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🎯 What are modern marketing approaches that work?

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Making a product is one big challenge. But shifting your mindset from building to marketing it might be an even bigger one.

As makers, we spend so much time improving the product. Then comes the question: How do we get people to discover it - and ultimately turn that attention into real customers and sales?

I'm not sure traditional approaches like email marketing and constantly posting on social media are enough anymore. The way people discover products is changing.

So I'm curious:

How do you approach marketing your product?

And for the marketers here:
What would you consider a modern marketing approach in 2026-2027? What would you advise an early-stage founder to focus on?

I'd love to hear different perspectives...

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If you had unlimited money and time, the answer would be all of it. Everyone knows that. But you are an early founder, so you have neither, and the real question is not which channel works. It is which channel AI can accelerate for you right now.

That test settles it quickly. Short video and live selling are where the attention is, and AI is close but not there: you still have to be in front of the camera, still have to edit, still have to show up again tomorrow. Written work crossed that line. With AI I can research, draft, and publish at a volume I could never reach alone, and the machine does not need me on camera at 9pm.

So I stopped doing video marketing entirely and went to writing only. On one of my own services, search clicks went from about 2,000 to about 16,500 in a four week window over three months, roughly eight times.

One honest caveat, because the number alone would mislead you. Signups over the same period only doubled. Traffic multiplied faster than customers did, which means the extra readers arrived with weaker intent. Volume is the part AI gives you cheaply. Deciding what is worth writing is still yours, and that is now where the whole game is.

My advice for 2026 and 2027: pick the channel where AI removes your bottleneck rather than the one that is fashionable, then spend the time you saved on choosing the topics, not on producing more.

 Thanks a lot for sharing such valuable and detailed experience!

I completely agree with what you said about video versus written content, especially the difference between traffic and actual users. And of course, I'm taking your advice for 2026 - 2027! =)

What are you building? Do you handle your own marketing, or have a dedicated marketing specialist?

 Thank you for reading it properly, and for asking.

Since 2004 I have run something like Upwork for the Japanese market. Video platforms did not exist back then, so there was no choice: I did SEO, relentlessly, for years. That is the reason the business is still alive 22 years later, and it is why I answered your question the way I did.

More recently I have taken on a new challenge and started shipping Mac apps and several new SaaS products. The Mac side is SpaceDeck, a browser that gives every web app its own space so two accounts of the same service stay signed in side by side, along with Kagemusha, Caltimate and Koffret. The web side is Rizaflow, Pinateca, Halict and Tsudoo.

On your second question: all of it myself, and the reason is older than the business. When I was young I was the one who was good with computers, which made me useful. Friends and people senior to me kept turning up with a business they wanted me to build for them. After enough of that I stopped wanting partners at all. I also just like working at my own pace.

Underneath that was a belief: that one person could build something big without a team and without funding. For most of those 22 years that was a bet I was quietly losing and surviving anyway. AI is the first thing that has made it actually true. I am still one person, but with AI staff my output is something like a hundred times what it was. I do not mean that as a figure of speech.

 I'm really impressed by your background and the products you've founded.

Yes, I think this is the best era for one-man bands nowadays! シ

Wishing you lots of success! And I'm curious, are you planning to launch your products here on PH?

 Yes, at some point I'd like to show what I've built.

But plenty of people here already have a product and are thinking exactly the same thing, and if everyone only promotes their own, the place gets worse for everybody. I run a platform myself, so I know how that goes.

I've only been here a few days. For now I'd rather read threads like yours and get to know a few people properly. Your question about what broke while building is the one I've enjoyed most so far.

Good talking with you.

We use a combination of social media and in-person marketing, especially in universities and sponsoring hackathons.

 Is your product related to education? I’m especially interested in the part about introducing it in universities. How does that work?

 Not at all actually. Our first employee is a student at one of the largest state universities in the country that has a large entrepreneurship program. Many students already have their own small businesses, so that is an easier audience to market to since they're young and want to bootstrap their businesses.

 that's really interesting! Thanks for the answer

Working in B2B AI, the thing that's changed most for us is that buyers now ask an LLM before they ask a salesperson. So a lot of "marketing" has become making sure the product is described clearly and consistently everywhere the models read: docs, comparison pages, forum threads like this one. The old channels still work, but the first impression increasingly happens somewhere you don't control. Curious if consumer-side makers here are seeing the same shift.

 I agree that buyers increasingly ask an LLM first, and it's important to have relevant information everywhere possible.

I think something important is to really niche down to an absurdly specific icp

 Finding the icp is definitely a path that needs to be walked =)

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