The Growth Newsletter #078

New marketer interview, deliverability, pain-point SEO, and product pages.  ‌ ‌ ‌ [Demand Curve] The Growth Newsletter #078 [Read in browser](=) Welcome to the 735 new marketers and founders who joined last week!  This week we're covering deliverability, pain-point SEO, and product pages.  If you don’t find this valuable, you can permanently unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. If you like it, tell your friends to [subscribe here](.   New marketer interview  We asked Amanda Natividad, SparkToro’s VP of marketing, how she built an audience of 100k+ followers on Twitter alone.  The result is a brand-new piece, “[5 Steps Amanda Natividad Took to 60x Her Audience in a Year (and Keep Growing It)](.”  Or scroll to the bottom to read the article right in the newsletter.  1. Improve deliverability with IP warming Insight from [Ladder.io]( and [Braze](.  When it comes to email, some marketers invest loads of time in writing, designing, and building flows. But they under-invest in making sure those emails actually land in inboxes.  This is called email deliverability.  To reach your subscribers, you need to indicate to internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail that you’re a legitimate sender.  One way to improve your sender reputation and email deliverability: IP warming. Instead of blasting all your contacts at once, “warm up” your list by gradually scaling up the volume of sent emails. Do this over a period of at least ~4-6 weeks.  At first, send emails just to the people who are most likely to open, click, reply, and forward. Don’t get too creative at this stage. Send emails that you think have a high probability of generating interest, like a promotion similar to past successful ones.  This will send positive signals to ISPs and help you reach more inboxes as you scale up.  IP warming is also important for brands that are switching email platforms. If that’s the case: - Export your most valuable leads—new subscribers and people who have clicked on your emails in recent months—to your new email service provider. - Run your next campaign to just this audience. - Increasingly add more contacts for each new campaign.  2. Pain-point SEO for keyword research Insight from [Grow and Convert](.  How most companies do keyword research: Build a giant list of top-of-funnel keywords. Then move down the funnel toward conversion. How most B2B companies should do keyword research: Target prospects who are already close to converting. This is “pain-point SEO”: Identify your prospects' main questions and pain points, then find relevant keyword opportunities that address those topics.  If you focus on high-intent keywords around customer pain points, your content will have a much better chance of converting people immediately, even if the search volume is low.  How to uncover pain points: - Study forums and communities where people discuss topics related to your product, like Reddit and Quora. Then enter their URLs into your keyword tool to find out what keywords they rank highly for. Example: A Reddit post at r/Entrepreneur ranks #4 on Google for the keyword phrase “starting a business with 50k.” - Interact with your customers via interviews, phone calls, and surveys. Ask them what problem they were looking to solve before stumbling across your business. And how they would describe your product/service to a friend who knows nothing about it. - Talk to your sales/CX team. You’ll get great insights into the problems customers are trying to solve, and any objections they might have. Take notes and look for patterns. Turn the most common use cases, questions, and problems into content ideas. Then use [Ahrefs]( to size up the opportunity of keywords that tie into those pain points and intents.  Once you have a handful of keywords, pop them into [Clearscope](. Run a report on each to gain AI-backed insights into how to rank for it.*  * Clearscope is our sponsor, but our content team was using their reports for SEO well before we partnered with them. Demand Curve readers can get up to three complimentary Clearscope reports. Head over [here to get your free reports](.  3. Optimize product pages to get more adds to cart Insight from [Alexa Kilroy](.  Creating compelling social ads is only half the battle.  Impressions and clicks are great. But you need folks to add your product to their carts and convert.  That’s where your ad landing page (often a product page) comes into play. Here’s how to optimize it for more adds to cart. - Show real people using your product. Skip Photoshop and take a quick snapshot with your phone. Even better, show a hand touching your product—this can [make your product appear more appealing](. - A/B test your CTAs. Try different messaging like “Shop Now,” “Check Out,” “Add to Cart,” etc. Also test the button’s actual placement, e.g., next to your product image, above or below your product info, or even as a fixed button on mobile. - Address objections in your copy. For example, make it clear how long shipping will take and what your return policy is. Anticipate the reasons shoppers might give for not buying—and then handle those objections preemptively. - Include user-generated content at the top of your page. Most companies default to including UGC at the bottom of a page, after product info. But UGC often converts better than staged product images. Try adding it to your product carousel (think: product selfies) or interspersing it among product info. - Find out what’s holding shoppers back. Consider using an exit-intent popup to ask users about their hesitation. Here’s [a simple template from Hotjar](. The multiple-choice format makes it easy for shoppers to provide feedback in seconds.  Your optimization efforts can get more adds to cart, but users will still inevitably drop off during the checkout process. So make sure you have cart-abandonment email flows set up to convert a percentage of that group.   News and links News you can use:  Lately it’s been a Meta vs. Google announcement showdown. - Meta is making [major changes]( to the Facebook app. Among them: a new Home screen featuring public content (largely video) suggested by the algorithm. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, TikTok must be blushing. - Instagram also saw some notable changes. Any public video under 15 minutes will now [automatically become a Reel](. And Reels under 60 seconds can [now be boosted]( into ads. IG is also launching a [dynamic, searchable map]( to help users find popular locations near them. - On the Google front, ad creation is [getting easier]( with the launch of an asset library and video ad creation tools like templates and text-to-speech voiceover. - Plus, YouTube is [partnering with Shopify](. Creators who link their Shopify storefront to YouTube can display products across their YouTube channel, and US-based creators can enable onsite checkout—so viewers have the option to buy without leaving YouTube. Bonus: automatic inventory syncing. - But don’t rule out the underdogs. BeReal, the photo-sharing app considered the anti-Instagram because of its emphasis on authenticity, is now the [top free app]( in the US App Store. Yes, above TikTok. What we're reading:  The Commerce Tech Newsletter. Their [teardowns]( profile the fastest-growing startups across the globe, starting with retail and ecommerce. Investors, founders, and executives of high-growth companies read the Commerce Tech Newsletter to identify new trends and opportunities. Highly recommend checking it out [here](.  In case you missed it:  We released a new playbook, Content-led SEO in partnership with Clearscope. It's an 80/20 of how to execute an SEO strategy for B2B SaaS in 2022. [Check it out here](. Top new marketing jobs  If you're looking for a top growth role, check out the opportunities below from our [job board](. [Remote Marketing Director for DTC Travel Brand Tortuga We build bags to make travel easier. We build Tortuga to make work better.](   Something fun From [@justmediathingss](   Want more growth tactics? We're giving away our entire back catalog of tactics to folks who refer two friends to this newsletter. Here's your referral link to share: [(. You can track your referrals [here](. We'll automatically email you the password-protected tactics page once you've referred two people.    5 Steps Amanda Natividad Took to 60x Her Audience in a Year (and Keep Growing It) Amanda Natividad grew her Twitter following from 1k to 60k in a year. It now has over 100k followers. She has another 12k followers on LinkedIn and 5k subscribers to her newsletter [The Menu](, which she launched in 2021. We asked her how she did it. Amanda Natividad knows how to go viral. [amanda natividad linkedin]14k reactions and 1.1 million impressions on [LinkedIn](. [amanda natividad twitter]3k+ likes on [Twitter](. Her Twitter threads regularly get 4-10k+ likes. It’s not surprising that she understands virality. People with massive online followings are generally pretty good at that. But she also knows something that’s much harder: how not to go viral. If a thread is all but guaranteed to get thousands of likes, but it runs the risk of turning her into “that person who tweets about that thing,” and that thing isn’t what she wants to be known for, she won’t tweet about it. She also won’t post anything that could hurt her credibility among her community, that won’t be genuinely useful to her readers, or that doesn’t align with her beliefs and goals. Put another way: She knows how to choose value over virality. Which, counterintuitively, is how she’s managed to grow her following in a digital landscape that’s noisier than a Meat Loaf album. In choosing value over virality, she’s built an audience that comes to her for precisely the insights she offers. Case in point: When she tweeted the waitlist for her [Content Marketing 201 course](, 300 people signed up in two days. It’s possible that her audience would be bigger if she were posting about “25 things you didn’t know you could do in x platform,” to use an example she gives. But it wouldn’t be the audience she can build the strongest affinity with. And it probably wouldn’t include a former president. [amanda natividad twitter bio] We talked to Amanda about her audience-building story and the tactics she recommends. Value is central to all of them. Here are five takeaways. 1. Know what you want to get out of audience building You wouldn’t learn how to sail if you didn’t plan to go sailing. You wouldn’t give a speech if you didn’t have a message to share. If you’re trying to build an audience, it helps to know why you’re doing it. Amanda was working for Growth Machine, the SEO content agency founded by Nat Eliason, when she first started building an online presence in 2020. She’d been in marketing for about eight years—after earlier careers in tech journalism and the culinary arts—but she hadn’t done much online posting. “It just never occurred to me,” she told us. “Not only did it not occur to me to build an audience, I just felt like, I don’t want to do that. I can’t do that. I’m not qualified.” Nat made it clear that she was qualified. (“Having someone who believed in me, who had his own following, his own clout, that was kind of groundbreaking for me,” she said.) And it would be good for business if she were to start posting about marketing. So her first goal was external: grow the brand she was working for. In the process, she could aim to become better known in her field of content marketing. She began doing the work of learning what to do. She took David Perell’s [Write of Passage course](, which gave her the courage to write longer-form online content. Then she took Demand Curve’s audience-building course, where she learned to step outside her comfort zone and apply direct-response copywriting best practices to her content. (We’ll discuss those best practices at Step 3.) And she learned a repeatable workflow for writing and publishing effective tweets. In learning from and meeting intellectual peers in these courses, Amanda honed her online writing skills and found serendipitous professional opportunities that opened up her network. She realized that posting online could be a way to chart her own career path. She walked away from those experiences with a new goal: to grow her career without ever having to do a traditional job search again. “I was still posting about my work, posting about marketing strategy and content strategy, but I did it with a little more of the intrinsic motivation of, I don’t ever want to do a traditional job hunt,” she said. It worked. She had been following [SparkToro]( co-founder Rand Fishkin on Twitter, and one day, he followed her back. That led to an in-person lunch—and, eventually, her current job as SparkToro’s VP of marketing. What do you do when you meet your goal? Amanda succeeded at avoiding the traditional job hunt. She met her goal. So what’s next? Goals, like everything else that still exists, evolve. She’s thinking through her next one, but it could be increasing monetization. She’s recently started to feature sponsors in her newsletter, The Menu. But she’ll only pursue monetization opportunities if they reflect her values. That means no partnerships with brands whose business model she doesn’t agree with. Some have approached her; she’s turned them down. It also means thinking through how monetization supports her values of inclusivity, accessibility, and opening up doors for others. “I don’t know that there are a lot of women monetizing through sponsorships. So there’s a part of me that makes me want to dive deeper into that, so that I can be an example for other women who want to do this too.” Goal takeaways - Be the Nat to someone’s Amanda. If you spot talent, support and nurture it. - In our audience-building class, we recommend having a specific, time-bound, measurable goal (e.g., “get to 5k followers by November”). But goals can take many shapes, and not all are numerical or time-sensitive. Something like “get a job without going the traditional application route” can be just as useful. - Adjust your goals as either 1) you meet them, or 2) they stop serving you. - Your reputation is priceless. Avoid aligning yourself with brands you don’t respect. 2. Pick a lane. Stick with it until you’re ready to explore a little. Amanda’s early social presence was all about content and marketing. She’d defined her goals—brand building, then career building—and she could use those goals to guide her content strategy. Her niche was clear: She’d post about what she knew about marketing. “I was realizing that people who are growing their accounts fastest were the people who stuck to their niche,” she told us. “So the first priority was getting to a good, healthy path of growth.” For the first six to 10 months, that’s exactly what she did. [tweet about content marketing] She still writes about marketing—about 80% of the time. Once she reached a critical mass of about 15-20k followers around the 10-month mark, she decided to venture beyond those marketing parameters every now and then. [tweet about emily in paris] “The fun stuff is still rooted in some kind of value,” Amanda said. “I won’t post, ‘Oh, I love coffee, I’m having coffee for breakfast!’ It might be about food, but it’ll be a recipe or thread of recipes, which are valuable in some way to some people. … Or if I think something is genuinely funny from my daily life, I’ll share that—the value being entertainment.” [tweet about recipes] “The niche content still gets the highest engagement and shows my expertise in marketing. But the fun posts are mostly for myself, to laugh with friends on the timeline and help stave off burnout.” Another reason to explore beyond your niche: affinity building. Amanda’s non-marketing content highlights that, although she’s one of the top marketers working today, she’s also relatable and vulnerable, with plenty of interests outside of work. That builds even stronger connections with her readers. If you’re going to head in new directions, think about how they relate to your niche. Veer off course to keep content lively and connections strong. But don’t veer so far that you’ll confuse or alienate people. - If you’re in sales, your life isn’t 100% sales. What are some topics you’d talk about in the break room? What are your thoughts on business decisions or product roadmaps—things that affect your work but don’t define it? - If you write about a specific topic (say, body positivity), consider all the arenas it’s related to, from social implications to pop culture. Niche takeaways - You need a topic: the thing that people follow you for because they want your take on it. Stick with it until you’ve reached a certain critical mass. At that point, it’s okay to get a little exploratory. - Twitter has changed in countless ways since 2006, but one thing holds true: No one cares, or has ever cared, about what you ate for breakfast. [Continue reading article](   What did you think of this week's newsletter?  [Loved it]( | [Great]( | [Good]( | [Meh]( | [Bad](  If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with a friend. If a friend sent you this, get the next newsletter by signing up [here](.  Who's [Demand Curve](? We’re who marketers and founders rely on to solve real marketing problems. We skip trends and fluffy stories and only share high-quality, vetted, and actionable growth content from the top 1% of marketers.  How we can help you grow: - Read our free [playbooks](, [blog articles](, and [teardowns](—we break down the strategies and tactics that fast-growing startups use to grow. - Enroll in the [Growth Program](, our professional course that will help you get traction and scale revenue. - Hire our agency, [Bell Curve](, and we'll grow your startup for you. - Engage with our audience by [sponsoring]( Demand Curve. See you next week.  — Nick, Grace, Joyce, Dennis, and the DC team. [Nick] Nick Costelloe [Grace] Grace Parazzoli [Joyce] Joyce Chou [Dennis] Dennis Buckley   © 2022 Demand Curve, Inc. All rights reserved. 4460 Redwood Hwy, Suite 16-535, San Rafael, California, United States [Unsubscribe](=) from all emails, including the newsletter, or [manage]( subscription preferences.