Content Marketing Playbooks
How founders use content to grow — the formats that drove signups, the distribution that gave each piece a second life, and the cadence that kept it sustainable for a tiny team.
193 tactics · page 4 of 7
“hey here are the top scams that are hitting Austin right now along with audio now we'll talk about it... if you give a reporter something to work with boom they're just going to write the story”
Give reporters local data, not category stats
Instead of pitching 'robocalls are bad' (a story already written thousands of times), Aaron sent reporters city-specific data: the exact scams hitting their city right now, with audio recordings attached. The story wrote itself because the reporter just had to listen and localize. This approach generated 2–3 press mentions per week for 10 years with zero PR budget or media spend.
“there's no webmd for female health we have the space to take this market share we can command all this seo value right so we started building out this amazing content team... and it was all for free and it was like wait a minute this is driving seo traffic but are we converting it”
Build free SEO content, then paywall it once you have the audience
Clue hired a former New Yorker editor to build scientifically rigorous female health content — effectively becoming the WebMD for female health. That content drove massive SEO traffic for free for years. Eventually the team paywalled the premium content, converting an organic moat into a subscription driver. Establish authority and traffic first, then monetize the asset.
“people forget why Spotify wrapped really took off... it took this like passive consumption user behavior and then it turned it into this natural sharable experience... you have to think about what your natural sharable moment in your product is right”
Find the natural sharable moment in your product instead of copying Spotify Wrapped
Most Wrapped clones fail because they copy the format but not the mechanism. Spotify Wrapped worked because it surfaced something users already felt identity around (their music taste) and made it beautiful and shareable. A coffee shop's annual spending summary does not carry that same identity weight. The question is not 'how can we do Wrapped?' but 'what do our users already want to brag about?'
“we built a custom GPT where we've analyzed what's all the top performing meta and Google copy and what's all our bottom performing meta and Google copy so we normally take what's our like brand X post and then we pass it through this custom GPT which will then iterate on it into like the high performing meta and Google copy”
Build a custom GPT trained on your best and worst ad copy
The ElevenLabs growth team built an internal GPT trained on their historic ad performance data — best and worst copy tagged. A launch post enters the GPT and exits as high-performing ad variants. The system makes institutional knowledge about what converts explicit and reusable, instead of locked in one person's head. Any team running paid ads can build this for a few hours of prompt engineering.
“on Instagram you are rewarded for building up a following and then over time you spend your time trying to extract value and trying to monetize that audience that you've acquired so you build this million per following and you try to sell them relevant goods and services Tik Tok is the exact opposite where most of the content that's being consumed is through the for you page”
TikTok is a fresh auditorium every video — unlearn everything from Instagram
Instagram creators optimize for a loyal following they sell to repeatedly. TikTok's For You Page means most viewers have never seen the creator before and never will again. Ladder had to coach their fitness influencers to stop referencing yesterday's post and treat every video as a self-contained pitch to strangers. The mental model shift: every TikTok video is a cold ad, not a community update.
“My brother and I founded this app, we saw a need because our mother was in hospice and there was no elder care app that also integrated messaging in this way... those kinds of opportunities allow you to do that storytelling above and beyond but you have to hit zero first.”
Your Founder Story Is A Pitch Angle — But Only After Your Product Earns Zero
Personal founder origin stories can be compelling press angles — but only once the product itself is solid and interesting. Panzarino's rule: hit zero first (working product, clear problem, good execution), then layer the human story on top. A tearjerker origin around a mediocre app goes nowhere. A great app with a great story gets two hooks for the price of one pitch.
“By the time they get halfway through the video they've already given the algorithm the 50-60-70% watch time and then you plug the app.”
Bury the Product Reveal Past 50% Watch Time — Let the Algorithm See Engagement Before the Sales Pitch
TikTok's algorithm rewards completion rate. If a video feels like an ad from the first second, viewers skip and the algorithm buries it. Joseph's template: lead with relatable content that earns the watch time, then introduce the app naturally at the 50%+ mark as a solution to the pain point just demonstrated. The ADHD hack TikToks exemplify this — genuine tips first, app mention last, delivered to an audience already nodding along.
“It's an infinitely repeatable tactic. Spotify wrapped if you just remake Spotify wrapped but for XYZ niche — that concept goes viral every single year reliably.”
Spotify Wrapped Format Goes Viral Every Year — Remake It for Your Niche
Joseph points to Verse app as the recent example: they generated an AI image of a bedroom matching the user's music taste, rode that Spotify-Wrapped format to the #1 App Store slot for several days. The tactic works because it's inherently shareable (people love seeing personalized content about themselves), seasonal (it anchors to year-end), and novel when adapted to a new category. Any app can find its version of the 'year in review' hook.
“I scroll on TikTok and I have swipe files — multiple folders. Every time I watch a video that seems like it was paid for I put it into one of my four categories.”
Build a Swipe File of Competitor TikTok Ads — Consuming with a Producer Mindset Beats Any Tool
Joseph's competitive intelligence method: four category folders (talking head, skit, slideshow, product demo) where he drops every branded TikTok he spots while scrolling. Over time the swipe file reveals patterns — which hooks repeat across categories, which content formats are being AB-tested at scale, which app niches are heating up. He supplements this with TikTok's first-party ad library and Creator Marketplace filters. The mindset shift is consuming like a producer, not a passive user.
“Here's five controversial rules that we had at our wedding recently... the no taking pictures kind of hints at the last slide — oh by the way I had the guests use the POV app. It's part of a storyline rather than saying hey go download this thing.”
Embed the App Into a Storyline Instead of Saying "Link in Bio" — Authentic Placement Converts on FYP
POV, a disposable camera app, went viral by embedding the product reveal inside wedding stories: five controversial rules, one of which required guests to use the app. By the time the audience reached the app mention, they were emotionally invested in the narrative and the product demonstration was natural. Joseph's rule: on the FYP where there's no pre-existing trust, any 'Link in Bio'-style CTA kills virality. The product has to feel like the organic resolution to the story, not a commercial break.
“Do we want to talk about pains do we want to talk about the gains of what people are trying to get in terms of benefits do we want to talk very literally about the jobs to be done do we want to talk about the situations when you're experiencing this this could help you there's different ways of bringing across.”
Test Four JTBD Message Frames: Pain, Gain, Literal Job, and Situational Trigger
Within the JTBD framework, there are at least four distinct ways to frame the same underlying job: the pain being avoided, the gain being sought, the literal task description, or the situational trigger that activates the need. Each resonates differently with different user segments. Running all four as ad variants tells you which emotional register your highest-converting users are operating in.
“I really believe strongly in also just spending a few hours just completely immersing yourself in the language you'll have this extra benefit on top of that with the messaging for the copy side of it where suddenly your language becomes more human it starts to resonate more.”
Immerse Yourself in User Reviews to Write Copy That Sounds Human, Not AI
AI can summarize reviews fast, but the human fluency that makes copy actually land comes from extended immersion. Daphne recommends spending several hours reading reviews directly — not just logging themes — until you start to absorb the specific words, phrases, and emotional textures users actually use. The output is copy that sounds like the user wrote it, not a marketing team.
“2025 with Meta's Andromeda has been all about creative diversity It being more important to focus on volume of diverse creatives as opposed to just volume and pumping out a arbitrary number of creatives.”
2025 Shifts From Creative Volume to Creative Diversity — Andromeda Changed the Game
Meta's Andromeda model update changed the optimisation signal. Where 2024 rewarded raw creative volume (more ads = more surface area for the algorithm), 2025 rewards a diverse creative set — different hooks, angles, formats, and concepts. Pumping out fifty variations of the same concept no longer works; the algorithm needs genuine concept diversity to explore.
“It's never been so easy to just copy competitors You can literally see what ads they're running on Facebook ad library clone them with AI and push them live But I don't think that's going to work... I think that's going to lead to crazy concept fatigue and trend fatigue.”
Cloning Competitors' Ads With AI Will Cause Concept Fatigue — Original Strategy Wins
AI makes competitor cloning trivially easy — pick an ad from the Facebook Ad Library, replicate it with a video generation model, run it. Nathan argues this becomes a race to the bottom: when every app in a category runs the same cloned concept, the concept saturates immediately and CPMs spike for everyone. Genuine concept origination — finding angles competitors haven't run — is the lasting moat.
“a lot of people like sell the flower but what you really want to sell is the badass with the Fireballs attacking the boss... you're selling Mario actually being able to save the princess and so it's cool that as you get through those wise it's not just about building a better product but it's actually about better marketing the product that you've built.”
Sell the Princess, Not the Flower — Market the Outcome, Not the Feature
The Mario analogy maps exactly to consumer finance: showing a clean dashboard is selling the flower; showing someone who no longer fights with their partner about money is selling the princess. Every marketing touchpoint — App Store screenshots, onboarding copy, ad creative — should anchor to the end state the user is desperate for, not the specific UI feature that delivers it.
“to solve this problem for people yes you need like a product and a tool but you also need some of Education to help folks understand some of these Concepts... our hope is that we can provide sort of the missing personal finance course.”
Build Financial Education Content to Solve the Problem, Not Just Market the Tool
After the Mint migration spike, Monarch reinvested revenue into a content team with the mission of teaching personal finance fundamentals — not just growing the app. This strategy works doubly: it attracts users still in the problem-awareness stage, and it deepens the product's value proposition beyond the software itself. For any app solving a complex behavior-change problem, owning the education layer creates a content moat that compounds over time.
“Short simple straight to the point subject lines, a couple of lines of body copy — and then you can always attach the press kit with high resolution images, all the information they could ever want about the founders, the app, its purpose, and then the images or assets necessary.”
Short pitch, deep press kit — give writers everything to write the story without a follow-up
The pitch email gets two seconds. The press kit is what closes the story. The ideal format is a few personal sentences in the email body, and a linked press kit with hi-res images, founder backstory, feature list, App Store copy, and a TestFlight link — so a writer can go from reading the subject line to publishing with zero additional outreach. The goal is removing every possible friction point.
“You want to tease them with your story — I've got a really compelling story XY I think is really cool, but then let them go wait, really? Like how did that happen? — pulling out the details from there.”
Don't pre-write the story — tease the details and let the writer pull them out
Founders sometimes send pre-written narratives about themselves inside their pitch — even full draft stories. Panzarino says this kills the writer's engagement: there's nothing left to discover. The smarter move is a compelling tease — enough to make the writer curious — then offer direct contact for the real interview. The writer needs to feel like they're unearthing something, not reformatting your copy.
“we got garyvee tweeting about us like a video from us so that was like a viral video demoing the app and we kind of in the thinking was if some videos of demoing photo room are viral it probably works also as ads”
If an Organic Demo Video Goes Viral, Use It Verbatim as a Paid Ad
GaryVee tweeted a PhotoRoom demo and it went viral organically. The insight: if a demo video earns organic attention without a budget, it will outperform polished ads because it already passed a real engagement test. They used those same viral clips as Facebook ad creatives and found them highly efficient — a cheap way to bootstrap paid UA with pre-validated creative.
“the way you target audiences is by actually crafting the the targeting into the into the ad itself and facebook still has like first party data on engagement on the ad and click-through rate and view rate that shows them oh yeah they said it looks like these people like it”
Post-ATT: Creative IS the Targeting — Facebook Reads Engagement Signals on the Ad Itself
After ATT removed third-party audience signals, Facebook shifted to using first-party engagement data on the ad itself — view rate, CTR, completion rate — to infer which audience segments the ad resonates with. The practical implication: demographic and interest targeting matter less; the creative must encode the targeting. A fitness-for-seniors ad does not need an age-targeting layer if the creative itself filters the right audience.
“There was one blog post I wrote that really struck a chord with people and it continues to do so — 'The Three Flaws in Couch to 5K.' Over time it just organically seemed to show up quite high when you search for couch to 5k.”
One Cornerstone Post Can Be a Whole Business — None to Run Was Built on a Single Article
Mark Kennedy's entire community was seeded by a single blog post critiquing Couch to 5K's ramp-up rate. It ranked for high-intent search queries, captured email subscribers via a free PDF offer, and to this day drives most None to Run discovery. The lesson: one deeply resonant piece of content targeting a specific frustration can outperform years of broad content publishing.
“Here's the top five apps I use for tracking my progress in the gym — you name five different apps and then your app is one of them. It's a genuinely useful video, similar to SEO strategy where it's like these are the top five credit cards — it's still genuinely useful and a certain percentage will follow the call to action.”
"Top 5 apps for X" list format — name competitors, yours is one — drives organic app installs
Positioning your app inside a curated 'best of' list feels editorial, not promotional. Naming real competitors lends credibility, and the viewer gets genuine value — which means they watch longer and trust the CTA more. It mirrors how affiliate SEO content works: be useful enough that the recommendation feels earned, not forced.
“They directly mention the app but it's part of a storyline rather than saying 'Hey go download this thing.' The CTA is: I had the guests use the POV app — so it's part of a story rather than a direct push.”
Embed the app inside a real storyline — the CTA is the natural conclusion, not a sales pitch
The POV app's wedding-slideshow content is a masterclass: five controversial wedding rules builds curiosity, 'no photos' rule creates the setup, then the resolution is 'I had guests use the POV disposable-camera app.' The install mention feels like the punchline of a story, not an ad. This storyline-embedding technique keeps completion rates high and removes the sales-pitch smell.
“The first slide is 'Here's five controversial rules that we had at our wedding recently.' That's a great hook — it's a very negative, interesting hook — people are like 'Oh what are the controversial rules?' And then the rules are controversial.”
Open with a controversial hook — negative framing drives curiosity better than benefit framing
Negative or controversial hooks outperform benefit-first hooks on TikTok because they trigger a curiosity gap the viewer has to resolve. 'Five controversial wedding rules' makes scrolling past feel like leaving an open question unanswered. Once you have watch time, you've earned the right to introduce your app as the solution or tool inside the story.
“if meta is one of your main channels then that already creates coherence people click through they see I've landed in the right place and this is the app that I was looking at that often already creates an uplift”
Bring Meta creative winners into your App Store listing — coherence from ad to store lifts CVR
When a Meta ad creative proves itself, the same visual language can move straight into App Store screenshots and preview videos. Users who click through and see the same framing feel immediate recognition — this is the app I was looking at — which reduces bounce before the paywall. Meta becomes both an acquisition engine and a continuous A/B testing lab for store messaging.
“The most important thing is volume. You put out 300 creatives — one out of 300 will blow up but you don't know which one. No one is a genius who can tell you. If they tell you that, that's just the algorithm — Instagram decides which one is gonna be really effective.”
Volume Wins Ad Creative — No One Can Predict Which 1 of 300 Will Blow Up
Cliff's core ad philosophy: produce as many creatives as possible, because predicting a winner is impossible. This is true for TikTok creators, YouTube influencers, and SEO writers as well — volume is the only reliable path to finding what works. Speechify produces 120 new creative pieces per week. At that cadence, the question shifts from 'will this work?' to 'how fast can we find the one that does?'
“We call this character Cruz Silver — a hyperbolized version of Cliff. He talks in a much deeper voice: 'Hi I'm Cliff founder of Speechify. What is Speechify? Well — you get stuff you need to read and we read it to you. Instantly.' Dead stare on the camera. Those convert really well because they're hilarious.”
Founder-as-Character Ad Persona — The Cruz Silver Playbook
Cliff accidentally discovered that a ridiculous founder-as-character persona converts better than polished product demos. Cruz Silver — Cliff in character with red headphones, deep voice, dead stare — became a meme that drove brand awareness far beyond its direct-response contribution. The key insight: leaning into absurdity builds memorability, and memorability compounds into lower CAC over time as the brand becomes the ad.
“I was like what are good ads — one of them is the Old Spice 'I'm on a horse' commercial. Who's got a horse? I posted to Instagram and turns out Logan Paul had a horse at his ranch. I went to the ranch, mounted his horse, and shot a Bold Spice commercial — and it crushed it on YouTube.”
Parody a Famous Ad Format — Old Spice on Logan Paul's Horse Crushed YouTube
Cliff's ad creative strategy includes duplicating proven formats from other industries: if a format works somewhere else, adapt it for Speechify. The Old Spice parody worked on YouTube because the cultural reference was already loaded with brand equity. Separately, Cliff identified a structural advantage: YouTube is owned by Google, which also runs the Chrome Store, so attribution from YouTube ads to Chrome extension downloads is unusually accurate — a channel arbitrage most apps miss.
“What I'm doing now is finding people who have crushed it on TikTok making TikToks and hiring those people to help me come up with the content for new ads — because hey, I'm funny but I'm not the funniest person in the room. Let me find the funniest people.”
Hire TikTok Creators for Ad Content — Find the Funniest People, Not Ad Agencies
Rather than hiring a creative agency or a traditional CMO, Cliff recruits people who already have a proven track record of making viral short-form content on TikTok. The insight: the creative skill that works on TikTok — fast hooks, cultural fluency, comedic timing — is exactly the skill that works in paid social ads. Paying for a track record of organic virality is more efficient than paying an agency to guess what might work.
“Just like an investor with an investment portfolio — you don't want 80% of your investments tied up in one creative. If it's an Nvidia you've got 30% max. Do anything more than that and you run a little bit of risk. Creative diversification is very important — it was a hard lesson learned.”
Portfolio-Diversify Ad Creative — Cap Any Single Creative at 30% Like an Investment
After losing their top creative overnight, Pray.com rebuilt their Meta strategy with explicit concentration limits: no single creative gets more than 30% of spend, the same way a smart investor caps a single stock position. They now test aggressively across formats borrowed from gaming, dating, and other verticals. The discipline forces continuous creative development rather than riding one winner until it dies.