đŸ”„ Startup sizzle

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Happy Friday! Thanks to everyone who checked out the inaugural edition of our new marketing strategy video series, Inspector Lander. If you missed it, you can watch it here. And if you found it useful (or not), hit reply and let us know.

Discussed in today’s edition: Startups, ChatGPT, and Twitter. Plus what most freelancers be like once they finish the project, and losing sleep over lookalikes.

Read time: 2 minutes and 39 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • New business applications in the U.S. up 44% from 2019. Startups continue to sizzle, as over 5 million new businesses were birthed in the U.S. last year.
  • Job application written by ChatGPT beats out 80% of human candidates. The owner of a communications consulting firm slipped it in as part of a blind test for his recruiting team. Serious question: if the application was better, does this qualify as a pass or fail?
  • Twitter confirms 3rd-party clients got the banhammer. The official statement came via the company’s Dev account in a somewhat vague tweet. FWIW — 3rd-party client Tweetdeck is still operational, which CEO Elon Musk has previously said he supports.

Working With Clients

Once They Finish the Project, Most Freelancers Be Like

Clients aren’t mind readers.

So if you want them to know


A) You value their business

B) You’re invested in their results (not just $)

C) And you’d be open to working with them again

Then say so by following up with them after you finish a project.

Most freelancers go radio silent once the last deliverable has been greenlit and the final invoice has been paid.

Don’t be like that.

Not only does following up signal you really care


But it opens the door to upsell or cross-sell opportunities. 

There may be another project in the pipeline you’d be perfect for.

More importantly, it gives the client an opportunity to share feedback with you on how the project went from their perspective.

Which is valuable intel for anyone looking to work with bigger and better clients.

Moral of the story is


Put a bow on every project, successful or not, by following up after it’s done.

From The Paid Ads Gig

Losing Sleep Over Lookalikes

If you’re familiar with Facebook ads, chances are you’ve heard of a “lookalike audience.”

This is where you upload a custom audience of people who’ve taken a specific action


Like opted in to your email list


Bought a low ticket product


Gotten on a sales call with you


Etc etc


Then you tell Facebook to go and find people on the platform who “look” most similar to the audience you’ve uploaded.

Anyway


This type of ad targeting typically does quite well.

But here’s a little-known tactic most media buyers don’t know about:

Testing stacked lookalike audiences.

What does this mean?

Let’s say you’re running a high-ticket course or consulting business


Instead of testing a 2% buyer lookalike audience on its own, for example


You might throw in a 2% buyer, 2% application submitted, 2% call booked, and 2% subscriber lookalike all into the SAME ad set.

(assuming you’ve got at least ~1,000 names in each source audience)

This gives the almighty algo much more data to play with


And can (sometimes) lead to killer performance right out of the gate.

Now, like any media buying strategy, it doesn’t work every time


But if you’re looking for new split-tests to run so you can scale up your ad account


Give this one a try and let us know how it goes đŸ’Ș

Gig Alerts

Looking for clients? These freelance jobs were posted on Upwork in the last 24 hours:

NOTE: We only share job postings from Upwork. We’ve found it to be the most trustworthy platform with the highest-quality clients. Furthermore, job postings must be for high-income skills like copywriting, media buying, funnel building, graphic design, remote closing, etc in order to qualify.

In Case You Missed It:

Quote of the Day


“It is surprising how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

— Abraham Lincoln