channel will
buy from you. Is your target in a buying mindset on
this channel? How close is this channel to your
conversion event? For example, a lawyer scrolling
39
 Reddit is going to have low buying intent if shown an
ad for legal software.
• Cost: How much the channel costs to launch and
maintain, and the average cost of acquiring a
customer
Using the six channel criteria, we'll walk you through each of
the scalable and unscalable customer acquisition channels. Be
sure to focus on the acquisition lanes that are available to your
startup. As you go through each channel, compare the channel
criteria with your constraints and goals. If you see a channel
that seems promising, write it down. If a channel doesn't align
with your constraints and goals, move on to the next one.
How to Evaluate Acquisition Channels
In the previous lesson, we went through a step-by-step process
for how to prioritize different acquisition channels. The final
step introduced an evaluation framework for judging
individual channels based on seven criteria:
1. Scale
2. Targetability
3. Intent
4. Context
5. Effort
6. Cost
7. Time to results
In this lesson, we’ll walk through this evaluation framework in
more depth by looking at each of the seven criteria. Channels
vary in effectiveness based on a company’s audience. Channels
may even vary in effectiveness for a single company targeting
multiple audiences. We’ll provide examples so you have all of
the context you need to pursue your channels.
Since it’s difficult to understand these criteria from a purely
conceptual perspective, we’ll look at how three companies
with different business models might evaluate acquisition
channels:
• Otter.ai, a B2B company with software that records
and transcribes online meetings
• Rareform, an ecom shop selling purses, bags, and
accessories from recycled billboards
• DoorDash, a food delivery app
Scale
Scale generally refers to how many people you can reach on a
given channel. For example, Amazon ads is a high-scale
channel because you can reach millions of Amazon shoppers.
Theoretically, you can scale Amazon ads. Certain companies
can build big businesses by using Amazon ads as a primary
channel. But when you’re evaluating channels, it’s important
to also consider how many of your ideal customers you can
reach on a given channel. That’s the type of “scale” we’ll
discuss here. While Amazon ads is a high-scale channel, not all
businesses can actually scale their acquisition through it. If
you’re selling a niche product in a category that won’t get
many searches on Amazon, then Amazon isn’t scalable for you.
Let’s look at Snapchat. Most users are between 18 and 29
years old; only 38% are 30 or older. Since Otter.ai’s product
serves remote workers, it wouldn’t be practical to run ads on
Snapchat. Most of Snap’s users are high school and college
students—not working professionals who can make decisions
about software for their companies. But for Rareform and
DoorDash, whose target audiences include Gen Z users and
young millennials, Snapchat ads have better scale.
For another example, consider SEO. DoorDash’s market
includes hundreds of millions of people that use food delivery
services. There are also close to 100 million searches related to
food delivery every month, making SEO a high-scale channel
for DoorDash. Rareform has a smaller, more niche market.
While there are many searches for purses and bags in general,
few are specifically for bags made of recycled materials—only
around 10,000 searches per month. So SEO has lower scale for
Rareform.
So when you go through the project to pick your acquisition
channel, consider the fact that channels have a certain scale—
how many users you can reach through that channel. Facebook
has billions of users while Reddit has millions.
But then evaluate those channels based on how many of your
target customers you can reach.
Targetability
Targetability describes the degree to which you can target a
specific audience on a channel. Millions of your target users
may use a channel—but if that channel doesn’t enable you to
hone in on that specific segment (low targetability), it would
underperform compared to a channel that offers such
targeting.
Some channels enable you to target users by selecting a
specific data point. For example, with Facebook and Instagram
ads, you can make your ads only show to people of one gender,
in a specific age range, and so on.
However, not all channels have this level of targetability. Think
about all the ways you can reach people with Google:
• Google Display Network (GDN) and YouTube ads
allow detailed targeting based on user demographics,
life events, interests, and browsing history. You can
also set your ads to appear on specific websites and
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 YouTube channels, or on sites and channels related to
certain topics and keywords.
• Google search ads rely mostly on keyword targeting—
your ads appear for keywords that you specify in
Google Ads. You can also set some targeting criteria
like location, device, and language, but these options
are more limited compared to GDN and YouTube ads.
• Creating high-ranking SEO content relies on keyword
targeting, except you don’t specify your target
keywords to Google Ads. Instead, you create content
around these keywords to appeal to specific
audiences (like parenting articles for new moms and
dads).
Sales and digital paid acquisition channels tend to have better
targetability than other acquisition lanes. Sales teams can
focus on reaching out to people that match their exact
customer criteria, and ad networks like Facebook let you
pinpoint audience segments based on user data. By
comparison, content and viral acquisition channels like
content marketing and virality give you very little control over
who your customers share your product with, or who will read
your content.
In general, channels with high targetability make it easier to
reach very specific audiences—a priority for companies selling
niche products. For companies with larger markets, like
DoorDash, targetability may not be as big of a priority when
evaluating different acquisition channels.
That said, even with high targetability, channel efficacy varies
based on who your audience is and the specific channel being
used.
Consider Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads. As paid acquisition
channels, they offer greater targetability than content and viral
acquisition methods—but their scope of targeting differs.
• With Facebook ads, you can target users based on job
title. However, since people use Facebook casually,
many don’t actually add their employer or company
info to their profile—making this targeting inaccurate.
• Because of LinkedIn’s purpose as a job platform,
people reliably update work details on their profile.
As a result, businesses that want to target based on
profession (e.g., B2B companies like Otter.ai) will find
LinkedIn ads more effective than Facebook ads at
reaching their ideal audience.
The point here: Since targeting options can vary even across
high-targetability channels, you must evaluate each channel’s
targetability in relation to your specific market.
Intent
Your target audience may be active on a particular channel
(high scale) that also allows very granular targeting (high
targetability). But if their intent in using a channel doesn’t align
with your product, they’re less likely to become a customer.
People browse channels with different goals—we call
this intent. For instance, people tend to use Facebook for
updates about their friends but use LinkedIn for professional
networking.
Some channels aren’t as effective for acquiring customers
because users aren’t actively interested in shopping on it. This
ultimately depends on who your target audience is and what
you’re selling.
Consider Pinterest. According to Pinterest Trends, some of the
most popular keywords searched revolve around outfit ideas,
recipes, and home DIY projects. Users often browse Pinterest
with the goal of sourcing style ideas and inspiration.
Given this intent, running Pinterest ads doesn’t make sense for
Otter.ai or DoorDash. But for Rareform, the intent behind
using Pinterest aligns. Why?
• Otter.ai: Users don’t usually browse Pinterest looking for
ways to improve their remote work communication.
They’d more likely search on Google for answers to
specific questions like “how to record Google Meet.”
• DoorDash: Even though food is one of Pinterest’s top
searched categories, users are generally looking for
specific recipes or cooking tips. They don’t scroll on
Pinterest when they’re hungry and want to order some
food.
• Rareform: Since users explore Pinterest for fashion and
style inspiration, Rareform could create ads targeting
keywords about eco-friendly fashion.
It’s worth noting, however, that intent can also vary within a
single channel. SEO and search ads are a good example, as not
all search queries have high purchase intent.
Someone searching for “best eco-friendly purses” probably
has a higher chance of becoming a Rareform customer (greater
purchase intent) than someone Googling “why is sustainable
apparel important?” In this case, searching for information
about sustainable apparel reflects an intent to learn, rather
than to buy.
Context
We use context to describe what users are doing on a
particular channel or what they expect to get out of it. When a
channel suits your product contextually, it means that your
brand aligns with the channel’s culture, or your product solves
a problem relevant to what’s discussed on that channel.
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Context is important not just for judging different channels,
but also for evaluating different strategies within a single
channel. It includes factors like:
• Device: Some channels are more commonly viewed on
mobile than desktop and vice versa.
o Example: Since people typically browse Facebook
and Instagram on their phones, it’s a lot more
natural to advertise a mobile app like DoorDash
on these platforms. Using a phone, you can get to
the app store and download DoorDash more
quickly and easily than if you saw an ad on
desktop.
• Culture: Some channels have communities with very
defined values and expectations, like Reddit. Or their
users lean in a certain direction religiously, politically, etc.
o Example: Rareform’s brand focuses on
sustainability. With an influencer marketing
strategy, fashion bloggers that thrift clothing and
care about the environment would be a better
contextual fit than influencers that clearly don’t
value sustainability, e.g., luxury brand fashion
bloggers.
• Relevance: Some channels cover specific topics so if your
product or industry doesn’t fit, audiences may find your
content random or out of place.
o Example: You can pay for a sponsored post on
websites like BuzzFeed and Fast Company. Since
BuzzFeed publishes pop culture and
entertainment content, a sponsored post there
wouldn’t be a great contextual fit for a B2B
company like Otter.ai. Fast Company is more
relevant since it publishes content about
technology and productivity for business leaders.
Effort
You can think of effort as the amount of time and expertise
needed for a channel to succeed. There are two dimensions to
this: setup and maintenance. Some channels require more
initial effort in terms of setup, with compounding results that
require less maintenance later on.
For example, user-generated content strategies often involve
more effort in creating social media campaigns and other
marketing collateral to encourage user participation. But as
these strategies gain momentum, companies can repurpose
user-created content rather than producing their own. Other
channels require consistent effort all around, like viral content
marketing strategies. Since creating viral content can’t be
automated, companies must continually work on ideating,
creating, and sharing new pieces of content to achieve virality.
Cost
Like effort, the cost of a channel is shaped by two factors:
setup and maintenance. Some channels are costly upfront but
after setup, require little in the way of maintenance.
Take SEO content. You may need to spend a lot of money
initially to hire a quality writer who can do keyword research
and create SEO-friendly content. Then you’ll need to monitor
your published content and reoptimize it for better
performance—but this doesn’t require daily maintenance.
Other channels have ongoing maintenance costs in addition to
setup. With Facebook ads, for instance, you need a monthly
advertising budget as well as resources for designing and
creating new ads.
Time to results
In an ideal world, whatever growth channel you pick would
convert users into customers immediately—that is, they’d
have a short, or fast, time to results.
There’s often a tradeoff between time to results and cost:
channels that quickly generate results (fast time to results)
tend to be more expensive than channels that convert
customers over a longer time frame (slow time to results).
Consider the difference between ad networks and content
marketing. Creating great ads and content both take time.
However, your ads reach viewers immediately once you pay
Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. On the other hand, any
content you publish may not get many (or any) views for a
while—especially for new websites just developing an SEO
foothold. Instead, results build over time, as you develop a
loyal readership or following.
Differences in time to results don’t make one channel more or
less effective than another. However, it’s important to
consider this criterion if your company faces more pressure to
acquire customers asap.
How to prioritize different channels
In an ideal world, you’d grow your company through channels
that:
• Are used by all of your target audience (high scale)
• Allow you to hone in on your exact audience (high
targetability)
• Users browse with a buying mentality (high intent)
• Match your product contextually (high context)
• Require little time and expertise (low effort)
• Are cheap to set up and run (low cost)
• Convert users into customers very quickly (fast time
to results)
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But channels likely won’t perfectly fit this mold. Some might
have more obvious potential for acquiring customers. Others
might “tie” across different criteria, in which case it may be
hard to determine which to prioritize.
For example, imagine you’ve evaluated two channels, Channel
A and Channel B. They score very similarly in terms of
targetability, effort, cost, and time to results. However,
Channel A aligns with your product more in terms of context
and intent while Channel B has greater scale.
Channel A Channel B
• Low scale • High scale
• High intent • Medium intent
• High context • Poor context
In situations like this, we recommend prioritizing channels
with stronger contextual fit and intent—or in this case,
Channel A.
Why? Remember our Five Fits Framework: aligning in context
and intent is necessary for achieving market-channel and
product-channel fit. It’s much harder to succeed on channels
with poor context and intent because users aren’t in the right
mindset to buy your product.
Think of how people sell water bottles and band merchandise
at music festivals. It’s a lot easier to make these sales versus
Top-of-funnel content
High: Broad keyword phrases with high search volume (lots of searches by
Scale
more users)
Targetability Low: Many people search for these phrases, not only your ideal customers
Low: Less intent to buy your product—users may not be aware of it and are
Intent
more interested in a broader topic related to it
Low: Contextual fit isn’t guaranteed among all readers, as some users may
Context have other reasons for searching this topic (desire to learn, research for a
project, etc.)
Medium: Easier to create content about more general topics that have lots of High: More effort required, since the content creator needs to
Effort
existing research
Medium: Cheaper to find qualified writers. However, you may need to invest
Cost
more resources in off-page SEO because of keyword competition.
Time to Slow: Because keywords are more competitive, ranking highly may take a
results longer amount of time, especially if you don’t invest in off-page SEO
Based on this evaluation, you might conclude that bottom-of-
funnel content has greater ROI for your company. Even though
it costs more to produce and there are fewer users searching
for this type of content, its alignment in both context and
intent means users consuming bottom-of-funnel content are
more likely to convert into paying customers. So you’d
prioritize creating bottom-of-funnel content first, and then
move on to top-of-funnel content later.
selling something like books, furniture, or software, where
neither context nor intent fits.
So starting with channels with strong contextual fit and high
intent tends to get you the highest ROI at first—you’re
effectively picking the low-hanging fruit before moving up the
tree.
Evaluating strategies within a single
channel
The evaluation framework isn’t only useful for judging and
prioritizing different channels. It also helps when prioritizing
strategies within a single channel. Once again, context and
intent should take precedence over the other criteria.
Here’s an example of how that might look in practice.
Imagine your company has decided on pursuing SEO content
to acquire customers and is now debating between a few
strategies. One strategy is publishing high-level blog posts
related to your product and industry to generate brand
awareness (top-of-funnel content). Another is creating more
specific content, like product comparisons with your
competitors, to convert readers into customers (bottom-of-
funnel content).
You could apply the evaluation framework like so:
Bottom-of-funnel content
Low: Niche keyword phrases with low search volume (a small amount
of searches by fewer users)
High: Your target customers are more likely to search these niche
keywords than the general public
High: Stronger intent to buy your product—users are already familiar
with it and want to compare it with competitors
High: Greater contextual fit for conversions—users are more than
likely looking for product comparisons because they’re thinking of
buying
research other products
High: Expensive because more research and product expertise is
needed to create quality content
Moderate: Because fewer sites are competing for the same keywords,
ranking highly may take a shorter amount of time
In short, our evaluation framework is helpful for not only
determining which acquisition channels to prioritize but also
which channel-specific strategies you should start with. Use
the criteria we’ve outlined above to figure out how best to
reach your target audience and what kind of creatives,
messaging, etc. might resonate best.
43
Pick Your Primary Acquisition Channel Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $50

The purpose of this section is to provide insight into each Businesses it works for:
acquisition channel. We'll highlight each channel's scale,
targeting ability, amount of effort required, time to results, • Products with substantial search volume
user intent level, and minimum achievable cost to acquire a • Products that have moderately high LTVs (lifetime
customer, as well as the business types it works for. value) or average order values (a $10 product is going
to struggle to be profitable)
We recommend bookmarking this page. Even though you’ll
focus on one acquisition channel at this stage, it’s helpful to Google Shopping ads
have a bird’s-eye view of the full spectrum of ways to reach
new customers. You can refer back to this page whenever you
need a quick refresher on specific channels and their pros and
cons.

Right after this section, you'll go through a project in which

you'll use this information to craft your growth strategy and
develop a prioritized roadmap of channels to test.

Note: The minimum cost of acquiring a customer is based on

our experience. The prices associated with your industry or
country may vary. Use the costs we list as a benchmark when
assessing which channel is best for your startup.

Paid Ads Scale: High; able to reach billions of people using Google for
searches each day. However, scale will depend on search
Google Search ads volume for relevant keywords.

Targeting: Moderate; all you have is automated keyword

targeting based on your product's name and product page
description.

Effort: Very low; because targeting is automated, the main

effort involves selecting negative keywords and tweaking the
product name and description. There are no assets or ad copy
to create, either.

Scale: High; able to reach billions of people using Google for
searches each day. However, scale will depend on search
volume for relevant keywords.
Targeting: Great; with keyword targeting, you choose the
specific search queries you want your ads to show up for.
Effort: Low; compared to more visual ad channels like
Facebook and YouTube, the time to get up and running is very
low since your ads are just text. Most of the effort comes from
thorough keyword research.
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
Intent: High; people are actively searching for things to buy
and researching/comparing products.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $35
Businesses it works for:
• Physical consumer products
• Products with a very short sales cycle
• Products people are searching for
• Products that are visually appealing

Intent: High; people are actively searching for things to buy

and researching/comparing products.

44
Amazon ads
Scale: High; able to reach hundreds of millions of people using
Amazon for searches each month. However, scale will depend
on search volume on relevant keywords.
Targeting: Great; you can choose one of the various
automated keyword targeting options or manual keyword
targeting.
Effort: Low; compared to more visual ad channels like
Facebook and YouTube, the time to get up and running is very
low since there's basically no ad copy or creative. Most of the
effort comes from thorough keyword research (but you can
also choose automated targeting options).
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
Intent: High; people are actively searching for things to buy
and researching/comparing products.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $25
Businesses it works for:
• Consumer products sold on Amazon
• Products with a very short sales cycle
• Products people are searching for
• Products that are visually appealing
Instagram ads
Scale: High; able to reach hundreds of millions of people using
Instagram every day.
Targeting: Great; you have a wide variety of targeting options
including demographics and likes, as well as lookalikes and
retargeting options.
Effort: Medium; Instagram is a visual channel. This makes
creating ad copy easy, but high-quality and frequently
changing ad creatives are essential, which can be time
consuming.
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
Intent: Medium; people aren't using Instagram specifically to
buy products. But it's a platform that people browse to keep a
pulse on what's new.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $30
Businesses it works for:
Most businesses, including:
• Mobile apps
• Ecommerce (it's a visual platform)
• B2C software
• B2B software
• B2B products with high customer lifetime value
• Products that are visually appealing
45
Facebook ads Quora ads

Scale: High; able to reach hundreds of millions of people using

Facebook every day (although on desktop, a portion of users
have ad blockers enabled).
Scale: Medium; Quora has 300 million monthly active users,
Targeting: Great; you have a wide variety of targeting options which is large but isn't as big as Facebook and Google.
including demographics and likes, as well as lookalikes and
retargeting options.
Targeting: Moderate; you target based on keywords and
topics, but you can't get granular.
Effort: Medium; Facebook is both a written and visual channel.
You need to constantly be creating new ad copy variations and
Effort: Medium; Quora has reduced targeting options, but just
high-quality ad creatives, which can be time consuming.
like Facebook, you have to create ad copy and creatives.
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
matter of days.
Intent: Medium; people aren't on Facebook to buy products,
Intent: Low; people aren't on Quora to buy products or keep a
but it is a platform that people browse to keep a pulse on
pulse on what's new, so purchase intent is low.
what's new.

Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $25

Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $30

Businesses it works for:

Businesses it works for:

• Products that solve a problem people search Quora

Most businesses, including:
for
• Professional services
• Mobile apps
• Ecommerce (it's a visual platform)
Google Display ads
• B2C software
• B2B software
• B2B products with high customer lifetime value
• Products that are visually appealing

46
Scale: High; over two million websites, videos, and apps show Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
ads using the Google Display Network. matter of days.

Targeting: Moderate; you target based on keywords, topics, Intent: High; people are actively looking for an app to
and specific placements, as well as audiences (retargeting and download.
lookalikes included).
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $10
Effort: Medium; Google Display ads require you to write ad
copy and create a lot of different ad creatives. To fully control Businesses it works for:
how your ads look, you need to make ad creatives in about 30
different sizes. But you can opt for an auto-placement option • iOS and iPadOS apps
if you're less picky about how your creatives display. • MacOS apps

Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a Pinterest ads
matter of days.

Intent: Low; generally speaking, no one likes banner ads.

People often ignore them, and ad blockers block them. The ad
is a distraction from the content they're viewing.

Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $75

Businesses it works for:

• Mobile apps
Scale: Medium; Pinterest has 478 million monthly active users.
• Ecommerce
• B2B SaaS
Targeting: Moderate; you target in similar ways to Facebook,
• Visually appealing products
including keywords, demographics, placements, and
• Products that are easy to identify visually
audiences (with actalikes and retargeting).

App Store ads

Effort: Medium; like Instagram, you'll need to constantly
refresh ad creatives to experiment and stay fresh. The size
formats are also different from all other channels.

Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a

matter of days.

Intent: Medium; people often use Pinterest to find new

products. Clothing and furniture products do exceptionally
well.

Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $40

Scale: Medium; Apple has millions of users, but searching for Businesses it works for:
apps is not a frequent occurrence.
• Ecommerce
Targeting: Moderate; like Google Search, you target based on • Cooking, health, fashion, furniture, gardening
keywords, but the App Store is more limited in terms of products
keyword types and research/volume.

Effort: Low; there's no ad copy or creative involved, just your

search listing, so it's quick to launch.

47
Snapchat ads
Scale: Medium; Snapchat has 46 million monthly active users.
Targeting: Moderate; you target in similar ways to Facebook,
e.g., demographics and audiences (including actalikes and
retargeting).
Effort: Medium; like Instagram and Pinterest, you'll need to
constantly refresh ad creatives to experiment. The size formats
are also different, and video is often needed, so they require
customization.
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
Intent: Low; ads are a distraction from use of the platform, and
most people using Snapchat are young with low buying power.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $40
Businesses it works for:
• B2C mobile apps
• Ecommerce
• Physical locations
• Those that target Gen Z
YouTube ads
Scale: High; YouTube has two billion monthly active users.
Targeting: Moderate; you target similarly to Google Display
ads, including keywords, topics, placements, demographics,
and audiences (with lookalikes and retargeting).
Effort: Medium; like Instagram, you need to constantly refresh
ad creatives to experiment. And videos can be expensive and
difficult to make.
Time to results: Medium; making high-quality videos takes
time—although it's quick if you already have videos made.
Intent: Low; ads distract people from using YouTube to watch
entertaining videos or learn things. Many people complain
about them.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $45
Businesses it works for:
• Ecommerce (gaming, fitness, music, beauty)
• B2B SaaS with high lifetime value
• Visually appealing products
• Mass-market consumer products
Bing ads
Scale: Low; Bing has about 1-2% of Google's daily search
volume.
Targeting: Great; Bing's targeting is almost identical to Google
Search ads.
Effort: Low; like Google Search, there are no ad creatives to
make. You can get Bing to fully mirror your Google Search ads
account.
Time to results: Fast; setting up a Bing account and
mirroring/copying over your Google Search ads takes no time
at all.
Intent: High; people are actively searching for things to buy
and researching/comparing products.
48
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $35
Businesses it works for:
• B2B SaaS that targets Microsoft users, since it's the
default search engine for their browsers
• Products that people search for
• Products that solve a problem people search for on
Bing
• Products that target older demographics,
predominantly women
LinkedIn ads
Scale: Medium; LinkedIn has around 300 million monthly
active users.
Targeting: Great; LinkedIn lets you target based on job
experience, job titles, specific companies, and audiences. It has
the best data for anything related to work experience.
Effort: Medium; to do LinkedIn right, you need to write direct
messages and ad copy, build ad creatives, and possibly even
create a lead gen asset like an ebook or piece of content.
Time to results: Fast; you can go from zero to results in a
matter of days.
Intent: Low; people don't tend to use LinkedIn to find products
to buy. Instead, they use it to hire people, get hired, or sell
products.
Average cost per LEAD (CPL): $200. Note that for LinkedIn, we
use CPL instead of CAC. The focus here is on getting valid email
addresses, not acquiring customers yet. Actual customer
conversion often requires moving over to a different channel,
such as direct sales. LinkedIn is expensive and tends to work
only for B2B companies earning thousands in customer LTV.
Businesses it works for:
• Recruiting
• Higher education
• B2B businesses with a customer lifetime value of over
$1,500
Affiliate & influencer marketing
This is when you contact people with their own audiences (on
social media platforms or on their own) and incentivize them
to plug your product, either blatantly or covertly.
Scale: Medium; there are influencers with followings of all
sizes on different platforms, with many hundreds of millions of
followers and subscribers collectively. Your scale will depend
on how many influencers there are in your niche, and how
popular they are.
Targeting: Medium; you can select influencers whose
audiences directly overlap with your company's. For example,
if you have a personal finance app, you can target personal
finance bloggers and YouTubers.
Effort: Medium; you need to create a list of influencers,
contact them, educate them on your product, negotiate rates,
and work with them on how to naturally pitch your product.
Time to results: Medium; it can take about 15 hours a week to
build an influencer marketing program, including contacting
and negotiating with influencers.
Intent: Medium; some influencers' followers respect their
recommendations, but they often don't follow with an intent
to purchase products.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $30 (but you can
often negotiate deals such as a percentage of sales or flat-fee
promotions)
Businesses it works for:
• Ecommerce (especially health, beauty, and apparel)
• Consumer SaaS
• Industries/niches where influencers dominate and
their fans respect what they have to say
Traditional paid acquisition channels
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These channels include classics like billboards, pamphlets in Physical advertisements
mailboxes, and TV and print ads. We don't cover how to
execute these channels, but below is a quick overview of what
they are and how to evaluate them. They're generally rather
simple: Create a compelling, unique ad, and then negotiate to
have it distributed (and pay lots of money).

Direct mail

Scale: High; you could theoretically buy any billboard or

subway, bus, or bus stop ad in the world if you outbid
everybody else.

Targeting: Poor; availability depending, you can choose the

Scale: High; you can send direct mail to basically anyone with
an address.
Targeting: Moderate; you can choose the neighborhoods you
want to send to. For example, one company sent mail to
people within a few miles of a hospital that was advertising
open nurse positions.
Effort: Low; the main efforts are designing the pamphlet
you're sending out and choosing where to send it. Delivery
services are quite easy to use for that.
Time to results: Medium; once you finally launch, results are
pretty quick, but first you need to design the pamphlets, print
them, and get the delivery service to pick them up and deliver
them (probably a day or several later).
Intent: Very low; people's default reaction to random fliers in
the mail is to toss them immediately. You need to really grab
their attention. Even when you do, this channel is higher
friction because they then have to visit a website, make a
phone call, or go to a store.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $50. Besides
upfront printing costs, you have delivery costs and any
promotional value you offer (which helps you track
performance).
specific places you want to advertise to, but you can't control
who looks at your ad.
Effort: High; there's no easy platform for buying physical
advertisement placements. It's still a very manual process of
calling different companies.
Time to results: Slow; because physical advertisements are
mostly good for general brand awareness, it takes time to have
a measurable effect.
Intent: Low; people aren't wondering which website-building
tool to use when they're heading to a coffee shop or
commuting.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $???. It's very hard
to track, other than hand-wavy things like, "At this date, we
added a billboard in this area, and sales there increased by X%
over the next Y months."
Businesses it works for:
• Local businesses
• Companies that want brand awareness, particularly in
a location where their target market is (like Silicon
Valley having tons of tech billboards)
• Real estate services

Businesses it works for:

• Local businesses
• Food and delivery services
• Real estate services

50
TV/print/radio ads
Targeting: Poor; you can choose the specific channels,
stations, or magazines to target, but you're at the whim of their
audiences.
Effort: High; there's no easy platform for buying these ads. It's
still a very manual process of calling different companies.
Time to results: Slow; because these ads are mostly good for
general brand awareness, it takes time to have a measurable
effect.
Intent: Low; ads are an unwelcome distraction.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $???. It's very hard
to track, besides hand-wavy things like, "At this date, we added
a billboard in this area, and sales there increased by X% over
the next Y months."
Businesses it works for:
• Companies that want brand awareness
• Expensive, luxury products (e.g., Rolex)
• Products that appeal to almost everyone (e.g.,
Febreze)
• Companies with very large budgets
Content acquisition channels
These are channels for which people create content, either
written or video, to increase traffic and build affinity with their
audience.
Search engine optimization
This is content written specifically to target high-volume,
preferably low-difficulty keywords that people use to search
on Google. The goal is to write the definitive article that
answers a user's query/solves their problem, increasing traffic
to the article and improving the rank of your site overall.
Scale: High; there are billions of Google and Bing searches
every day.
Targeting: Moderate; you can target specific keywords, but
you're at the whim of the search engine's algorithm.
Effort: Medium; to be clear, it takes time to write and edit a lot
of articles targeting various keywords, although you can easily
outsource them to writers.
Time to results: Slow; at a minimum, it takes several months
to start seeing results. And it can take over a year to start
seeing meaningful volume—if it comes at all.
Intent: Medium; depending on the keyword you target, you
could have anything from very high to very low intent.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. If you write all
the articles yourself, you can get organic customers "for free."
But realistically, you'll want to outsource the writing.
Businesses it works for:
• Companies in niches that have significant search
volume
• Products that require extensive education before the
audience understands what they are and why they're
needed
• Professional services, such as accountants, agencies,
and law firms, as they can demonstrate their
expertise
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User-generated content
This is content created by your user base, not by you. Obvious
examples are social media platforms. People put videos on
YouTube, and those videos bring people to YouTube. This also
includes platforms like Medium and Substack, as well as
marketplaces like Airbnb and Etsy (seen above).
Scale: High; if you have a lot of users and they're incentivized
to generate content, there's no limit to your reach (think
Facebook, Medium, or Substack).
Targeting: Poor; you have little to no control over the content
your users make.
Effort: Medium; it can be challenging to create a platform that
encourages and incentivizes users to generate a lot of good
content and share it. On the other hand, you aren't creating
the content yourself.
Time to results: Slow; you need to reach a decent size before
the amount of content being produced by users is sufficient to
generate results.
Intent: Medium; ultimately, intent depends on the content
your users generate, so it can range from very low to very high.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. Because your
users are generating the content, it doesn't cost you anything.
Businesses it works for:
• Social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and
Dribbble
• Tools that help people create and distribute content.
Examples: Medium and Substack
• B2C media businesses
• Marketplace businesses (think Airbnb or Etsy)
Viral content
This is content made to be shared. That means it's either
extremely shareable/viral in nature—like a funny meme—OR
it's so good and useful that people naturally want to share it
with others and link to it from their site. Demand Curve's
playbooks are viral content. They're not made with SEO in
mind. They're purely meant to be extremely detailed and
useful content that people will want to reference and share
with others.
Scale: High; there's no limit to the amount of content you can
create for this purpose, and no limit to the number of people
who might see it.
Targeting: Poor; you can choose the subject for the content,
which will influence who ends up reading and liking it, and you
can share the content in various places (social media, Reddit,
Product Hunt, etc.) to distribute it to specific types of people.
You can also run ads to it if it tends to perform well. But you
can't control who shares it and when.
Effort: High; viral content requires a lot of writing, researching,
planning, and experimentation. Hitting virality through some
sort of weird novelty way takes a good deal of
experimentation. If you want your content shared because it's
really good, it takes substantial effort to make it really good.
Time to results: Slow-medium; writing and creating really
great content takes time and effort, but each piece lets you get
the ball rolling.
Intent: Low; generally, readers of viral content don't have high
intent to purchase anything.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. Each additional
user doesn't directly cost you anything, particularly if you're
writing all the content yourself. But to create great content,
you probably need to hire great writers.
Businesses it works for:
52
 • Teams with strong content expertise Referrals are a hybrid between paid acquisition and viral
• Educational products (like Demand Curve; content acquisition. You incentivize your customers to invite others to
reflects product) use the product by offering the referrer and/or referee some
sort of bonus. This can be straight cash, but more often it's free
credits or additional features/bonuses in the product itself.
Viral acquisition channels
Scale: High; this is a snowball effect. The more customers you
Product virality
have, the more potential referrers you have.
This is when customers naturally recommend your product to
Targeting: Low; you're at the whim of the customers
others so they can get more out of it. A classic example is
recommending your product.
Dropbox. Dropbox users benefit when others use Dropbox, so
they'll pitch Dropbox to anyone they need to share files with.
Effort: Medium; it takes a decent amount of effort to dial in a
referral program (when to ask for referrals, how to ask, how
Scale: High; this is a snowball effect. The more customers you
much to offer, etc.), but once it's running, it's pretty easy.
have, the more free advertising you get. The effects are barely
noticeable at small scale, but are huge at scale.
Time to results: Slow; it takes time for your customer base to
build, and for people to feel comfortable recommending your
Targeting: Poor; you're completely at the whim of whoever
product.
happens to see people using the product.

Intent: Low; because you're incentivizing people, they're

Effort: Low; the main effort is making a product people like to
probably going to share the referral link with a lot of people,
use regularly, then designing it to stand out or be instantly
many of whom don't actually care about the product.
recognizable. Everyone knows what a Lamborghini looks like,
and it gets a lot of attention.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $20. It all depends
on how much you offer as an incentive. If you offer a discount
Time to results: Slow; it takes time for the snowball to roll
on a piece of software, it doesn't really cost you anything. If
down the hill and gather snow. This is something that builds
you offer cash or a discount on a physical product, it costs you
over years.
something.
Intent: High; often, a current user is recommending that
Businesses it works for:
someone use your product because it solves a problem one or
both of them are facing.
• Products that get better the more people are using
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. There's no cost them, such as marketplaces, social apps, and
networks. Referral helps speed up natural product
for people to recommend a product to others, unless you
virality.
incentivize it (but that's a referral).
• Products that aren't particularly private in nature.
People aren't going to share their referral code to
Businesses it works for:
Grindr, for example.
• Products people love and would be happy to share
• Products that get better the more people are using with others.
them, such as marketplaces, social apps, and
networks
Product use

Referrals

This is when customers end up advertising your product just by

using it. Examples include Uber and Superhuman (a
Superhuman email signature is always included). You could

53
also argue that this applies to physical products like iPhones
and fancy cars.
Scale: High; this is a snowball effect. The more customers you
have, the more free advertising you get. Its effects are barely
noticeable at small scale, but they're huge at scale.
Targeting: Low; you're completely at the whim of whoever
happens to see people using the product.
Effort: Low; the main effort is making a product people like to
use regularly, then designing it to stand out or be instantly
recognizable. Everyone knows what a Lamborghini looks like,
and they get a lot of attention.
Time to results: Slow; it takes time for the snowball to roll
down the hill and gather snow. This is something that builds
over years.
Intent: Low; because people are seeing the product out in the
wild at random times, it's generally when they have zero intent
to purchase it—but not always. Sometimes, it will be the
perfect moment.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. Besides the
upfront cost to make a branded or beautiful product, there's
no cost for people to see others using it.
Businesses it works for:
• Physical products that are used in public and easily
recognizable
• Software products that people use to interact with
others
Sales acquisition channels
Cold outreach
Scale: High; the only limits to scale are the size of your market
and your ability to get contact information.
Targeting: High; you can specifically select the people you'd
like to contact.
Effort: High; although much of the outreach can be
automated, it takes a lot of writing and rewriting emails, then
nurturing leads after they respond.
Time to results: Fast; you can start sending emails in a matter
of hours.
Intent: Low; this is cold outreach. It's unlikely that recipients
had any intent to purchase a product like yours.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. If you do it
yourself, it's free to prospect and send emails to people. If you
hire salespeople or use prospecting tools, it can be costly.
Businesses it works for:
• B2B products
• Service-based businesses
• B2C products with a customer lifetime value of more
than $150
Unscalable acquisition channels
Super-node websites (Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News)
This is when you launch your product on websites like Product
Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News, Designer News, Indie Hackers, and
various other communities. They generally rank for only a day,
and you typically need to promote the post in other places to
get significant traction.
This channel tends to do best if a superuser of the platform is
the one to share your product, not you.
Scale: Low; although there are a lot of people using these
channels, ranking can be very difficult. Even if you do, your
content is really only going to rank for a day or so. You'll get a
great burst to launch something, but it's not scalable.
Targeting: Poor; there's no targeting on many of these sites—
besides maybe Reddit, where you can target based on the
subreddit you choose. Ultimately, the audience is whoever
uses the site that day and whom you're able to market your
post to.
Effort: Medium; it doesn't necessarily take a lot of work to
create the post, video, some images, or a bit of text, but it takes
54
a decent amount of work to cross-promote it and try to
engineer it to be viral.
Time to results: Fast; things generally rank and get traffic for a
maximum of 24 hours, so it's a very fast turnaround.
Intent: Low; people use Product Hunt and these other sites to
find cool new tools and products, but generally just free ones.
They're bombarded with them all day, so there's some fatigue.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. It doesn't cost
anything to post to or use these sites. It would only cost money
if you were to pay for a video or a designer.
Businesses it works for:
• SaaS tools for B2B or B2C
• Bundles of free tools and content
• Weird viral things
Off-line meetup or conference sponsorship
This channel could entail either hosting your own conference
or meetup, or going to others as an attendee or with your own
booth.
Scale: Low; there are only so many conferences and meetups.
If you're running one, it's very costly and time consuming.
Targeting: High; you can cherry-pick very specific conferences
to go to (or run). For example, people at the bitcoin conference
are perfect if you have a bitcoin-related product.
Effort: Medium-high; if you're creating a conference, it's a ton
of work. Running a booth, a lot of work. Going to a conference
to network, not a ton.
Time to results: Medium; if you're just attending, results can
be fast. If you're running a conference or managing a booth,
there are weeks to months to years of planning and
organization.
Intent: Medium; people going to conferences are often
looking for products and services to use.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $250. The cost
depends on whether you're just buying a ticket, running a
booth, or hosting a conference.
Businesses it works for:
• B2B products targeting enterprise customers
• B2C products with high lifetime value per customer
Speaking engagements
These are conferences or other events where you can offer
your services as a presenter on a topic directly related to your
business. Unless you're a high-ticket person, it's unlikely that
you'll be paid; instead, do it for free for the exposure.
Scale: Low; there are only so many places with speaking
engagement opportunities.
Targeting: High; you can cherry-pick very specific events
where your target audience will be.
Effort: High; you have to find the event, convince organizers to
let you talk, create the speech, travel to the event, and give the
speech.
Time to results: Fast; generally, people will either convert right
then and there at the event, or they won't at all.
Intent: Low; the audience is most likely looking to learn, not
purchase a product.
Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. The cost
depends on whether you need to pay to attend and/or need to
travel.
Businesses it works for:
• B2B products targeting enterprise customers
• B2C products with high lifetime value per customer
55
PR (public relations) This is the final and most important section of the ongoing
Acquisition Strategy project. In this project, you'll build a
prioritized backlog of the top acquisition channels you've
identified for your company.

Once you've developed your backlog, you'll submit it to your

growth advisor for review. They'll help ensure that the best
channels have been identified. This is also when they'll create
your custom schedule to guide you through the rest of the
program.

Project

Open your Acquisition Strategy doc and follow the steps

PR involves creating some sort of story or buzz. Different
media outlets then decide to share the story. In the tech
industry, TechCrunch is the classic media outlet that covers the
stories of hot new startups and their funding rounds.
in Part 5.
Send your Acquisition Strategy doc to the instructor guiding
you through the course. You'll receive feeback and also
valuable tips on what course you should take next

Scale: Low; there are only so many media outlets, and they can
only cover you so many times.

Targeting: Low; you can choose the media outlet, which may
have an audience type (like tech people and TechCrunch), but
anyone can see it.

Effort: Low-medium; you might have to come up with the

story, write the articles yourself, and do a lot of schmoozing
with editors/writers. If you have connections already, it's
pretty easy.

Time to results: Fast; if you have the connections at media

outlets, the turnaround time is very fast. PR leads to spikes in
traffic that die off quickly.

Intent: Low; the audience is just reading the news. They aren't
looking to buy products.

Average customer acquisition cost (CAC): $0. The cost really

depends on whether or not you have connections at media
outlets. If you don't, you'll probably need a PR agency, which
will charge large amounts of money to be the gatekeeper to
the media outlets.

Businesses it works for:

• Mission-driven companies with a novel or impactful

narrative

Project: Create Your Acquisition Strategy

Overview

56
2️.
GROWTH
FOUNDATIONS

57
 value prop. And bullet point the top two reasons why they
Value Props care about it.

What you’ll learn Here’s an example of value props for a fantasy football (soccer)
app:
• How to identify the value props for your
product/service.
• How to turn those value props into the foundation of
your ad copy.

Why is it important?

The most compelling copy on the planet does you no good if

you're not conveying your value propositions ("value props"
for short). You’re proposing to someone the ways they’ll “get
value” from your product. Without clearly identified value
props, you risk attracting the wrong customers and delivering
the wrong message.

Overview

Before you sit down to write copy, you need to know what to
focus on. This is where value props come into play. From now
on, you can think about value props as copy ideas. Whenever
you’re stuck for copy ideas, revisit your value props. Your first
step to creating effective social ads and landing pages is to
identify value props: What does your product do to improve
the lives of your target audience?

Developing value props

And another example for an online matcha shop:
Step 1

To identify your product or service value props, create a 3-

column chart.

Here’s the process:

1. List all the bad (non-desirable) alternative solutions

people resort to when they don't have you. And describe
what makes each one bad. For example, if they don't have
your fast car, they have to get to work in a slow car. What
makes that bad is how much more time you waste in
traffic. Or less time spent with your family.
2. With each bad alternative, write one value prop that
highlights how your product offers a better solution to
improve on that bad alternative. For example, your fast
car gets you to work quickly. The value prop wording
should encapsulate the main high-level idea. Don't worry
too much about the details yet (we'll dive into that later). You may walk away with a bunch of value props at first. This is
For example, the value prop could be "fastest consumer good. It’s always easier to subtract than to add. Once you feel
car ", and not "X horsepower". you’ve exhausted your options, you’ll want to reduce your list
3. Finally, list a lucrative customer persona in a third column: of value props in column two to those that are most appealing
identify the persona that cares most about this particular to your top personas.

58
The leftover value props will be the focus of your ads. Ideally,
you'll walk away with at least five value props to build ad copy
from.
Step 2: Identify the problems your value props
solve
Now that you've identified your value props, it's time to refine
them so that they serve as a foundation for your ad copy. To
do this for our clients, we use a spreadsheet to flesh them out.
Continuing from our first example:
And from our second:
First, it’s important to remember that you want to use the
language your audience would use. This is where customer
surveys become invaluable. Second, skip the jargon
(exception: if you’re in a super-niche market, it’s sometimes
OK to use industry jargon).
When you fill out this spreadsheet, do it as though you were
speaking directly to your audience. Begin by listing out the
value props you’ve identified in the left-hand column. Then, fill
out the following columns:
Problem
Get super specific about the moment your target audience
has urgently experienced the problem. This should be written
in past tense. This is especially important if you're a B2B
product. Most often, the problem involves wasting substantial
time or money.
Some examples:
• Your company just lost a lot of money
• A key employee just quit
• A relationship just got ruined
If you're B2C, you might be a "vitamin" instead of a "painkiller".
This means there might not be a burning problem to solve.
That's OK. Focus on the solution and benefits section more. At
Demand Curve, we’ll sometimes get on the phone and talk to
each other as if we were a member of our target audience. We
interview each other to flesh out the pain and urgency we feel.
Implications
Drill into the bad things that happen if someone hits that
problem. What happens after the key employee quits?
What can't you do because you're wasting tons of time? Does
your company risk going out of business? Do you fear for your
job? We call this "twisting the knife". Once you've found an
entry point with the problem, drill into that pain more and
more.
As you write out the implications of the problem, find the
specific person whose butt is on the line when things fail. Get
super specific, down to the job title. They should be losing
massive amounts of money, time, or reputation.
Examples:
• If your company loses a lot of money, people are
going to get fired. Which means your job as the VP of
Finance is at stake.
• If your key employee quits, it's going to take months
to retrain a new hire. And that costs $80,000.
• If you're wasting 20 hours a week on meaningless
tasks, you can't ship as quickly. Which means that, as
the CEO, you're going to miss investor goals and lose
funding.
Solution
How your product solves the problem.
Examples:
• Ruby Plants uses machine learning to grow plants
• Our feedback tool keeps track of employees who are
flight risks
• Sentry integrates with every type of codebase
Benefits
Flip the implications of the problem around and talk about
the great things that naturally come from the solution.
59
 • Growing plants with machine-learning makes
them five times cheaper. So you save money.
• Keep employees around. Saving you months of time
hiring and training.
• When every codebase can integrate, you don't write
any custom code. So you have time to push new
features.
Don'ts / Common Pitfalls
Implications that aren't tied to the problem.
For example, if your customer's problem is "you just missed
your taxi", an implication is not "you always miss your taxis."
That's a separate problem and value prop. An
implication would be "you missed an important sales meeting"
— which missing your taxi directly caused.
Avoid industry-wide trends
Don't use language like "80% of office managers don't know
about plant-based snacks" or "AI hasn't reached farming yet".
That's not a specific problem that your customer faces.
Instead, talk about your customer. For example, "your key
employee just had an allergic reaction to gluten" or "you have
thousands of workers manually checking your chicken eggs."
Project: Create Your Value Props
Overview
Value Props help you position your product and find the right
messaging that will resonate with your target audience. The
goal is to write compelling value props that you'll reference
throughout the course while writing ad copy, landing pages,
and much more.
What you’ll learn
• The most compelling ways to pitch your product.
Part 1: Determining your value props
Reference the template you copied above:
1. List down the bad alternatives people resort to when
they don't have your product or services. And
describe what makes each one bad.
2. With each bad alternative, identify ONE value
prop that will highlight how your product offers a
better solution.
3. List down and identify the persona who cares most
about a particular value prop.
Complete the Part 1 Table and determine the value props of
your product or services. This is the column that will matter for
the next exercise. Bad alternatives and top personas help you
rewrite your personas to speak more directly and at the pain
points of the target audience.
Part 2: Determining your copy
On the next table in the template:
• Using the previous table, turn the value props
into problems, implications, solutions, and benefits.
• Complete the table below and determine the value
prop of your product or services. Write a maximum
of 5 value props.
• You will use all of the columns below throughout the
course to rewrite your landing page, ad copy, cold
emails, and more.
Part 3: Do a final pass of your Value Props
• Read each row. Does each column naturally follow a
sequential order? E.g. if your value prop is “Get 2x
more than any other card” then don’t make the
problem about saving time.
• These rows should tell a story
Onboarding Flow
A good onboarding experience welcomes new users or
customers into your product so they're excited to become
recurring, repeat customers for life.
You could have the world's best landing page, but if your
onboarding experience is poor, people will leave before they
actually buy from you. Specifically, onboarding is the full set of
things a new user does between:
• When they first visit your site
• And when they become a regularly engaged user.
This experience happens in three phases:
• Their first visit to the site - The steps a user goes
through from visiting the landing page to signing
up/purchasing the product.
• 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.
• Follow-on engagement — This includes the (1)
messaging (emails, phone notifications, texts) that
keep them engaged, plus (2) your sales and support
outreach.
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 • These phases are unique to new users. You have to
treat new users differently than your established
customers.
A smooth onboarding flow gets more people to buy from you;
it increases conversion rates throughout the funnel, which
ultimately leads to a lower CAC. It will require a lot of testing,
and the first rendition of what you create will not be the best-
converting funnel. This is the case for every product we
market.
A good funnel comes from iterating on a strong foundation —
and that is what the onboarding experience you'll develop is
meant to provide.
A brief warning (for SaaS apps in particular)
Most SaaS apps lose 95% of their new users after 90 days.
That's 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. Think about how many services waste their time with
marketing tricks and poor products. Yet onboarding is usually
the most half-baked aspect of products. You get spammed
with tooltips, then dumped into a boring home screen.
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 deserves resources dedicated to its thoughtful design,
development, and optimization.
Onboarding strategy
When you onboard users, you want to welcome them into
your product in a way that excites them to become lifelong
customers. You achieve excitement through delightful
onboarding experiences.
After someone visits your site, every page they land on must
answer: “How do I get value out of this product?" Then, you
have to identify the obstacles that exist along the way to
getting that value. And address them. You can show value in
three main ways:
Integrated walkthrough
Walk the user through one product feature at a time while
having them fill out their profile or create a sample project in
the process. For example, if you’re building a visual site design
tool, have them choose a starting site template to begin
designing with as you walk them through how to modify it.
Sample data and tooltips
Or you can throw them right into their account. If you do this,
present them with pre-filled sample data to play with in places
where they're expected to enter their own input. Pair this
sample data with callouts that point out key features and
explain why they’re valuable. And remind them that support
and sales are just a click away.
Video
Finally, only if you can easily visualize your product's value —
or if you have a very complex product that requires intricate
explanation — make users watch an optional screen recording
video. Keep the video short, get to the point quickly, skip the
sales fluff, and make it watchable without audio (use captions).
Most users are really not going to want to watch your video,
so focus on making your product self-evident to use before you
resort to a video.
Regardless of which onboarding implementation you choose,
recognize it's a distinct experience separate from what
returning users experience. So treat it with the gravitas it
warrants; partition your engineering and product resources in
earnest pursuit of making the onboarding easy, enticing, and
productive.
In fact, these are the principles of onboarding design:
• Decrease friction (remove obstacles)
• Make it enticing
• Make it productive
1. Decrease friction
In an onboarding experience, the next step should always be
clear: “Where do I go from here?”. The next step must appear
low-friction; it should be stupidly easy to take. This is how you
build momentum toward the end of the funnel — when users
pay you.
Obstacles increase friction. They’re usually pretty easy to
identify. They are the steps in a user's journey that:
• Require the most work.
• Are the most boring to complete.
Here's an example of a bad interaction pattern: A user creates
an account. Then they create, then immediately delete, a new
project. Hmm.
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What are they really trying to accomplish? Was there an
intermediate feature they wanted to momentarily access? If
so, why not 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 site data likely
wouldn't have revealed.
So your first task in developing your onboarding experience is
to list every action users must take on their path toward the
paid conversion event. For a website design tool, it might be:
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.
One great way to see the real actions people take is with user
recordings: videos of people actually using your site, in real-
time. They reveal where people spend more time than they
should. And what causes them to get stuck and give up. We’re
going to have you study user recordings later in the course, but
we want to drive home the idea that you really need to break
things down step-by-step.
For now, think about reducing friction by using these
principles:
Reduce total workload
Only ask for what you need. For example, pre-fill form inputs
with your best guess of what the user would enter, then
prompt them to correct each guess. When’s the last time you
had to type out your full address?
These days, almost every site uses Google to autocomplete
addresses and credit cards. Here are some instructions for
your engineers if your site doesn't already do this.
Another tactic: Defer asking for input until you absolutely need
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 choice anxiety
Hand-hold users through anxious moments. For example, if
users fill out a dating profile bio, you should accompany it with
suggestions on how to fill it out: Describe your unique interests
and explain why you're passionate about them. (E.g., reading,
skiing, and rock-climbing because you're intellectual and
outdoorsy.)
Reduce perceived complexity
Use GIFs to make onboarding tasks feel less complicated. Break
down the task and visually demonstrate each step. You'll see
us using this tactic throughout our course.
Forms
Forms are where anxieties tend to surface. So here are two
more form friction tips:
Keep the end in sight
Always say “You’re almost done” at the top of a form. It’s been
A/B tested heavily, and it works. It reminds people that form
entry won’t go on forever. Further, when a form is longer than
5 input fields, break it up across multiple pages. Don’t tell users
how many form pages there are until they reach page 2! Only
begin showing a progress indicator on page 2, which is now
partially filled out since they already completed step 1. But,
generally, your form should never be more than 5 fields. The
longer your form, the less people will actually fill it out.
Explain the value
Explain why inputs exist if it's not obvious. 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 I
shouldn't ignore this button!
2. Make it enticing
Onboarding experiences should never just be educational or
enticing. They must always be both. Whenever you educate
new users, you must also entice them with your value props so
they are willing to go through the education. Tease them with
how amazing life will be once they are fully onboarded.
To do this, think about the magical moment near the end of
the funnel — when the user pays to get maximum value out of
the product. Find a way to visualize this end state for
them during the onboarding experience. For example, look at
how "dating" site Ashley Madison does it. They visualize the
end goal (“finding a partner”) through a blurred background
photo while asking you to painstakingly enter your profile
details.
They're teasing you with their magical moment while you grind
away at your profile. 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:
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 • Want someone to read your boring tooltips during a High-Touch User Onboarding
walkthrough? Wait until they engage with a feature
before you explain it. That's when they'll care.
This reading discusses semi-automated sales.
• Want someone to download your Chrome extension?
Wait until they've become hooked by your web
app. Then prompt them to download something new. If you don’t have a high LTV, you can skip this section. You
won’t able to justify the investment you’ll have to put in.
• Want someone to read your lengthy ebook? Wait
until they've read one of your short, fantastic blog
posts. For example, if the average customer only pays you $3, you
• Want someone to sign up for your newsletter? Don't probably don’t want anyone to spend 30 minutes on a call with
ask them right when they visit your site. Let them read them to sell them on your product. That’s means you’re
a few articles, without distraction, to let them learn making $6 per hour. At best.
you're worth subscribing to.
If a customer is qualified to convert into a high-revenue
account, you're able spend more on support and sales
Minimize selling
resources.

Your goal is to get users into the habit of regularly using your
For example, you could proactively reach out to customers via
app. Not to "hard sell" them. Don't force them to do things
live chat, email, or phone to discover and address the
they don't want to do. Once they begin depending on you, they
objections they have to converting.
will organically want what you’re selling. At this point, it’ll be
much easier to convert them.
Just like a great first-time experience on your website, high-
touch onboarding isn't a nicety. It's a necessity for any B2B
For now, get out of their way. But, do keep pricing within view:
business operating in a small, but valuable, market.
prominently link to your Pricing page and tease them with the
benefits of upgrading whenever they start to bump up against
Here's how you extract maximum value out of every valuable
the limits of their current plan.
visitor.

Write out your pitch

If you don't have anything enticing to visualize, at least write a
pitch for achieving the end goal. Place it alongside forms in
your onboarding flow. For example, if you’re a subscription
service that helps people quit smoking, tell users how many
other users successfully used this service to quit smoking
forever:
“About 15% of the people who finish signing up wind up
completing the course. Don’t be one of the quitters, because if
you complete this, you then have a whopping 85% chance of
quitting smoking for life. This is your chance.”
The high-touch onboarding process
Step one is determining the likelihood of a user being high
value. When someone comes to your website, they become a
"lead". You have to figure out whether they'll become a
customer that will pay you a lot.
This is domain of lead scoring, which means taking in company
and job role data to determine the visitor's market fit, financial
resources, and readiness to purchase. Then, an algorithm spits
out a number (a "score") between 1 and 10 that indicates how
likely that person is to convert.

Lead scoring is considered part of sales, but it’s equally as

3. Make it productive relevant to onboarding if you have a product with high LTV.
Say, $2,500 per year or more.
If your onboarding is part of an integrated walkthrough, don’t
leave users empty-handed. For example, if you’re an email There are many businesses dedicated to creating complex lead
app, have your walkthrough help the user clean up their inbox. scoring models for you. They’re generally a waste of money —
This way, users accomplish something they care about while unless you’re drowning in thousands of leads and have
learning to use your app. It leaves them with a small dopamine extensive data on each one of them.
hit. It delights them.
For most SaaS companies, you only need a few data points to
Another example: If you’re a project management app, have
meaningfully qualify a lead for sales outreach:
your walkthrough leave users with the scaffolding required to
share their project with team members. Nothing feels better
• The lead’s role at the company
than getting value out of a product within the first few
minutes.

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 • Their company’s employee count (this is a proxy Or, and this is where Clearbit gets particularly interesting, you
metric for their purchasing power) can use all this data to automate your outreach to VIP's.
• Their company's geographic location
• Their company's industry Let’s take a look.

Let’s consider how we'd interpret each data point to estimate
a lead’s potential.
Lead’s role (job title): If the lead works at a company who'd be
a perfect fit for your product, but their job title is, say, HR
intern, then they’re not going to be worth the sales outreach.
They don’t have the appropriate buying power within their
firm.
Company employee count: Let’s say their company has 15+
employees. This might qualify them as large enough to get
value out of your B2B SaaS product that helps with team
collaboration. Further, let’s say their company has 30+
employees. This might mean they’re earning enough to afford
your expensive Enterprise plan of $2,000/mo. They’re
therefore worth dedicating extra sales labor to.
Emailing leads
Whenever your lead data qualifies a user as VIP, write a custom
email for them as quickly as you can after they sign up.
Data shows shorter sales turnaround times drastically increase
conversion.
So, to make outreach quick and scalable, have at least 90% of
your email pre-templated. And to make sure it converts well,
use Clearbit's data to select a variation on the template that's
most appropriate for the lead's job role (e.g. developer or
marketer).
Based on this role, proactively link to relevant resources they
need to get started:

Company location: Only focus on countries you’re actually

• First, recap the product’s value props that are most
able to service. Or narrow it further to only countries that are
relevant to their job role.
more likely home to companies that can afford to pay you.
• Next, link to case studies or product pages they’d find
most useful.
Sourcing quality signals: To source all this lead data, use
• And give them resources they’d need to immediately
Clearbit’s Enrichment API to automatically retrieve it from any
begin using the product.
user that signs up.

Look at an example of this in action. On the left, there's an

To do this, ping Clearbit’s API with the user’s email address,
email sent to a developer. Look at the prioritization of a code
then Clearbit will respond with an up-to-date and
sample. That's what a developer would care about.
instantaneous demographic and firmographic report.

On the right is an email sent to a different role: a marketer. For

Enrichment costs $0.01-0.04 per API request. Or, you can use
marketers, we prioritize non-technical integration guides:
Clearbit's handy Salesforce plugin so you don’t have to code
anything.

If you’re a SaaS company targeting developers, data scientists,

product managers, or growth marketers, Clearbit also
reports which third-party services (e.g. DigitalOcean,
Facebook Ads, Stripe) a company’s site uses.

This provides a picture of A) the site’s technical sophistication,

B) which parts of their development stack are missing, and C)
how your technical product fits in.

Qualification process: Pipe the data Clearbit returns through a

basic set of heuristics to rank (out of 10) how high potential a
lead is. Design this simple formula based on the characteristics
Had we instead sent every VIP a singular, generalized email, it
of your current highest-paying customers.
could have been a lengthy email. Because we’d be
addressing all the potential value props that may interest
If a lead scores high enough to be a VIP (say, 8.5 or above), them.
immediately partition sales labor to talk to them: have your
qualification algorithm alert someone on your sales or support
team.
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This wordiness and lack of specificity would have hurt
clickthrough and response rates.
Beyond brevity, there's another benefit to knowing a lead's job
title: you can reference it so they feel like you know who they
are and that you're capable of catering to them.
It also makes it look like your email was sent manually.
In fact, if you want to double down on your level of
customization and further improve responses rates, read up
on their company and inject a few insightful remarks about
how it's a great fit for your product.
Emailing: Going above and beyond
Once you've qualified a VIP, there are quite a few ways to go
above and beyond to get their attention.
First off, include a genuine offer of support: Since these users
are VIP’s, make it clear that you’ll respond to them within X
business hours and that you’re providing your direct line if they
want to talk any time.
Next, consider going extremely high-touch if you really want to
convert them: Create a 2 minute fully personalized screen
recording that walks the lead through your product from the
perspective of their job role and company. This means talking
about which features that would be most relevant to them.
Emailing: Bypassing spam folders
Keep your VIP outreach emails as simple, raw text; don’t use
fancy design templates. Fancy designs look like automated
email marketing spam.
Further, if you go the raw text route, your email is much less
likely to be automatically sent to Gmail’s Promotions tab,
which kills open rates.
And while we’re on the topic, here are a few other tips for
staying out of someone’s Promotions (and Spam) folder:
• Don’t include an unsubscribe notice in the email
signature. (You should be able to legally get away with
this since you’re sending a custom, non-automated
email.)
• Address the user by name. This increases the
certainty of Gmail’s spam filter that you actually know
the recipient.
• Don’t use link shorteners, such as bit.ly. Gmail doesn’t
like these.
High-touch trick — Live chat
High-touch onboarding extends beyond just emails. It also
includes the in-product experience: Namely, live
chat. Olark and Intercom are both great.
Most companies hastily throw live chat on their homepage and
call it a day. But, if you have significant traffic, you should
restrict chat to VIP’s after they've already signed up.
This laser focus permits you to treat each conversation with
extreme attention-to-detail and above-and-beyond support.
This entails proactively messaging VIP's with
comments tailored to them instead of “Hey! How can I help?”
Instead, you want to say, “Hey, I noticed you work at X and are
browsing page Y. Can I answer any questions about relevant
topic Z?”
Client Story
One of our clients had a bunch of low-quality traffic from
outside the United States that never converted. In fact, people
in countries outside the US couldn’t buy because of legal
regulations.
We had them add a chat widget to their site that only popped
up for users who were in the United States, using
a Geolocation API.
People outside the US saw nothing. Saving our client hundreds
of hours of useless chats. And letting them focus on their real
customers.
High-touch trick — Phone calls
The VIP outreach that converts best is phone calls. This is why
you should always ask for a phone number on a B2B customer
signup form.
Turnaround time is especially critical to phone calls. We’ve
seen calls placed within 5 minutes of a VIP sign up lead to 20x
conversion improvement than a 30 minute lag time between
signup and call.
Heck, there’s a good chance they’ll still be on your site if you
call them within 5 minutes. You'll be top of mind and they'll
have questions they want answers to.
(Or, they’ll just be startled and uncomfortable — but still likely
interested in chatting! Either way, it’s enough of an
opportunity for you to briefly dazzle them and setup a proper
20 minute demo for later.)
The call script is simple: Within minutes of a VIP sign up, call
the company and introduce yourself:
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"Hi, this is Sid.” [Pause a second] “I work at X.com, where
someone on your team just signed up.” [Pause a second]
“We’re the company that does Y. Is this a good time for a quick
chat so we can make sure you get the most value out of our
tool? I want to help you make sure you don’t waste your time.”
Emailing: Following Up
It's unlikely you'll close a lead by the end of your first email or
call. You'll need to follow up.
Less is more with sales calls and email follow-ups. If you avoid
being annoying, you leave the door open to come back a few
months still in good graces.
We recommend following up, at most, in 3-day and 7-day
increments after an initial call.
The three-day email can look something like this:
Hi Dean, Hope all is great. You'd mentioned you're dealing with
challenges A and B and that you have concerns C and D. We've
put up [a landing page] that explains which of our features
solve those exact issues. Is there anything missing from that
page I could personally address? - Jane
As referenced in the above email, it's worthwhile to create
landing pages that address common sales objections for each
category of prospect you pitch.
Landing pages are the new PDF's. They're better for conversion
because they keep visitors on your site and can be optimized
even after they're handed out.
If the lead doesn't respond to your 3-day email by the 7-day
mark, consider sending a final email that looks something like
this:
Subject: Should I close our conversation? Hey Dean, I'm closing
my email threads for the month. You're understandably busy
or are no longer interested. No worries! If you aren't
interested, should I close out this conversation? And may I
briefly ask what made you lose interest so I can better use
people's time in the future? Just a sentence would be great. If
you are still interested, I'd love to be useful to you. I'd be happy
to do a quick call if you think it'd be productive. If so, I am free
at [times]. Have a great day! - Jane
Education, Information, & Service Business
Onboarding
Many companies are "service businesses." This means they sell
their people's time: a consulting agency "sells" their hourly
consultants, a coaching service "sells" hourly coaches, a
therapy app "sells" hourly therapists, etc.
Other companies are "information businesses," such as books,
seminars, pre-recorded video courses, paid podcasts, etc.
Education companies fall in this bucket.
For these types of companies, we've seen two patterns that
distinguish high-converting onboarding flows from poor ones.
1. They demonstrate a lot of expertise up front.
2. They do free consultations.
If you aren't on the "service business" or "information
business" categories, skip this section.
They demonstrate a lot of expertise up front
When someone first hears of you, they first need to
understand that you actually know what you're talking
about before they buy.
You wouldn't get hired for a job without having an interview.
You wouldn't get hired for a senior role without proving you're
an expert. The same goes for service businesses; they need to
get "hired." Demonstrating expertise is their interview
process.
If you can get someone from your team on podcasts, or have
them write industry newsletters, do it. It helps a lot when you
try to convert people in your pipeline.
Examples
Coding bootcamps offer free curriculum online and free prep
courses to demonstrate expertise. Many offer free tutoring
sessions with instructors. This often makes the difference
between ads working and not working.
Investment firms write guides and content around their areas
of expertise. This can live on a blog, in a podcast series, or
elsewhere.
Student Story
One of our students built a course on how to improve people's
reading habits. It cost $100 to access. They ran Facebook ads
pointing at a signup page for a free webinar. This drove 100+
signups in a week — on $550 of ad spend. Very profitable.
They do free consultations
To demonstrate expertise, the best companies put real human
beings in front of leads to give them free advice.
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Examples
Successful personal finance education companies invite all
their leads to free seminars on 401Ks and saving for
retirement, then mention their full program at the end of the
seminars — after proving their expertise.
Ad agencies offer free audits, webinars, and office hours with
partner agencies.
Workout companies offer new members a free first class (or
month of classes).
Sales consultancies offer free consultation sessions.
In the example above, the copy is a bit salesy, but the principles
are correct. Notice how they hit on the scale of their expertise
("our consultants speak with hundreds of high-growth sales
teams") and also talk about how valuable their consultations
are ("our regular program costs $1,500").
Paid Social Acquisition
If you're an education/informational/service business planning
to run paid social channels, such as Facebook/Instagram Ads,
Pinterest Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc...don't run ads directly to your
site asking people to sign up. That almost never works.
Instead, point ads at something free and "gated" ("gated"
means asking for their email address before they can access
the content). This can mean free content, a webinar, a form for
a free consultation, etc.
Do not try to directly get people to sign up for your program.
This applies to any cold outreach you do as well.
Note: This does not necessarily apply to higher-intent
channels, such as Google Ads and Quora, where people are
actively looking for solutions. You'll want to test both direct
and gated content approaches with these.
Caveats
Of course, there's a downside to offering all this free stuff:
some people won't pay you afterward.
On your end, as a growth marketer, some fraction of the
people who read your stuff and meet your people need to
actually convert...and pay. Otherwise, it's not worth the
investment.
So, how do you make sure you're not wasting your time? The
key is to only offer free stuff to leads who you'd reasonably
expect to pay — so your free hours don't get taken advantage
of.
Meaning: segment your leads. Offer cheaper things to lower-
quality leads.
Don't offer free consultations to everyone who fills out the
form on your site. Use a tool like Clearbit Enrichment and look
up leads on LinkedIn to see if they look like a fit — before you
reach out.
Ecommerce Onboarding
If you aren't on the e-commerce space, feel free to skip this
section
Keep your social accounts active
Having dead Facebook and Instagram accounts — meaning,
accounts without much quality content posted — hurts you if
you're an ecommerce company. A lot of people look at a
company’s social accounts to assess their trustworthiness. If
you’re planning to run Facebook and Instagram ads, people are
clicking through and looking.
You don’t have to go overboard. but you do want to hit a few
minimum thresholds:
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 1. Have ~20 pieces of content posted (arbitrary, but
feels like enough that you’re not a dead account)
2. Have ~200+ followers (same thing)
3. Have engagement on your posts so it’s not obvious
you bought followers.
Other Fixes
Include a quiz
This works surprisingly well for most ecommerce companies -
the quiz doesn't even have to be particularly well designed.
You can put something together with Typeform with
surprisingly good results. In particular, you should try pointing
ads directly at a quiz. As opposed to the homepage of your site,
or asking for a direct signup, for example.
Here are a few example quizzes that we know perform well:
• Tea Quiz
• Beauty products
• Wedding planning (requires signup)
Aggressively A/B test pricing
This is often the biggest macro test available to you. Find out if
a price reduction results in a net higher profit — it often can by
getting more people to buy.
Design mobile-first
Most purchases will happen on mobile via Instagram and SEO.
This means you literally design in Sketch with the mobile
dimensions as your starting point: figure out what allows for
the best UX. Consult Baymard for mobile ecom CRO advice.
Speed up the checkout flow
Get rid of the checkout flow and allow instant checkouts on the
product page via Apple Pay and Google Checkout. Even more
aggressive: Ask for contact and shipping details only after
they've paid.
Free shipping
You must offer free shipping. It's not a nicety. Increase your
product price to allow for it if needed. This will often be net
positive. Put the free shipping copy as a small snippet of text
underneath the add to cart button instead of putting it as a
site-wide banner. The former results in 10% better checkout
performance.
Anchor prices
Anchor prices tend to work. Introduce very expensive products
or plans (that you don't expect people to buy) that will make
your normal pricing look cheaper.
A/B test your product images heavily
Labels, colors, positioning, models, jar shape, pill sizes,
everything. These are a chronically overlooked micro-test with
a lot of potential. A/B test your product images a lot.
You should be A/B testing the look of your products on
checkout performance every single week. (Once you have over
~5,000 visitors per month.)
Use GIFs
Using GIFs of people using your product outperforms having
static images on your product page. It provides a unique
experience and makes you feel premium.
Project: Overhaul Your Onboarding Flow
We’re going to come up with improvements for your
onboarding flow.
A high-converting onboarding flow makes it cheaper to get
customers. Which lets you test out more ways to find users and
also gives you more room for error.
Once we set up some initial machinery, we’re going to
approach this in a more data-driven way. This will happen later
in the course.
Phase 1: View Completed Doc Example
First, take a look at an example completed onboarding
recommendations doc to see what we’re working towards.
Phase 2: Copy Template
Make a copy of our template. We’re about to fill it out.
Phase 3: Goal
Write down the goal at the top of the page in bold. The goal
should be the tipping point that means, after the user does it,
they’ll keep using the product as part of their life.
Examples
Envoy: iPad is on the front desk welcoming visitors. Sentry:
User has deployed to their environment, resolved an error,
integrated Slack and invited a team member.
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Phase 4: Current First-Time User (FTU) Experience
Go through (and write down) the current onboarding flow in
steps. This means starting at the landing page, filling out the
fields, and clicking through all the buttons yourself so that you
see exactly what the user sees.
Break this down to the mechanical level of clicks and typing on
the keyboard. It’s easy to gloss over steps if you’re not careful.
Examples
1. “Create a service in major cities that delivers iPads
within 2 hours to set up offices sooner (could restrict
to major cities with an Apple store). Add a button to
the iPad pairing page that says "get an iPad delivered
in 2 hours" if the IP is within the right area.”
2. “Add live chat to the signup page to handle any
objections as they pop up.”
There are ways to take expensive recommendations (that
require a lot of human labor) and make them cheaper.
Common ways to do it:

1. Automate parts (e.g., send an automatic chat

A) Envoy:
message instead of a manual one).
2. Propose a short test so that the you don’t have to
1. Enter email and press "Get Started" spend much to tell whether or not there is ROI on
2. Enter email again, along with Full Name, Phone your suggestion (i.e., whether it’s worth doing).
Number, Company Name, Password
3. Sign in with email and password
Also look for places to entice the user by highlighting the
4. Tell them about company, including location
metrics they care about or showing how great life will be
5. Visitor info + NDA form field choosing.
once they are using the product. But, only entice the user if it
6. Pair iPad
makes sense: don’t force it with weird metrics or out-of-place
7. Go to dashboard.
media.

B) Sentry:
Examples

1. Sign up
Envoy: Experiencing a super fast office sign-in is important to
2. Click type of project
office visitors. Visualize this benefit with a GIF showing the
3. Type name of project
speedy sign-in flow at the part of the onboarding flow where
4. Click "Create Project"
most people quit.
5. etc…

Sentry: “Estimated Time To Engineering Hotfix” is an

Phase 5: New First-Time User (FTU) Experience
Move to the “New FTU Experience.” section.
Now that you’ve gone through the existing onboarding flow,
write down your suggested onboarding experience. Follow the
guidelines from our reading.
In particular, look for places to reduce friction in the funnel
by removing steps or pouring in resources:
important metric for a Sentry user to minimize in their daily
workflow. So, visualize that number decreasing continuously
(via a progress bar) as the user goes through the onboarding
flow. It'll motivate them to see the onboarding process
through to completion.
Phase 6: Mobile ideas
Move to the “Mobile Ideas” section. (Skip this if you know that
none of your traffic is mobile.)

Examples of removing steps:
1. “After the user submits information on the second
page, bring them to the dashboard. Don't force the
user to sign in again — that's a redundant step that
will tire people and we need all their energy for this.”
2. “Prefill the company name on the company
information page with what the user has already
submitted.”
Visit the site on your phone or tablet. Alternately, in Google
Chrome, open Chrome dev tools (Command + Option + J on
Mac) and choose a mobile device type (Command + Shift + M).
Ask us if you're having trouble with this. Write down the bullet-
point improvements you want to make to the mobile
experience. This includes both your mobile website and your
mobile app (if applicable). So, go on your phone and try to buy
your own product.

Examples of pouring in resources: Include screenshots of poor onboarding to show what you’re
talking about. You can use Skitch to mock up improvements.

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One trick we’ll sometimes use with clients is a “mobile drip
campaign:" If you’re a desktop-only app, but you get a lot of
people who visit your site on their phone, you can ask visitors
for their email on your landing page. Then, you send them an
automated email they can click to return to your site when
they’re later at a desktop computer. You can even say that in
the email: that they should return once they're not on mobile
so that they can fully experience your app.
impression people get of your company. The better your first
impression, the better chance you have to get a customer.
Landing page copywriting isn’t a skill one is born with. Even a
"natural" writer needs to learn the specific strategies that turn
ordinary copy into copy that converts. Which is what this
module achieves: teaching you how to write and structure
high-converting landing pages.

Phase 7 - Additional “Shoot the moon” ideas

The 3️ types of landing pages
Add a section called “Additional ideas” or “’Shoot the moon’
ideas”. There are three types of landing pages. They apply to both B2B
and B2C businesses—and we'll show you examples for
different business models.
This is for ideas that popped into your head but might be really
costly, or you’d need to see more data to come to a good
decision, or are just crazy. Your homepage

It's good to make note of these ideas because they might A catch-all page for visitors of every type. Below, you'll find 3
become more feasible in the future. Or, they might inspire a examples for different business types.
coworker to come up with an alternative implementation that
is actually immediately feasible. Intercom: customer support

You can generate shoot the moon by re-reading the high-touch

experiences from earlier in our reading.

Phase 8: Final Pass

Go through all your recommendations.

Under the “Main Takeaways” section, pick the top two or three
changes you’d make that would have the biggest impact on the
funnel. Highlight those in the doc as well.

Phase 9: Implement Bullymake: durable dog treats

You can't stop here. Your team will actually have to make these
changes.

Send the doc to your product team and schedule a meeting to

discuss your recommendations. Or pitch it to your leadership
team.

In that meeting, work with them to identify the changes that

require the least engineering and design effort that have the
highest impact on your onboarding experience.

If you're having trouble selling your team on this, ping us.

Your product page
Landing Page Copy Where you dive into the nitty gritty of your product.

Landing pages should never be an afterthought in your

Intercom:
marketing strategy. Your landing pages are often the first

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Bullymake:
Depending on how people arrive at your site, you'll want to
show them a different type of landing page.

These three types are structured identically. Frankly, there

aren't many different ways to design a compelling page. They
differ in just one way: the value propositions they focus on.

The strategies you’ll learn in this module can be used no matter

which landing page format you’re using.

Optimizing Landing Page Copy

No matter how well structured your page is, and no matter
how compelling your ads are, audiences will not read, or even
stay on, your landing page if the copy is confusing.
Your ad landing page
People come to your landing page looking for excuses to stop
Where you tailor your messaging to a specific audience, based reading and bounce away from your website. Your copy will
on the ad they click on. keep them on your page. And interested.

Intercom: To keep readers on your page (and ready to convert), think of

landing page optimization from the perspective of desire:

Conversion = Desire (Increase this) - Labor (Decrease this)

- Confusion (Decrease this)

It's less work to reduce a visitor's labor and confusion than to

increase desire. Here’s what we mean:

• Increase desire — You have to entice readers with value.

Value is conveyed through carefully targeted copy and
creative. This takes a lot of the writer's brain power.
• Decrease labor — Ensure all words and design elements
on your page are clear and of high value. The more words
and images you have, the more visitors struggle to figure
out what matters.
• Decrease confusion — Be highly specific and consistent in
your messaging. Every vague statement you make forces
visitors to think more about your intentions and less about
how your product improves their life.
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The best way to decrease a reader’s labor and confusion is
to say a lot with a little.Here’s what we mean:

Get to the best copy variation

• Every word on the page must exist for a reason. Don’t

write a paragraph with the first phrasing that comes to
mind. Write a dozen variations until you find the most
enticing and concise one.
• If you need help determining what’s best, run ads to test
the copy variations. Let the audience's clickthrough rates
tell you everything you need.
Sure, you should alter this structure from time to time.
Particularly as you grow more confident in your landing page
Don’t pitch every value prop in full prowess. But this structure works for our clients. And it will
work for you.
• Stick with the value props that most entice your ideal
customers. The more visitors must read, the less they'll The lessons in this course will break down each element in the
read in total. structure pictured above. We won’t discuss social proof and
CTAs until we’ve talked about the rest of the page — those
No sales fluff tend to flow from the other sections you write.

• There’s no room for meaningless sales speak; Since the Navbar is relatively simple, let’s discuss what to put
avoid revolutionary, incredibly powerful, best-ever, and there now.
whatever else. Isn’t every product trying to be that way?
You’ll seem like a copycat. Instead, specifically describe
Navbar
exactly how you're unique.
• Use the exact language your customers use.
All your navbar needs is your logo, links to key sections of your
o Are they supply chain officers that "lower spend
page, (occasionally) links to the other pages on your site, and
through lower total cost of ownership"? Maybe
a call-to-action button (e.g. signup).
some jargon is OK.
o Are they stay-at-home dads? Call them that.
Don't call them "primary household maintainers"
— that's marketing-speak.
• One small exception: the word modern performs well in The fewer links you have, the more your CTA stands out.
our copy. For example: "the way modern sales teams
target leads." Make sure your product feels modern if you Your CTA is your "Call To Action": the next step you want
decide to use this word. But generally, avoid vague fluffy people to take after seeing your page. It's usually a button to
terms like this. sign up, submit an email, or add to cart.

Minimize scrolling
• Think about how much physical space you occupy. Don't
design pages that scroll endlessly. It's a bad trend. Give
readers the key value props before they have to scroll.
• There are exceptions to this rule. Some of the landing
pages we create for clients are long. As long as every word
provides unique and compelling value, pages that go in-
depth can outperform short ones (specifically for ad
traffic). People want details! But don’t ramble.
Fewer links is a good thing. You want few distractions between
your users and the CTA.
In fact, if you're feeling bold, drop all links except for the CTA.
This prevents visitors from being pulled away from your
conversion-optimized landing page.
Creating a Narrative With Your Landing
Page

Understanding the Structure Of Your Throughout this module, we go back to the idea of
constructing an ongoing narrative with your landing page. This
Landing Page is key.

Most of your landing pages will follow this structure: Landing pages are not like ad copy. Many of your visitors will
want to read your landing page from top to bottom. There
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needs to be cohesiveness from one section to another. This Overview
cohesiveness is what increases conversions.
In this lesson you’ll create a powerful yet concise header for
To help you build a narrative, take the page structure we your landing page’s hero section. "Hero" is designer jargon for
showed above, and replace it with a standard essay you might the big section at the top of your page. It consists of:
have written as a middle schooler:
• Header text
• Subheader text
• CTA (optional)
• Image (optional)
• Social proof (optional)

The last three are optional, because there are times you’ll want
to include these elements below the hero.

In the image above, introduction is your hero section; Here’s the hero section of a landing page we developed for one
the supporting paragraphs are your features, and of our clients. It has all five elements listed above:
your closing is your CTA.

We’ll make the connection between each element of your

landing page, and a standard five-paragraph school-based
essay, within each lesson.

One final note

We’ve tested the strategies in this module on all of our
agency’s clients. We’ve been able to show that landing page
copy has a major impact on your growth funnel.

The principles we're about to teach you apply to both B2B and
B2C clients; but there are a few sections that only apply to e- And another:
commerce companies. We have a special reading for those.

Writing the Header of Your Hero Section

What you’ll learn

• How to make your visitors excited about your

product/service, immediately.
• How to identify the most captivating feature of your
product/service.
• How to explain the “what” of your product in 6-12
words.

Why is it important? For this lesson, we’re focusing on the header.

We’ve already discussed how landing pages are audiences’ Our header above takes up just five words. But choosing those
first impression of your company. handful of words takes special skill. And lots of practice.

On that landing page, your hero section (above the fold) is the I. The Litmus Test for a Good Header
first thing visitors see. Without a compelling hero section, the
rest of your landing page will go unnoticed. Your header must be descriptive while being concise.

73
Here’s the litmus test for having a sufficiently descriptive
header: If the visitor reads nothing else on your page, they’d
still know who you are and why they should use you.

Here’s a good example of a header that achieves that. It's from

Streak, another of our clients.

This header lets you know that DoorDash is a delivery service

for restaurants and other stores.

This header lets you know that Streak is a CRM. It lives inside And another bad header:
Gmail. And it’s capable of working for sales, marketing, and
other departments within your company. The writer assumes
that the person coming to the page knows what a CRM is.

And here’s a bad example of a header:

What does it mean that the user is in the right place?

What does it mean to love a CRM? And why do I care if I love
my CRM? And what makes this CRM different from any other
CRM out there?
Here’s another good example from Vaan & Co., an ecommerce
company that repurposes discarded leather into bags.
Compared to DoorDash, UberEats' header isn't as
straightforward or obvious about what it does.
Companies often write headers vaguely (e.g. "Improve your
workflow!"), which makes the user scroll more before they
understand how you specifically deliver on that. As is the case
in the notifiCRM example above.

But most visitors won't have the patience to scroll. So they'll

just leave. Don’t be coy with your header language. Don’t be
cryptic.

Your audience values their time too much for that.

II. Look at your header as the first sentence

in your essay
It’s important to build a narrative with your landing page.
Thinking of your landing page as an essay may help.
This header lets you know what materials are used (leather
remnants) and what product is being offered (bags). It's a lot
In this case, your header is the first sentence of your standard
more effective than what many online retail shops often do,
five-paragraph essay.
e.g., "Spring Collection Now Available" and "Let love light you
up." And one more strong example from DoorDash.
For example, if you were writing an essay on why the world is
round, then your first sentence might be:

74
“I shall prove that the world is round.”
It’s straight to the point. If I want to know why the world is
round, I’ll read on. That’s exactly what you want with your
landing page header.
III. Keep your visitors interested with this
two-step copywriting process for headers
Your header must hook people into your product with a
feature (the “what”), and tell them why that feature matters
to them (the “why”).
Let's distill that into a two-step copywriting process.
1) Identify a compelling feature that captures the product's
purpose
Find your product's feature that will get most people who read
it thinking, "I want that!"
To do that, first list out all of the novel features of your
product. From that list, choose the feature(s) that best
represents the high-level purpose of your product.
Let’s use a video chat app as an example.
Here are some novel features of our video chat app:
• Chat with anyone quickly
• Use your phone, tablet, or computer
• Use auto-translate to hold real-time conversations
regardless of language barriers
• Get transcripts of every conversation — emailed to
you
Most of the features listed are standard with any video chat
app. A header is too valuable a space to highlight those. You
want the feature that’s the most compelling, yet still speaks to
your product’s purpose.
In the list above, the auto-translate feature is amazing. Not
only is that feature differentiating the product within a
saturated video app market, it's also representing its
compelling purpose: the ability to chat with anyone in any
language and understand them.
Here’s an example header to represent that feature:
• Have auto-translated video chats with foreigners
And here’s a feature from the list above we would not have
used – because it doesn't represent the purpose:
• Find someone to video chat with in less than 30
seconds.
This feature focuses on speed. But if speed is not the main
reason why people would use this app over a competitor’s, we
shouldn’t highlight it in the valuable header section of a
landing page.
Here’s another example. This time for a business that doesn't
need to differentiate itself from competitors.
A business targeting real estate agents might write its header
to be:
• We text your real estate leads for you.
If this business offers many features, but auto-texting real
estate leads is:
• Likely to be the most compelling to their target
audience ("I want that!") plus
• The most representative of the product's most
compelling purpose (the business helps agents
automate the most laborious parts of dealing with
leads) …
Then it's the correct feature to be highlighting.
2) State the high-level purpose (optional)
Step one above helps us identify the purpose of our product.
Sometimes you need to complete the thought by explicitly
stating the purpose for visitors who are unable to connect the
dots themselves.
This is usually the most compelling value prop from the sheet
you've made.
This step is only required if the purpose of your
product/service is not completely self-evident by the feature
alone.
Here are two examples of extending a header with a
description of purpose:
• Riley texts your real estate leads for you — to
automatically qualify them.
• Have auto-translated video chats with foreigners
— make learning any language fun.
Let’s focus on that first one. What if we removed the high-level
purpose addendum. We’re left with:
• Riley texts your real estate leads for you.
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Not bad, and many real estate agents will know,
immediately, why this feature matters, and how it can be used
in their life.
But when we add “— to automatically qualify them.” we leave
no doubt. We’ve connected the dots for our readers so they
don’t have to (remember, we want to decrease labor for our
readers).
Here are good examples of header copy:
• Website design tool — "Visually design and develop
sites from scratch. No coding."
• Grocery delivery service — "Groceries delivered in 1
hour. Skip traffic, parking, and long lines."
• Home rental service — "Rent real homes. Then
experience any city like a local."
• Front-desk sign-in app — “Sign in visitors on an iPad.
Free up your front desk.”
You might notice a trend with these examples above. They’re
pretty short.
Keep your header to within 6-12 words so it reads quickly.
There are exceptions, but 9 times out of 10, shorter
outperforms longer.
Here are a few more good (and bad) examples:
Bad — "Forest: Stay focused, be present."
• We don’t know what Forest is, meaning we’ll have to
scroll on to find out.
Better version — "An app that prevents phone addiction. So
you can focus on what’s more important."
Bad — "Extend your software development team."
• What does that even mean? To extend your team?
Better version — "Add experienced remote devs to your team.
Better quality for less cost."
IV. Header Copy Templates
When you write header copy, here are a few templates you
can lean on as a crutch:
• "{{Benefit}}. Without {{problem}}."
o Build beautiful websites. Without technical
expertise.
o Get vendor quotes. Without reaching out
manually.
o Sign in visitors. Without wasting front desk
time.
• "The only {{solution}} with {{value prop}}"
o The only off-road electric scooter.
o The only coding bootcamp with a 5:1
teacher-student ratio.
o The only keto powder that's additive-free.
• "{{Solution}} — so you {{benefit}}"
o Fantasy football without budgets — so you
can draft any player you want.
o Rent pop-up spaces instantly — so you don't
waste time searching.
o Track app errors automatically — so you
don't write custom code.
Writing the Subheader of Your Hero Section
What you’ll learn
• How to write a subheader for your landing page
• How to explain the “how” of your product/service in
one to two short sentences (and 10-13 words).
Why is it important?
The header you created in the previous lesson tells your
audience what you do and whyit makes their life better. Your
subheader will describe how you do it.
How is critical to landing page conversion because it lifts the
veil on what you do to show people you have real, sensible
solutions to their tough problems. They want to know you've
thought this through — so that they're not wasting their time
signing up.
Overview
Explaining the “how” doesn’t come naturally to marketers.
There are seasoned marketers out there who believe you’re
supposed to use every square inch of hero copy to pitch a
product's vague lifestyle benefits.
But people are tired of being pitched vague value props.
They've seen a million TV commercials do it. They've built up a
reflex to ignore sales talk.
Do you know what the antidote to vague sales talk is? A precise
description of how your product works.
I. Determining the “how” of your features
There’s a very good chance you know your product/service
well enough to explain how it delivers key features or benefits.
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But just in case, if you finished the project in the Value Props • Try to keep it to 10-13 words.
section, you’ve done the work needed to create your • Two sentences are OK, if necessary (it’s better to have
subheaders. two short sentences than one long one).
• Be clear in your copy. Avoid jargony words (like
You’ve completed a Value Props spreadsheet. ‘revolutionize’).
The solutions column of that value props spreadsheet explains
the how of your product/service: Of course, rules are meant to be broken. You don’t always have
to keep it to 10-13 words. Or two sentences. Here’s a
header/subheader pairing for one of our clients, Tovala, that
goes well beyond 10-13 words:

Always strive for short and succinct. But, test out other
variations. Your audience might surprise you and respond
better to longer copy in the hero.

Let data drive your decisions.

II. Using benefits in your subheader (when to, and

why)

If your product's how is obvious within the header, then

In the previous lesson, you identified the compelling feature of
your product.
In this lesson, home in on the solution(s) that support that
specific feature.
In other words, you can’t create your subheader (the “how”)
until you write your header (the “what”).
In the previous lesson, we provided this header example for a
video chat app:
• Have auto-translated video chats with foreigners —
make learning any language fun.
Now it’s time to answer the how:
there’s no reason to reiterate it in the subheader.
Example: you are a photography agency.
What would you say in your subheader that greatly
clarifies how you are an agency? Sure, you could say: “We are
a team of top photographers.”
But boy does that sound boring.
In cases like this, use your subheader to list the 1-3 most
compelling benefits you offer. So, in the case of our
photography agency above, you could say:
• Get document-style photos and mobile-friendly
videos from our award-winning team.

• In real time, we transcribe and translate your words
into 100 languages.
It’s incredibly straightforward, but also often overlooked.
When writing your subheader:
III. Look at your subheader as the rest of your first
paragraph in your essay
Remember: It’s important to build a narrative with your
landing page. Thinking of your landing page as an essay may
help.
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As a reminder, we’ve already written our essay’s first sentence
(or header). In the previous lesson, our first sentence was “I
shall prove the earth is round.”
Now we need to explain “how” we’ll prove this. We need to
support our claim. In school essays, we did this by listing out
three ways we plan to make our argument. “I shall prove the
earth is round by discussing horizons, shadows, and time
zones.”
In other words, our essay’s first paragraph (or
header/subheader if we’re talking about landing pages) would
be:
Boring. Yes. But clear.
That’s exactly what you will do with your subheader: support
the claim you made in your header.
Features and Objections Sections
What you’ll learn
• How to write a features section of a landing page
• How to portray your product/service as uniquely
valuable.
• How to proactively address visitor concerns and
skepticism about your features.
Why is it important?
Your features/objections sections make up the meat of your
landing page. If your hero section is the front door, your
features/objections is the kitchen, where everyone goes to
congregate, spend some time, and discuss.
Features come in three to four parts (title, paragraph, image,
and, at times, a CTA). The goal of your features and objection
sections is to:
• Portray yourself as uniquely valuable, and
• Address visitors’ concerns and objections
And you have to do it in a compelling manner that gets visitors
nodding their heads, eager to click on your CTA buttons.
Overview
Remember that Value Props spreadsheet you made? The
information in it will directly influence not only the types of
features and objections you add to your landing page, but also
the order you present them in.
Each feature consists of three elements:
• Title
• Paragraph
• Image
For example:
Another example:
Order your features by which you think are most important to
users. At Bell Curve, we often survey people who didn’t buy to
figure out what their biggest objections were, then structure
the landing page to emphasize the features that would
overcome those objections.
If you have a sales team, ask them for the most common
objections they hear on sales calls.
Here are a few example objections:
• I'd rather use a competitor
• I'd rather do this manually
• It's not worth the price
• I can't trust that it's secure
• It doesn't work in my environment
• I can't justify this to my boss/significant other
Objections keep us focused as we write out our header and
paragraph. It’s not something we keep in the final landing page
that we develop.
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Important note: these should be objections to using your
product. Not objections to your product's alternatives.
So, if your product is organic dog food, don't talk about why
synthetic dog food is bad. They already understand that
synthetic dog food is bad from your ad copy and header. Talk
about how safe the food is and the process you used to make
it.
Aim for 3-5 features. The more expensive or unintuitive your
product is, the more objections you should address.
If you’re having a hard time deciding which objections to
highlight, study your competitors' homepages to learn how to
differentiate yourself from what people expect you to say.
But also go back to your header/subheader. If, for example,
you listed out 3 key features in your header/subheader pairing,
you should definitely discuss those features in detail on your
landing page.
I. Look at your features/objections sections as
paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 in your essay
Continuing on with this comparison between landing pages
and school essays, your features/objections sections are just
like each supportive paragraph you write in a five-paragraph
essay.
If you recall, we’ve written the following first paragraph for our
essay:
• I shall prove that the earth is round. I shall prove that
by discussing horizons, shadows, and time zones.
The next three paragraphs in your essay should go into great
detail about:
• Horizons (paragraph 2)
• Shadows (paragraph 3)
• Time zones (paragraph 4)
Simple, right? The same logic follows suit with your landing
page.
II. Features: Title
Write a 3-5 word title describing the specific feature or value.
Don't use vague language like "Empower your life" or
"Revolutionize your workflow." No. Just bluntly describe what
it is so visitors can decide whether it's relevant to them.
When you let visitors skip over sections they don't care about,
you reduce their labor and improve their focus on the sections
they do care about.
Here are feature header examples for a stovetop grill client we
had:
• "Cooks and Sears"
• "No Prep or Cleanup"
• "Cooks More than Just Meat"
Here's another example of a features section for Rithm School,
a coding bootcamp:
And an example of the features section for Calendly:
III. Features: Paragraph
When you write a feature paragraph, tailor it to the reader as
much as possible. Use the second-person; you can use the
word "you". Get right to the problem they have. Then twist the
knife and dig into the larger implications that come from the
initial problem.
Bad Example
Guys have a busy life. Work. Family. There’s no time to cook.
Tovala makes it easy for men to eat real, full, dinners. Without
all that time wasted in the kitchen.
Bad because:
• It’s written in third person (not tailored to the user
and talks about “guys” in general)
• It doesn’t talk about the second-level, larger
implications of the problem
• It talks about general info instead of jumping straight
to the problem
Good Example
You have no time to cook at the end of a busy day. You should
be relaxing at night. Not spending hours in the kitchen. Tovala
delivers delicious meal kits to your door. Meal kits you cook to
perfection in our steam oven. So no matter how busy life is,
you can always eat like a king.
Better because:
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 • It gets right to the problem, immediately
• Talks about the implications (waste hours in the
kitchen vs relaxing)
• It’s written in second-person
Now you might be saying to yourself, I want to dig deeper in
my feature’s paragraph, but 3-5 sentences isn’t enough.
What’s the difference? Word choices like “You need to” are a
call to action. They make it clear what the reader should do
(and how our product helps).
And sentences like “That’s how you’ll make sales more
productive.” literally tell the reader how our product fits into
their lives.

If that’s the case, no problem. Never underestimate bluntness.

An effective way to dig deeper — without burdening readers What if your feature needs more explanation than the space
with long text — is to use bullet points. on your landing page?

Another example If this is a complex or unintuitive feature that people won't

understand without extra detail, either link to a separate page
Here’s an example of a feature title and paragraph, that digs where visitors can learn more, or provide a button they can
deeper with bullet points: click to reveal additional details.

Coordinate with other parents using real-time chat Managing
your schedule (and your kids’) isn’t easy. Day care. School.
Soccer practice. Phone calls and text messages slip through the
cracks. But LOOP's real-time messaging never does. With
LOOP, parents are more connected with each other. And their
neighbors.
• Create a chat room to organize school carpools.
• Find a trusted babysitter on the fly.
• Arrange playdates and (kid-free) social gatherings.
The latter is better because it keeps users in the narrative flow
of your page.
Adding special widgets to your feature sections
Another incredible way to explain a feature is to use widgets.
Tabbed widgets, pictured below, let you discuss several key
components, without forcing the users to scroll.

When explaining features, end each line with a clear benefit to

the reader (as seen in the last line below).

Flawless formatting Mis-formatted emails are a thing of the

past. When you copy and paste content into a PersistIQ email
template, PersistIQ automatically identifies and removes
HTML formatting. For a cleaner, user-friendly more modern-
looking email. That people respond to.
Follow the cardinal rule of landing page copy: be blunt.

Don’t use vague marketing copy. Visitors have zero patience

for that. Decrease their confusion.

Point out what people are doing wrong and how you make
things better. The more you can make the reader really feel the
pain of their problem, the more likely they’ll convert. We call
that twisting the knife.

Do this: "You need to reduce the timeline of your sales calls

from days to hours. That's how you'll make sales more
productive."

Not this: "Reducing the timeline of your sales calls from days Lastly, end each feature paragraph with a short hook that
to hours will make your sales team more productive." naturally leads folks to the next section.

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For example, if your landing page focuses on natural dog food, This is what we did for Streak:
you may have two feature sections:

• One section focused on the benefit of using real foods

for your dog food
• One section focused on comparing your product to
‘other’ substandard products.

In section one (the benefits of using real food for your dog
food), your ‘hook’ to the next section might be as simple as:

“Feeding your dog real foods can prolong their life. Too bad When creating a draft of your landing page, you may not have
most dog foods on the market are loaded with ingredients that your images ready. In that case, you can provide direction
do more harm than good. See what we mean below.” within your landing page document, as seen below:

IV. Feature: Image

For your feature's image, include a product screenshot or

professional photography that demonstrates the feature in
action. Much like your copy, don't just include meaningless eye
candy.

Visualize the feature in a way that further educates the visitor.

But in times when you do have images available, embed them

right onto your draft page:

Better yet, use an auto-playing GIF or SVG animation. It’s

better to show than tell.

Should you use videos for your features sections?

Think of it this way: don't add graphics to your site that people
wouldn't find in the product itself. Whether it's a short demo,
a link to an interactive component, or a dashboard screenshot,
think internally instead of externally.
If you’re showing a screenshot of your product, and it's too
noisy for a viewer to know what to focus on, recreate the
screenshot in Sketch or Photoshop and blur the parts of the UI
that aren’t essential.
Most promo videos aren't great. They take too long to get to
the point, and they have derivative, uninspiring visuals and
wordy voiceovers. Visitors don’t finish watching them. This is a
problem because visitors watch videos instead of reading more
of your page.
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.However, a foolproof reason to
include a good video is when you’re selling a physical or visual
product that's intriguing to see in action.
If your product qualifies, follow these rules:

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• Quickly get to the point
o Explain your product in the first 5 seconds. Skip
all preamble.
• Be brief
o Try to keep your video under 45 seconds.
o Ask viewers which parts lose their interest. Then
cut those parts.
• Show all enticing features
o Show the product in action from start to finish.
Give me the full picture. Timelapse any boring
parts.
• Ask viewers what unanswered questions they have that
are preventing them from purchasing.
o Address those questions in a new edit of the
video.
But as we discussed in the introduction, both social proof and
• Sound authentic
CTAs can appear throughout your page. Where they exist
o Drop all the sales jargon. Sound like a real person.
depends on the type of copy you’ve written so far. That’s why
• Treat audio as a bonus
we’ve waited until now to introduce these two vital
o Many visitors won't listen to your audio, so make
components.
sure someone can understand the video without
listening. Use captions and make it self-evident.
First, let’s start with your CTAs, or calls-to-action. As a
• Conclude with a CTA
reminder, these are usually buttons with the next step you
o End the video enticing the viewer to convert.
want users to take, such as signing up or starting their trial.
Explain why it'll change their life.

You can feature a video anywhere. But it often works best to I. Calls-to-action
add context to a feature paragraph.
It’s possible you’ll have several CTAs on your page. Almost
Writing the CTAs and Social Proof certainly one in your hero section, and one in your navbar.

Then, many people like to add one at the bottom of their page.
What you’ll learn Finally, you may choose to have CTAs for some of your feature
sections. Our data shows you should keep feature CTAs to a
• How to strengthen your landing page’s argument with minimum, and instead focus on adding hooks to (connections
social proof. between) each section.
• How to encourage visitors to your page to take action.
You need to write your CTA sections like an ad. They have to
Why is it important? be laser-focused on enticing people to convert.

The sole purpose of your landing page is to get visitors to
convert. You can’t do that without calls-to-action. And until
now, the arguments you’ve made on your landing page have
been in your own voice. It’s time to strengthen those
arguments with input from 3rd-party sources.
To this end, there are often two parts to CTAs: header copy and
a button. In the image below, there is a CTA header, and two
buttons. More times than not, you should only have one
button:

Overview

If you recall the landing page template, social proof and CTAs
are found pretty high up in our suggested structure:
CTA: Header

The CTA header summarizes what the visitor gets from signing
up. For example, "Get a new logo in 24 hours" or "Just set your
price and go." You want to build a sense of momentum, and
you do that by thrusting visitors to the next step.

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In contrast, don’t use something generic like "Get started with Note: This CTA button has no CTA header. Not every button
your free trial." People have seen that text so many times that needs one.
they're programmed to gloss over it. Specifically remind them
why they came here.
II. Social proof
Important: CTA headers are not required for every CTA. But if
Your landing page has successfully explained what you do,
you do use CTA headers on your page, don’t use the same one
why, and how you do it. Now it's time to convey the credibility
for every CTA section on your page. Have each CTA section's
of your company through social proof.
header highlight the value prop that was discussed in the
page's preceding section. This rides the page's momentum: If
a value prop resonates with a visitor, let them immediately Social proof comes in many forms. You’ve seen the standard
sign up to realize that particular value prop. social proof section on landing pages everywhere:

CTA: Button text

Make the CTA section's button either a single action word, e.g.
"Signup" or "Start", or use a verb phrase that further describes
what's about to happen next. Example verb phrases:

• See Dashboard →
• Start trial →
• Browse listings →

Don’t write "clickbait" CTA text like “Give me my free PDF!” - Another example:
copy like that reads as overly "salesy" and not very
trustworthy.

Tip: If you’re not sure what to put for your CTA button, say this
line to yourself: I want to …

Now, imagine how your landing page visitors would fill in the
blank, based on where they are on your landing page. The
word or words you chose to fill in the blank likely make a good
CTA button. For example, on the landing page below, we
embedded a video to get people excited about SPYSCAPE, a
spy museum in NYC:

This is called your social proof section. You should have one.
And more often than not, it should be added high up on your
landing page.

Your social proof section should show off your press coverage
and/or your most well-known customers. Or if you're an
ecommerce product, simply state how many customers you
have (if it’s an impressive amount).

Your goal is to make it seem like everyone already knows about

When deciding what to put as a CTA button text, we said to
ourselves, I want to … Then, we batted around a few ideas of
what we’d want our visitors to say at this exact moment on our
landing page.
Plan a visit seemed perfect.
you, and to make the visitor feel bad that they haven't yet
heard of you.
Hack: If you don’t yet have notable customers, provide your
product for free to employees at well-known companies. Then
place their logos on your page if they wind up continuing to
use you.

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Other uses of social proof
Just having one section with social proof isn’t that effective.
Especially when someone comes across a CTA button much
further down the page. They’re not sure if they should convert.
Keep in mind, at the moment you ask someone to convert,
they’re internally trying to come up with reasons why they
should not convert.
How do you convince them to take action?
Social proof can help. We use social proof within the copy of
our clients’ pages. It comes across natural. And visitors are
reminded that the product has credibility. For
example:
Depending on the client, we also dedicate a section of our
landing page to customer testimonials:
Hack: B2B Testimonials
If you're B2B, a customer testimonial from a well-known
executive works very well. But executives of reputable
companies are generally busy and difficult to reach.
If you're struggling to get that testimonial, here's one hack
we've seen companies use:
1. Contract with a freelance journalist who’s written for a
reputable publication like the New York Times.
2. Reach out to your executive customers with something like
"Hey, we have a journalist who has previously written for NYT
who’s interested in speaking to a few of our customers for a
piece. Do you have 15 minutes for a quick call?"
3. For $200 in freelancer time, you get a testimonial you can
use (in the words you want) from a reputable executive. Be
sure to figure out some way to make it worth the executive’s
time.
Quotes in feature sections
One of the most effective ways we use social proof in landing
page is to complement feature sections with quotes that back
up the claim we’re making. Here are a few sections from
Framer, a sleek design tool. You’ll notice each quote, from
reputable sources, reinforces the message we’ve made in that
section.
The above example remains one of the most effective ways to
use social proof and testimonials in landing pages.
Not only does this approach spread out social proof
throughout each section, but these quotes address any
objections about a specific value prop that a visitor might have
prior to converting.
Hack: Testimonial Language
Write out the exact quote you want on the landing page. Then
email your happiest customers to get their approval about
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using it. This lets you say exactly what you want — and they
don't spend any time worrying about what to say.

Ecommerce Landing Pages

Skip this section if you aren't working on e-commerce.

Overall, the strategies learned in this module can be applied to

ecommerce pages. However, ecommerce brands should
employ certain elements to their page to increase conversions.
The strategies below are specifc to ecommerce companies.
It’s about more than value props
SaaS landing pages focus on value props to help site visitors
understand what the product is and how it benefits the user’s
life.
The value props of ecommerce products are usually self-
evident. For example, people know what to use a bed for —
and why a good bed matters. There’s no need to use valuable
landing page space to dive deeper into these self-evident value
props.
Instead, focus your ecommerce landing page copy on why, as
in:
There’s a very good chance that people landing on Tovala’s
website are asking themselves why Tovala beats other meal
kits . That’s what makes this header so effective — it addresses
the visitor’s mindset.
The matrix makes this comparison visually appealing —
meaning even if someone scans through the page, their mind
will register that Tovala beats out its competitors.
2. Pose 3-4 questions, then answer them in-depth
The example above lends itself nicely to this next strategy —
to ask questions on your landing page, then answer them
concisely, yet in-depth. Huel does this well for two sections on
its homepage:

• Why visitors want this product (over competitors’)

• Why it will change their life

Do this in three ways.

1. The comparison focus

Visitors to your landing page are likely researching competitors

concurrently.

For example, someone who lands on Casper’s website

searching for a bed almost surely knows about competitors
including Purple and Nectar — and they’ll likely visit those
websites at some point.

Your copy should make it easy for them to see why your
product is head and shoulders above the rest. In the example
below, Tovala uses both narrative and a matrix to compare
themselves to two of their biggest competitors:

Again, you do this because your visitors are asking these

questions — in their mind — when visiting your site.

This approach addresses any potential objections that might

prevent conversions — and does so in a tightly woven
narrative that helps to personalize your brand.
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3. Sell your product with high-quality images
The purpose of your entire landing page is to sell visitors on
your product. As convincing as well-crafted copy can be,
nothing compares to seeing the product itself in action.
First and foremost, invest in professional photography. You
can use your photos for more than just your landing page
(social media, Amazon if you decide to go that route, etc.)
Here are some other factors to consider
Take photos that visualize key value props of your product. For
example, one of Tovala’s key value props is its size — it can fit
right on your countertop. What better way to prove that than
with a photo:
Framing the oven with the shaker and utensils helps people
assess its size — from their computer screen.
Use GIFs and and visual cues when necessary
Ecommerce pages don’t need to be inundated with copy. One
way to minimize the words on the page is to use GIFs or images
as explainers themselves:
The example above helps connect key features to the product
itself.
We recommend showing a draft of your ecommerce landing
page to someone unfamiliar with your product. Once they
review the page, ask them the following questions:
• What makes our product different from competitors?
• How will this product improve your life if you buy it?
• What is one key feature of the product that you
remember?
Project: Rewrite Your Landing Page
First: A Common Question
How should I deal with writing copy for different segments of
the same audience.? Should I be writing two separate versions
of the landing pages, each focusing on one of the major use
cases, when the target audience is essentially the same? How
should I be thinking about this?
In the long run, you’ll want to write a landing page for each
segment of your target audience so that every value prop
speaks to their pain points specifically. You’d build a funnel for
each one (ad campaigns, ad copy + creatives, landing pages,
etc) to get the highest conversion rates.
For the purpose of the course, though, just write one landing
page: you can do a general one as a catch-all, or write
for one audience. It doesn't matter which.
Then, you can apply what you learn from our feedback to
future landing pages you make. And add use cases specific to
the audience.
(If you're writing a general landing page, include the most
common use cases to hit the biggest swath of your audience.)
It’s too much work to build the full funnel for every segment
and it's not worth the investment right now.
Part 1: Navbar
Shorten your navbar to the bare minimum number of links you
can put on your site without users getting confused. Too many
links diverts their attention and distracts them from what they
should be doing: reading your landing page.
Some of our highest-converting landing pages have navbars
with just the company logo on one side, and a button with the
call-to-action on the other.
Directions:
1. Create 1-2 variations of your Navbar in the table
o Your CTA should be the rightmost option
o Use 0 - 2 links to the left of your CTA
Part 2: Hero — Header, Subheader, CTA
Creating variations of your headers is important. We do it for
all of our clients (we create at least 6 variations).
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Why so many? A couple of reasons:
• Think of these variations as part of the brainstorming
process. There’s no reason to try to nail just one
header in your writing. Come up with ideas and jot
them down.
• For A/B testing. You may find one header you love and
want to use for your page. Great! But what about
those other header variations you like? They’re worth
testing out on A/B variations of your landing page.
These variations should not sound the same. They should hit
different value props. They should rarely describe the same
features.
Why? Bigger changes mean bigger wins when we A/B test.
Because we can quickly get rid of the losers.
Your hero should pass the Litmus test: if someone were to read
the Hero of a page and nothing else, would they know what
your company's main product is? You have to assume that
they’re landing on your page cold and have no prior context
about your company.
Directions: Remember those problems and solutions columns
from the Value Props project? This is where they come handy.
Step 1: Set Up
1. Open up your value props exercise. Identify the 2-3
most painful problems.
Step 2: Headers
1. Match that problem with a solution.
2. Make it actionable
3. Handle objections people have when considering
purchasing your product/service
Step 3: Subheader
1. Explain your product within 1-2 sentences
Step 4: CTA(Call to Action)
1. Add a call to action statement that’ll become your
CTA button
Part 3: Hero — Image Description
The purpose of your hero image is to complement your hero's
copy, which explains what the product does and teases the
visitor to keep scrolling.
Therefore, your image must show off the product.
Illustrations can work if a screenshot doesn’t do your product
justice. Or if you want to demonstrate interactivity and action.
But aim for a screenshot as much as possible.
Don’t use vague, stock imagery of, say, people using their
laptops at coffee shops. This doesn't show your audience
anything new. You'd be wasting precious space.
(Perhaps stock imagery would be valuable for brand
marketing, but it doesn't incentivize landing page conversions
as much as a literal depiction of your product will.)
Directions
1. Insert 1-2 images or descriptions of image variations
you can include in your hero section
Part 4: Features and Objections
Write 3 to 4 features/objections sections.
Refer to the features/objections lesson for how to pick and
write these. Remember to use your Value Props spreadsheet
to identify the solutions your features provide.
If you're an eCommerce company, swap in some of our
recommendations from the eCommerce reading. You may
need to remove some feature sections.
Directions:
1. Come up with 3 to 4 objections customers typically
have before purchasing your product.
2. Each features section consists of the following
elements: Header, Paragraph, Image, and CTA — Fill
them out using the notes and examples for each
section.
Part 5: Social Proof
Social proof comes in 2 forms: testimonials and logos. If you
don’t think testimonials or logos make sense for your landing
page you can skip this section.
Directions:
1. Create 1-3 testimonials
Tips:
• Keep the testimonials short. If it's a wall of text,
people will just skip them.
• Including a photo of the testimonial author makes it
look more credible.
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 • If your product caters to various audiences, choose
testimonials that cover this wide range so there's
more chances of a visitor seeing a testimonial that will
resonate with them. e.g. If it's Webflow, showing a
testimonial from a designer, a developer, and an
eCommerce shop owner will hit different value props.

Part 6: CTA

Directions:

1. Create a final CTA that ties your page together

Tips:
Here are some examples of conversion events:
• Demonstrate how frictionless the next steps are (e.g.
“Sign up in 5 minutes”) • Submitting an email address
• Make it intriguing: leverage your top value props • Submitting an online form to sign up for a webinar
• Add exclusivity (e.g. “Join the waitlist”) • Adding payment information
• Adding to cart

Conversion Tracking
Questions Answered in This Module
• How do I properly set up the technical side of growth?
Without a coding background?
• Why is conversion tracking important?
• What are conversion events?
Overview
When you run any type of digital ad, you naturally need to
know whether someone who sees the ad (or clicks it) actually
buys on your site. Or installs your app. Or at least visits your
landing page. Otherwise, you won’t know if the ad is working.
Each of these key steps in your funnel — visiting the landing
page, installing the app, buying, etc. — needs to be tracked.
Events that lead directly to users or revenue are called
“conversion events.”
Here are some examples of events that are not conversion
events, but students sometimes think are conversion events:
• Filling out a zip code field
• Mousing over a category
• Closing the chat window
• Visiting the about page
These are not conversion events because they’re not
important enough in the overall funnel. For example, if you’re
Amazon, it’s not a conversion when a user fills out their zip
code; the conversion is when the user submits all of their
shipment information to move to the next screen.
You should still track the less important things people do on
your site. We just call those “events” or "analytics events,” in
general. Not conversion events. Ad channels don’t care as
much about them.
Diagram

For every ad channel we run, we need to tell the ad channel — Here's another way to visualize how marketers use events. In
Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever — that someone “converted” a nutshell:
and did what we want.

That way, we can look at data on those channels to see if our

ads and targeting are actually working.

Here’s a quick screenshot from Pinterest's ad manager (you’ll

get much more familiar with this later in the course if you run
Pinterest ads):
So in this module, we’ll do the following:

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 1. Make a list of the major conversion events on your
site/app.
2. Track the events either manually, with Google Tag
Manager, or with Segment.
3. Set up Google Analytics and send it event data.
4. Map conversion events to your ad channels for
reporting.

How Conversion Tracking “Actually Works”

Or whether people actually sign up when you send a them a
Under the hood, there’s always a line of code that runs on your reminder email:
website or in your app. It pings out to the ad channels to say
“Hey! Something good just happened. Keep track of this.”

Here’s what this code would look like on Demand Curve’s

website (if we didn't use Segment that is — more on that later).
It runs every time someone clicks the button to apply:

Another example: If you install LinkedIn’s conversion pixel, you

can see visitor job titles and industries (the firmographic
targeting). This is a must if you’re a B2B business.

That fbq in the image comes from Facebook’s pixel — a piece

of code that you put on your site to connect it to Facebook's
ad platform.
If this doesn’t make any sense, that’s ok. Engineers usually
implement conversion tracking code. You’ll be sending them
instructions in the project.
Conversion Tracking: Not Just for Ads
Conversion tracking can be useful even if you’re not running
ads.
For example, by setting up conversion tracking in Google
Analytics using Conversions, you can easily see which cities
actually enter their credit cards the most:
Facebook is starting to show detailed data like this as well. As
ad platforms stick around, they do this more and more.
Email marketing
Conversion tracking is also key for effective email marketing
campaigns. Being able to trigger automated campaigns based
on specific user actions will make your email campaigns much
more effective. For example:
• Contacting users who haven't logged in for 30 days to re-
engage them
• Emailing users who abandon cart
• Offering a discount to someone who's viewed the same
product page multiple times without purchasing
• People who downgraded but visited the site recently

The possibilities are endless. Tracking a ton of events will

enable these possibilities.

Client Story

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One of our clients was a tool that helps programmers when You absolutely should install GA into your site or app if it’s not
their code breaks. The company was run by engineers who there already. We’ll be using it as the primary analytics
believed strongly in privacy and security. So, when we started software throughout this course.
with them, they had almost no tracking set up. They felt it was
a privacy invasion. GA is best for looking at site traffic as a whole. For example,
you can see when groups of people click an ad or click around
They weren’t tracking any events — despite already running your homepage, broken down by geography or source.
ads on Google Ads. We worked with them to track their main
events, such as when users signed up, started the free trial, and
upgraded. Quickly, we discovered that sign ups on Google Ads
were costing at least hundreds of dollars each. Possibly
thousands.

They had no idea they were spending so much per sign up

because they weren’t tracking anything.

We used their new conversion data to drastically lower their

cost of getting a sign up. We were able to get far more people
Google Analytics 4, the latest version of GA (which came out in
to their site while cutting the total amount they spent.
mid 2020) also automatically tracks a variety of events such as
clicks, scrolls, downloads, and searches.
Data is powerful. Logging the right events also allowed us to
make a variety of suggestions, tweaks, and optimizations
Note: We will be using Google Analytics 4 for all of our
across their funnel to get more conversions.
examples in this program. If you're using Segment, as of
writing this (May 2021), Segment does not support Google
Conversion Tracking Tools Analytics 4. If you plan to use Segment, sign up or continue to
use Universal Analytics
This reading covers the tools we recommend to track
conversions. Up until Google Analytics 4, GA was very bad at tracking
conversions. Previously, if someone returns to your
Analytics Platforms website/app on their computer after visiting on their mobile
device, GA wasn't able to tell that it was the same person.
These tools record data for every visitor to your site/app,
including: However, with Google Analytics 4, you can track users just like
you can with the tools discussed in the next section. Although
you need to explicitly set it up to do that by passing a unique
• Where they came from
ID, or email address, to GA along with your events.
• How long they stayed
• The pages they visited, and the order they visited
Google Analytics is completely free, and the tools below can be
them in
very expensive. Although the other tools do have better
• Where in your funnel they dropped off
reporting tools (in our opinion).
• Their device type and location
• The actions they performed
Although we won't be covering it much in the program, let's
• And more!
learn more about user-level tracking.

Analytics platforms give you a great idea of how visitors

interact with your site and where they’re coming from. They’re
the foundation of every modern marketing team.
Google Analytics (GA)
GA is the most common analytics tool out there. It has tons of
features. And it’s free. It also integrates with nearly every tool
and platform.
User-level Tracking Platforms
We won’t get too into the weeds on these since we only
recommend them if your site is complex or your sales cycle is
long, and Google Analytics 4 doesn't suit your needs.
Platforms
There are a few event tracking platforms on the market,
including Mixpanel, Heap, and Amplitude (which we use due
to their very generous free plan). Any of them work. If you’re
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starting from scratch, we recommend Mixpanel because it also
does drip emails and in-app messaging — which can save you
from also paying for other tools like Intercom, Drift, Zaius, or
Mailchimp. It also integrates nicely with Zapier which helps cut
down on engineering resources.
Screenshot
Here's an example of what you can see with Mixpanel data.
Who they’re best for
These platforms are best for medium-sized to large companies
because they’re pretty expensive. They’re also good for
complex web and/or mobile apps (especially if you have both
a web and mobile version), or a long sales cycle.
If you’re an ecommerce company, or have a relatively simple
site, these tools can be overkill. And they’re generally not
appropriate for sites that don’t make users sign up.
How they work
Before Google Analytics 4 (and by default, unless you configure
user-level tracking), GA tracked users on your site using
“cookies,” which is how your browser knows they’re the same
person every time they come back to your site.
If the user changed the device they use, changed their
browser, used incognito mode, didn't allow cookies, or cleared
cookies (which happens after a certain amount of time), then
GA considered them a new person. This made down-funnel
attribution difficult in GA, since people often change devices at
least once (mobile → desktop, or home computer → work
computer).
Instead of using cookies, user-level tracking platforms, and
Google Analytics 4 (assuming you configure it) tie every action
to the user using a unique identifier (often an email address,
username, or database ID). If the user is signed into your site,
all the actions they take will be associated to them—no matter
what device or browser they’re using.
Integration Tools
There are tools that make it easier to track conversions from
different channels — in one place.
Setting everything up in one place gives you the following
benefits:
• You don’t have to write code. For some third-party
tools, you can just copy-paste the tool’s code. For
others, you don’t need to look at code at all.
• Your site’s code stays cleaner. You work through a
website instead of a codebase.
• It saves your dev team a lot of time. Often, you won’t
need to touch code at all or involve an engineer.
• You don’t risk writing bad code. So your app won’t
break. Instead, a tool that’s well-tested (and has a lot
at stake if things go wrong) handles everything for
you.
What are example integration tools?
• You may have heard of Segment. It's the easiest to
use, saves a lot of engineering time, and has some
powerful data integrity and targeting tools built in. It
does cost money though (
• Google Tag Manager. It's like Segment, but free. And
involves a lot more manual work to set up
If you have an engineering team ready to help, we recommend
Segment as it'll ultimately save your engineers a lot of
headache now and in the future.
But Google Tag Manager is a free alternative that works well,
doesn't require a lot of engineering time up-front. It requires
more work, though.
RudderStack is a Segment alternative with a Free Tier. You
might want to give it a try.
Database Visualization Tools
We won’t talk much about database visualization tools in this
module. We only recommend them if your site is complex
and/or your sales cycle is long. Or if you don’t want to pay for
user-level tracking.
What they are
These tools let you look at tables and graphs of the data you’ve
recorded on your site. You can get super custom about the way
you track users.
To make them most useful, you save almost everything about
your users and their actions in your own database or a "data
warehouse." Then, these tools let you drill down into the data
to create dashboards and visualizations for them.
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Besides tables and graphs, you can also ask questions of the
data, like:
• Who hasn’t purchased in +90 days?
• What traffic sources lead to my most engaged users?
• Where do my most engaged users live?
• What job titles do my paying users have?
• How big are the companies paying for my product?
There are a few choices for these tools. Metabase, Mode,
Looker, and Chartio are a few examples. They can cost
hundreds of dollars per month.
Here’s a screenshot of what you can see with database
visualization tools and why they’re useful.
Recommendation for most companies
Metabase is a free option that you have to host yourself. It
covers the vast majority of things you’d need in a database
visualization tool, so we recommend it.
Before you begin the projects
Check with your team that they don’t already have conversion
tracking set up for your ad channels. If they do, get the tracking
plan documentation and use it as input for the first project (but
you will probably need to tweak o re-design your conversion
events dependending on how well thought out they are)
Check if they’re using GTM, Segment, or doing it manually. We
generally recommend keeping with the system you already
have in place. Otherwise, go with Google Tag Manager.
Project: Conversion Events
Introduction
In this project, we'll flesh out the actual conversion events.
Crack open and skim the example conversion events doc. This
is what we're working towards (if you were an ecommerce
site).
Prerequisites
• A running website
• A growth strategy doc with the ad channels you’re
going to run
• You know which tool will be used for tracking (we
recommnd Google Tag Manager, but maybe your
team is using Segment, Rudderstack or something
else).
Phase 1: Identify the key conversion events
Go to your website and app. Click and tap around.
Starting when when you first visit your homepage, there are a
bunch of actions that you can perform. Actions: physical things
you do to a computer. Keystrokes. Clicks. Pressing "Submit". Et
cetera.
Only a few are conversion events. In other words, only a few
are the most important steps people take in your funnel.
In this phase, we’ll identify the 5 to 10 key conversion
events from our list so we know which ones to turn into our
KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators - the most important
numbers for our business), Google Analytics goals, and ad
channel conversion events.
Ecommerce example conversion events
Crack open the example again. Looking through it, these would
be the key conversion events.
• Search
o This is a clear sign of intent. They had something
specific in mind and are looking for it.
• Newsletter subscription
o This captures their email, letting you hit them
with blog content, product launches, discount
codes, and more. This step can lead to many
purchases in the future.
• View product page
o This is where they can view product information,
increase quantity, choose flavor/color, and
ultimately add to cart. Very important step.
• Add to wishlist
o This shows they have an intent to buy. Just not
yet, for whatever reason.
• Add to cart
o This is a necessary action in the funnel that shows
clear intent to purchase.
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• Initiate checkout
o This is a necessary action in the funnel that shows
clear intent to purchase.
• Add shipping info/signup
o These two events are often the same thing on an
ecommerce site as users often give their email in
this step.
o It’s a mandatory step in the checkout process.
• Add payment info
o They got so far as to add their credit card, but
maybe they didn’t confirm for whatever reason
• Purchase
o This is the primary action that you care about.
Since it makes your company more money.
o Note: there's more nuance than this, because you
really only want purchases from people who
genuinely need your product and will stick
around. Otherwise they’ll ask for refunds or give
you bad reviews. So you can’t onlycare about
purchases. But they’re a darn good indicator.
We developed this list on our own, but it perfectly
matches Facebook’s own list of conversion actions. In fact, if
you use the Facebook integration in an ecommerce platform
like Shopify, Shopify adds these events automatically.
How did you choose these events?
Good question. For key conversion events, you want to pick
the major points in the funnel.
For example, when we’re judging a Facebook ad campaign’s
performance, we don’t care about secondary events like
whether they read the FAQ, looked at a product photo,
changed flavors, or logged into their account.
• [Key user actions that demonstrate increased
engagement]
o For example, in Instagram this could be following
20 people, or posting for the first time. These
actions show product use and engagement.
• Initiate checkout (start upgrading/purchase flow)
• Add payment info
• Purchase/upgrade
Now your turn
Make a doc that lists your conversion events. You should have
five to ten of them. Here's a template you can use.This doc lets
us remember what each channel calls our events.
Note: if you have an app, this doc should cover all the events
across your website andapp. Some students make the mistake
of creating a separate doc for their website and app. Don't do
that. You'll have too many events - and it won't be useful.
Bookmark your deliverable. We’ll be referencing it
constantly in our acquisition section when we set up and
launch your ad channels. You need to make sure you’re looking
at the right ad channel mappings once data starts coming in.
For example, Facebook (and many other channels) do allow
you to make custom event names, but they recommend that
use you named ones from their list of recommend event
names.
In other words, we'd take our own event names, like Order
Scooter , and call it Add to Cart on Facebook instead. We'll
keep a record of which names are which in this doc.

We care about how many purchases we got, the revenue we

generated, and the return on the ad spend (ROAS — how much
money we make per dollar we spend on ads).

We also want to know how far into the funnel people got if
they didn’t end up purchasing. This will let us identify the
Example of an event being mapped to various channels' event
largest drop-off points. Then, we can use the secondary events
pixel
we’re logging in Google Analytics to keep people around
better.
For your Conversion Events doc, for each event, list out the ad
channels you plan to run, with a colon. These channels should
What about for a SaaS product?
come from the Growth Strategy projects.

For a SaaS product, these are a bit harder to identify, and vary
For example:
widely based on product, but these are generally applicable:
View product page
• Viewed sign up page
• Download/Install (if applicable)
• Facebook:
• Newsletter subscribe (if applicable)
• Google Ads:
• Sign up
• GA:
• Complete onboarding
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If you're a mobile app, include AppsFlyer in this list if you're This is optional. For many events, you might want to add some
already tracking these events in AppsFlyer and they're named additional data other than just the event name itself. You can
differently. You'll have to write out the name "mapping" here. see the list of additional data on each event in the links to the
standard events.
Standard event names used by ad channels
For example, for purchases you might want to add what the
Refer to the docs below for the list of conversion event names product was, and how much revenue was generated. You can
that must be used for each ad channel. see examples of additional data added to the view_itemevent
for GA in the example above. This tracks the name and value
• Facebook + Instagram events of the product viewed.
o 02/2021 Note: Apple's update with iOS 14's
AppTrackingTransparency drastically affects how For example, on a purchase event you might do:
Facebook conversions are tracked. Advertisers
and companies are still learning the details to Pay
adapt. We will be updating our curriculum to
reflect the changes. In the meantime, please • Facebook: Purchase
consult Facebook's official documentation on this o currency: {currency}
topic. o value: {revenue}
• Pinterest events: o content_ids: [{product_id}]
https://developers.pinterest.com/docs/ad- • Google Ads: Pay
tools/conversion-tag/? o value: {revenue}
• Snapchat events • Pinterest: Checkout
• Quora events o order_id: {order_id}
• LinkedIn events o product_id: {product_id}
• Google Analytics 4 (there are more links at the bottom for o value: {revenue}
specific company types, like ecommerce) o currency: {currency}
o Note: if you're planning to use Segment, it does • GA: purchase
not yet (Nov 2021) work with Google Analytics 4. o value: {revenue}
You will need to use Universal Analytics. o transaction_id: {order_id}
• Google Ads: When you create the event, you can name it o items: {product_id}
whatever you want. Google will then assign a unique label o currency: {currency}
ID to the event. Save that label ID into your conversion
events doc. Phase 3: Implement
(If you want to avoid a tab explosion, you can use this That's it! Now go make your doc.
spreadsheet — credit to Marc Thomas at Doopoll for making.)

For each event, you'll end up with something like: Project: Configure Google Analytics

View product Prerequisites

• Facebook: View content This course assumes you already have accounts for Google
• Google Ads: View product Analytics and the various ad channels you’ll be testing. If you
• Pinterest: PageVisit don’t, make these accounts now (and make sure to add billing
• GA: view_item information for the ad channels).

Pay • Google Analytics Account.

• Account on the various ad channels you plan to run
• Facebook: Purchase given your growth strategy.
• Google Ads: Pay • Conversion events document from Project:
• Pinterest: Checkout Conversion Events
• GA: purchase
Overview
Phase 2: Additional Data on Events
In this project, you’ll:
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 • Learn the difference between an event, conversion
event, and goal in Google Analytics
• Set up major ad channels to track conversions.
• Fill out your conversion events doc to keep a record
of how you configured each ad channel.
Make sure to have your conversion events doc open for
constant reference. It’s important to not forget or mismatch
something. Otherwise your tracking will be useless!
Phase 1 covers how to configure Google Analytics and Phase
2 covers ad channels.
Phase 1a: Configure Google Analytics
GA is the bread and butter of analytics and tracking,
predominately because it's free and has a lot of great features.
It’s the place you track all traffic on your site. It also acts as a
backup to the data that's collected and reported by ad
channels themselves.
In 2020, Google released a new version called Google Analytics
4 (GA4) that can be set up to work alongside the previous
version (UA, Universal Analytics) or standalone by itself.
However, many platforms like Segment and Shopify don’t yet
have official integrations for GA4 which can influence which
version you choose to implement.
If you're unsure whether to use GA4 or UA for your marketing
stack, see our FAQ: Google Analytics 4 We’ll cover how to
configure both versions below.
Phase 1a—Option UA: Universal Analytics
Events vs goals
In GA, there’s a distinction
between an event and a goal.
Events are sent through your
site/app’s code and get piped
into Behaviors > Events
A goal is a key conversion event in your site/app. For example,
a purchase is one of the most important events in your app.
That would be both a goal and an event.
Visiting the team’s “About” page would be an event, but not a
goal since it's not a vital metric indicating your company's
overall growth.
You can break down goals by a bunch of things: the traffic
sources that lead to its completion, the total number of
completions, the conversion rate, and the value for each traffic
source. For this reason, it’s very important to create a goal for
all major conversion events in your site/app.
You can see goals in the Acquisition and Conversions tabs
from the left menu.
Unfortunately, goals don’t act retroactively on your data. If
you’ve been firing an event in your code for a month, and then
create a goal for it on day 30, the goal will only start tracking
data from day 30 and onwards.
You can’t retroactively use the goal for the previous 30 days.
So it’s very important to set goals up as soon as possible. We’ll
show you how.
Create a “Show Full Domain” view
If you’re looking at stats on a specific page on your site on
Google Analytics, you usually only see the path (blog-
posts/my-great-greece-trip) instead of the full
domain (www.yoursite.com/blog-posts/my-great-greece-
trip).
Especially if you’re setting up subdomains (blog.yoursite.com
in addition to www.yoursite.com), you need to make a “Full
Domain” view to see what pages people are actually going to
— so you don’t do things like confuse your main blog page with
your site’s homepage.
To do that…
• Log into your Google Analytics account.
• Go to Admin (the gear) > View > +Create View
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 • Make the reporting view name “Show Full Domain”
• Click “Create View”
• Back in the Admin panel, in the right column, click
“Filters”, then “Add Filter”
• Make the filter name “Show domain”
• Filter Type: Custom filter > Advanced
• Field A: Hostname
• Extract A: (.*)
• Field B: Request URI
• Extract B: (.*)
• Output To: Request URI
• Constructor: $A1$B1
• Check “Field A Required” and “Override Output Field”
• Hit “Save”
To test that it works, head to the Real-Time > Pageviews
section of Google Analytics. Then, open a new tab, visit your
site, and click around to a few pages. You should see the visits
show up as www.yoursite.com/page instead of /page.
If you ever want to see the /page view, you can always switch
back by clicking the dropdown at the top of GA and
choosing “All Web Site Data” under views
each goal is only triggered once (what if
the person refreshes a page over and
over?). The goal doesn’t rely on the
URLs staying the exact same.
7. Goal details
o These values need to match exactly how the
event is configured in your code, so make sure
they match exactly how you have them written in
your conversion events and analytics proposal
docs. Lowercase vs uppercase matters. If you
leave something blank, GA will accept any value.
o Category/Action: Copy-paste the values from
your conversion events doc
o Label/Value: We recommend leaving these
blank to capture all actions for this event
8. If the events were already added to your site, click Verify
this goal to see if you’ve configured it correctly.
9. Click Save
10. Repeat steps 2-10 for all the remaining conversion events
11. You can now take advantage of goals to see how different
traffic sources are performing!
Phase 1a—option GA4: Google Analytics 4

Creating a GA4 Property

Log into GA, click Admin > GA4 Setup Assistant and follow
Configure GA goals along the instructions to setup your GA4 property. Make sure
to turn on “Enhanced Measurement” so that it will
automatically track basic events like page views. Make note of
Note: if you're using Shopify's native integrations, follow along,
your Measurement ID (this can be found in “Data Streams”
but once you get to step 7, see Shopify's instructions on how to
from the Admin menu) and add it your Conversion Events
add goals based on URL.
Project doc.
Turn all events listed in your conversion events doc into GA
goals.

1. Go to your Google Analytics account

o Note: Since goals are configured at
the “view” level, make sure you’re on the view
you will be using all the
time. (We recommend “Show full domain”.)
2. Click Admin in the bottom-left corner
3. Click Goals on far-right, under the View column
4. Click + New Goal
5. Goal setup
o If the event falls under any of the templates, use
one of those. But 90% of the time, you’ll choose
Custom.
6. Goal description
o Name: Use the same name the event has in the
conversion events doc
o Type: Choose Event
▪ Note you can create goals either by
event, by page URL, or time on site. We Events in GA4
always prefer event-based goals
because they allow you to make sure There are three primary ways of creating events in GA4:
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 1. Logging the events in code manually
2. Configuring them in the GA4 dashboard
3. Logging the events using tools like Google Tag
Manager or Segment (not yet supported)
We recommend #3 using Google Tag Manager because it’s
something you can setup yourself without requiring an
engineering team.
#1 requires you to update your codebase which might require
the help of an engineer.
#2 is too limited because you can’t track events like a form
submission.
We’ll cover the installation of #3 in Project: GTM. For now, you
can keep reading to get an overview idea of how GA4 works.
Once events are configured, you can find them in Configure >
Events menu. The “Mark as conversion” column allows you to
easily define which event in the list are important. For
example, you could mark clicking a signup button as important,
while leaving a mundane event like viewing a FAQ page un-
toggled. (This is the equivalent of having Goals in UA.)
You can break down data throughout GA to see its conversion
performance. For example you can see the total event count,
total conversion count, total revenue generated from
conversions, as well as filter it down to specific
events/conversions.
Phase 1b: Confirm GA is working
Prerequisite: This assumes you already have GA installed on
your site. If you don't, skip this section. We'll verify the
installation later.
Phase 1b — Option UA
Within the dashboard
Head to Real-Time > Overview.
Verify the following:
• Do you see yourself when you hit the website?
• Do you see all your site’s pages in Behavior > Site Content
> Pages?
• Do you see all the events from your analytics proposal
in Behavior > Events > Overview?
• Are those events firing on the right pages?
• Real-Time > Events, do you see all the events firing as you
walk through your website?
• Are all the goals firing in Real-Time > Conversions?
o If not, is the associated event firing?
o If so, then the goal’s configuration must have a
mistake
o If not, the event must not be logging properly
Using Chrome extension
Google Analytics has a Chrome extension called Google Tag
Assistant that lets you see if Google code is installed and firing
on your site. It works for GA, Google Optimize, and Google Ads.
Install it. Then head to your site. You can see if Google Analytics
is installed on the page you’re on, and if it’s pointing to the
right ID
Phase 1b — Option GA4
Within the dashboard
Verify the following:
• Do you see yourself when you hit the website?
• Do you see all your site’s pages in Engagement >
Pages and screens?
Tag Assistant
Google replaced a Chrome extension (as well as Google Tag
Manager's debugging tool) with an online tool called Tag
Assistant. This tool lets you view your website in a separate
tab/window, and displays all your Google tags in another
tab/window. As you step through your site, this tool will show
all the Google tags that fire on each page.
It works for tags that you add to your site for GA4, Google
Optimize, Google Tag Manager, and Google Ads making it very
useful. Only caveat is that you must view each
property (GA, Google Ads, etc) separately unless everything is
installed using Google Tag Manager (more on this later in the
chapter).
We'll show how to use this tool in more detail later in Project:
Verify Pixels .
Project: Configure Ad Channels
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Introduction

Each ad channel handles conversion tracking a little bit

differently. Below, we show you how to prepare the major ad
channels for conversion tracking.

We’ll go through the following ad channels:

• Facebook/Instagram
• Quora
• Pinterest
• Google Ads (AdWords)
• LinkedIn
• Bing

At this point you should have the different ad channels you’ll

be running listed out in your conversion events doc.

Go through each channel you’ll be running, make an account

on it, and then follow its setup instructions below. Come back
to the verification section after it's implemented. • Then click Continue.
• Facebook will tell you your pixel isn't ready to set up yet
Skip the channels that aren’t relevant to you. and give you the option to do this later. Select Set up the
Pixel Now.
B2B Companies: Set up LinkedIn tracking no matter what so
that you gather demographic data from your site visitors.

Shopify users: If you're using Shopify's native integrations for

an ad channel, you can skip the instructions for that channel.
We'll go through this in more detail in the Project: Shopify.

Facebook/Instagram
Preparing Facebook is a two step process: creating your
Facebook pixel and mapping conversion events. The Facebook
pixel goes on every single page of your site and app.

Create and set up the Facebook pixel

• Go to your Facebook Ads Manager account. Click the

hamburger button in the sidebar.
• Just like with domain verification, there are a few options
• Click Business Settings in the menu.
for setting up your pixel: add code using a partner
• In the Business Settings sidebar, open the Data Sources
integration; manually adding the pixel to your website; or
dropdown. Then click Pixels.
emailing instructions to a developer. Choose the option
• Click the Add button. A popup will appear to create a that makes the most sense for your situation. For
Facebook pixel for your site. Give it a name (like your example, if you use WordPress or Shopify, add the pixel
company's name). code using a partner integration.
o You can enter your URL to see if easy setup
options exist, like if your site uses WordPress,
Shopify, or Squarespace.

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 3. If no tag currently exists, click Create new Pinterest Tag
4. Add Pinterest to your conversion events doc
5. If using Segment: In the bottom "Pixels" section, copy over
the Unique Tag ID into a "Pinterest" sub-section. If not
using Segment, copy over the full Tag code.

Quora
Google Ads
Quora is almost identical to Facebook, with slightly different
events. Google Ads is done very differently. First, you install Google
Ads through Google Analytics. Second, there are no pre-
Create the Quora pixel defined conversion events, meaning you get to create custom
ones yourself (with whatever name you want).
1. Go to your Quora Ads Manager
2. Click Quora Pixel in top navigation Create conversion events
3. If no pixel currently exists, click Setup Pixel
4. Add Quora to your conversion events doc in every section. 1. Go to the Google Ads dashboard
5. In the "Pixels" section at the bottom of the doc, make a 2. Click the wrench icon (tools) in the top right
new "Quora" sub-section and copy over the full Pixel 3. Click on Conversions
code.

In Conversions
Pinterest
1. Click the giant +Conversions sign
Pinterest is very similar to Facebook, except its conversion 2. Choose Website (assuming it’s not a mobile app)
event names are different, and they call their pixel a “tag.” 3. Fill out the form:
o Name
Create the conversion tag ▪ Name it exactly the same as it is in your
conversion events doc
o Category
1. Go to your Pinterest Ads Manager
2. Click Ads > Conversion tracking in top navigation
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 ▪ The category only matters for some reporting
purposes. Choose one from the list if it’s
appropriate, like Purchase for a purchase.
o Value
▪ If a value is associated with the event, like the
dollar amount someone spent, then choose: The
value of this conversion action may vary (for
instance, by purchase price). Set a default price if
appropriate.
▪ Otherwise choose: Don't assign a value
o Count
▪ This affects the number of times Google records
an event, every time the user triggers a
conversion.
▪ Unless the conversion adds value to your
business every time, like a purchase (revenue) or
a referral, change Count to One. You don’t care if
the same person created five accounts, but you
do care if they make five purchases. So you’d set
the sign up conversion to One and the purchase
event to Every.
o Conversion window
▪ This means how long it generally takes for people
to buy after they see an ad.
▪ Leave this as the default: the industry standard of
30 days.
▪ If it’s likely people will take longer than 30 days
to convert because you have a long sales cycle or
a free trial period, increase it to something more
appropriate.
▪ We often do 30 days for eCommerce and 90 days
for down funnel SaaS conversions.
o View-through conversion window
▪ If someone sees your ad and then independently
Googles you without clicking it, that’s a view-
through conversion.
▪ This is generally better left to 1 day. If people see
your banner ad on a site or a video in YouTube,
it’s likely they’d Google that day (or right then
and there), or they won’t do anything at all.
Setting this window much longer makes the
number of conversions look higher than it should
be. Because people may come to the site another
way in the meantime.
o Include in "Conversions"
▪ By putting the right conversions in this “Include
in ‘Conversions’” section, you have control over
who Google shows your ads to overtime.
▪ Do you want to show more ads to people who are
more likely to sign up for a free trial, or people
who are more likely to upgrade to a paid
account? You have control over this.
▪ If the conversion you’re tracking is the key event
in your funnel, such as a Purchase or Upgrade,
then make sure this box is ticked.
▪ It’s best to only have one or two conversion
events included in “Conversions” so Google
knows exactly what to optimize towards.
▪ If it’s just an incremental step in the
funnel that’s useful to monitor, but is
not absolutely critical or telling of a
valued customer, untick this box.
o Attribution model(our recommendation is in part ii)
▪ We use attribution models to figure out how why
someone converted — after they came to our site
through more than one ad. For example, if someone
clicks on 5 different ads before converting, each
attribution model will distribute the conversion
differently:
▪ Last click: Only click #5 would get
attributed. Oftentimes this can be a
“brand term search” — meaning they
Googled your business name — since
they learned of your business from the
previous clicks and probably came back
by googling your business’ name.
▪ First click: Only click #1 would get
attributed. This gives all the credit to the
first ad that got their attention.
▪ Linear: Gives all 5 clicks equal
attribution. That means they’d each get
0.2 (1 conversion / 5 clicks) of a
conversion
▪ Time Decay: Gives more credit to clicks
that happened closer in time to the
conversion using a 7-day half-life.
Meaning a click 8 days before a
conversion gets half as much credit as a
click 1 day before a conversion, and a
click 15 days after would get a quarter
as much credit, and so on.
▪ Position Based: This would give credit
to all 5, but would give clicks #1 and #5
40% credit each, and distribute the
remaining 20% across the rest. For
example, 0.4, 0.067, 0.67, 0.67, 0.4.
▪ Data-Driven:
▪ It uses machine learning and
your own data to appropriately
weigh the conversion. For
example, if Google determines
that one campaign consistently
increases the conversions for
other campaigns, it’ll get
weighted higher.
▪ Data-Driven requires at least
15,000 clicks and 600 actions
on the conversion in 30 days
(and for it to maintain at least
400 actions per month
thereafter) before you can
select it.
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 ▪ What we recommend (based on Google’s own
recommendations)
▪ Do Time Decay for very early funnel
events like a download or a product
page view.
▪ Do Position Based for anything further
down funnel
▪ Once you have enough data, and you’re
confident it’ll stay there, switch to Data-
Driven since it’ll be the most accurate
▪ Avoid Last click and First click models as LinkedIn
much as possible. Last click gives too
much credit to branded and retargeting
LinkedIn is also very similar to Facebook and Pinterest. You first
campaigns (where you target people
have to create the base pixel (which in this case is called
who have already heard of you).
an “Insight Tag” by LinkedIn). Then, you have to create the
▪ People will often come in on a
pixels for the conversion events you want to track.
prospecting campaign (the first time
they hear about you) but convert later
on branded/retargeting. First click Create an Insight Tag:
would be the opposite problem.
▪ Both the first ad and last ad that people 1. Go to your LinkedIn Ad Account
see are important. 2. Hover over Account Assets nav dropdown
4. Click Save and continue 3. Click Insight Tag
5. Tag Setup: Add the event to your conversion events doc: 4. Create the insight tag
o Conversion ID: If this is your first conversion, 5. Add the tag info to your conversion events:
choose Use Google Tag Manager (even if you're 6. At the bottom of your conversion events doc, in
not) and copy-paste the Conversion ID (looks like the "Pixels" section, add a sub-section for LinkedIn
123456789) into the top of your conversion and copy the entire tag into the doc. If using Segment,
events doc just copy over the partner id (523421 in the example
6. Conversion Label: Choose Install the code yourself. Then below).
scroll down to the Event snippet section and copy the
code there
7. Repeat the above steps for all remaining conversion
events

Create your conversion events:

1. Hover over the Account Assets nav dropdown

2. Click Conversion tracking
3. Click Create new conversion
4. Fill out the form.
5. Conversion name: Match what it is in your conversion
events doc
6. Conversion type: Match the one that makes the most
sense.
7. Value: Add value if it’s relevant (generally only for
purchase)
8. Conversion window: We generally just leave to
default. 30 day click-through and 1 day view-through
would match the AdWords and Facebook defaults.
9. Applied campaigns: LinkedIn is odd and forces you to
choose the campaigns it applies to. If your campaigns

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 are already made for some reason, add them now. If • Track 1: Web Tracking
not, you can add the conversions to them later. o The most common track. Your website is not
10. Conversion method: Click Event-specific pixel and built on Shopify (or equivalent), and you
then copy the “img pixel” . Don’t use destination- need to add conversion tracking to it by
based events; too much can go wrong. Ask us about it yourself. You can do so using Google Tag
if you really want. Add it into the Pixels > LinkedIn Manager OR Segment/Rudderstack.
section of your doc. Leave a comment saying which • Track 2: Mobile Apps Tracking
conversion event it should fire for. o This is for mobile app companies.
11. Save o Note: If your product also has a website, do
12. Repeat steps 1-11 for all your other conversion Track 1 as well.
events. • Track 3: Shopify Tracking
o Choose this track if your site is built on
Shopify (or BigCommerce or
WooCommerce).

Track 1: Web Tracking

The most common track. Your website is not built on Shopify

(or equivalent), and you need to add conversion tracking to it
by yourself. You can do so using Google Tag Manager OR
Segment/Rudderstack.

Web Tracking with Google Tag Manager

(GTM)
If you plan to use Segment or Rudderstack, skip this reading
and go to Web Tracking with Segment
Bing
What you’ll learn
Bing’s setup is almost identical to Google Analytics. But first
you need to create the pixel/tag.
• What Google Tag Manager (GTM) is
Generate a UET (Universal Event Tracking) tag:
• How to use GTM to set up conversion tracking and
1. Go to Bing Ads Dashboard
analytics
(https://bingads.microsoft.com/)
2. Click Conversion Tracking (bottom left)
3. Click UET tags Overview
4. Click Create UET tag
5. Give it a name. We’re only going to have one so make Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tool for sending your site data
it simple like UET to third-party tools like Facebook and Google Analytics. At its
6. At the bottom of your conversion events doc, in core, GTM puts code snippets on your site. This lets you tell
the "Pixels" section, add a sub-section for Bing and these third-party tools when people visit pages, or when
copy the entire tag into the doc. If using Segment, just people click on a specific button or submit a form.
copy over the ID.
Set up conversion goals: Here’s a picture of how it works:
1. Click Conversion goals
2. Click Create conversion goal
3. Create the goal exactly the same as in GA
4. Repeat for all key conversion events

Now, choose your track

Make sure you see the content tree on the left (you'll need to
click the "Browse" button if you are using a narrow screen).
Then pick the right track for your product:

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You add GTM on your site by inserting GTM's code snippet.
Your site logs different events (such as a button click) and
variables (such as the product you clicked the button for), and
passes that data to GTM. GTM then uses that data and reports
it to the different tools/channels.If this feels like it’s too
complicated, that’s OK. You don’t have to know the guts of
how it works to use it properly.
Read through the sections below to get an overview of what’s
in GTM, but it’s OK if you don’t remember everything. Things
will feel a lot more intuitive once you start the project.
Tags, Triggers, and Variables
Tags and Triggers
Google Tag Manager, as you can probably guess from the
name, is all about tags. Tags are snippets of code that GTM
puts on your site and fires when a defined “trigger” happens.
Trigger
A trigger can be any of these:
• Page view (all or specific pages)
• Clicks
• Page element in view
• Form submit
• Scroll page depth
• YouTube video watch
• Error triggered
• Timer completes
• Custom event (triggered in code)
For technical folks:You can add triggers based oncode as well:
things like HTML classes and ID’s on page elements like links
and forms. These are a bit dangerous because your engineering
team may change these without telling you, breaking the
trigger.
If you need a piece of data from the site when the trigger fires,
like the user’s email address, then you’ll need the engineers to
add code to handle that anyway. They may as well add the
event trigger.
Tags
Tags are how you hook into your third-party tools like
Facebook or Google Analytics. Some built-in tags include:
• Google Analytics
• A/B testing tools like Google Optimize
• Hotjar, which lets you see live video recordings of
people using your site.
For anything else, you can setup custom tags, and copy and
paste specific code snippets. This lets you put any tool you like
on your site, such as Facebook tracking, Intercom, and
anything else.
Variables
To save yourself from repetitive work, and to pass data from
your site/app into GTM, you’ll need variables.
Example: your user has to submit their email before they can
schedule a demo with you. In GTM, every single email is going
to be different: joe@example.com,
renee@othercompany.com, etc.
If you create a variable containing the user’s email address,
and you call it User Email , you can then insert it in your tags as
{{User Email}}. Instead of pasting each email address
individually. So, wherever GTM sees {{User Email}}, it will use
the actual value of the variable: joe@example.com.
In other words, once a variable is defined, you can use it by
using its “symbolic name” in double curly brackets. There are
two kinds of variables in GTM.
Built-In Variables
These are automatically pulled from your website by GTM. All
you need to do is go in and “Configure” (choose) which ones
you want GTM to include.
Example built-in variables:
• Page URL
o For example, yoursite.com/sign_up
o For example, yoursite.com/log_in
• Error Message
o For example, page crashed
• Video status
o For example, video started
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• Scroll depth 2a. Built-in Variables
o For example, 50% of the way down the page.
As a reminder, these are variables that GTM generates
User-Defined Variables automatically, but you still need to tell GTM to create them.

User-defined variables are things like the user’s email address, 1. Go to Variables tab in GTM
or purchase revenue. (Things that aren't on every website.) 2. Under Built-In Variables click Configure
3. Select all those you’ll need. We generally enable:
Project: GTM 4. Everything under Pages
5. Everything under Clicks
6. Everything under Forms
If you plan to use Segment or Rudderstack, go to Project: 7. And Event under Utilities
Segment instead. We recommend starting with GTM, but your 8. Exit
team might be using Segment/Rudderstack already. 9. You can now use these variables throughout your tags
and triggers
What you’ll be doing
2b. User-Defined Variables
• Creating a Google Tag Manager account
• Configuring GTM As a reminder, user-defined variables are things like email
• Adding GTM to your site addresses and first names that change every time someone
• Add pixels using GTM comes to your site. You want to dynamically pass them from
your site to GTM.
Who is this project for?
Google Ads Conversion ID
This project is meant for students that do everything
themselves, has no coding background, and/or has limited As an example of a static variable, we’ll configure your Google
access to engineers. We'll show you the quick way to set up Ads Conversion ID to be used for every Google Ads conversion
conversion tracking on simple websites and landing pages. event.
You'll set up GTM yourself from scratch: configure triggers, add
tags, and verify everything is working. 1. Go to Variables tab
2. Click New under User-Defined Variables
Don't worry if you don't get everything right the first time 3. Name the variable Google Ads Conversion ID
around (that's normal). Phase 5 will show you how to debug 4. Start Variable Configuration and choose Constant
and verify the setup. 5. To do this, open a new tab. Then…
6. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools, Billing, and
Settings menu (the wrench).
Phase 1: Setup
7. Select Measurement: Conversions, which opens to
the Conversion Actions table.
If you haven’t already, you’ll need to create a GTM account. 8. Select the name of the conversion that you want to use
Head to the GTM website. Create an account and create a from the Name column.
container. 9. Expand the tab for Tag setup to view the tag details.
10. Select Use Google Tag Manager card.
There’s a snippet of code you’ll have to put on your site. Add it 11. Copy the Conversion ID. (See Google’s help for more step-
to the codebase yourself, or ask your engineers to add it. by-step)
12. Paste the value of your Google Conversion ID into the
Phase 2: Create variables space in GTM.
13. Hit Save
Once the account is created, you’ll want to configure the
variables and triggers you’ll be using to add all the tags to your Dynamic variables
site.
Dynamic variables go beyond the scope of this project and will
We’ll do this configuration in a bit of a weird order: built-in require an engineer's input. If you need to send dynamic
variables, triggers, and finally user-defined variables. You’ll variables such as email addresses or purchase values, send
need the built-in variables for the other two, and it’s easiest to this official documentation to your engineers.
spec out the user-defined variables after doing defining the
triggers.
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Phase 3: Add Google Analytics / Google For Universal Analytics:

Optimize You’ll want to define a re-usable variable called {{Google

Analytics Settings}} to save yourself a lot of time and repetition
Google Optimize lets you run A/B tests to see if new versions when we set up Google Analytics later.
of your site perform better. We’ve already talked about Google
Analytics. 1. Go to Variables tab
2. Click New under User-Defined Variables
There’s a very specific configuration you need to get them 3. Pick Google Analytics Settings
working just right. 4. Start Variable Configuration and choose Google Analytics
Settings
Note that Google Optimize doesn't currently link with GA4. So 5. Enter your GA property’s Tracking ID
if you want to link the two, you'll need to set up Google 6. This should be in your analytics events doc.
Universal Analytics. 7. Leave Cookie Domain set to auto
8. Expand More Settings
3a. Google Optimize 9. Under Fields to Set add a Field Name of allowLinker with
a value of true
10. Under Advertising, turn on Enable Display Advertising
Do this first. You’ll need to create this tag before you create
Features
any of the Google Analytics tags if you don’t want to duplicate
11. If your site is ecommerce, under Ecommerce, turn
work.
on Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Features and Use data
layer
1. In new tag configuration click Google Optimize 12. Under Cross Domain Tracking, add your website’s base
2. Name it Google Optimize URLs under Auto Link Domains. For example, you may
3. Add your Optimize Container ID have bellcurve.com, blog.bellcurve.com, or
4. Add the variable you created in Phase 2 for {{Google
bellcurve.agency
Analytics Settings}} 13. Add any settings you need for your specific setup.
5. Save without a trigger! (We’ll hit this in a couple
14. Hit Save
subphases.)

3b. Google Analytics Phase 4: Adding pixels and tools

Now you’ll want to add GA to every page of your site, and to Some of the channels and third-party tools have useful
record every page view. integrations that make them easier to add to your site. It also
means you don’t have to touch any code. We'll first add Google
Ads and Hotjar.
For GA4:

1. Head back to the GTM Tags dashboard. Hit “New.”
2. In “Tag configuration”, click Google Analytics: GA4
Configuration
3. Name it GA – Page View
4. Add your Measurement ID
5. Expand Advanced Settings
6. Set Tag firing priority to something really high, like 1000,
because you want this firing before everything else. That
way, GA boots up before any other code runs on the page
— and you don’t lose tracking.
7. Make sure Tag firing options is set to once per event (you
don’t want to record duplicate page views)
8. If using Google Optimize
1. Expand Tag Sequencing and select Fire a tag
before GA – Page View fires and choose Google
Optimize from the list
2. This will make sure GO integrates properly with
GA
9. Add a trigger for All Pages
10. Save
4a. Google Ads
Google Ads has its own built-in integrations, although you
don’t necessarily have to use them. We recommend using the
integration since it hides away code you’d have to write, and
it’ll always be up to date with the latest changes Google makes.
There are three kinds of Google Ads tags you need to add to
get it all working:
• Conversion Linker
• Conversion Tracking
• Remarketing
4a - i. Conversion Linker
The Conversion Linker tag is an oddity that you need to add for
Google Ads conversion tracking to work properly.
105
Basically it helps store data from the visitor’s click from an from Conversion Tracking > Project: Conversion
Google Ads ad, and without it, conversion tracking for Google Events****where you had copied over all your ad channels'
Ads won’t work. Add the tag and set it to trigger on All Pages. pixels.The process is the same for all of them: set up a custom
tag, and have it fire on every page. Let's do FB as an example.
4a - ii. Remarketing
1. In GTM > Tags. Click New
Adding a remarketing tag allows you to manage remarketing 2. Click Tag Configuration, and choose Custom HTML
lists in Google Ads. These are lists of people who did something 3. Copy/paste the pixel code snippet you have for the ad
specific on your site, like visiting a page or subscribing to your channel. For FB, it would look something like <!-- Facebook
newsletter. Pixel Code --><script> !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
We’ll be using these later when we set up ads. n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(argumen
ts)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
1. In new tag configuration, click Google Ads Remarketing
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
2. Enter the Conversion ID variable
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
3. Configure the rest (ping us if this isn't clear)
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
4. If this is for a general site visit, leave Conversion
document,'script',
Label blank and set the trigger to All Pages
'<https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js>');
1. If this is for a specific conversion event, add the
fbq('init', '9999999999999999'); fbq('track',
corresponding Conversion Label and then set the
'PageView');</script><noscript><img height="1"
trigger to the corresponding event.
width="1" style="display:none"
5. Save and repeat for every other event you wish to create
src="<https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=7817798255517
a remarketing list for.
30&ev=PageView&noscript=1>"/></noscript><!-- End
Facebook Pixel Code -->
4b. Hotjar 4. Under Triggering choose All Pages
5. Name your Tag {{Ad Channel}} – Base Pixel (e.g. FB – Base
You’re going to be using Hotjar for heatmaps and user Pixel, Pinterest – Base Pixel, etc)
recording (which we strongly recommend to learn how users 6. Click Save
are using your site). Add it in using the built-in integration. 7. Repeat for all your other ad channels

1. Make an account on Hotjar if you don’t have one yet. Phase 5: Add triggers, verify, and publish
2. In GTM, in new tag configuration, click Hotjar.
3. Name it Hotjar
4. Add your Hotjar Site ID We'll now add the triggers to detect when people click a
5. Trigger it on All Pages specific button, submits a form, or views a key page. When
6. Save! those triggers fire, we want to report that event to the ad
channels and analytics platforms we had set up earlier.

4c. LinkedIn, Quora Before you begin, download the Chrome Extensions below.
We'll use them in the video to verify if all the pixels and events
LI and Quora have their own native integrations with GTM. are firing properly at the end.
You'll just need to supply your Partner ID for LinkedIn, and your
Pixel ID for Quora. You can find those on their respective
• Facebook Pixel Helper
platforms in your account.
• Google Tag Assistant
• Pinterest Tag Helper
1. In new tag configuration, search for LinkedIn or Quora
• Big UET Tag Helper
2. Supply your ID
• Snapchat
3. Set the Triggering to All Pages
4. Name your tag LinkedIn – Base Pixel or Quora – Base
Pixel Common mistakes
5. Save!
• When setting up triggers based on a CSS Class or ID,
4d. Custom: Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, other make sure you input the exact value (no quotation
marks, case sensitive).
Some channels don't have a native GTM integration, so we'll • Multiple triggers firing? Make sure the CSS Class or ID
need to install their pixels manually. Open your doc you chose to identify your form/button is unique to

106
 that element. It's best to use the element's ID if it's
unique. If not, try using Click URL as the
trigger instead of a CSS Class or ID.
• Page path vs Page URL: Page path returns only the
relative path of the page (/about) whereas Page URL
returns the entire address
(www.yoursite.com/about)
• Form submissions: When setting up the trigger, make
sure you're basing the CSS/ID off the form itself and
not a submit button that happens to be part of the
form element. In the video, we're basing the trigger
on Clicks, but basing it off of a Form
Submission trigger is just as valid.
• When verifying events from your GA4 dashboard,
please note that it can take 24 hours before events
will appear. Once you see the event, don't forget to
toggle it on as a conversion event.
Web Tracking with Segment
Skip this section if you're not using Segment.
What you’ll learn
• What Segment is
• How to use Segment to set up conversion tracking
and analytics
• How Segment sends the data to Google Analytics
Rudderstack is a Segment clone. Most of what you'll learn here
can be applied to Rudderstack.
Overview
It’s OK if you don’t remember or understand everything in this
doc. It will feel a lot more intuitive once you actually start using
Segment in our project. Don’t stress too much if there’s too
much new vocab.
Segment makes it easy to add new tools and tracking to your
site.
You use Segment to log events like button clicks and user data
like email addresses throughout your site. Then, you configure
it to automatically send that data to the right places, such as:
• Facebook ads — so you know which ads are working
well.
• A chat widget — so you can chat with the right
person.
• CRMs such as Salesforce — so you can follow up with
them through email
• Usability tools like FullStory and Hotjar — so you can
see video recordings of specific users on your site.
The basic process is:
1. Engineers add all the events you’ve specced out for
them, using Segment’s code.
2. You configure Segment to add every tracking tool you
need.
3. For example, you can add GA and Facebook Ad
tracking to your site.
4. Each one only takes a minute or two to set up.
5. Segment will automatically send the event data along
to these tools as they happen
Sources & Destinations
Segment organizes itself with Sources and Destinations.
If we add Facebook Ads (a Destination)
to www.demandcurve.com (a Source), Facebook will start
receiving the events and user data being logged on our site. So
when someone clicks a button on our site, Facebook will know
about it — once we hook up the data in Segment.
Sometimes, Segment sends data to a Destination
automatically. For example, Google Analytics automatically
receives every event you log with Segment.
Other times, we need to translate the Source data into
something the Destination can understand. For example, a
signup event on your website would be called
a CompleteRegistration event on Facebook. We'll cover this
more in the project.
Sources
A Source represents a codebase. It’s the codebase for your
site, your web app, your mobile app, or your server. These
Sources are where events like button clicks and page visits get
recorded.
You need one source for each codebase you have. Your
product team can tell you what codebases you have.
Destinations
You add Destinations to a Source. These are third-party tools
and platforms that you want added to your site/app. For
example: Facebook or Google Analytics.
So when someone clicks a button on your site (the Source),
Facebook (the Destination) learns about it.
Project: Segment
Skip this section if you're not using Segment
107
Rudderstack is a Segment clone. Most of what you'll learn here
can be applied to Rudderstack. ¡
Phase 1: Create a Source
1. Create a Segment account at Segment.com
2. Go to the Segment dashboard:
https://app.segment.com/workspaces
3. Click Add Source
4. Select the appropriate Source type
1. If your product is a website…pick JavaScript
2. If it’s a mobile app…
1. (Note for the non-technical: You may
have to ask an engineering manager
what your mobile app is made with.)
2. If your mobile app is NOT React Native,
you have to create separate sources for
the iOS and Android versions of your
app.
3. If your mobile app IS React Native, select
JavaScript as normal
5. Click Connect
6. Name it appropriately, below are examples of clear names
1. Site: Website
2. React Native App:Mobile App
3. Non-RN App: iOS/Android App
4. Extension: Extension
7. The website URL is completely optional and is for
Segment’s purposes only, but feel free to enter your
website.
8. Now, add the Segment code to your analytics proposal doc
for your engineers to add to your site.
9. If you have other sites/apps, create separate Sources for
them as well.
Phase 2: Add Initial Destinations
We’re going to have you install a couple destinations (places
your data goes) to get the hang of how to do it. We’ll be setting
up our ad channels as destinations in the next project.
Hotjar
Sign up for Hotjar if you haven’t (we’ll be using it later in the
course). Add your Hotjar Site ID and Hotjar will be fully
installed.
Intercom
This integration is very useful and makes setting up Intercom
extremely easy. All the Segment events become Intercom
events that you can then trigger messages and emails from.
Sign up for Intercom.
This integration requires two things:
1. Syncing with the Intercom account
1. Assuming you already have Intercom access,
all you need to do is log into Intercom
through Segment and hit Activate
Destination.
2. Adding the app ID
1. Grab the app ID from your Intercom
dashboard (it’s also the 8-digit bunch of
letters and numbers in the URL of the
dashboard after /apps/)
1. Example: https://app.intercom.io/
a/apps/we4aokh6
Phase 3: Get engineers to install Segment
and add all your events
Your engineers will need to install Segment on your site and
add all the events from your analytics proposal doc.
For that, send them Segment’s documentation to follow, along
with your analytics events doc to create all the events.
Note: Segment defaults to lumping all your events into
the Category of All unless you tell it otherwise. Make sure your
engineers tell it otherwise; use your own categories to
organize events better.
You’ll want to make sure that they also remove the code that
already exists in your codebase for any of the third-party tools
that you’ll be installing with Segment. For example, if they’re
already adding in Google Analytics manually, they’ll want to
remove it from their code.
You should also encourage them to port over any other tools
they’re adding in manually.
This may take a while, depending on how fast your company
moves. You may have to come back to this project later once
they’ve set everything up.
That’s OK. Go do Conversion Events > Project: Configure GA
and Ad Channels and come back later.
Phase 4: Verify events are tracking and
sending
After your engineers have confirmed installation of Segment,
you can use Segment’s Schema and Debugger tools to verify
that it’s working.
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Schema 5. Select the source you want to add it to
6. Click Confirm Source
Schema lists out all the events that have fired on your site, with 7. Configure what needs to be configured
a bunch of other info. Click around your site and make sure you 1. Alternately, if you’re redoing configurations
see the right events show up. that were already done on another Source
(say for the web app and now you’re doing it
The Schema section can be used a bunch of different ways: for the mobile app), you can copy it over:
1. Click the three dots in the top-right
corner
• If you’re missing an event from your proposal, you can
2. Select the Source to copy from
use it to verify with your engineers that it’s installed
3. Click Copy Settings
properly.
8. Click Activate Destination
• If something is firing more or less than you would
9. Move on to the next one!
expect. Is “purchase” firing more than “add to cart”?
Something may be wrong.
We’re going to set up every destination that you listed in your
• If an event hasn’t fired in a while, the event might be
strategy doc.
broken somehow.
• If one event in the funnel has significantly fewer
events than the one before it, then this may be an
indication that it’s either not firing 100% reliably, or
Track 2️: Mobile Tracking
there’s something about your site that’s making a lot
of people leave at that spot. • Track 2: Mobile Apps Tracking
o This is for mobile app companies.
o Note: If your product also has a website, do
Debugger
Track 1 as well.
The Debugger allows you to watch your events fire in real-
time. You can also click on each page event to see other data Tracking Mobile Apps
that was passed along at the same time: things like the
category, label, value, URL, and more.
What you’ll learn
Walk through your site in one window and watch Segment
record the events in the Debugger to make sure they’re all • How to set up and structure your mobile app tracking
firing as expected. You can use this whenever you want to test • What’s different about mobile app tracking
to make sure it’s still working properly. • The tools you need to make tracking work

Phase 5: Configuring Destinations on Segment Introduction

A Destination is where Segment will send data as soon as an
event (e.g, a button click or form submission) happens.
Example Destinations include Facebook, Intercom, and Google
Analytics. You’ll have to configure every Destination
differently.
Google Analytics 4 is not currently supported with Segment.
You either need to install it manually, with Google Tag
Manager, or use Universal Analytics with Segment.
We’ll talk about the specifics of the main tools we suggest you
add to your site, but the overall process of adding a destination
looks like this:
1. Log into Segment.
2. On your Source Overview tab, click Add Destination
3. Choose the channel from the list (often easiest to
search for it)
4. Click Configure [Channel Name]
If you’re not familiar with some of the words in here (especially
around ad channels), that’s OK. It’s going to feel a lot more
tangible in the project.
It's a lot harder to track conversions on a mobile app than on a
website. Here’s why:
1. Instead of being on your website, the user is in your
mobile app. That's a totally different codebase and
browser.
2. There’s a totally new site in between your website
and your mobile app: the App Store or the Play Store
page. Any tracking you have gets lost when they hit
one of the stores.
3. People may visit your landing page on their desktop
computer. Then, they’ll jump to their phone to
actually download and use your app. It’s easy to lose
track of them between devices.

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There are solutions to these problems. You have to spend
more money and spend time configuring things — but you'll be
able to track conversions better. It's worth it in the long run.
Mobile App Attribution Platforms (MAAPs)
MAAP’s let you track people from the ad channel, to your site,
on the App/Play Stores, and throughout your mobile app.
Say you’re in charge of a mobile app that sells furniture.
Someone clicks an ad on Instagram, which takes them to the
Apple App Store. They download the app, install it, and then
buy a chair on it.
If you’ve set up your MAAP correctly, you can tell that
the same person clicked the ad, installed your app, and bought
a chair. Without the MAAP, it would look like different people
did each step. In fact, you likely can't track those steps at all.
How can MAAPs do this?
MAAPs have a special agreement with the App and Play Stores
that allows them to pass the right data around. You can't code
this yourself.
Recommended MAAPs
We recommend AppsFlyer to clients. We’ll walk through using
it in the project for this module. Other MAAP’s include Adjust,
Branch, Kochava, Tune, and more.
Screenshot: a correctly set up MAAP
Here's what a MAAP can look like when it's set up correctly.
You’ll be able to see exactly how each traffic source is
performing — whether it’s organic (from people googling you),
referral (people sharing posts on Facebook), Facebook ads,
Google Ads, or any other traffic source.
So, whenever someone installs the app or triggers an event
(e.g., buys a chair) after clicking one of these ads, the MAAP
will know.
Without knowing that these events happened, you have no
way of knowing which ad channels are working. Which means
you might throw money down the drain.
Feel free to skip the rest of this reading. Come back to this
reading if you get stuck in the mobile app project. There's too
much to read and remember otherwise. But if you really want
some bedtime reading, read on!
Technical hurdles
Hopefully, you now see the benefits of using MAAPs. The tricky
part is setting them up. There are a few hurdles.
Technical Hurdle 1: Dealing with landing pages
If someone hits your landing page before they visit the app
store, it's hard to track conversions. The app store removes all
the tracking.
To fix this, you use the MAAP to create unique URLs for each
traffic source. For example, https://bellcurve.onelink.me/3Eg9
would be a link to the Apple App Store, specifically for people
who come from Facebook. https://bellcurve.onelink.me/4Fa2
would be a link to the Google Play store, specifically for people
who come from Quora. And so on. In AppsFlyer, this weird-
looking link is called the OneLink.
Technical Hack
The OneLink URL looks super ugly. And to a user, it looks
downright spammy.
You can mask the spammy-looking link by asking your
engineer to point your CTA at a clean-looking URL (e.g.,
at https://bellcurve.com/download-app), but have the
Javascript actually send the user to the OneLink URL when
they click the CTA button.
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If this doesn't make sense, you can literally copy the above
paragraph and send it to an engineer. They'll get it.
Technical Hurdle 2: Passing Data to Ad Channels
Facebook won't know that someone bought a chair on your
mobile app; the ad channel doesn't receive conversion data.
That data will only live the MAAP itself. Until you do some extra
work.
To send data to your ad channel, you’ll need your engineers to
install the special code that Facebook/Google Ads/etc. gives
you inside your app. This code is called the "SDK".
We’ll cover the instructions you should give them in the
project. If you don’t install this code…the ad channels won’t
optimize towards a conversion goal that you care about.
What does this mean?
Let's take Facebook ads. Facebook automatically shows the
ads that perform best. But what does "best" mean? Ideally,
"best" means showing ads that lead to people buying on your
site.
Not clicking on the ad. Not adding to their cart. Not liking your
post. Buying on your site. Without the SDK, you can't send
downfunnel conversion data (such as installs and purchases) to
the ad channels you’re running.
So, Facebook will show the ads that lead to worse “proxy”
metrics, such as the number of clicks on your ad — because
it can see that data. That’s not ideal. Someone who clicks a
button won’t necessarily become a loyal, paying user.
Technical Hurdle 3: Passing UserData to Ad
Channels
Even if you install the SDK, you still have to do some extra work
to tie individual users to a conversion.
For example, Facebook can now tell that someone bought a
chair. But it doesn't know that Hannah Sornson from Kansas
bought the chair -- because she's not logged into Facebook on
your app.
In order to know that Hannah bought the chair, we have to use
a couple hacks. These hacks are not-so-good solutions. Both of
them mean you have to kick the user out of your app, which is
not a great experience. Sucks, we know.
Here are your options:
Preferred Solution
Redirect the user to your a “thank you” page on your website
after they convert in your app. This page will have the right
tracking pixels on it, so the ad channel can receive the
conversion data.
To make the page useful to the user, you can link to helpful
articles or tutorials they'll need after they purchase.
Alternative Solution
Put the purchase form on your website (instead of in the app)
and use the ad channel tracking pixels there.
In this case, the MAAP won’t receive the data — since the
purchase happened outside of the app — so you'll have to send
it the data separately.
You may have to use the MAAP to see if your campaigns are
converting
If you don’t use one of the strategies above, you’ll have to rely
on the data in the MAAP itself. You’ll struggle when you run
ads because you can’t track your goal.
It’ll also be harder to take advantage of the full suite of data
that the ad channel has. For example, you won’t be able to
figure out that people in Ohio tend to buy from you more often
than people in Florida — which would teach you to run more
ads to people in Ohio.
Why? When you pass data into the MAAP, you can only pass
along a few pieces of information: the source, the campaign
name, the adset name, ad names, and keywords. There won’t
be any extra information that your ad channel would give you,
like the user’s location, age, gender, parental status,
household income, and more. The ad channels often have this
data, but AppsFlyer won’t.
As a workaround, you can break these different audience
segments out into separate campaigns and adsets in order to
properly track them at these more granular levels. So, for
example, to see how Google Ads audiences perform across a
few different geographies, you could break your “Dog Food”
campaign into different, geography-specific campaigns:
• Dog Food – USA
• Dog Food – Canada
• Dog Food – UK
• Dog Food – Europe
• Dog Food – Asia
• etc
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Then you’d have different UTM tags for the ads in these
campaigns (utm_campaign=brand-usa, for example), which
then lead to different MAAP URL’s, which then update the
MAAP with the different campaigns.
It’s a lot more work when you set up your campaigns, but this
approach will give you better data in your MAAP. You won’t
need to boot your users out of the app just to have better
tracking in your ad platform. We think it’s the best
compromise.
Food&af_adset=Organic&af_keywords=best+organic+dog+fo
od&af_ad=the-best-organic-dog-food
When everything is installed and configured, you’ll find this
data in the AppsFlyer dashboard and see how each source,
campaign, adset, ad, and keyword performs for each event you
record.

Technical Hurdle 4: Passing through UTM Tags

Your site will need to take your site visitor’s UTM tags and
append them to the OneLink.

Like this:

https://fictitiousdogfood.onelink.me/3Eg9/?pid=google_search&c=D Project: Mobile App

og-
Food&af_adset=Organic&af_keywords=best+organic+dog+food&af_
ad=the-best-organic-dog-food Goals of the project
We’ll give you the template for the code snippet in the project, • Create an AppsFlyer account and set it up
but you’ll need to know how it works so you can structure your • Configure your website and app to work with
UTM tags and campaigns the right way. AppsFlyer
• Have mobile app conversion tracking working
With the AppsFlyer OneLink, you can pass many kinds of data,
including source, campaign, adset, ad, keywords, and more.
They work just like UTM tags, but have different names. We’ll Prerequisites
want to connect our UTM tags to these values. Here's a table
with the most important ones, and how they map to UTM tags. • An app and website
• Engineers to install code into your app and website
Since AppsFlyer doesn’t have a utm_medium equivalent, you'll • Ad channel accounts
need to combine the utm_source and utm_medium tags • An analytics proposal doc with all events within your
together into AppsFlyer’s pid tag in this app
format: [utm_source]_[utm_medium]
Phase 1: Configure AppsFlyer
For example, pid=facebook_prospecting
Create account
Google example
AppsFlyer usually gives a 30-day free trial, but they also
Say someone hits Fictitious Dog Food's landing page with the operate mostly on a pay-for-use basis, so you can do this
following URL (broken out): project for free.

https://www.fictitiousdogfood.com/?utm_source=google&ut 1. Set up your account

m_medium=search&utm_campaign=Dog- at https://www.appsflyer.com/get-started
Food_Organic&utm_term=best+organic+dog+food&utm_cont 2. If there’s no free trial available, add billing for pay-for-
ent=the-best-organic-dog-food use account
3. Add your iOS/Android app(s)
We would change the OneLink to look like this: 4. Click into one of the apps.

https://fictitiousdogfood.onelink.me/3Eg9/?pid=google_searc
h&c=Dog-

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Create OneLink Here are AppsFlyer’s installation instructions
for iOS and Android. Send the instructions to your devs to
The “OneLink” is the URL you’ll be linking to on your landing reference, along with your analytics events doc.
pages. This will automatically redirect users to the appropriate
app store, and pass along tracking data to AppsFlyer. With Segment

You can create one “OneLink” for all traffic sources and your You can use Segment to add AppsFlyer to your mobile app. To
iOS and Android versions. You’ll customize it for each traffic do so, follow the instructions here.
source by adding additional “query parameters.” More on this
below.
Phase 3: Change the code on your site
1. Click Configuration > Configure OneLink in the left-side
This phase is only necessary if you’re using a landing page as
bar
an intermediary between ad channels and landing pages, or
2. Click Add OneLink
linking to the App/Play Store from your website.
3. Call it something, like Company Name - OneLink
4. Select your app(s)
5. If you only have an iOS app, or only an Android app, you Make sure you’ve read about UTM tags in the mobile app
can set a default landing page for the other version. For tracking reading before working on this step.
example, if you only have an iOS app, people who click this
link on Android could see a “Coming Soon” page that asks As a reminder, you’ll need your engineers to change a few
them to add their email so you can tell them when the things on your site to make this all work. There are two steps;
Android app comes out.
1. This is something you’ll have to coordinate with 1. Change all links to the app stores to point to your
your engineering team. OneLink
6. Under Additional Configuration 2. Add code to handle different traffic sources
1. Add your domain name under Deeplinking. For
example, we would enter demandcurve so that The code template below will take the user’s UTM tags (if
our OneLink becomes demandcurve.onelink.me present), save them as cookies (in case they return later
2. For Website URL, add a URL to page that would directly, we can still attribute them to the original source), and
act as a good backup for desktop users that click then add them to your AppsFlyer OneLink like we talk about in
on your app store link. This could be a page that our mobile app tracking reading.
asks people to sign up to your web app, or a page
with a subscription form so you can notify them The following code template needs to be customized in the
when your web version is released. Or it can be following ways (tell this to your engineers):
your website or landing page URL that pops up a
banner saying that there is no desktop version of
• Your OneLink needs to be added on line 67
the app.
• The CTA’s on the website need to either have a class
7. Click Save Configuration
of cta or the targeting on line 131 needs to be
changed to reflect their actual class
Then you’ll see that it generated a OneLink ID for you. Your
OneLink URL will follow this
You can download a template of the AppsFlyer tracking code
format:[Domain].onelink.me/[OneLink ID], or for
to throw into your website here:
example, demandcurve.onelink.me/3Eg9.

We’ll use this URL for all the links that go to the App and Play Phase 4: Configure any integrations
Stores on your landing page.
This phase is only necessary if you’re using ad channels to send
Phase 2: Install AppsFlyer users directly to the app stores*.*

Because the integrations change rapidly, we recommend

In this step, you’ll get the engineering team to add AppsFlyer
following the official AppsFlyer installation guides for each
to your mobile app. You’ll also be getting them to log each of
integration. Remember to add one for each ad channel you
the events you identified in the analytics project.
wish to run direct-to-app-store ads for.

We won’t go into how this code is added to your app, but your
However, here are some general things to note:
engineers should be able to figure it out.

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• Whenever possible, you’ll need to connect your ad
account in the Data Enrichment tab in order to see cost
data in AppsFlyer. We highly recommend this.
• Whenever possible, turn on Enable Attribution and In-App
Events Postback. Configure your AppsFlyer conversions
events to the relevant ad channel conversion events.
o For channels like Facebook with pre-made
conversion event names, make the mapping as
logical as possible. Map purchase/upgrade to a
Purchase event. Map a sign up to the
CompleteRegistration event, etc.
This integration will let you track conversions for App
Install ads created within Facebook.
Unlike Apple Search Ads, Facebook can be fully set up within
AppsFlyer.
1. Go to the AppsFlyer dashboard
2. Go to Configuration > Integrated Partners
3. Search for Facebook and click Edit

Apple Search Ads

You can see the AppsFlyer integration guide here.

AppsFlyer lets you track down-funnel performance on Apple

Search Ads (ASA)—something the ad channel itself doesn’t let
you do. To get AppsFlyer to pull in the cost, clicks, and
impression data from ASA, you need to grab a couple files from
your ASA account first. Let’s do that now in preparation:

Prepare ASA for integration

1. Go to your Apple Search Ads account

dashboard: https://searchads.apple.com/ Integration tab
2. Once logged in, go to the API
settings: https://app.searchads.apple.com/cm/app/settin 1. Add your app’s Facebook App ID. You may have to ask your
gs/apicertificates engineers for this.
3. Click Create API Certificate 1. To advertise an App Install campaign in
4. Name the certificate AppsFlyer and select Account Read Facebook, your app must be registered with
only Facebook and have an App ID. See Facebook’s
5. Click Create site for more information.
6. Select the certificate from the list, click Actions > 2. Change Click-Through Attribution to 28 days since that’s
Download certificate normally Facebook’s default.
7. Unzip the file. It should include the two files we need: 3. Enable In-App Events Postback in order to map AppsFlyer
1. AppsFlyer.key events to Facebook’s conversion events
2. AppsFlyer.pem 4. Use your conversion events doc as a guide for which
events to use and what to map them to Important
Configure AppsFlyer integration Note: On Facebook, you can only optimize for one of
Facebook's 14 standard events through your mobile app,
which means you might have to name some events weirdly
1. Go to the AppsFlyer dashboard
in AppsFlyer. For example, you can't optimize for
2. Go to Configuration > Integrated Partners
"Achievement Unlocked", even though that's an option
3. Search for Apple Search Ads and click Edit
Facebook gives you. Use a standard event like "AddToCart"
4. Keep all the default settings in the Integration tab:
instead. Students have spent hours down this rabbit hole.
5. Go to the Data Enrichment tab
Don't be one of them.
6. Enable Get Cost, Clicks and Impressions Data
7. Upload the PEM and KEY files we downloaded earlier
8. Click Save

Facebook

You can see the AppsFlyer integration guide here.

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 Steps to verify traffic sources

1. Visit your landing page by using the ad landing page

URL’s, UTM tags included (you’ll have to write them
out yourself).
2. Click the button/link containing your OneLink
3. Install the app (make sure it’s not installed to begin
with)
4. Perform conversion actions
5. Wait a few hours to a day for data to sync (we know,
the lag sucks )
6. Go to the AppsFlyer dashboard for the app
7. Look at the Events Dashboard
8. Look for the source/medium combination the landing
page URL had. Verify that it has all the actions you
• Finally: Click Send Revenue for the event involving performed. If there are any key events missing, or if
payment (like purchase or upgrade). The AppsFlyer no data is showing at all, let your engineers know.
code in the app will also have to log this revenue data
for it to work. Steps to verify integrations

Data Enrichment tab There’s not much you can do besides make sure that the data
in the integration is all correct and up to date. You’ll have to
1. Connect your Facebook ad account by wait for real data to pour in before you can truly be sure that
clicking Login under Get Cost, Clicks and Impressions it’s working.
Data
2. Keep Get Ad Revenue disabled. Only enable this if
you use the Facebook ad network within your app to
FAQ: Mobile App Tracking
generate revenue by having other people run ads in
your app. What if I use a different mobile tracking service,
such as Adjust or Branch?
Permissions tab
That's fine, they should have most of the same settings as
1. Go to the Permissions tab and enable all the options: AppsFlyer when you do the project.
2. Click Save and you’re done.
But, a note from our CTO on Branch:
Phase 5: Verify installation
• Branch was wildly inaccurate for a past client
Once the engineers have installed the code into both the • Branch didn’t have integrations direct to ad channel
mobile app and the website, you’ll want to verify that it has for install ads (maybe it does now?)
been installed correctly before you turn on ads. • Branch didn’t let you pass in data like
adset/ad/campaign to get more granular with the
data like appsflyer (maybe it does now?)
We can do this by checking for organic installs and event data
(these are free with AppsFlyer).
Technical Question: Can we track events server-side?
Steps to verify events and organic installs
The longer version of the question: Some of our events don't
1. Go to the AppsFlyer dashboard for the app fire on the client side. For example, when someone purchases
2. Look at the Events Dashboard a subscription to our product, they could get an error message:
3. Look for Organic as a source and see all the events maybe they already have an account; maybe they didn’t supply
that are being triggered by users. If there are any key a valid password, etc. Obviously, we want accurate and clean
events missing, or if no data is showing at all, let your data wherever we can achieve that, but right now we don’t
engineers know. have a client-side ‘signup succeeded’ event; the opportunity to
hook into that is server-side.

The problem with tracking server-side only is that you might

lose contextual information about the user: things like UTM
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params, user device, browser information, where they came
from, etc. You also lose your tracking from your ad channels, if
you're running ads (because they rely on client-side pixels).
So... Track events client-side whenever possible.
That being said, tracking server-side is still better than no
tracking at all. If users are failing to sign up and encountering
an error screen, and that’s not being reported, then server-
side tracking could be implemented in the interim.
You can also pass things like UTM tags through to the server
from the client wherever you can.
Why is AppsFlyer reporting different numbers than
Facebook?
The difference is mainly due to the way Facebook and
AppsFlyer report their data.The Facebook Ads Manager
dashboard shows event data according to the date the user
engaged with an ad. On the other hand, the AppsFlyer Events
dashboard shows data according to the date the user installed
the app. An example of this would be like the following:
1. User click on FB ad on June 1
2. User installs the app on June 2
3. User performs event on June 3
Facebook Ads manager will show the event under June 1,
whereas AppsFlyer Overview and Events dashboard will show
the event under June 2.The AppsFlyer raw data reports and
Activity section will show the event under June 3.
Track 3: Shopify Tracking
• Choose this track if your site is built on Shopify (or
BigCommerce or WooCommerce).
If you're using Shopify, you can use their native integrations for
GA and ad channels like Facebook and Google Ads. It'll track
the main conversion events in the checkout process
automatically.
• Bonus: In most cases, Shopify's native event tracking
is more than enough. But if you want to track new
events that aren't supported out of the box, then
follow Track 1 and install GTM. Note that you won't
need to install the base pixel again (it'll duplicate your
data).
o For example, if you want to track a specific
button click and report it to Facebook, you'll
only need to set up the trigger and tag for
that button-click in GTM. The base FB pixel
will already be installed on your site via
Shopify's integration. So when you go
through Track 1's projects, skip the steps
that tell you to install a base pixel on every
page.
Project: Shopify
What you’ll learn
• How to set up tracking for ecommerce platforms like
Shopify
• What’s different about ecommerce tracking
• The tools you need to make tracking work for
ecommerce
Introduction
Conversion tracking for Shopify is a bit different than if you
have a different type of site.
Shopify, and other ecommerce platforms, simplify a lot of
things through apps, integrations, and easier-to-use UI’s. But
in their simplifications they also make things quite different, so
this project will walk you through the nuances of setting up
conversion tracking in this different environment.
We use Shopify as the example as its the most popular
ecommerce platform currently on the market. If you use
another platform, such as Bigcommerce, then the steps are
similar, just with a different UI.
Phase 1: Add Google Analytics
Google Analytics, like we discussed earlier, is the bread and
butter of any analytics and tracking setup.
Luckily, Shopify and other ecommerce platforms have
integrations that handle the brunt of installation of Google
Analytics. But there are still a few things you need to do.
We’ll use the Shopify GA help page as a guide here. There is a
bit of information there, and you can skip most of it if you have
a Google Analytics account already, so we’ll tell you what to
focus on.
If you haven’t already, you’ll want to add your GA tracking tag.
Assuming this isn't in your conversion events doc already, open
up GA, then head to Admin > Data Streams > {Your Site}. Copy
the Measurement ID in the top-right corner. Then add this ID
to your site in your Online store > Preferences.
You’ll also want to make sure that code is not already manually
installed into the page in the theme.liquid file (Step 1 of the
Shopify guide walks you through that).
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Once you’ve installed GA in Preferences and made sure GA
isn’t installed manually, you’ll want to follow Step 4: Turn on
ecommerce tracking in the Shopify guide.
Ecommerce tracking and the improved Enhanced Ecommerce
(which we recommend) will automatically set up events and
goals on your site, including product page views, adding to
cart, initiating checkout, purchasing, and more.
Phase 2: Add ad channel tracking
In this phase we’ll walk you through how to add tracking for
the different ad channels. We’ll be adding to your Conversion
Mapping doc as you go along to keep tracking of all the events
being tracked and what they mean for each channel.
Most channels will require some coding (so best to involve an
engineer in this process).
2a. Facebook
Add your Facebook Pixel ID to Shopify and it’ll automatically
track nine different events a user may take on your site.
This includes viewing a product page, searching, adding to cart,
initiating checkout, registering, purchasing, and more.
For steps on adding it, and more information on the events it
will track, check out Shopify’s Facebook pixel help page.
Make sure to add that list of events to your conversion
Mapping doc if you haven’t already.
2b. Google remarketing
If you’re running Google Ads (aka AdWords), and you want it
to create audience lists, such as All Site Visitors, or All
Customers, or even a list for everyone who purchased in that
last 30 days, you’ll need to create a “remarketing tag” and add
it to the site.
This is useful for excluding already converted users, and for
retargeting visitors who didn’t convert. We highly recommend
it.
Add it in by following these steps on Shopify’s help page.
2c. All other channels
Every other channel is more complicated, as the events are
spread out in a few different places. We strongly recommend
you have your engineers do the steps below. Not you.
Purchase conversion
Adding tracking for purchase conversion is different than any
other event. Why? Because for Shopify and most other
ecommerce platforms, the checkout flow and order
confirmations happen on a Shopify hosted site that you don’t
really have much control over.
The most you can do is insert HTML (i.e., ad channel conversion
pixels) into the order confirmation page through Shopify’s
settings.
If you’re adding Google Ads to your site, you can follow these
steps to install it.
Otherwise:
1. Go to your Shopify admin
2. Go to Settings > Checkout
3. Scroll down Order processing
4. Expand Additional scripts
5. Paste in the ad channel pixel into this box.
6. Make sure to include the <script> tags
1. E.g., to track purchases on Quora,
do <script>qp('track', 'Purchase');</script>
2. Not qp('track', 'Purchase');
7. You can then customize the conversion value by using the
built in Shopify variable for the sale price.
8. If you don’t want to include shipping and tax, this would
be {{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency }}.
9. If you do want to include shipping and tax, this would be
{{ total_price | money_without_currency }}.
10. An example using the Google Ads/AdWords pixel is below
(note the ID’s are X’d out):
Make sure to add the Purchase event to the Conversion
Mapping doc for each new ad channel you set up.
Checkout conversions
Because the checkout conversion events are on Shopify’s site
and not your own, you can’t actually track them manually. So
you can’t track things like “add shipping info” or “add payment
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info.” All you can track is when a customer starts checking out
(initiate checkout) and when they finish it (purchase).

Subscription purchase

If your product is available on a subscription basis, you might

use a third-party Shopify app like Recharge to allow those
checkouts to happen. But here’s the catch: these products
have checkouts that occur on other sites entirely. Not on • Click on your Pixel
Shopify. So you may have to add a conversion pixel with those • Click the pixel’s name
third-party app settings in Shopify. • You should then see a graph showing all the events
over time, with a table of the events being logged
All other conversion actions below.

All other conversion actions are added in through code just like
they would be on any other website. Have your engineers add
all the remaining events from your analytics proposal.

Phase 3️: Verify they’re installed properly

Now that you have everything installed, go into each ad
channel and analytics software and verify that all the events
are firing as desired.

Log into Google Analytics. And go to Real-Time > Events. Do

you see the events in the GA events tab? Verify that the right
events are firing on your other ad channels as well.

Project: Verify Pixels

• Ask yourself the questions in Question to Ask When
Verifying Ad Channel Setup.
Introduction
Using Chrome Extension
In this project, we'll use Chrome Extensions to verify that the
conversion events are firing correctly for each channel. The Facebook Pixel Helper lets you see if the pixel is installed
and let’s you see events as they fire on your site. Install it.
Prerequisites
Then, walk through your site and make sure the right event
fires at the right time.
• Have installed conversion events on your site (done in
in one of the three tracks)
Quora
Facebook
1. Go to your Quora Ads accounts
2. Click on Quora Pixel
Using the dashboard
3. You should then see a list of events.Base Pixel means
a pageview happened.
Facebook lets you see a lot about each event that fired.To
access this data:

• Go to the Facebook ads account

• Click the hamburger menu in top left, and
choose Pixels

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 • Ask yourself the questions in Question to Ask When
Verifying Ad Channel Setup.

Using Tag Assistant

• Ask yourself the questions in Question to Ask When Google offers an online tool called Tag Assistant that let's you
Verifying Ad Channel Setup. view all the Google tags installed on your site. Go to this page,
add your domain if it's not there already. Your site should then
Pinterest open in a new tab/window, and the tags should start displaying
as you click around your site. Just make sure you're looking at
Using dashboard the Google Ads tab (should
say AWXXXXXXXX):
1. Go to your Pinterest ads account
2. Hover over Ads in top navigation, and select Conversion
tags
3. Click View history on your conversion tag
4. You should then see a list of events“base code” means
page view

LinkedIn
1. Go to your LinkedIn ads accounts
2. Hover over ACCOUNT ASSETS, and select Conversion
tracking
3. You should then see a list of event

• Ask yourself the questions in Question to Ask When • Ask yourself the questions in Question to Ask When
Verifying Ad Channel Setup. Verifying Ad Channel Setup.

Using Chrome extension Bing

The Pinterest Tag Helper works just like the Facebook Pixel Using dashboard
Helper. Walk through your site and make sure everything is
firing at the right time.
• Go to the Bing Ads Dashboard
• Click Conversion Tracking (bottom left)
Google Ads • Click UET tags
• You should see Tracking status as Tag active
Using dashboard

1. Go to your Google Ads dashboard

2. Click the wrench (TOOLS) in top-right corner
3. Select Conversions
4. You should then see all the events
• Click Conversion goals (left side-bar)

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• The events should all have their Tracking status as XXXXXXXX):
Recording conversions

Bing Chrome Extension

Install the UET Tag Helper and visit your site. Click around.
Make sure the right tags and events show up.
Hotjar
Google Analytics Login to your Hotjar account. If Hotjar hasn’t been detected
yet, you can ask it to verify by clicking this button after the
Within the dashboard tracking code information:

Head to Real-Time > Overview.

Verify the following:

And if it has, you’ll see this in the top-right corner:
• In Realtime, do you see yourself when you hit the
website, and do you see the events firing as you walk
through the website??
• Do you see all your site’s pages in Engagement >
Pages and screens? When you're ready, turn on user recordings and heatmaps for
• Do you see all the events from your analytics proposal your site. You'll want to do this just before launching your
in Events? channels.
• Are those events firing on the right pages?
• Are all the conversions firing in Conversions? Fixes
o If not, is the associated event firing?
▪ If so, then the goal’s configuration
If something isn't working as intended, go back to the
must have a mistake
corresponding track to see if you missed anything when
▪ If not, the event must not be
installing the pixels on your site. It's also a good habit to run
logging properly
through this verification list periodically to make sure nothing
is broken (e.g. when a new site design is rolled out). Otherwise,
Using Tag Assistant it ruins your ability to optimize your ads.

As mentioned in the Google Ads section of this doc, Google

offers an online tool called Tag Assistant that lets you view all Question to Ask When Verifying Ad
the Google tags installed on your site. Go to this page, add your
domain if it's not there already. Your site should then open in
Channel Setup.
a new tab/window, and the tags should start displaying as you
click around your site. Just make sure you're looking at the Each ad channel lets you verify that the pixels and conversion
Google Analytics tab (should say G- tags are receiving data. This will tell you where to look for each
channel. For each channel you’ll want to ask yourself the
following questions:

1. Is an event missing from this list?

2. Has an event not fired in the last few days/weeks?
3. Is something firing more or less than expected? For
example, is Purchase firing more than AddToCart (which
should be impossible)

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FAQ: Google Analytics 4 Some of my events happen server-side and not client-
side. What do I do?
Should I use GA4 or the previous
version (Universal Analytics)? This is a bit complicated as there are benefits and drawbacks
to tracking on either one. Here are the pros/cons of both:
You can use both or either. Google currently has no plans to
retire UA in the immediate term. If you’re already set up Client-side
comfortably using UA, then it’s not crucial to install GA4. A lot
of third-party services like Segment and Shopify don’t currently Pros
have native GA4 integrations.
• Let's you easily record their UTM and referrer (where they
While it would be good to use Google's latest products in the came from)
longterm, there's no immediate cons to keep using UA while • Works with ad channels
third-party support matures. • Less coding work.

I’m using Segment. Should I install GA4? Cons

Segment doesn’t currently have a native integration for GA4. If • Adblockers will block them so you'll miss a percentage of
you’re short on time or you’re already set up with UA, we’d your audience. That percentage will vary depending on
recommend sticking to it for now. You can install GA4 later on your audience.
when there’s an official integration. If you still want to install
GA4, you’ll have to do it manually (inserting the code or using
GTM). Server-side

I’m using Shopify. Should I install GA4? Pros

Shopify doesn’t currently have a native integration for GA4.
We’d recommend using UA to keep things simple for now. It’ll
track your main checkout events so that you don’t need to set
this up manually. If you still want to install GA4, you’ll have to
do so manually. Here’s a link to a tutorial for that.
• Guaranteed to fire. Adblockers have no affect on them.
• If you track based on user ID instead of email address, it's
easier/faster to access that from your database.
Cons

How do I track GA4 events using GTM?
This tutorial goes in-depth on how to install GA4 and track
events. It may take 24 hours before you’ll see the events being
logged correctly after you’ve completed the setup. Note that
Google has updated their UI since that video. To locate the
Events settings, go to Configure (it’s the last icon in the left
menu) > Events:
• Don't work with ad channels.
• Have to pass information like UTM's and referrer to the
server to record it.
• More coding work.
Together
So we actually record events on both client-side and server-
side. If they're events that we want 100% accuracy, we do it
server-side. If it's one we're okay with it being off by some
amount, or if we want our ad channels to get the data, we'll do
it client-side.

For events we want 100% accuracy and have ad channels see

them (like Purchases), we'll create two
versions. Purchase and Purchase – FE (front-end, aka client-
side). That way we can get both.

Conversion Tracking: Client-side vs Server-

side

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3️.
GROWT
H
ASSETS

122

Quora Ads – Additional Resources
Exporting Google Ads Keywords
1. Open a new tab. Open AdWords and go to your
campaign. Go to the Keywords tab.
2. Hit the little down arrow, then click “Download”.
3. Export to a CSV and then hit download again.
4. Open a Google sheet and import the CSV.
5. Select everything in the “Keyword” column and copy
it.
6. Stick it in the “Choose Topics” box in Quora.
7. Go through and remove all of the plus signs, [‘s and
other symbols.
8. You can do this quickly: open a new Google Doc and
paste everything in (unlinked). Run a “Find and
Replace All” for [ and replacing it with nothing. Do the
same thing for the other symbols (“]”, “+”, “-”)
9. Then copy everything (Command + A) and paste it
back.
Amazon SEO & Reviews
Now that we’ve gone through the process of launching,
optimizing, and tracking your ad campaigns, we’ll consider a
few additional tactics for making Amazon a high-conversion
channel. On this page and the next one, we’ll go over organic
rankings, product reviews, coupons and promotions, and a few
additional Amazon tools you might want to use.
First up, the closest companions to PPC: SEO and reviews.
Amazon ads, organic search results, and reviews have a rising-
tide-lifts-all-boats kind of relationship. When one does better,
they all do. The better your ads perform, the better your
organic SERP (search engine results page) rankings will
become; the stronger your reviews, the higher you’ll rank. And
so forth.
Here are some tips for improving your SERP rankings and
reviews profile.
Amazon organic SEO
Successful Amazon advertisers will see about 60-70% of their
sales coming from organic traffic, with the rest coming through
PPC ads. Investing time and effort in SEO pays off.
Higher Amazon search rankings mean a stronger CTR:
• A third of shoppers click on the first product that
appears in search results.
• The first three products in search results get about
64% of clicks.
• About 70% of shoppers never click past the first page
of results.
(Source: Single Grain)
Amazon organic ranking uses the same two factors as PPC ad
ranking: performance and relevance.
Ranking Factor: Performance
Amazon wants to know that your product is buyable. If your
conversion rate is solid, your organic rankings will prosper for
it.
Besides an optimized PPC program, other elements that
improve conversion, like strong imagery and good reviews, will
move the needle on your search rankings.
Pricing and inventory factor into performance too. If your
product is priced too high, you’ll lose out to competitors. If
your stock runs out, your search rankings could plummet.
Ranking Factor: Relevance
You’ll rank more highly for a search if your product page proves
you’re relevant to it.
“Optimize your product pages” was the second step of getting
started in Amazon ads, and that was also an important step
toward improving search-result relevance. You can show your
products’ relevance by doing what we recommended there for
each of your product pages:
• Have a compelling title with at least one keyword.
• Have a thorough product description with 250-1,000
words, including about five bullet points. Populate
your product description with keywords.
• Feature high-quality, high-resolution images (around
seven) and video.
Which keywords should you add? Now that you’re farther
along in your PPC journey, you can answer that question much
more easily.
Using your PPC data for SEO
PPC ads will get your brand more impressions and more data
than a product page would organically—and they’ll do it much
more quickly. Running ads will fast-track quality product pages.
Tactically place high-converting keywords from your PPC
campaigns on your product page to boost it for both relevance
and performance. (In contrast, low converters—the kind you
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may have added before gathering PPC data—would tell
Amazon that shoppers aren’t interested in your product.) Add
your top keywords to your product title (including your brand
name), product description, and image metadata.
Another element that will help with relevance is the search
term field (Seller Central > Inventory > Edit Product >
Keywords). Use up all 250 characters with a string of keywords
that differ from those in your title. Your customers won’t see
this string, so don’t worry about grammar or punctuation.
What not to do: repeat your keywords anywhere. Keyword
stuffing—the sketchy practice of repeating keywords in an
attempt to rank for them—is as frowned upon on Amazon as
it is in content marketing. It worsens the user experience,
which results in lower conversions—and lower rankings, the
opposite of what you want.
Plus, if you don’t keyword stuff, you’ll have room
for more keywords. Given how important it is to have
keywords on your product page in order to rank for them,
adding more will help your product get discovered. Just don’t
sacrifice page legibility to get more keywords in.
Once your product page is expertly keyword optimized,
consider increasing your bidding in your manual campaigns for
those keywords.
There’s plenty more you can do with Amazon SEO, including
using additional keyword tools like Jungle
Scout or MerchantWords. Because our focus here is on PCC,
and because the above points about SEO are the most
essential, we’ll leave it at that and move on to reviews. But if
you want to go deeper, check out this PDF from My Amazon
Guy.
FitVille’s product title gets pretty specific: “running sneakers
for wide flat feet,” “comfortable support for plantar fasciitis.”
Guess how it ranks organically for those two search terms?
Amazon reviews
To get the most out of Amazon as an acquisition channel and
drive more sales, you need 4.0-stars-and-higher reviews. More
is better. PPC ads help with getting more reviews, which in turn
boost organic performance.
Here are four honest ways to have a healthy review profile on
Amazon—emphasis on honest. Amazon prohibits review
manipulation tactics like buying positive reviews or writing
negative reviews of competitors’ products. If you do it anyway,
your account could get flagged. Reviews should be earned.
• Use Amazon’s Request a Review feature. From four to
30 days after an order is placed, you can click
“Request a Review” on the order details page in your
seller account. Your customer will get an email asking
for feedback.
• Insert an eye-catching card along with your mailed
product. On it, ask for a review (not a five-star
review).
• Ask for reviews in your email marketing and on social
media.
• Respond to negative reviews. Acknowledging a critic’s
concerns shows prospects that you care about your
customers and their experiences with your product.
Sellers in Amazon Brand Registry can contact
customers directly in response to negative reviews.
Lading Page (Re)Design
Questions answered in this module
• How can I build a good-looking landing page on a
startup budget?
• What distinguishes a high-converting landing page
design from a poor one?
• How do I find a good designer?
• How do I find a good developer?
Overview
You might have high-converting copy written for your landing
page and a general idea of what it should look like.
You still have to make it look good. Without losing the laser
focus of converting your visitor. Plus you have to build the darn
thing.
Client story
One of our clients is Framer, a design tool. They’re a company
run by designers.
When we looked at their homepage, it was clear that there
were things they could improve. Their copy was vague. They
had conflicting CTAs all over the place, and the design spread
out people’s attention.
Even though they had an idea of what looked good, they didn’t
design with an idea for what would actually convert well.
So, we wrote, designed, and developed a landing page that
drove 20% more signups within weeks. That’s the power of
building landing pages with an eye for growth.
Good Landing Page Design
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You want to expend at least some effort presenting your page
in a visually appealing way. It does help with landing page
conversion — by showing you're not amateur.

The design of your landing page should clearly lead the user in
a linear flow; a visitor should always focus on one part of the
page at a time and have a clear idea of what they should look
at next.

For example, here’s a site with a good linear flow. (Open it in a

new tab so you can see a better quality of it than the one we
included below.) It's clear exactly which line of text and which
section of the page you should be looking at as you scroll
through.

Or, instead of just listing your features in a grid or line-by-line,

you can stagger them. (Look at the sections numbered 1
through 3 below).
Your site has to look good enough that:
• It's enjoyable to visually parse.
• It looks thoughtfully put together.
• It represents the personality of your brand.

Dos
Text and Spacing

Keep text evenly spaced. Use whitespace to draw a user’s

attention to a focal point on the page.

Color

Use colors that contrast with (stand out from) each other. Blue,
gray, white, and black tend to be a good combination for B2B
companies.

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Size
The most important part of the page should also be the
biggest. Generally, make your call-to-action buttons large, and
make them contrast well with the rest of the page.
All buttons should look clickable. They should not look like
rectangles on a page.
Imagery
Choose icons that the world is familiar with — so users don’t
have to think what they mean. Reddit and Facebook are good
sites to look at when you’re trying to figure out which icons to
use.
Don’ts
Don’t center everything on the page horizontally. In particular,
don't center paragraph text. (We see this a lot from beginners.)
Don’t have anything distracting or intimidating, such as giant
walls of text, unusual font, or large irrelevant images. Don’t
make the CTA small or hard to click.
Here’s an example of all these rules being broken. Yes. It’s a
real landing page.
Building Your Landing Page
Once you have landing page copy — before you even design it
— you need to choose how you’re going to build it.
It all depends on how much time you have and your budget.
You have two main options.
1. Hire a designer and developer.
2. Use a landing page generator.
Hire a designer and developer
If you have more than a month of time to launch plus $15,000
to spend, hire a designer and developer to build out your
landing page.
This lets you customize your page the way you want, it’ll look
beautiful, and you won’t have to cram your content into a
template that doesn’t tell a good story about your product.
When you send the designer and developer your copy, ask
them to reference successful landing pages that Bell Curve has
made.
Here’s a list of top landing pages we’ve made, broken down by
type of company. Look through them and see if you can feel
out what they have in common:
• SPYSCAPE (B2C Museum)
• Perfect Keto (B2C eCommerce)
• PersistIQ (B2B SaaS)
• Lambda Labs (B2B eCommerce)
• Service (B2C App)
A common objection we hear about our landing pages is they
look “SaaS-y” — like what businesses selling software would
design.
This is intentional. This page structure and design style
generally convert best. You don't want to be too experimental
on your first draft. Do what works to start then be riskier later.
So, test at least one design that matches this structure.
At Bell Curve, we have an in-house designer and developer. We
use Webflow to build all of our landing pages for clients.
For yourself, how do you hire good designers and developers
without breaking the bank? Check out How to Find Good
Designers and Developers Without Breaking the Bank
Use a landing page generator
If you’re on a budget or need to launch quickly, use a landing
page generator. Instapage and Strikingly can set you up within
a day.
This is important if you’re at a bigger, slower company. You’ll
need to first sell your team on building a better-converting
landing page, so use a quick generator for the prototype —
even if you end up having a designer and developer rebuild it
from scratch later.
If you decide to use a generator, avoid their templates that
convert poorly. To help you, we've put together some
guidelines, or a list of Demand Curve-approved templates
depending on the platform.
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Note: If you’re already running on Shopify or WordPress, we • Hello X
still recommend using Instapage, then making the signup links • Maker
from the new landing page point to your existing site. • Showcase
• Zine
Instapage (pricier, but strongly recommended)
Leadpages
As of May 2019, Instapage no longer names their templates, so
it's a little tricker to point you at the right ones :( Leadpages is fine if you follow the guidelines we put for
Instapage.
As a general guideline, you want a template that lets you plug
in: Shopify

• A header • Narrative (Light or Cold theme, not Warm)

• A subheader • Debut (Light only)
• A hero image (many templates don’t have images in
the hero section) WordPress
o The hero image should be on the same row
as the header and subheader; not above or
• Shopline
below.
• Clarina
• One call to action button
• Influencer
• Clearly defined feature sections
• Scope
• Staggered feature sections. Instapage should let you
• Oswald
duplicate and flip sections pretty easily.
• Beauty Studio
• ClubHair
Here are a few to look for:
Note: Squarespace and Wix generally have bad templates for
growth. Avoid them. Unbounce is good, but takes longer to
learn and requires a lot more customization.

Extra: How to Find Good Designers and

Developers Without Breaking the Bank

1. Ask friends for referrals

Here’s a template for reaching out:

Hey #{Friend's name}! We're rebuilding our landing page and

I've been tasked with finding a good designer. Do you happen
to know any good visual or UX designers looking for contract
work? Who designed your site? (Feel free to forward this email
to them directly.) -#{Your name}

2. Use a marketplace site

Designers
Strikingly (more affordable, but doesn't convert as well)
Webflow too has a solid vetted pool of designers.
• Glow
• Dolce In the instructions you write for these designers, include a link
• Figapps to the landing page copy you wrote and references to Demand
• Lotus Curve’s successful landing pages. You don't want them going
• Sora off-track. They don't know as much about copywriting and
conversion as you now do.
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In fact, most designers prioritize aesthetics over UX and
conversion potential.
99designs tends to be okay. You have the option to get
designers to submit multiple designs and compete for your
money, so you’ll see many different design approaches at
once.
It will cost you $400-1000 for a decent design.
Krop is new on our radar, but looks interesting.
Dribbble
Find designers whose work you love on Dribbble, and reach
out to them. If their email addresses aren't visible, you'll need
to upgrade to a Pro plan to message designers through the
platform.
Developers
When we have too much demand to build a design in-house,
we’ll turn to Webflow developers (since it’s the tool we use).
It's a safe suggestion if you don't have developers of your own.
Or if they're slammed with app development work.
Also, we’ve seen success using CodeMentor.
Other marketplaces out there that we don’t have experience
with:
• Upwork
• Gun.io
• Toptal
Project: Landing Page Design
This project walks you through setting up a new landing page
using Instapage with a solid template.
The Short Version
If you have designers and engineers on your team with extra
bandwidth, you can shorten this project to these steps:
1. Send your landing page to your designer for them to
design.
2. Send the design to an engineer to build.
Otherwise, if you lack the in-house expertise, we're going to
walk you through how to do this on your own. By the end of it,
you’ll have a shiny new page to A/B test.
Prerequisites
• Landing page copy.
Phase 1: Sign up for a landing page
generator and pick a template
Make an account on Instapage. Or Strikingly or LeadPages if
you're on a budget.
Go through each template as detailed on Building Your Landing
Page and pick one that’s good for your business
If you're picking a template that's not on our list, ask around
first for a second opinion.
Phase 2: Add in copy
Take your landing page copy and plug it in to the template.
You’ll likely have to change a bunch around in the template:
move sections and choose different variations of the same
section so your page doesn’t look repetitive. For example,
feature sections could have alternating background colors.
And change the color scheme to match your business' colors.
It’s important to delete unnecessary sections; conversion will
suffer otherwise. Delete all the sections from the template that
don’t match your LP structure. For example, you probably
don’t want a “Contact Us” section with a map.
Also, cut down navbar links to the essentials you need. Don’t
link to your Jobs page and don’t link to your upcoming events.
They distract from the main purpose: informing people about
your product, getting them to understand the value, and
clicking the main CTA.
Phase 3: Add your images, videos, links, etc.
Once you’ve added all the copy, add in everything else:
product photos, videos, testimonial headshots — you get the
gist.
Double check that every CTA button links to your website (as
opposed to having no destination at all).
You should generally avoid stock photos. Instead, show
photos of your product, your customers using it, and its
benefits.
However, if you’re in a pinch, we’ve made a list of sites where
you can find free stock images to use. These sites let you
download and use their images for free.
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 • Pexels What you’ll learn
• Shopify Burst
• Unsplash
• How to source effective A/B ideas
• Pixabay
• How to identify exactly what you should test on your
• Stocksnap landing page
• freephotos.cc • How to create an A/B testing strategy document for
• Morguefile your team

Phase 4: Do a design and QA pass Why is it important?

In order No landing page is perfect. No matter how hard you worked on
its first iteration. Here’s an example of a landing page we did
• Slowly scan through your site top to bottom. for one of our clients:
• Click on every link and button on your site.
• Read every sentence on the site.
• Look at the site on your phone. Make sure it’s mobile-
responsive.

Look for

• Walls of text to be cut down or spread out

• Text that's too small or low-contrast to be easily read
• CTAs that are hard to find
• Anything that “feels weird" or distracting
• Odd spacing or colors that don’t match
It contains a lot of context, supporting copy, and our client’s
• Buttons or links that are hard to click on mobile
products. Our client saw a jump in conversion rates with this
landing page. But we knew there was room for improvement.
Phase 5: Install tracking
There always is.
Configure tracking as discussed on Track 1: Web Tracking .
We used analytics, heatmap data, and customer surveys to
Phase 6: Point a subdomain at your new site create an A/B variant of that page. The only content on the
new variation was the products (and thus, the page was much
shorter)
We recommend putting your new landing page at
start.yoursite.com. You can ask an engineer on your team to
do this.

Or, if you want to try it yourself:

• Log into the site you used to register your domain

name.
• Then, look for a way to edit DNS records. You may
need to Google search something like [edit DNS
records GoDaddy] (if you’re using GoDaddy).
• Follow these instructions. If you’re using another
landing page builder, you may have to Google The result? Our A/B variation led to a 20% increase in
something like [publish on a custom domain conversions (and revenue) for our client. The only way to
Strikingly] (if you’re using Strikingly).
improve your landing page’s conversion rates is through A/B
testing. Your page might convert well now. But it can be better.
A/B Tests
A/B testing keeps you from getting comfortable with the status
quo. If you could increase your conversion rate, even by 1%,
Introduction: A/B Tests isn’t that worth it?

129
Overview
A/B tests help you see what changes to your site lead to higher
conversion rates (e.g., signup rate, checkout rate).
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 variants. (They
are the "B" variants in the term"A/B.")
You test variants against your baseline, which is your landing
page before you make changes. (Your baseline is the "A"
variant in the term "A/B.")
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%.
There are free tools to manage all this testing logic for you. So,
your only job is to figure out what is worthwhile to test and to
create the required landing page material.
Micro vs. Macro A/B Testing
There are two types of A/B test
variants: micro and macro variants.
that can be difficult to pinpoint in hindsight. We see it all the
time.
Macro variants require considerable effort: It’s hard to
repeatedly summon the focus and company-wide
collaboration needed to rethink your page. But macros are the
only way to see the forest through the trees.
Because the biggest obstacle to testing macros is committing
to them, we recommend creating an A/B testing calendar.
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.
Hack: the cheap, easy macro test
There’s one type of macro variant that doesn’t take much
effort: testing a new group of header, subheader, and image
on your landing page.
This is the one type of test that can drastically change
conversion — because so many people leave a site after
skimming the top of the page. With the right combination of
copy and image in your hero section, you can get them to stick
around much longer.

The Importance of Big Swings

Micro variants
When we talk about running macro A/B tests, it's an example
Micro variants are minor adjustments to your page's copy, of a broader idea in growth: taking big swings.
creative, or layout. These are small, quick changes. One of the
most common examples is changing the color of a CTA button,
Examples
or even the copy inside that button.

When you make a landing page that's 80% shorter than your
These minor changes are unlikely to have a huge impact on
current landing page, that's a big swing. Changing the color of
conversions, unless you combine several micro variants
your CTA button is NOT a big swing.
together. In which case, you’re making significant changes to
your page, which is where macro variants come in.

Macro variants
Macro variants are significant rethinkings of your page.
Changing up the style completely, the ordering of your
content, or targeting an entirely new audience.
When you set up three Instagram ads — a screen recording
Prioritize macros over micros. That’s where you’ll see the video, an ad with only text in the image, and an image of
biggest return on investment. someone tweeting about you — those are three big swings.

Not only that, but micro variants tend to only deliver small
wins (small relative to the business outcomes you care about).
In the short-term, this may not seem important. But, in the
long-term, it may introduce unforeseen funnel consequences
When you set up three Instagram ads — three screen
recording videos with different body text — those are NOT big
swings.
If you typically email users asking for a Yelp review, and then
you A/B test texting them a meme like this asking for a
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review... that's a big swing. (Maybe not one you should do. But 7. Ad performance
a big swing nonetheless.)
You’ll record your work and findings inside each of these
documents, and share them with your team.

Note: You may not have the time or resources for all these
data-gathering sources. The first three are the easiest to
gather. Gather data from these sources, at least, before any
test. Any research is better than none when conducting A/B
testing.

In future tests you can dig deeper with the other data sources.

In other words: "Big swings" means testing things that are
wildly different from each other. Then doubling down on what
works.
Why are big swings important?
When you take big swings, you win big and you lose big; the
results are very different between swings. But you get to cheat
because you can only keep the ones that win - and prune away
the losers. So you improve much faster over time. Find big
winners. Quickly get rid of losers. It's evolution at work.
Project: Gather Data for Your A/B
Hypotheses
Most people conduct A/B tests wrong. Why? They create tests
based on opinions they have. Not on useful data. That’s a
waste of your time and resources. Gather data before you
brainstorm ideas. You'll come up with more effective A/B
variations, and a better conversion rate.
This is the process we use at Demand Curve to A/B test all our
clients’ landing pages.
Phase 1: Experience-based assessment
Your first step is to conduct an experience-based assessment
of your landing page. Other approaches deliver more concrete
data. But this type of assessment is quick and easy to execute.
As you assess your landing page, you’ll group your findings into
five main categories:
• Relevancy: Does this page deliver the experience your
visitors expect?
• Clarity: Is the content on the page clear?
• Value: Does the page present the value of the product to
visitors? Or is there room for improvement?
• Friction: Are there parts of the page that cause confusion,
doubts, or hesitation?
• Distraction: What elements on the page distract from the
main purpose/CTA?
The most effective experience-based assessments are a team
effort. Get your writers, designers, and other key stakeholders
to perform this test. Their perspectives will give you a fuller
picture of where you can improve your page.
What does this experience-based assessment look like?

Phase 0: Make Folder • Use annotated screenshots (with tools such as CloudApp).
• Avoid adding random comments. Keep your observations
For starters, create a folder in your storage platform of choice focused on the five categories listed above.
(Google, Dropbox). Name it A/B Testing.
Here’s an example of an experience-based assessment
Create a separate document for each of the steps we outline of OpenPhone's landing page.
below, and place them inside your A/B Testing file. By the end
of this lesson, you should have up to seven documents inside
your A/B testing folder, titled:

1. Experience-based assessment
2. Landing page inspiration
3. Competitors’ sites
4. On-site behavior
5. Sales team input
6. User surveys

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This assessment is a good start. And it's easy to perform, even
if you're strapped for time or resources. Now it’s time to
expand your research.
Phase 2: Online inspiration
Browse websites like Good Web Design. Good Web Design
features dozens of landing page designs and new approaches.
Bookmark that page and revisit it whenever you’re lost for new
A/B ideas.
We recommend keeping a swipe file inside your A/B folder of
ideas you want to test.
Phase 3️: Competitors’ sites
Identify successful competitors in your space and mine their
pages for inspiration. Do they structure their content
differently? Do they use a different tone? Take screenshots of
new ideas, and keep them in a document inside your A/B
folder.
Mine their reviews. Especially on Amazon. This is a gold mine.
When Demand Curve was an agency, we performed a
competitor analysis report for all new clients. This report was
an invaluable resource for future A/B testing ideas.
We had you do this at the beginning of the course. Rip from it.
Phase 4: On-site behavior
Use a visitor recording tool like Hotjar to find patterns in
visitors' engagement:
• What are they clicking?
• What are they ignoring?
• What does this imply about the type of content that
most appeals to them?
• How does this on-site behavior align or conflict with
your own experience assessment?
We’ll be covering this later in the course. Skip it for now and
come back to it when we work on conversion.
Phase 5: Sales team input
Team members who interact with your customers know best
what appeals to them. Have your sales team answer the
questions below. And encourage them to include screenshots
of conversations and direct quotes from prospects.
• What (about the product or onboarding experience)
are prospects most confused about?
• Why do prospects say they chose not to buy the
product?
• What questions are you (the sales team) asked most
by prospects?
The answers to these questions will help you:
• Know the language your audience uses
• Identify key objections and address them in your
landing page
• Reduce confusion by adapting your landing page copy
Phase 6: User surveys
Your sales team is an incredible source of information on what
works, and what doesn’t. But when possible, go straight to the
source: your customers.
Conduct surveys (with tools like SurveyMonkey) to find out
your users' favorite features and biggest concerns.
You may also consider using on-page surveys (Hotjar offers
this). These visitor surveys can provide you specific details on
where (and why) your visitors are confused or frustrated.
But use them sparingly. They can annoy your visitors.
Gather your survey responses in a single document, and file
them in your A/B folder.
We’ll be covering surveys later as well. You can skip this for
now if you haven’t already run a survey.
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Phase 7: Ad performance
Your best-performing ads have value props, text, and imagery
that you can repurpose for your site. In fact, you should run
ads explicitly to discover the optimal combination of text and
images.
Take screenshots of your best-performing ads, and record
them in a document inside your A/B Testing folder for future
reference.
Now that you have a folder of data to work with, you’re ready
to turn that data into actual theories.
Project: Choose What to Test on Your Page
It's time to take the data you gathered in the last lesson and
transfer it to a spreadsheet.
That makes it easy to look at as a whole. Use the same five
categories used in the experience-based assessment. These
are:
• Relevance
• Clarity
• Value
• Friction
• Distraction
Use any spreadsheet tool you like. Google Sheets works well.
You can make real-time comments and edits, and share it with
your team.
Here’s an incomplete example of what your spreadsheet
should look like. Remember, your table may not contain all
seven data sources, especially if you’re early in your startup
phase.
But any data research is better than none.
Phase 1: Make Spreadsheet
Crack open this spreadsheet in a new tab. We're also putting a
screenshot below.
The first seven columns contain the data you gathered in the
previous lesson. The last column is where you come up with
solutions to address the problems identified by your data.
The bullet points you add to that column will decide what you
test and how.
Phase 2: Come Up With Ideas
You might be able to come up with some ideas on your own.
But here are a few tried-and-true macro variant strategies you
can use for inspiration:
1. Mimic sections of competitors' pages. You’ve already
identified, in the table above, parts of your competitors
sites that work. Mimic some of these page sections. By
"sections," we don’t mean their words. We mean their
layout tactics. This includes charts, sliders, GIFs, and other
ways of displaying information. (Do not rip off their site.
Only take inspiration.)
2. Write to a new persona. Tailor your value props and copy
to, say, mothers instead of teenagers. You could have
misidentified your most valuable audience. In our table
above, we recommend tailoring our copy to senior-level
audiences. Beware: This type of variation will also likely
change your ad targeting. For example, if you target moms
with your A/B variant, you need to make sure you target
that same audience with your ads.
3. Cut the page in half. Less content sometimes means
visitors will read more of it. They're less overwhelmed
with information. Try removing everything that isn't
critical. Be hyper concise.
4. Take a stance. Choose one value prop that you embrace
more than competitors. Build an entire page drawing that
line in the sand. In other words, 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. Above, we recommended testing a landing page
focused on our Slack integration.
5. Combine micro-ideas. We’ve discussed the importance of
implementing macro-variations vs. micro-variations. But a
handful of micro-variations, focused on a singular goal,
can be a valuable test. Here are some of the areas of your
page you can test in one variant:
• Text— Header, subheader, feature headers, feature
paragraphs
• Imagery— Header image, content images,
background images
• CTA— CTA button design, placement, copy.
o One note on CTAs: if your page is long and
informative, don't put the CTA in the hero
section; we want to force visitors to learn
more about the product before clicking
through.
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 o If the variant is short, it's fine to leave the
CTA in the hero section.
• Social proof— Try different quotes or different forms
of social 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 a time-sensitive discount
• Modal popups— Entice users to join your mailing list.
This makes it easier for you to educate them—
through emails—about your product.
Use one or two of these tactics and you’ll likely see little
impact. Change several of these on your page, and what you
have is a macro change. And a better chance of seeing real
impact on your conversion rate.
Phase 3: Choose the best action items
Now that you have a complete table, it’s time to whittle that
last column down to the ideas you want to test.
We share this table with our clients. We ask them to strike out
any bullet point from that last column they don’t want to test
(or don’t want to test yet). You should do the same with key
stakeholders in your organization.
This step saves you considerable time and embarrassment. It's
better to know what your team is comfortable with before you
start designing.
Project: Propose an A/B Test
When pitching A/B tests to our clients as an agency, we gave
them an A/B proposal that highlighted the changes we’d like to
make to their page. This gave them the ability to approve (or
deny) certain variants, before we commit too much effort into
the actual changes.
You can, and should, do the same. This allows you to share
your ideas with your team. And allows key stakeholders to
provide input before you commit to specific changes on the
page.
You can use our A/B Proposal Template as a starting point. And
here’s what a finished A/B proposal document looks like.
Let’s break down the proposal:
1. Experiment title
You should include at least 2-3 experiments (or variants) in
your proposal. That’s because it’s worth testing a couple of
variants at the same time.
Title each experiment with a descriptive name, so you and
others know what the experiment is testing.
2. Explanation
In simple bullet points, explain what the experiment will
change about the current landing page.
3. Reasoning
You want to make sure your A/B ideas are worth testing.
There’s no point testing just for testing sake, when you could
invest your time in more worthwhile ventures.
Your reasoning will explain your hypothesis of why these
changes should be made. This is useful both in communicating
your motivations to your team and as an exercise in better
thinking through your process.
When your test is done, check your hypotheses against the
data; then make new A/B changes from those learnings.
4. Examples
The remainder of our A/B Proposal Sample features an
example of what we believe our new A/B page might look like.
For our mockup, we used Balsamiq. But we don’t always create
mockups this early in the A/B process. It’s okay to just explain
what you think the page might look like if you haven’t done so
already in your Explanation section.
Here are a few examples on how you might describe the
proposed changes:
• Use a video for the hero section, and copy like:
o “Your dog deserves better than retail-quality
food”
• Right under the hero section, add 3 columns of
testimonials from current customers.
• Then the rest of the page will be our products. With
the ability to add to cart right from the homepage.
It’s best to come up with 2-4 experiments to pitch to your team
so you can pick and choose the best from each and let your
team contrast and compare. Once you decide which variant(s)
you’ll test, implement the A/B changes. That’s what we’ll learn
next.
Next Step: Propose A/B Test
Use the template above to propose an A/B test for your
company.
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Project: Set Up A/B Test
We’re going to set up an A/B test using Google Optimize, the
tool we use at Demand Curve. Then, we’ll run it and measure
the results over time.
Prerequisites
• A completed A/B test proposal
• Google Analytics has been set up on your website (via
Google Tag Manager, for example)
• At least 200 visitors to your site a week
If Instapage already hosts your current homepage, make an
A/B test through their editor. It will be much easier and much
less painful.
Phase 1: Build Your New Landing Page
Phase 1a: Build It
You already built one landing page. Make one to A/B test
against, using the proposal you’ve been building out.
Use Instapage or the tool you picked for your landing pages
(LeadPages, Strikingly, Unbounce, etc).
Phase 1b: DNS records
Log into the place you registered your site’s domain name
(e.g., Namecheap). Set up a CNAME record at
start.yoursitename.com to point at the new page. Your
Landing Page tool should have documentation on how to do it
(Or ask an engineer to do it.)
Phase 2: Set up Google Optimize
Head to Google Optimize. Make an account or log in. Click “Get
Started,” check the boxes you want, and eventually, you
should end up at the Experiments screen.
1. Click “Create Experiment.”
2. Name it “First A/B Test.” For the URL of the page to
test, put the homepage of your site. Not the new
page you want to test against.
3. For example:
www.demandcurve.com, not start.demandcurve.co
m.
4. Choose “Redirect Test” for the type of experiment.
This is very important.
5. Hit “Create.”
Phase 3: Link to Google Analytics
Go back to your home screen and click “Link to Google
Analytics.” Choose your account, check all the boxes, and
submit.
Phase 4: Add the Optimize snippet
Skip to Phase 5 if you already configured Optimize as part of
your Google Tag Manager project in the Conversion Tracking
module.
Like when you set up Google Analytics, paste the Optimize
code on your current homepage, following their directions.
You might need to use a version of the code below, instead of
what Optimize says:
JS. Do the same with the page-flickering code. (You may have
to screenshot the directions and then ask a dev to do it.)
Phase 5: Run experiment
Phase 5a: Link Google Analytics View
1. Click back into your experiment from the home screen.
Scroll down to the "Measurement and Objectives"
section. Click “Link to a Google Analytics view,” then under
“Select a view for this experiment,” select your view
(probably “All Website Data”).
2. Hit “Done" to save that puppy down.
3. Now click back into your experiment.
Phase 5b: Variants and targeting
Variants
1. Click “Add Variant.” Name it “Variant 1” or something
more descriptive if you’d like.
2. Set the “redirect destination” to be the URL you’re using
for the new landing page you want to test, e.g.,
start.yoursite.com. Hit "Done."
Targeting
Click "Add rule" under "Targeting." Click Behavior, then for the
first Variable, select “Time since first arrival less than,” then “5
seconds” for the values. This makes sure our users don’t have
a poor experience if it takes longer than five seconds for our
code to load and redirect them. Hit "Save."
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Phase 5c: Measurement and objectives
What's an objective? This is the thing you want users to do
most on your site — whether it’s clicking the CTA button,
signing up, or actually purchasing.
Make sure it’s early enough in the funnel that a lot of people
will do it: you need at least 50 times a week. Otherwise, you
won’t get enough data.
Google Optimize will show the page that performs better: the
page where more people do the thing you want. There are two
ways to add objectives. To begin, click "Add experiment
objective."
A) If you have Goals set up in GA (which you should), click
"Choose from List" and select the appropriate one.
B) Else, choose "Create Custom" > "Events," and fill in the
appropriate event parameters (event action, event category,
etc.) that corresponds to the objective you want to measure.
Set the counting method as "Once Per Session." Then hit Save.
Phase 5d: Settings
Now, scroll down to the "Settings" section. Select and edit
"Traffic allocation." Set the experiment to run on 10% of
visitors — this way, if the experiment fails, you don’t risk
everyone on the site going to your new page. Hit "Done."
Phase 6: Track events on your variant page
Make sure that GA tracks your goal event when people visit
your variation page. There are two possibilities here:
Possibility 1: Your goal event lives on a page farther on your
site. Not on the landing page.
For example, if you care about people signing up, that happens
on your actual site. Not on Instapage. Or maybe you care about
people downloading your app. That happens on your actual
site as well. If your goal lives on your site, your life is easy.
When you first set up Google Analytics, you started tracking
this. You’re probably done.
Sanity-check this by visiting your variant site, clicking through
to your goal, and seeing your event fire in the Real-Time
section of GA.
Possibility 2: Your goal lives on the InstaPage page itself
Tracking this goal in Google Optimize means you have to use a
hack.
If you have a dev, ask them to set up tracking on Instapage
following the directions below. It will save you a lot of time.
Otherwise…get ready for some technical stuff. We’re going to
assume you want to track CTA clicks (the most common thing
our clients do).
Here we go. Open up your Instapage editor and find the button
you want to track clicks on. Click on it, then choose “Edit CSS
Styles."
Don’t actually enable Inline Styles. Close the window. Copy the
code below.
HTML
In Instapage, go to Settings > HTML & CSS > Head. Paste that
code in. Replace the following with your goal information:
• Your GA id on line 2: UA-XXXXXXXXX-X
• Your GA id on line 8: UA-XXXXXXXXX-X
• The element number on line 12 that you found above:
38
• The action name on line 13, if it’s different: ‘Click’
• The category on line 14: ‘Button’
• The event label on line 15: ‘Landing Page CTA Button
1’
Save your changes and publish your site.
Sanity-check that you’re tracking events correctly; visit your
variant site, click through to your goal, and seeing your event
fire in the Real-Time section of GA.
Do this for every event in your Conversion Events doc that
would live on your Instapage page.
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Phase 6b: Run a sanity Google Optimize Test (Optional)
Assuming your site gets under 1,000 visits a day, it’s worth
sanity-checking that your redirect is set up correctly. (It’s
notoriously tricky to get right, and lots of teams screw it up.)
To do that, we'll make a copy of your experiment and
temporarily set it to redirect 100% of your traffic, instead of
only 10%. This allows us to manually test and verify if
everything is working properly. We'll then switch the real
experiment back on and turn off the copy.
• First, click the 3 dots next to your experiment, and
click "Make a copy".
• Let's rename the Copy Experiment. Click the three
dots in the Draft box, and name it something like
"Sanity Test."
• Click the three dots to the far right.
• Next, under Settings > Traffic allocation, set it to
100%. Then under Variants and targeting > Variants,
click on "% WEIGHT" next to the variants. Set 90% of
your weight to your Variant, and 10% to the original:
• Set the experiment live, then open your site 4-5 times
in a bunch of incognito windows. Most of them should
redirect to the new page
As soon as you’ve proven that your test works, turn off the
experiment. You can now go back to your real experiment.
Phase 7: Go Live!
Hit “Start Experiment.” For real this time. Check out the
“Reporting” section of the experiment — this is where your
results are going to show up.
Measure Paid Traffic Results
When it comes to A/B testing, you quickly get diminishing
returns on your organic, high-intent traffic because those
visitors already came looking for what you sell. The onus on
you was to affirm you sell what they want and not to scare
them off. They were already primed to convert.
However, with your paid traffic, A/B testing gets you a lot
further. These are medium-intent eyeballs at best — usually
people who errantly clicked your ad — and are therefore
looking for an excuse to dismiss your value props and bounce
from the page.
If you a/b test very aggressively, you can 5x your conversion
rate on paid. Most companies can do this. We’ve done it for
them a half-dozen times in the last several months.
Here’s one important takeaway: determine a test's success by
measuring the conversion boost mostly on paid traffic. That’s
where the delta is large enough to notice the impact. If you
only assess high-intent organic (non-paid search, referrals, and
word of mouth), you may not even see a bump and might
mistakenly dismiss the test as a failure.
Set Reminders
Set a reminder to check back in one, four, and seven days.
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1 Day: Make sure events are actually being recorded on each
variant. This is the biggest problem we usually see running A/B
tests and it’s totally normal. You might have to debug issues
here.
4 Days: If the new variant is performing significantly worse
than your old landing page, turn the test off. Otherwise keep
waiting.
7 Days, 14 days, etc.
Google will funnel traffic to the highest-performing variant
automatically. Check back to see what’s winning. If one does,
have your devs make that the permanent homepage.
Ad Copy
Introduction: Ad Copy
Questions answered in this module
• How do I write ads that people actually click on and buy
through?
• Does punctuation matter?
• How do I know what to write about in my ads?
• How do I choose the right type of creative to complement
my copy?
how to speak to them — while at the same time conveying
your core message.
At Demand Curve we spend a considerable amount of time not
only crafting ad copy, but continually refining it. It's this cyclical
process that's allowed us to crush it for our clients with social
ads.
How to Write Compelling Ad Copy
What you’ll learn
• How to turn your value props into compelling ad copy
suitable for all social channels, and specific to
targeted audiences.
Why is it important?
Ad copy is nothing like writing an email. Or an essay. Your
ability to string sensible thoughts together into sentences does
not mean you can write good ad copy - the kind of copy that
gets people to stop scrolling through their feed.
This is a skill. Fortunately, it is a skill that can be learned, no
matter your comfort level with writing. And that’s actually
what you’ll accomplish here.

Note: This reading pertains to social ads (Facebook/Instagram,

Pinterest, etc).
Overview
Social ads are one of the most effective ways to find new
customers and connect with people already familiar with your
company. But there's a big hurdle you have to overcome if you
want to make money off your ads: user intent.
Someone on Facebook is not actively searching for a product
or service. It's not like Google, where they want to find results
related to their search. With Google, the right type of ad can
speak directly to their needs. That's not the case with social
ads. People go to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest (to name
a few) to be entertained. Or to catch up with friends. And to
discover new things.
Overview
In the strategy section of our course, we had you brainstorm
value props, which will serve as the foundation of your ad copy.
As you begin this writing phase, be sure to keep that
spreadsheet readily available, ideally in a separate window.
Also, it’s best if you have an idea of who you’re targeting with
your ads. Use the audiences you brainstormed in our Strategy
section. Your value props help you know what you’re pitching.
Now it’s important to know who.
Open up a blank document (at Demand Curve, we prefer to
work with Dropbox Paper for its simple, clean interface). Copy
the material found in this Ad Copy Template. This is the
template we use with all of our clients as we brainstorm ad
copy variations.

No matter your niche, you can be certain your target audience

Let’s break down this document bit by bit.
spends a considerable amount of time on sites like Facebook.
It'd be an incredibly large missed opportunity to not advertise
to these folks where they spend hours each day.

But how do you do that? If you want to connect with your

audience and get them to convert when they're not
deliberately looking for something to buy, you have to know

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Ad copy is never set it and forget it. You’ll never create the
perfect ad. But with constant refining, you can keep improving
your ads.
The process you learn in this lesson should be repeated
periodically. Only then can you continue to see a solid return
on investment for your ads.
Example of a Facebook Ad
Example of an Instagram Feed ad
The section above shows the different parts of an ad on
Facebook and Instagram. You’ll create copy for each of these
parts. Some social channels don’t need every part.
But they all require a headline and body, at the very least. We
write every part for all of our clients.
Some ad channels have specific character limits. For example,
Facebook headlines should be fewer than 40 characters, if you
want to ensure the headline remains on one line.
This section of the template gives you a breakdown of the
character limits. You can use our character
counter spreadsheet to count the length of each ad copy
element.
Writing ad copy variations
The remaining part of our template is dedicated to the actual
ad copy. Let’s turn our attention to that task now. Staring at a
blank screen is intimidating. Even with clear value props in
hand, you may not know how to craft the type of copy
designed to convert.
That’s why when we create ad copy for clients, we often apply
specific strategies to simplify the process. These strategies
have been tested over time and are proven to be the most
effective forms of ad copy. Regardless of your specific niche.
When you’re ready to write your ad copy, you’ll see in the
template there are separate table ‘blocks’ to place your copy
in. The first block, or section, you’ll see is “General Copy.”
This is copy that can be used with the widest possible
audiences. It’s important to brainstorm general ad copy
variations (copy not specific to any one audience).
Brainstorming general variations is a good practice to identify
your most prominent value props, and it allows you to execute
ads to the widest possible audience, when you need.
You’ll also see a section in each block for carousel ads. This is a
carousel ad:
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Carousel ads allow you to show multiple images or videos in a
single ad. Each image/video has its own headline (and
opportunity for creative copy). But they have the same body
copy.
You don’t need to fill out ad variations for carousel ads if you're
not planning to run ads on Facebook and Instagram. But if you
are, we recommend it. These ad types can be very effective.
The outline below is applicable whether you’re writing general
copy, or copy specific to an audience.
1. Creative copy
Each ad block on the template starts with the creative.
Your creative copy should either summarize the product, or
focus on the your specific audience’s biggest anxieties, as
succinctly as possible. Keep it to two to seven words, with rare
exceptions.
It should almost always hit a value prop. You’ll often (but not
always) want to add CTAs to your creative — see "Learn More"
in the Kip example below. We've found they convert about
15% better.
Here are a few examples of real creatives we've made for
clients, one of which includes a CTA (Kip’s “Learn More”):
The examples above have little to no ‘design.’ We've found
that these types of ads convert best (more on this in our ad
creative section).
2. Headline copy
We've found a few specific formulas that work best for
headline copy:
• A headline that focuses on the target audience’s
biggest anxieties (pull these from the problem and
implication sections of your value props sheet).
• A headline that focuses on the solution and benefits
of your product.
• A straightforward description of the product itself.
• A headline that focuses on social proof: ratings, press,
famous customers, testimonials, etc.
Keep the headline to 50 characters or less.
Tips as you write headline copy:
• If the headline is one sentence, don’t end it with a
period.
• If it’s two sentences or more, use periods.
• We've found headlines that use “the only … in the
world”, as in “the only organic dog food in the world”,
convert particularly well.
Here are a few examples of real headlines we've used for
clients:
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3. Body copy
Each ‘block’ in your ad template has three length options:
• Short body copy variations: (150 characters and less)
• Medium body copy variations: (150 - (roughly) 250
characters)
• Long body copy variations: (250+ characters)
You might think short copy outperforms the others. But our
data tells us otherwise. That’s why it’s a good idea to come up
with at least a couple of variations for each body length.
The more you test, the more you’ll know.
By the way, when you do come up with long body copy
variations, it’s best to follow this formula:
1. Hook
2. Product/service explanation
3. Handle objections
4. Write in a CTA
Example:
You say you’re going to cook dinner. But you don’t have the
time. Microwave dinners? Yeah, they’re quick. But have you
looked at the ingredients? You’re not going to get healthier
eating those. The Tovala Steam Oven makes it easy to eat
delicious gourmet meals without having to cook, clean, or
complain. How? We send you a box of gourmet meals. Plus our
companion smart oven. Each meal is cooked to perfection in
20 minutes or less. You don’t do a thing. Well, except eat a
home-cooked meal. Without having to cook. Choose your meal
plan in seconds. Start eating healthy meals (without the hassle)
by next week.
When creating body copy, here are the strategies that we've
found to convert best:
Explain how your product/service works. Step-by-step.
Here’s how Streak works: Install it in 2 clicks. For free. In
seconds, your Gmail inbox converts into a complete CRM. So
you can manage leads, conversations, and more. All from a UI
you already know And use daily. Know exactly when
someone opens your email. And from what device.
Schedule emails to increase open rates. Save your best
performing emails as Snippets. So you can send more cold
emails. Faster. Personalize your emails with Mail Merge.
Streak turns your inbox into the CRM you always wished it
would be. And the best part - it’s free.
(Note: emojis tend to perform pretty well in ad copy — it’s fine
to include them.)
Articulate problem, solution, and benefit.
"Kip makes therapy more effective by helping you track your
weekly progress through self-assessments. No more guessing
whether you're improving.”
Highlight differentiation (from competitors)
“The only automatic visitor logbook.”
Use a judgmental question.
“Your office doesn’t sign in visitors automatically?”
Use a quote that someone would use to talk about the
problem.
“Yeah, we kept their CEO waiting for way too long. No wonder
we lost the deal.”
Reference big numbers and good reviews:
“#1 on Yelp”
Ask a pressing question
Did you know airlines will pay you ~$135 when they delay you?
Match one of your value props to a specific audience
Cost — "The only full-featured, 4K camera
that’s affordable [quality] on a student’s [audience] 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].”
Make a statement your readers emotionally agree with. Then
provide a solution
Example: Training RNC’s sucks butt. Here’s a solution.
Compare your product/service against the status quo
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Meaning, focus on how the current way to solve the problem 4. Write the social proof section
sucks.
Now write the social proof section for each of your value props.
It should emphasize social proof: famous companies using, big
numbers, selectivity, etc.

Examples:

• The error tracking tool trusted by AirBnb and

Microsoft
• Over 50,000,000 emails available
• How Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton reach their
fans

3️b. Don’ts.

• Don’t use vaguaries.

o Example: “At Bing Surfboards, we make your surf
trip easier”.
o An easier life is something anyone can pitch.
o Instead, be specific about how the Bing Surfboard
product actually makes your life easier: by having
the lightest surfboard on the planet, which
means you aren’t grunting pain and wasting If you have a totally new product, use this copy section for
energy every time you lug it to the beach from something other than social proof. Add a secondary value prop
your car. or proactively address concerns someone would have.
• Don’t use cliche phrases like “earn more money” and
“change your life”. 5. Retargeting Ads
• Don’t use exclamation marks. They turn on people’s “this
is salesy” reflex and treat you like spam. Retargeting ads are shown to audiences who have interacted
• Don’t try to be cute. with your brand or product in some way in the past.
o There was an ad for a New York taxi service that
read: “If you hate waiting, raise your hand.”
Maybe they visited your website, FB or IG page. Depending on
o Instead, it should focus on how the drivers are where you set up your retargeting pixel (for example, a specific
safer than a car sharing service (because of page on your website) you can create ads that speak directly
insurance, background checks, etc.), as well as a
to this audience group.
shorter time-to-pickup and more comfortable
seating.
The message you deliver to someone who already interacted
• Don’t ask generic questions: “Do you like saving money?”
with your brand should be different from a message you
o Instead, ask questions that prompt responses
deliver to a stranger.
like, "Wow, I didn't know that" and "No, tell me
more..."
o Better: “Did you know airlines will pay you ~$135 Specifically, they're farther along their buying journey. You can
if you get delayed? “ assume they know more about your product, and you can hit
• Don't ever write “tag someone” in the ad text, headline, them with more specific copy to compel them to buy.
or link description - your ad won’t deliver properly and be
flagged as “poor quality” by most channels. This means you don't have to waste time explaining what your
product is. It's more important to cover all the different
problems your product solves, in the hope that one hits. In
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other words, emphasize the use cases, and not the product in
general.
Project: Social Ad Copy
You're going to write ad copy for a variety of ads that you’ll run
for your business.
The elements required for LinkedIn ads are similar to Facebook
ads (minus the newsfeed, which is unique to Facebook). You’ll
be creating one set of ads, which you can then apply to both
social platforms.
First, we're going to come up with a giant pool of copy to draw
from. Then, we're going to pick the best variations to make
your first ad units.
Prerequisites:
• Value Prop Spreadsheet
o You should already have at least three value
props specific to your target audience from
doing the exercise in the Strategy section. Do
that if you have not done it yet.
• Audiences you're targeting
Phase 1: Write your ad copy pool
This will consume most of your project time.
Phase 1a: Setup
First, go to Ad Copy: Additional Resources > Template: Ad
Copy, and make a copy of the doc.
Scroll through it. Where it says "Target Audience 1," fill in the
audience you prioritized in your growth strategy doc from day
1.
Only add your top audience for now.
You can write copy for other audiences later, but it will be too
time-consuming for you to write in the scope of the training.
(You can apply what you learn to future copy you write.)
If you’re only targeting a General Audience for now, you can
skip the Target Audience 1 section.
Second, open up this ad copy reference doc. It shows you the
common mistakes students make when writing ad copy for the
first time. Reviewing it will save you literally hours of rewrites.
Phase 1b: Copywriting
Then, fill out the ad template with variations of the following:
• Creative copy - 3-4 variations
• Headline - 3-4 variations
• Short body copy - (150 characters or less) - 2-3
variations
• Medium body copy - (150 - 250 characters) - 2-3
variations
• Long body copy - (250 characters or more) - 2-3
variations
• Social Proof - 3 variations
Each variation you write should either: A) cover a different
value prop, or B) use a different phrasing or style to convey its
value prop.
Steal from the examples on How to Write Compelling Ad Copy
where you can.
Then, if you plan to run ads on Facebook and Instagram, fill out
the carousel section as well.
Warning: To reiterate...don’t stray from your value props!
They’re what make you unique and they help you generate ad
copy. You can sometimes rip ad copy directly from your value
props doc to save time. Please. Avoid vague language.
Phase 2: Count your characters
Next, copy and use this template to count your characters.
Certain elements of your ad copy have strict character limits,
depending on where you’re running ads.
Phase 3: Self-Review
Run through this checklist for each piece of ad copy you expect
to run with. This is what we use internally at Demand Curve.
Phase 4: Group Together
Copy this template. Make headers for each audience from the
last doc.
Group together your copy from the pool you made.
Make three complete ads per audience (General and Audience
1). So you should have 6 complete ads total. You’ll want to test
different lengths and formats, so the 3 ads should be:
• 1 short or medium copy variation
• 1 long copy variation
• 1 carousel ad
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Each ad should have:

• Creative copy
• A short text description of the image
• A headline
• Body copy (can be short, medium, or long)
• Social proof

These are the actual ads you'll be running on Facebook,

LinkedIn, etc. So put some effort into them. Be careful not to
use the same phrasing in each section of the ad.

Every section (creative copy, headline, etc.) should fit with the
others to hook the reader and compel them to click.

If a burst of inspiration strikes and you decide to write new,

better-tailored copy when you group these ads together, that's
fine. In fact, we encourage it.
When you make ad creatives, you’re going to be testing them
Ultimately, we want to test wildly different ways to resonate on a bunch of social ad platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
with our reader.
Fortunately, most social platforms use the same creative
dimensions as Facebook, so you won’t need to re-do your
Ad Creatives creatives for most channels. In addition, they let you
supplement the copy in two different places (just like
Introduction: Ad Creatives Facebook). So for all intents and purposes, the ads follow the
same structure they already do on Facebook.

Questions answered in this module
• What is an ad creative?
• What are examples of good ad creatives?
• How do I make a good creative without a background
in design?
• Where can I find templates for creatives to save time?
Overview
Ad creatives are a fancy way of saying the image that shows up
in an ad. You’re going to have to make them if you want to run
ads on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social channel.
This should clear things up:
There are four types of ads to that tend to work best on social
channels. We’re going to have you set up each of these types
in our project. Thankfully, we’ve found that minimal ads tend
to perform well, so you don’t need an extensive design
background to get some quick tests up and running.
It’s much more important for your ads to clearly communicate
the value of your product to your audience than to have a
fancy design. And we’ve seen conversion rates back this up.
Examples
Again, there are four types of ads that tend to work well. Here
are examples from real clients of ours.

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Text-only ads
Image ads, with text in the ad
These are always images of the product in action (not abstract
designs), along with some simple text.
Screencast walkthroughs
If you’re a B2B software product, screencast walkthrough
videos tend to perform much (usually 5-10x) better than static
image ads.
Watch the
video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rqudpqvslcnso5g/dribble
_screencast_v3.mp4?dl=0
Video Ads
The best performing video ads walk through the product itself,
build trust, or provide social proof (testimonials, celebrity
endorsements, etc.). If you have videos of press coverage,
customer testimonials, or authority figures you can advertise
(for example, top scientists on your team), you’ll want to use
those for ads.
Overall, video ads tend to perform much better than image
ads. You’ll want to make at least a few of these.
Here’s a video of press coverage that would work well as an
ad: https://youtu.be/hyUPw9r30sw
Complement Your Copy with the Ideal
Creative
What you’ll learn
• How to choose visual media to bring attention to the
message of your ad copy.
Why is it important?
The creative part of your ad (the image, graphic, or video) is
the first element of your ad that people see in their feed.
The creative you choose for your ad dictates whether your
audience will invest the time to read any of your copy. Some
ad channels don’t even show other copy next to the creative.
So it's squarely on the shoulders of your creative to be obvious
what it’s about.
Overview
Most ad units, including Facebook's and Twitter's, provide
space for both copy and creative. (Whereas Google AdWords
is purely text-based advertising.)
Like ad copy, ad creative isn’t about being cute or overly
creative. It’s about increasing conversions. You do this
by literally depicting the product in action. Don't beat around
the bush; show the value.
When coupled with your creative copy (which you created
earlier), your ad should make it incredibly clear what you offer
to your audiences. For ecomm companies, this is generally
pretty straightforward: show your product in use.
Here are some other examples of literal depiction:
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 • 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 dog next to a leash.

The second rule of creative design is to be purposeful with

your visuals.

Many companies are bad at advertising online when it comes

to growth — they're only good at spreading awareness, not
driving purchases. So don't just blindly copy the visual tactics
in you see in ads on your feed, thinking they're used because
they work.

Given the volume of ad exposure we're subjected to, people

have neither the patience nor motivation to guess what your
ad is selling. Remove the work involved and clearly show them
the goods.

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) in your creative should depict the
product in action or depict its value, as seen below:
The more purposeful and minimalist your creative is, the less
likely it is viewers are distracted by a visual element that
doesn't even compel them to click.

People often parse ads from top to bottom, so whatever

imagery you place at the top is responsible for motivating users
to continue looking down.

In other words, don’t place your logo in the top-third of an ad.

Not only does that remind people they're looking at an ad, it
doesn’t motivate them to scan the rest of the ad.

When it comes to social ads, you don’t want to

stand out.

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You read that right, contrary to what you might believe, your • ScreenFlow. If your product is difficult to explain in an ad,
goal isn’t to make your ad stand out so that it says “Hey! I’m screencasts are a powerful way to show your product in
an ad!” You want to toe the line between being noticeable and action. We use ScreenFlow for all of our clients’
fitting in with the overall context of your social platform. screencasts.

You still want bold imagery and a unique brand

presence. But, you also need to look like you visually belong on
the site: Mimic as much of the surrounding colors, font,
spacing, and so on.
Using video for ad creatives
Our experience, backed by our data, show that video ads
outperform image-based ads and have a lower CPA. On
average, video ads get clicks that are roughly half the cost of
image ads.
With video, users are better educated about your product
before they hit your site, so they convert better too. In the
resources section below, we share two tools we regularly use
to create video ads for our clients.
Ad Design Guidelines
There’s a lot that goes into designing ad creatives. We’re not
all Van Gogh. If you don’t have a background in design, here
are some guidelines you’ll want to follow when making an ad:
• Text should stay away from the side of an ad.
• Have a clean line height.
• Fill up lines as wide as possible before moving on to
the next line.
1. Text should stay away from the side of an
ad.

Resources for ad creatives Examples: Compare these two ads

With the tips outlined above, and a few tools at your disposal,
you can create powerful social ads, even if you’re not a skilled
designer.

Here at Demand Curve, we use the following tools to create

ads for our clients:

• Unsplash. A site that houses free photo that you can use
in any way you’d like. The best part about these photos is
they’re high-quality and natural looking. The last thing you
want for an ad is a stock-photo image of a group of people The top one just looks worse. Why? The text bleeds too close
in suits laughing. What’s that even about? to the side of the ad.
• Sketch. A Photoshop alternative that's better suited for
non-photography work. It does take some time to get used Quick math: the ad is 2400 pixels wide, and there’s about 110
to the UI, but is worth the time investment. pixels between the edge of the text and the edge of the ad on
o Sketch does cost money ($199/year). An even each side. 110/2400 = 4.5%
more lightweight and restricting alternative to
Sketch is Canva. Canva offers a free version of the Here are good rules of thumb:
app, which can produce just about any type of ad
you want. Over time, however, you may realize • For wide ads (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), keep
Canva’s limitations and will want to invest in text away from the edge of the ad by at least 10% of
something more like Sketch. the ad width. In this case, since the ad width is 2400,
• Animoto. Video is everywhere in your social feed. And, text should always be at least 2400*10%, or 240 pixels
since you want to blend into your audience’s feed, it only away from the edge of the ad.
makes sense you’d create video ads. Animoto is the tool • For square or vertical ads (Instagram or Pinterest),
we use to create affordable videos at scale. you should have at least 15%padding.
o There are a host of factors to consider when
creating an Animoto video for your social ad. For
Good spacing. It’s very important.
example, you need to write a script, choose
background music, and plan out your visuals for
maximum impact.

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How do you measure this?

How can you tell how far away the text is? You can use
Sketch’s ruler tool. Here’s how.

You might have to drag the text box around to make it fit right.
You’ll also have to change the line height to make sure it’s right
(see next section).

2️. Have a clean line height

Examples: Compare these two ads

The top one looks weird. Doesn’t it? That’s because it has bad
Click anywhere on your ad. Then, at the top of the screen, click line spacing. Don’t let your ads have weird line heights.
on the ruler, lining up the red line with where the text ends.
How do you measure this and fix it?

Here’s your litmus test. The capital letter “E” should fit snugly
between the two lines.

Measure from the bottommost part of the top line (notice how
“p”s and “g”s hang down in this parenthesis) to the topmost
part of the bottom line (notice how “t”s, “l”s, and “b”s are
taller letters).

That should put a line down with a number on it. This is the Copy the text (command + C) and paste it (command + V). Then
number of pixels away your line is from the left side of the ad. drag it between the two lines. Replace it with “E”. You can use
the arrow keys to fine tune the placement (shift + arrow keys
Then, put another line down at the edge of the ad. See what moves it faster). Then you can update the line height on the
number shows up. Subtract the smaller one from the larger right. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
one. That’s how much padding you have. (You can also play
around with pressing alt/option and clicking, but it’s not as
precise.) Your new ruler. Fit for a king. We’ll show ourselves
out.

How to fix the problem

Usually, you’ll have to make your text larger or smaller to get

it to fit neatly. You may also be able to break the text into
multiple lines (like in the example above).

To change your text size: click the offending text. Then, on the
right, change the font size.

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Yes, there are exceptions to this rule (such as the SPYSCAPE ads
above). But it’s a very good rule of thumb.
3️. Lump chunks
Examples: Consider these two ads
The ad on the top works better than the one on the bottom.
Why? The important chunk describing the product (“all-natural
dog food”) is on the same line. In the ad on the bottom, “all-
natural” and “dog food” are on different lines, splitting the
user’s attention.
One more note: when the text naturally breaks, keep those
breaks. For example, when you have sharp sentences. (is
worse than…)
4. Put app screenshots in a mockup
If your product is a site (e.g., SaaS software) or app, put the
screenshot of your app in a mockup of an iPhone or a
desktop/laptop. If you keep the screenshot on its own, the
result is often visually unappealing and tacky. But you can get
around this by demonstrating to the user that it's a screenshot.
Put your app in a phone. Where it belongs.
Screen Recording Ads
Screen recordings are videos you take of your screen while you
use your product. You’re practically obligated to test these in
ads for digital tools, especially B2B products. They consistently
outperform other types of video ads. Here are the keys.
Tips
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.
Record the “magic moments”
When aiming for conversion, prioritize demoing the parts of
the product that are most valuable to the user. Don’t use any
custom designs or smiling actors. Stick to the product.
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.
Tools
Screenflow
If you have a Mac, we recommend a tool called ScreenFlow,
which is what we use to record our videos. There’s a free trial
and it costs $129 to buy forever.
Windows Users
Windows has a built in screen recorder -- Windows symbol + G
opens the so-called Game Bar (it's part of the XBox-related
functionality).
Quicktime Player
For a cheaper alternative, you could use Quicktime Player.
Here’s how.
iPhone screen recording
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If you have a mobile app, you can use the iPhone’s screen
recording feature. Record the different features separately,
then import the videos into Screenflow for the final video you
make.
Android screen recording
Same thing as for the iPhone, but for Android. Record the
different features separately, then import the videos into
Screenflow for the final video you make.
You’ll need to download a special app from the Play Store to
do it.
Project: Make Ad Creatives
Overview
We’re going to create variations for each major type of ad
creative so that you can put them on Facebook, Instagram,
LinkedIn, Twitter, and more channels.
Prerequisites
• Your company logo. (You can hack a quick one
with LogoMakr if you don’t have a logo yet.)
• Ad copy
Phase 1: Find your images
Look through as many photos and images you have as possible.
These probably live in a Dropbox or Google Drive folder of
yours.
• If you don’t have any photos yet and you have a digital
product, take live screenshots on your computer screen
(Apple + Shift + 4 on Mac, then drag).
• Otherwise, you can find a wealth of natural looking images
at Unsplash.
Pick two to four images that follow the guidelines for a good
ad. (Consult the readings as you need.)
A lot of our clients are limited on the number of images they
have. We get it. You may have to compromise a bit.
Save them to a folder on your computer called “Image-only
ads.”
Phase 2: Make a text-only ad
Ads with text alone perform surprisingly well on Facebook.
Technically, you’re not allowed to have more than 20% of your
ad be text. But we’ve had great success (low CAC) with ads like
this:
Phase 2a: Setup
Download and install Sketch (you get a 30 day free trial). Don’t
worry about ramping up on learning it; we’ll teach you
everything you need to know to hack together an ad that
performs well.
Windows users: Check out Figma or Lunacy instead. Import
the sketch file directly into the tool.
For PC users: the template uses the free custom "Open Sans"
font, which you'll need to download here from Google Fonts.
Plug your copy into a text-only variation that you think looks
good. Change the colors and logos to be for your product.
While you do this, follow our ad design guidelines to make sure
the ads still look good.
Phase 2b: Review Checkpoint
Make sure your creative contains both copy and a CTA (call to
action), such as “Download App” or “Start Tracking”, etc.
If you’re a mobile app, include the app store icons in a corner
of the ad — we’ve found this builds trust and causes people to
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click more often. To save your ad, select the container for the
ad, then click export at 2x. Look for exporting instructions in
the Sketch Cheat Sheet for how.
Make sure to do this for both Facebook and Instagram ads (and
Pinterest and Snapchat, if that’s part of your growth strategy).
Get all the different sized creatives out of the way so that
you’re not held up when you actually set up ads.
Customize it to match your brand. Getting the spacing, font,
logo, etc. right may take some time.
Beware of logo placement
In general, don't place your logo at the top of an ad. People
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 that it's an ad instead of the organic content that
they came for.
By the end of this phase, you should have one text-only ad fully
created (plus variants for Instagram, Pinterest, etc.). For
example:
• Ad copy: "Growth training. With extremely attractive
instructors."
o Facebook plaintext
o Instagram plaintext
o Pinterest plaintext
Save your text only ad to a folder on your computer.
Phase 3: Image ads with text
Pop back into the template. Plug your images and ad copy into
an ad that has images andtext: Banner, Shelf, Split, etc.
Make sure to create Instagram/Pinterest/etc. variations if
that’s part of your growth strategy. So you should end up with:
• Ad copy: "Learn growth in weeks. Not years."
o Facebook shelf
o Instagram shelf
o Pinterest banner
Phase 4: Video ads
Brief intro
Videos perform extremely well on Facebook and Instagram.
There are three types of ads that we’ve found to perform well
— this comes from having tested hundreds of variations:
• Animoto ads (text overlaid on compelling images)
• Screen recording and app recording ads
• Social proof ads
In general, keep videos to between 15 and 30 seconds.
Anything shorter and it’s hard to get the point across, and
anything longer means viewers lose interest.
One exception to this length limit: if, say, you had a full
segment on Jimmy Fallon, or a piece of content (like a short
movie) that stands on its own, you can upload the whole thing.
But if you’re uploading something that looks or feels more like
an ad, stick to that range.
Phase 4a. Make Animoto ads
Make an Animoto ad. Follow the instructions in Bonus Project:
Animoto Ads
Phase 4b. Screen recording ads
If you have a product that can be viewed on a screen, record
videos of the parts that are most valuable to the user. Follow
our reading on screen recording ads for more instructions.
Make a screen recording ad. Save it to your folder.
Phase 4c. Social proof ads
If you have any videos that establish your credibility, save them
to your folder as well.
Good examples:
• Appearing on a TV show
• Receiving an award
• Customer testimonials
• Authoritative employees or partners (doctors,
writers, actors, etc.)
Phase 5: Steal from Competitors
Revisit your Competitor Analysis doc from day 1. For each
competitor, look up their ads here. (Enter their Facebook
Page.) Look for things they do in their ads that you didn't think
of: anything from copy to creative to social proof they use.
This can save you a bunch of work. If they've been running ads
for a while, they've put a lot of time and money into pruning
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out the low-performing ads — and zeroing in on the copy that • Choose “Hi, I’m Standout”, as the video style.
works. Which you now get to steal. For free. (Standout is our default, but you can use others if you
prefer).
Bonus Project: Animoto Ads • Choose 1:1 ratio (we can export in landscape format
later, too)
• Interface overview.
Animoto ads are some of the secret sauce we use at Demand
Curve to make ads that are super high-performing. It’s like
Let’s take a quick look at the interface, and overall steps below.
hacking together a video production team, but you can make
“Blocks” are like slides in a powerpoint presentation. Every
ads in minutes.
block has its own media and text, and should each sell a value
prop for your product.
The ads sometimes look blunt and straightforward, but when
they show up on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in
particular, that’s a plus. You want to convey the product super
clearly. And they tend to convert 2-3x better than other video
ads.

Example
Here’s an example Animoto ad we made for a client of ours.
They’re a fantasy soccer app.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1zp4sk9atlgne9s/How%20to%2
0use.mp4?dl=0

How to make an Animoto ad

Phase 2: Video structure
Contents
2a. Script
1. Setting up
2. Interface overview Before we start adding media, let’s first talk about how to
3. Video structure structure the video script. We want the video to follow this
4. Video guidelines format:
5. Media and content guidelines
6. Creating the video Block 1: The hook

This is where we introduce the product or a problem we’re

Phase 1: Setting up trying to solve. Two tactics for doing this:

• Create an account on Animoto. You should get a free

• Ask questions people really want to know the answer to
14 day trial.
when posed. Then answer them.
• Choose Create > Animoto Marketing
• Show people how something they thought was actually
completely wrong. Then keep doing that over and over
until they realize you know everything and they know
nothing.

Example: Ever had a flight delayed or cancelled? Airlines might

owe you money.
Block 2: An explanation of what the product does or how it
solves a problem
Example: 'Service' is a free app that can get you compensated.
It detects all past and future flight itineraries in your inbox. And
automatically files a claim with the airline.

• Click the “Start from scratch” button on the top right.

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Block 3+: Features Once blocks are added, click “Edit”. Enter your text from the
script.
We now present 1 or 2 more value props per block. Keep it
short, and do a maximum of 3 value props.

Example: It finds over $600 per year for travelers on average.

It's loved by thousands of users.
It takes 1 minute to setup and works automatically. Best of all,
it's free.
Final block: Logo

Show your logo with a CTA if possible (“Learn more”, or badges

for the App Store or Play Store). Do not display your URL. We
want viewers to click the ad and not manually type in an For text, we want to make sure its legible, so toggle Legibility
address — otherwise, we won’t be able to track that they came on. It will create a light transparent black background behind
from the ad. the text:

2b. Video guidelines 3. Adjust the font (Design)

Aim to make the video as short as possible (ideally less than 30 Once all the blocks are created and you’re happy, adjust the
seconds). The shorter, the better. Users get bored quickly, so global font from the menu on the left side. Choose Monserrat.
we want to get our message across succinctly:

• What is the product?

• What does it do?
• What makes it special?
• Where can I get it or learn more

2c. Media & content guidelines

For content: Get inspiration from your Landing Page or

previous ads.

For media: If possible, use photos or vids that show the

product in action. If this is hard to come by, use stock images
(https://www.unsplash.com) or videos
(https://www.videvo.net/).

Always check the license for stock media. In the case of

Videvo vids, make sure the video has a “Videvo Standard
License” or "Creative Commons 3️.0 Unported (CC BY 3️.0)”.

Phase 3: Creating the video
Animoto’s interface is pretty self-explanatory, but here are
some tips for each step in creating the video.
1. Add media
Upload your images/videos, then drag them into the blocks
area.
4. Choose music
We want music that doesn’t distract or overpower the content.
But it also needs to be enjoyable to listen to. A few tracks have
been favorited to make it easy to choose from. Feel free to
choose something else if the context demands it.
You can also upload songs as long as you have the license to
use them in commercials. YouTube has a good library for this.

2. Add blocks

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5. Review & export

When you’ve reviewed everything to your liking, click the

“Preview” button on the right side. Then, click “Produce”.

Note: to remove the watermark, you’ll have to pay for

Animoto. It’ll cost around $16 for the first month, and you can
cancel after you make your initial videos to save money.

You’re done! Save the video to your hard drive in the highest
resolution possible, so it can be used for ads later.

6. Optional: Save video in landscape format

If needed, duplicate your project, and re-export the video in

landscape format. The format ratio option can be found on the
menu on the left side.

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