What were the best marketing learnings or advice you have been given?
Formally, I studied marketing, but honestly, that stuff from textbooks didn't help me at all. :D (sounds like wasting 5 years of my life, nwm)
The best marketing things I have learned weren't from courses, but through:
– own projects
– calls with someone better than me
– random social media posts or interviews on YouTube
The ones that stuck in my mind the most were:
Find someone/product that is 10x better, copy that, add something of your own that is useful, and ship it.
Show what you are doing (in short, be active), because if you don't show yourself, no one will know about you (my classmate said when I was starting yoga classes).
Don't launch an affiliate program when you are starting. Launch it only when at least 50 people ask if your company has something like that. (We launched it when we had ~1 million downloads in the Play Store, but no one was interested. Now we have 9M, and people are already asking about it on their own.
What marketing learnings/advice were so impactful that you would welcome them in your business and life earlier?
Replies
minimalist phone: creating folders
@blakeskrable so the main idea is to be... prompt and cruel? :D
One thing I wish I learned earlier: distribution matters more than the product at the start.
You can fix a product with feedback, but no one can fix something they never see.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@combajt In this AI era, marketing matters more; that's a fact. Almost everyone can replicate a product :) Approach is harder to copy-paste :)
@busmark_w_nika Exactly! I’ve seen startups with decent products fail just because their launch and distribution weren’t thought through. Focusing on how people discover your product early is half the battle. Curious — what strategies have worked best for you in this AI space?
@busmark_w_nika @combajt Distribution is underrated for sure, you can't fix what no one sees. Curious though whether you think product and distribution are as separate as we sometimes treat them? In the AI era especially, a great first experience can become its own distribution channel through word of mouth. Product is marketing, but unfortunately not many founders treat it that way.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@combajt Not gonna lie, I do not have my own product, but for the people I work with, one client is using a personal brand for building awareness, and the other one is using paid ads + UGC. That one with a personal brand is more solo, the other one with ads and UGC is bigger with a team.
The biggest marketing mistake we've seen founders make is thinking marketing starts after the product is built. But, the product itself is marketing. How it feels the first time someone uses it, what it does and doesn't do, who it's clearly designed for, that's all sending a signal before any dollars are spent on a campaign.
Pricing is the same. It's one of the most powerful marketing signals; it tells the market who you're for before they've even tried it. Get it wrong early and you've already anchored expectations that are really hard to shift.
The best founders I've met are ruthless about positioning and they never stop iterating on it. Getting more and more specific about the exact pain they're solving, not less. If you're targeting everyone, you're really targeting no one.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@shanntlt Two learnings are new to me, but the 3rd one have heard many times and agree! :)