Winning Copywriting w/ ChatGPT 🤖📝

Rise and grind, growth hackers 😤

Welcome to the newsletter that’ll get you winning your weeks, years, months, minutes, etc.

It’s just that easy 🤷‍♂️

Speaking of, big week this week for anyone gunning for the W:

→ Winning Copywriting w/ ChatGPT 🤖📝

→ Top 5 Hacks from Growth Hacker TV 📈🔑

→ AirBnB’s Early Traction 🏡🏆

Let’s Go 😤😤😤

Leveling Up Your Copywriting With ChatGPT 🤖📝

Since ChatGPT hit the scene, copywriters have realized they gotta up their game or be replaced. They’re not alone.

But real ones know: you don’t fight against innovation, you fight with it. If copywriting plays a part in your grind, ChatGPT has got to be a tool wisely used. Figure it out.

There’s a solid list of 150 ChatGPT prompts that’ll improve your craft on Notion— we figured we’d slim it down to the top 25.

Refine Your Method:

1. What is the AIDA model and how can it be used in copywriting?

2. How can I use the PAS formula to create persuasive copy?

3. How can I use copywriting to create effective lead magnets?

4. What are some common copywriting formulas and how can they be used?

5. How can I use the inverted pyramid method in my copywriting?

6. What are some common copywriting mistakes to avoid?

7. What are some ways to use storytelling to make my copywriting more compelling?

8. What are some best practices for writing persuasive copy?

9. How can I create compelling headlines that grab the reader's attention?

10. How can I use humor in my copywriting to connect with my audience?

Ask For Examples:

11. Can you provide an example of a successful copywriting campaign that utilized the power of nostalgia?

12. Can you provide an example of a successful copywriting campaign that utilized the power of the ‘what’s in it for the future and the past’ approach?

13. Can you provide an example of a successful copywriting campaign that utilized the power of repetition?

14. Can you provide a copywriting example that successfully appeals to the senses?

15. Can you provide an example of a successful copywriting campaign that utilized the power of the personal touch?

Achieve Results:

16. How can I use the power of specificity in my copywriting to increase conversions?

17. How can I use the power of the senses in my copywriting to create an emotional connection with my audience?

18. How can I use the power of anticipation in my copywriting to increase conversions?

19. How can I use copywriting to create effective sales funnels?

20. How can I use social proof in my copywriting to build trust?

21. What are some ways to use copywriting to increase email open and click-through rates?

22. How can I use the power of simplicity in my copywriting to increase conversions?

23. How can I use copywriting to increase sales on e-commerce websites?

24. How can I use emotional triggers in my copywriting to increase conversions?

25. What are some lesser-known copywriting techniques that can be used to increase conversions?

Growth Hacker TV’s Golden Nuggets: Top 5 📺📈

One man watched GrowthHacker.TV’s entire catalog. Every episode. Said it took him 3 years. That’s dedication.

But instead of doing what he did— just hack it.

 He wrote up this list of the 100 best lessons he learned. It's worth a look. But we took the 5 best.

1. All Gas, No Brakes:

“When something works, you must have a killer instinct; show no mercy and exploit it at 100%.”

— Zack Onisko, CEO, Dribbble

2. Let Your Values Drive You:

“Many people are selling the same things, so you should not only focus on the “how” but also on the “why” (your core values and your beliefs).”

— Joanna Lord, CMO, Reforge

3. Know Your Model:

Advertising is fundamentally a business model competition. It is you, competing with the other companies, to figure out who can afford to pay the most for the attention of this specific user.”

— Gagan Biyani, CEO, Maven

4. The Art of A/B:

“If you are running A/B tests, be sure to test forests first (big ideas), then trees (different strategies with landings), branches (headlines), and finally leaves (color of buttons).”

— Michia Rohrssen, VP and GM, Upstart Auto Retail

5. Lead After Doing:

“Whatever you’re doing in your business, you have to do it yourself for a few weeks or you can’t actually lead intelligently.”

— Bronson Taylor, Co-Founder at GrowthHacker.TV

Legendary Hacks: The Early Days of AirBnB 🏡🏆

Say what you will about AirBnB, but they’ve earned their place in the start-up hall of fame. For real, no doubt. And they wouldn’t have achieved their Success Story status without some high-end growth hacking in their earliest days.

AirBnb’s Most Famous, but Second Best Tactic

You’ve probably read about their “Craigslist Hack,” which has basically become the stuff of legend. If not, here’s the rundown. Basically, they began with a tactic that they knew was unscalable. The founders would browse San Francisco’s Craigslist listings, waiting for short-term lodging, B & Bs, etc. to be posted. As soon as one would drop, they would pounce. The strategy was to invite all of these hosts to their budding platform and persuade them to list. Not the easiest sell, but not the hardest either— sure, AirBnB was new, but it was more specialized than Craigslist. And it’s not like Craigslist has a reputation for trustworthiness. Plus, the hosts were incentivized: they’d earn referral benefits for joining.

From there, they were able to write the right code to automate the process and the right copy to persuade potential renters. Boom. Big step. Not only did the emails they sent out direct every potential host in the Bay area to find their way onto their new site, but the hosts would also spread the word to others they knew who had potential listings, or even people in need of accommodation.

The Craigslist Hack was a great way to develop a consistently generative source of organic traffic, as well as listings. It was manual, it wasn’t scalable, but they did it anyway. It was a start.But my take? That’s only the second best growth hack that AirBnB ever pulled.

Optimizing Quality

A closer look at AirBnB’s early days shows that the growth hacking ethos was present in less obvious ways, too. Sure, some of their other strategies may not have the same storytelling cache. Still, I argue that the Craigslist Hack deserves a silver medal at best. (And I’m right).

Interested? Well, here’s what’s up.

Maybe you’ve heard about their photography strategy before. It’s definitely been covered. But more often it’s cited as evidence re: the power of photography in marketing in a more general sense. From the analyses I’ve read, the photography strategy is rarely seen from the growth hacking lens (sorry, no pun intended, I’m trying to delete it, sorry).

At this time, AirBnB had just expanded from San Francisco into New York City, but they were definitely struggling financially.  They knew most of the suites they were offering were nice enough, but something wasn’t clicking. Basically, they were able to identify one core issue: the listings themselves didn’t look particularly appealing to the consumer. The amateur pictures snapped by homeowners themselves didn’t do the suites justice. This is obviously a problem, since it was these listings that the site’s potential users were encountering.

So, they pivoted.

Unreal.

Persuading potential customers to sacrifice the sure bet of a hotel room for some random site renting random spaces? Not easy. But it became way easier once they invested in professional photographers. Improving the photo quality on each listing proved to be an absolute gamechanger.

One move. One investment. A single switch in strategy. Exponential growth. Line. Goes. All the way. Up.

Clearly, they milked this for everything it was worth (Slides from Joe Zadeh’s Airbnb presentation at Lean Startup SXSW, Austin)

This strategic shift in quality generated massive growth re: many metrics. Revenue, activity, attention, referral rate. Suddenly, their conversions, viral coefficient, site traffic- everything, basically- went through the roof.

In my opinion, THIS is the REAL story of  how growth hacking made AirBnB into what it is today. The Craigslist hack was clever and it for sure paved a way, but the discovery that professionally photographed listings could boost so many metrics is even truer to what it means to hack growth.

By this I mean it gets to the core of what growth hacking is all about: optimize the hell out of one metric, watch and learn from how it amplifies others.

The founders were on it from the start, and they took a multi-faceted approach to growth.

They developed a solid referral program.

They pumped out travel content.

They traveled from SF to NYC and met ground-level users to get their feedback.

They tried (and failed) to get Angels to invest (check this incredible email exchange where Paul Graham almost gets Fred Wilson to invest— an opportunity Wilson regrets missing to this day).

You can’t deny the importance of any of it. But you’re not convincing me the top growth hack that defines AirBnB’s rise isn’t the photography.

Moral of the Story

So, what’s a growth hacker supposed to learn from this? Good question. There’s a few things, at least.

1. The right qualitative shift will lead to massive leaps in important quantitative metrics. Maybe it’s obvious, but sometimes the most obvious things need to be reiterated, or even re-reiterated. When you’re in the moment, it might seem counter-intuitive. But the time will come when increasing your spend to optimize a qualitative element is necessary to trigger massive gains. AirBnB was struggling financially when they flew out to NYC, met with users, bought a good camera, and brought their photography hypothesis into reality.

2. Growth happens in stages. Don’t try to move on from the first one until you’re sure that you’re fulfilling a need, and that people are willing to have that need fulfilled. AirBnB did that early. Setting up your next stage needs to be based on what you’ve learned from clearing the first. Getting your cash-flow into the green depends on that proof of concept. And, even if you stack nothing but Ws in round one,  you’ll need to adjust your business model based on the experience for that dub-stack to keep growing.

3. Growth engines are necessary, but not sufficient. There’s an evolution from manual Craigslist poaching, to automated Craigslist poaching, to user-end optimization. And it’s instructive. Keep innovating, don’t get complacent. Can you imagine if AirBnB had just kept refining their Craigslist poaching rather than pivoted to user-end optimization? Loser behavior. Whenever you get the opportunity to think bigger? Seize that.