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19 Jan, 19 tweets, 3 min read
THREAD: Read this if you're new to ads. Here's how to make each ad channel work.

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

(from our experience running ads for 400+ startups)
IMPORTANT. We're growth marketers. We believe that you should test most channels (in time). This is an 80/20 to help you prioritize which you might want to test FIRST based on your business.
2 types of ad targeting:

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

Profile: Uses social profiles/engagement to serve ads. Conversion is lower, but audience size is less restricted.
Top channels ordered by average cost/click for U.S. audiences (LinkedIn being most expensive)

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

We'll dive into each (and a few more)
LinkedIn offers uniquely granular company and employee targeting (firmographic targeting)

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

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

Poor fit: anyone earning < $10,000 USD in LTV
Experiment w/ LinkedIn's ad units:

• Text Ads: Typically only work for retargeting & brand marketing
• Sponsored Content: Focus on these. Decent CTRs but saturate quickly due to small audiences
• InMail: Generally avoid. Response rate is poor compared to good cold emailing
Twitter ads let you target users who follow a particular topic or person. That's unique.

Best for 2 scenarios:

• Companies targeting niche audiences that can ONLY be identified based on who they follow.
• Enterprises running brand marketing. They "buy" followers through ads.
Downsides compared to FB/IG:

• Twitter ads usually cost 2x more/click
• Conversion is usually lower
• Audiences saturate quickly bc there are fewer engaged users

Better use case: If your profit margins allow, run Twitter ads to get sales leads that you close via email/phone.
Facebook (FB) and Instagram (IG): The best profile targeting channels.

Good fit for: Mobile apps/SaaS, eCommerce.

Poor fit: Most enterprise products.

IG ads generally convert better than FB. Use IG to target the 18-24 y/o audience that DOESN'T use FB.
FB & IG ads 80/20:

• FB and IG have a ton of users. If you get ads to work, they'll sustain a higher daily spend than other social channels.
• Best for product *discovery*
• Start broad, then niche down. It's the one channel where you can really lean into the algorithm
Google ads

The best behavior targeting channel: Reach people who are actively searching for your product.

Good fit: Products that solve *known*, high-volume problems

Bad fit: Products people don't search for because they don't know they exist. e.g. cutting edge technology
Google ads 80/20:

Balance specific vs broad: Use exact match keywords on the "money" keywords, and add a broad match modifier (e.g. women, summer, hats) to capture long-tail keywords.

Add negative keywords to filter out things that aren't suitable.
Pinterest ads combine profile (interest) targeting with behavior targeting (search)

Best for:

• Selling fashion, food, or furniture
• Products that lend themselves to pretty, eye-catching imagery
• Predominantly targeting women (70%+ of Pinterest's audience)
• B2C eCommerce
Key for Pinterest: You don't want users to click your ad by accident.

1. Ads can't look so obvious that people reflexively ignore them.
2. But, make them look enough like ads that those who click do so purposefully.

Blend in, but don't mislead.
Reddit ads work best in two scenarios:

• If your product appeals very broadly (e.g. underwear, credit cards)
• If you earn a lot per customer AND your niche is active in a subreddit.
If your product fits within a large subreddit category, try subreddit targeting: Running ads within niche subforums.

You can get them to run profitably, and large subreddits take longer to saturate than small ones.
Snapchat ads

We've seen snapchat ads work for 2 company types:

1. Consumer-facing mobile apps or games with a free trial.
2. Retail businesses that lend themselves to impulse purchases (e.g. restaurants)—You can target users near your store and capture them as they walk by.
Banner ads

Best for:

• Cheap brand marketing: Advertising not to get clicks, but to stay top of mind.
• Retargeting: Showing ads to your site's visitors to get them back.

If you do run display ads, do it through Google Display Network—It provides the most granular targeting
If you're looking to learn more about ads and how to optimize your growth strategy, sign up below.

You'll get an email (only 2x per month) packed with actionable growth tactics.

demandcurve.com/newsletter

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More from @GrowthTactics

Growth Tactics Profile picture
12 Jan
You can find all of the marketing tactics other companies are using.

Here’s how to see and replicate them for your startup.

THREAD 👇
1/ Here's the benefit:

Competitive analysis de-risks your own growth experiments: Adopt the best growth ideas and avoid the worst ones.

Testing the right things quickly —> faster growth.
2/ Important:

This IS NOT about repurposing another startup's hard work. That's stealing.

Instead, analysis is about:

• Identifying the right companies to study
• Learning from their successes and failures
• Then prioritizing growth tests using your learnings
Read 14 tweets
Growth Tactics Profile picture
8 Jan
Here’s how to double conversion on your startup’s homepage.

(From rewriting over 1,000 websites.)

A thread 👇
1/ Your "above the fold" (ATF) section is the part of your site that's immediately visible before scrolling.

When visitors see this, they decide to either keep scrolling or bounce.

In seconds, they attempt to assess:

• What you do.
• Whether you're a fit for them.
2/ If your ATF is confusing or uninteresting, visitors bounce.

This happens because of:

1. Weak messaging: Your product's purpose is unclear, uninteresting, or irrelevant.

2. Weak design: Your design is unprofessional or outdated.
Read 15 tweets
Growth Tactics Profile picture
6 Jan
Twitter is, by far, the fastest way to build a high-quality audience.

Why?

It's quicker to write insightful tweets than it is to produce 10min YouTube videos or 1400-word blog posts.

Here's a thread of actionable tactics from studying the fastest-growing Twitter accounts.
2/ Fast-growing accounts have two things in common:

1. They spend 30+ minutes per day sourcing and refining 1-3 daily tweets. They don't wing what they say, and they typically sit on each idea for a few days.

2. Key: They write tweets that get *retweeted.*
3/ Retweets bring followers.

We polled people to ask why they retweet. They said:

1. "Retweeting is my bookmarking system for ideas."

2. "I retweet when someone's put elegant words to my thoughts."

3. "I want my followers to know I relate to this statement."
Read 12 tweets
Growth Tactics Profile picture
30 Dec 20
We found 6 startups that are growing way faster than everyone else.

We figured out their unconventional growth tactics.

This thread walks you through how to repeat them for yourself.
1/6 Experiment with timing.

Here's a clever example:

@brooklinen "leaked" a time-bounded discount and had one of their *best* revenue days of the year.

Great startups experiment not only with copy/creative, but also framing.
2/6 Get people to FEEL the problem your startup solves.

Here’s how Muzzle (notification hiding tool) uses their site to visualize the problem:

• Shows cringey notifications
• Makes them super vulgar
• Points out how Muzzle puts an end to this during Zoom calls
Read 7 tweets
Growth Tactics Profile picture
22 Dec 20
On average, email earns $40 for every $1 spent 🤯

The next highest ROI growth channel returns half that.

We spent the last month interviewing email marketers at this year’s fastest-growing startups.

Here's a thread of actionable email insights.
1/ Why email?

1. Email is where the most dollars remain UNCAPTURED.

2. Email is an OWNED channel. Instead of relying on social media algorithms to surface your content, you're directly in subscribers’ inboxes.

Email is high ROI and has few gatekeepers.
2/ How to grow your list:

You DON'T need a huge list. You want a growing list of people who are in the mindset to actually trust and buy.

• Create a lead gen asset that excites people—quickly. E.g. ridiculously good content
• Use popups: They work
• Quality of subs > volume
Read 13 tweets
Growth Tactics Profile picture
18 Dec 20
PSA: How content marketing actually works these days.

Quality matters more than SEO skill.

Backlinks and SEO micro-optimization are becoming less useful, while being the best result for your query is the dominating factor.

(1/6)
(2/6) Google heavily prioritizes content based on click-through rate (CTR) and a term we call "finality"
(3/6)

• High CTRs, which are a function of your PAGE TITLE, prove your content is relevant for the search term.

• Content has "finality" when people don't bounce back to Google from your article. Your content satisfies the searcher's FINAL intent.
Read 6 tweets

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