Weekly Marketing Dip #6
Return of Andrew Chen, Dropbox & Eight Sleep
Hey it’s Erik again with your Weekly Dip into marketing, growth and tech.
In case you missed it - here’s Dip #5 featuring Apple and Meta.
Last week two of our team went for a short trip to the US of A, where most of our clients are based. This time we headed to Austin, Texas - the fastest growing US city and home to a wide range of great tech companies.
One of which is Concierge Auctions, a platform for luxury real estate auctions. Tech disruption is still young in the real estate industry, and Concierge Auctions have been innovating in this space for the past 16 years.
It was lovely to meet the Concierge team in person. Besides work, we also enjoyed the many things Austin has to offer: great TexMex, tender beef brisket barbecue, 1L cokes and lots of cybertrucks!
And now… back to the Dip!
Growth law of the week
➡️ “Inbound is slow, but steady”
Channels like SEO and content marketing are considered inbound - people come to you. Inbound trac is much more valuable than outbound, because those leads sought to interact with you in the first place. Inbound channels compound slowly, but steadily. Inbound is attractive if you can afford to be patient, and don t need to grow 30% MoM. Of course, inbound marketing opens pathways to building a strong brand over time (examples: Hubspot, Intercom).
— Pieter
Lessons in growth
(1) Product strategy matters more than growth hacking
Growth legend Andrew Chen made the move to Substack and seems to be writing more regularly again. Hoorah! Fun read about the 10 years after “Growth Hacking”.
Maybe this explains why he’s writing again…
Content creation - preferably using AI - happens to be the growth strategy he’s most hopeful about:
“It’s partly why creators, short-form video, and shareable memes have become such important growth drivers for new startups today, even though sometimes the spikes are short and ephemeral.”
And how he imagines AI’s role in marketing/sales (content personalisation, 1:1 convos):
“We only have marketing because 1:1 sales for everything is too expensive. But with AI allowing people to convert $ to labor, we will see unique combinations of mass 1:1 sales with brand efforts to give your virtual salesforce air cover. And along with sales, mass personalized landing pages, product experiences, and so on. Everything will be white glove and concierge, rather than mass-produced.”
The initial choice of product category and target customer segment have a bigger impact on core metrics like retention than growth tactics. You can't growth hack your way out of a poor initial product/market fit decision.
Thoughts? Drop a comment.
(2) Copywriting gives you frame control
Eight Sleep introduced a new product: the Pod 4 Ultra - and it sounds… like a dream.
Take a look at their copy:
“It’s not a bed, it's a revolution in the sleep game. It cools. It heats. It elevates. Clinically proven to give you up to one hour more of quality sleep per night.”
It actually detects snoring and raises the top part of the bed under your head automatically. What a selling point. And obviously hundreds of more features. Very pretty landing page as well.
But all that fancy tech comes at a price…
It costs $4,049.
Honestly… Would you pay $4k for a bed?
Instead of feature bombing and the overused “clinically proven” - what if they leaned into a different angle?
🚂 Train of thought:
On average a mattress can be used for 7-10 years.
Let's assume you only use it for 5 years. That’s around 1,825 nights.
If your partner snores, that is 1,825 not so great nights.
This mattress detects snoring and automatically elevates the head area to stop it.
The product is $4k. For 1,825 nights it would literally mean only $2 per night.
Based on this, I would change the hook to:
“Would you pay $2 per day for a good night sleep?
The Pod 4 Ultra allows you to sleep next to your partner without distractions, so you can fully enjoy each night and day together.
See what I did there?
Copy gives you frame control.
5 things we consumed this week
Elena Verna from Dropbox shares an inside look of their structure, way of working, metrics they measure. This allowed them to succeed in B2C and B2B markets, as well as the massive scale of its product-led growth model. Dropbox uses three types of growth personas — the optimizer, the builder, and the innovator: but in general, they expect that everyone will cycle through these roles throughout their careers. Which one are you?
Mobbin - The world’s largest mobile and web design library. Product designers use Mobbin to find real-world design inspiration. Easily search for best practices for common user flows like: Onboarding, Subscribing & Upgrading, Canceling a Subscription.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig - a philosophical book that explores the meaning of quality through a motorcycle road trip. It challenges the idea of objective reasoning and encourages introspection and appreciation for the complexity of life. I prefer quality over complexity to be honest.
Podcast on Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) - this company is the largest company of Europe atm. The main reason is that they have developed the drug Ozempic, which helps (healthy) people lose weight. Why this is interesting: it's a big trend in the world and shows that longevity, health and pharma is a crazy market;
OpenAI's leadership shake-up - and the plethora of meme’s that followed. I’ll need a holiday after this.
Hope you enjoyed this read. Louise will be back to host next week’s edition of the Dip.
We'll just leave this here…
🌈 This woman can see 100x the colors we do. Yeah, pretty wild.
Thanks for reading. It’s been a pleasure.
Erik — on behalf of Double
