Acquisition Channel Opportunities: 2021's Most Popular Content, TikTok, App Stores

This week, I sifted through over 4300 marketing/tech articles in search of news-as-opportunities for you to get more paying users. Here are the top 3 I found:

1. Here are the most popular subreddits, tweets and searches of 2021

The news: Reddit, Twitter and Google have all released a 2021 recap of the most popular subreddit posts, business tweets and trending searches, respectively.

What's trending? Plenty of interesting stuff. Reddit's most popular Q&A of 2021 was a lobster diver who recently survived being inside a whale. The most popular brand Tweet tapped into the nostalgia for millennials everywhere. And the most popular TV show search on Google was...well, you guess it. Squid Game.

The opportunity: What better way to create viral content for your business than to be inspired by what's already working? This is especially true for Reddit where founders often make the mistake of being overly promotional in their posts. So dip your toes into the inspiration pool and watch the results pour in!

2. A leaked document shows what makes TikTok so addictive

The news: The New York Times obtained a leaked document that reveals the science and purpose behind Tiktok algorithms.

What TikTok optimizes for: TikTok optimizes for two metrics: "retention" (whether a user comes back) and "time spent" (how long they look at a particular video/videos).

TikTok's recipe for getting you hooked: It's a combination of several things:

• Highly personalized feed. TikTok's AI takes into consideration all kinds of things (from what the people you follow watch to how long you watch something) to show you content you want.
• Open the app, consume immediately. The "moment to instant gratification" is immediate.
• Videos are shown on an endless loop on purpose. Compare this to Netflix or YouTube, for example, where you have a pause before the next episode starts.
• Quick and short is the name of the game. It's not only about instant gratification, it's about frequent instant gratification

The opportunity: Can you take any of these principles and apply them to your app/SaaS? In SaaS for example, there's a principle called "the Aha! moment" that could help you convert free trials to paying customers. TikTok has the "Aha!" moment nailed by immediately showing videos, for example.

TikTok shows videos on an endless loop because they want to remove friction. There are endless opportunities for removing friction within your app (one of them is on your signup page, for example.)

3. Apple will allow you to A/B split test your app marketing pages

The news: Last week, Apple released two new features to put your App Store product pages on steroids:

• A/B test your product pages. This feature will allow you to try out alternate versions of your app's product pages. You can try different icons, app previews and screenshots and learn which version gets the best results.
• Custom product pages In addition, you'll be able to create more versions of your app's product page where you can highlight specific content or features. These product pages will be discoverable through unique URLs you can share.

The opportunity: A/B testing is powerful. Test meaningfully different things, and you'll (usually) get meaningfully different results. If your product page converts at 2% but suddenly converts at 5%, that makes all acquisition channels you currently use far more powerful than they are.