Founder Lesson
Marketing has always baffled me. This is the main reason why I rely so much on product & brand - I want new customer awareness and conversion to be as easy as possible, so I have to rely less on traditional marketing after launch.

Because marketing has always been a nagging worry of mine, I’m always trying to learn all that I can about it. One rule of thumb that I’ve grown to appreciate is that there are no silver bullets. The discipline of marketing your business is a consistent/measurable/ongoing activity. Start testing & measuring from the very beginning and never stop.

Another marketing dynamic that’s always fascinated me is how individual startups use particular tactics in the very early days to get the early traction necessary to get off the ground. From my experience, the way founders determine initial marketing tactics is a combination of...

• A marketing tactic that aligns well with the business model. A great example of this is how TOMS gives one pair of shoes to someone needy for every pair that was purchased. This wasn’t a bolt-on marketing tactic…it was ingrained into the business model/vision/culture of TOMS.

• A marketing tactic where one of the founders has some expertise and they really push hard on this tactic for early traction. This is the lesson of this podcast.

In this podcast/video, a founder who had previous success with street teams describes how he used those tactics to jump-start his most recent startup.

Even if you don’t have any need for street teams, this lesson is a great example of how to really focus on a single marketing tactic to produce results.

Get Right to the Lesson
I’d recommend listening to the entire thing, but to get right to the point go to minute 27:38 of this podcast/video.

Thanks to these folks for helping us all learn faster
Sonny Mayugba (@SonnyMayugba), co-founder of Requested (@requestedapp)
This Week In Startups (@TWistartups )
Jason Calacanis (@jason)
Jacqui Deegan (@jacqKD)
Jacob Beemer (@jacobbeemer)

Please let me and others know what you think about this topic
Email me privately at dave@switchyards.com or let's discuss publicly at @davempayne.