The art of choosing and "testing" marketing channels
I’ve been a professional marketer since 2010. I’ve started more side projects than I can count, and I’ve built multiple six-figure annual revenue companies (most recently EditorNinja) from scratch. I’ve advised hundreds of software founders on marketing over the last four years, pulling from my experience building my own companies and making every mistake along the way.
The challenge most software developers have is marketing their products. I see many who “start testing some marketing” without actually committing to it, getting into the minutiae before they have anything to actually analyze, and when they don’t see crazy results from that lack of investment they get discouraged and say that “marketing doesn’t work for me.”
Either that, or they avoid marketing from the start because they don't like doing it or think it's slimy.
I’m here today to help you avoid this trap and instead have a strong chance of actually reaching your goals with your software product — through marketing.
The goal of this article is to help you unlock new levels of growth by changing your mindset around marketing, finding the right marketing channels, and maximizing them before starting a new marketing channel.
Yes, You Need Marketing
Naval Ravikant, entrepreneur and co-founder of AngelList, once tweeted, “You’re doing sales because you failed at marketing. You’re doing marketing because you failed at product.”
Naval’s a smart guy, but I agree with some of the top replies to his tweet that he’s mostly wrong. It’s true that a great product can improve marketing and sales efficiency, but he misses that every product needs both a great offer and great marketing.
If you listen to entrepreneur and author Alex Hormozi, you know this is true. He and his wife Leila built an incredible business called Gym Launch, which took them from essentially broke one year to a net worth of eight figures just a few years later, and they did it with an incredible offer that they marketed well to an engaged audience.
Notice — they built an offer (a “product”), and then marketed it. Both are necessary.
So let’s talk about picking your first marketing channel.
How to Pick Your First Marketing Channel
Investor Rob Walling said it well recently on this episode of the Startups For The Rest Of Us podcast (around minute 10:30):
“Great products do not market themselves, and as a developer we don’t want to have to market… Realistically, [things don’t just go viral]. If you’re a developer and you feel like you don’t want to market, you don’t want to bother with cold outreach…then just pick an idea where that doesn’t need to be the marketing channel.”
- Ask yourself what you believe about marketing. If you think cold outreach is spammy, then don’t pick a product or offering that needs cold outreach in order to scale.
- What is your skill set? If you hate writing but love writing code, pick a product that you can market through “engineering as marketing.” Don’t pick a product or service to build that you can’t market in that way!
- What are your goals and what is your timeline to seeing those results? Can you commit to the time required to achieve those results? Too many people make the mistake of expecting to see returns from very little effort. The truth is you’re going to have to put in time and effort ahead of seeing results, and often you’ll have to put that time and effort in for much longer than you’re comfortable with before you start to see results.
- Most importantly, who is your ideal customer, where do they hang out online, and what sort of messaging are they going to respond to so that they’ll sign up for your product or schedule a sales demo?
After you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to do your research and figure out the investment of both time and money that you think will be needed to achieve your goals.
The likelihood of a marketing channel working for your business comes down to this:
- Do you have the skill set to run it, could you get that skill set fast enough, or do you have the budget to hire someone with the skill set?
- Do you have the needed budget to properly test a channel, based on the amount you would be willing to pay to acquire a customer? For example, if you are selling a $100 per month subscription and you’re willing to have a 90-day payback period and you need to get ten customers to consider the channel “successful,” do you have $3,000 to spend? If not, you should probably use a different channel.
When and How to Test Additional Marketing Channels
Change your mindset around marketing channels
A common mistake I see entrepreneurs making — especially entrepreneurs who are more development- or product-focused — is trying too many channels at once.
A founder or a marketer finds a channel that kind of works. The results aren’t amazing, but they’re ok. There are at least some results.
Then they go and start a new channel, instead of trying to improve the existing results and maximize the channel they already have. This leads to two channels that are kind of working, but not really. There’s no process built around them. Nothing’s been truly optimized.
What's needed is a change in mindset — a commitment to seeing a channel through. You will see more success if you maximize the first channel, and only start new channels when you see the first channel stop working well enough to justify increasing investment in the channel.
What to do once you've maximized your first channel
If you’ve maximized your first channel, it’s probably time to start a new channel. But how do you do it well? After all, finding the first channel was hard enough.
I have a couple of rules for starting a new marketing channel.
1. Commit to a long-enough period of time
First, you have to commit enough time to make the channel work, which means you are profitably acquiring customers after that period, or you have a clear path to the channel being profitable.
I recommend allowing yourself one quarter, which is three months, to even see any results at all. There will be a lot to set up — creative to get in place, messaging to write, landing pages to build, audiences to build, meta tags to add to your site, and much more. This means you have to be willing to “lose” a full quarter’s worth of investment.
After that first quarter, the next quarter will be spent optimizing and hopefully scaling. After the second quarter, you should be profitable or have a clear path to being profitable. You will have honed your creative, messaging, landing pages, and much more.
I don’t recommend starting a new marketing channel more than every 90 days. In fact, I usually don’t recommend starting a new marketing channel more than once every year. It simply takes that long to dial in a channel and create processes and a team around it so that it runs without your deep involvement.
2. Properly resource the channel
Second, you need to properly resource the channel. The most common mistake entrepreneurs make when “testing” a new channel is not giving it enough budget and/or time to make it successful.
If we’re talking about an inbound channel, like content marketing, entrepreneurs usually don’t commit for long enough. If we’re talking about an ads channel, they usually don’t give it enough budget.
Think about it this way.
If your product or service costs $500 per month, and you’re willing to spend $1,500 to acquire a customer, and your conversion rate from cold traffic to “leads” is 5%, leads to calls is 25%, and calls to customers is 25%, how much do you need to spend to get one customer?
Let’s run the math. To get 1 customer, you need 4 calls. To get 4 calls, you need 16 leads. To get 16 leads (at a 5% conversion rate), you need 320 clicks.
So you need to get clicks for $4.68 on average ($1,500/320). You need to get leads for $74.88 each. You need to get calls for $299.52. And you need to close 25% of those to acquire customers for your target amount.
These are all funnel numbers you need to know and optimize towards. You likely won’t achieve them at first, but they are the numbers you should be targeting to make the channel work.
Now that you know those numbers, you can dial your budget up or down to hit your goals.
For example, if you want to get four new customers in a month then you need to spend at least $6,000. Once you’re hitting the needed economics, you can scale that channel until you start seeing diminishing returns, at which time you can investigate the next channel.
A Final Word
Every product needs marketing. The days of building a product that people just find and use are over, if they ever existed.
If you want to hit your goals and achieve success with your company, you need to market it. To market it effectively, you need to play to your strengths.
Once you start trying a new channel, give it at least six months, or two quarters, to make it profitable. Trying new channels more often than that will lead you to have a lot of marketing channels that kind of work, but where nothing is a clear winner.
After you find a channel that works, maximize it before investing in a new channel.
Good luck and happy marketing!
Protect your momentum like your life depends on It
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It's controversial, but I like that Naval quote.
Imo it's just better advice for high-growth startups than it is for indie hackers.
If you're trying to reach a million people and be a billion dollar company, then it often is for the best to have product-based growth so strong that you can suck at marketing and still do well (see: Stripe). And, failing that, it really is for the best to have marketing so good that you can suck at sales and still do well.
But if you're an indie hacker, I'd do the opposite and focus on sales first. Having a sales driven business forces you to choose a high price point (otherwise, sales isn't a profitable distribution method), which forces you to solve a valuable problem.
My favorite example will always be Key Values, where Lynne is making $5-10k a year per customer, sometimes with just one or two phone calls.
You make a good point, but i'd actually take the other side and say that these billion and trillion dollar companies have mastered sales and marketing to the point where it just looks effortless, but actually a ton of effort has gone in. For example
Stripe has the reputation of being developer focused because 1) it is and 2) the founders and team cultivated this image and got it to spread.
Tesla has famously not spent a dollar on marketing (well until a few months ago) but Elon is a master at getting attention and selling products.
All this to say that sales and marketing are extremely important at any level, just that the best companies in the world are so good at it that they make it appear effortless.
I very much agree! Thanks for the comment!
Spot on. Particularly the bit about having a super clear ICP. We speak to so many companies (from startups through to global brands) that have really loosely defined target customers. Getting super specific about exactly the type of person your service is for is super critical. Once you've got that, everything else (positioning, placement, promotion etc) is so much easier. Great post.
Yep, 100% Thanks for the comment!
This is the exact problem I see almost everyone making. It's leading to super generic and boring copy.
100% - in our industry almost every agency says they want to work with “ambitious businesses”. Like what business would describe themselves as “unambitious”?
Really great post John! Thanks for demystifying the marketing world for us dev-types 🤓
Thanks for reading!
Thank you for this insightful article! It's crucial to understand our beliefs about marketing and pick the right channels that align with our skill set and target audience. I appreciate the emphasis on maximizing the first channel before exploring new ones, as it allows for better optimization and focus. I will definitely keep these tips in mind as I continue to grow my business. Kudos to the author for providing such valuable guidance!
For sure! Focus on one, make it work, then move on to others!
Thank you, John! Your emphasis on the importance of 'commitment' in marketing - both in terms of the time dedicated to testing a channel and the willingness to stick with it - resonates deeply. Marketing is indeed not a sprint, but a marathon. As you pointed out, it's easy for entrepreneurs to get discouraged when instant results aren't forthcoming, or to dilute their efforts by spreading themselves too thinly across too many channels.
It is indeed a journey, not a destination. Also measuring too early is a death knell, but is something developers commonly do. Give it space to work!
Oh, thanks, this post was so useful for me!
This is a very informative post and I appreciate your selfless sharing.
I agree with your point that we should not attempt to expand to multiple channels without fully exploring one channel first. This could lead to a dilution of our resources, both in terms of energy and money, resulting in poor performance across all channels and ultimately leading to the unwanted outcome of giving up.
I also subscribed to Startups for the Rest of Us and find it to be a valuable podcast. In fact, I'm currently listening to it as I type this comment. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent post! Finally, I received clarification on the anticipated outcomes of utilizing a marketing channel and the importance of allowing sufficient time for it to develop and generate desired outcomes.
Thanks for writing about this, John! Marketing is such a necessity, especially in today's cluttered world. You are right, one needs to show patience and supplement their marketing efforts with enough budgets before they write it off. Marketing is all about constant experimentation, taking the learnings, and retrying.
Thanks foe the info man, rlly helpful
Can this testing strategy apply to smaller priced products (freemium-$50)?
Crisp math. We all learned how important it is to understand your strengths and build products and strategies given that basis.
I liked the way you explained the customer acquisition cost and conversion, it easy to understand and visualize the funnel
Impressive journey, and your insights on marketing channels are on point! 💪 The marathon vs. sprint analogy is gold. Kudos on EditorNinja's success! 🚀 I'm curious, what's been your favorite marketing channel to work with, and why?
"maximized your first channel" --> How can we know we've reach "the" channel and should maximize one, instead of trying new channel to see are there any big potential channel out there?
Respect to all Product marketers out there. It feels uncomfortable for builders because there's no SDK documentation with examples to guide you through the process (That's me lol).
I've started marketing across three channels and have been consistent, posting three pieces of content every day. Despite seeing no immediate results, I remain committed and continue to work hard.
Nice article John 🙌
It reminds me of the fact that once you start discovering Gold, you don't go for a new gold mine search. You go All In on the potential one.
Same for Marketing, once you get first users and then paid users, you have to understand from where they come and double down on this marketing channel.
THe main problem I think at the beginning is that numbers are so small that are often not really meaningful or representative
Really great read, John. Thank you for posting. It reminds me of something Peter Thiel said in 0 to 1: if you can get a single distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try several but don't nail any you will fail.
I've built products all my life. As product and tech people, we've always struggled doing marketing - it was too complex and unrewarding for us.
Now reading this, I'm questioning is there a solution for non-marketers to do marketing like experts? Like we have webflow for coding for non-coders. Anything for marketing?
You just boosted my confidence. I was starting to loose hope. Indeed it's a marathon not a sprint. And I'm a sprinter :-(
Thank you, John! Your marketing pipeline insights hit the bullseye. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Choosing the right channel is like finding the perfect dance partner—commit, understand their moves, and create beautiful marketing music together. “Maximize before you multiply” should be every marketer’s motto. Quality over quantity, every time!
good one I like that point "Every product needs marketing. The days of building a product that people just find and use are over, if they ever existed."
Can you share more about your experience with maximizing a marketing channel before moving on to the next?
This advice is golden!
Amazing. I have just red it but i will read it again. Lots of infos.
i will report to my CEO "Every product needs marketing. The days of building a product that people just find and use are over, if they ever existed."
Insightful article. As an engineer, marketing feels cringey to me. It seems like the opposite of engineering. But, the most successful people have the rare combination of engineering and marketing skills.
Great article John! As a fellow marketeer, later ending up in tech, I totally agree with what you're saying.
It's all about finding out where your users or clients are, that will be the #1 channel. Then just stay consistent, with the right strategy, growth will follow.
Thanks for the article!
Here are my thoughts from while I was reading this.
Okay, yes, this sounds important to me. I'm in.
I'm prepared this is or will be my bottleneck.
Guilty.
Again, this sounds important.
Todo: study the success history of this business.
Todo: think about this.
Tell me more.
You said the likelihood of a marketing channel depends on:
I'm sure these are both important, but I wonder if you should also add natural affinity for the platform. For example, I generally like interacting on Reddit, and Reddit has been good to me in terms of the people I've met and the interactions I've had. So I feel like I could more easily engage with Reddit than, say, Instagram.
'A common mistake ... is trying too many channels at once.'
I'm tempted to be guilty of this.
'a commitment to seeing a channel through'
That sounds difficult. How do I gain that?
You stated a couple of rules for starting (and committing to) a new marketing channel.
'If your product or service costs $500 per month...'
Side note and todo: How much will my service (AWS consultations) cost?
'The days of building a product that people just find and use are over, if they ever existed.'
And even if it's theoretically possible to get a product off the ground without marketing, why would you not use the opportunity to use marketing and speed things up?
'To market [your company] effectively, you need to play to your strengths.'
'Good luck and happy marketing!'
Thank you, and I hope I realize great gains from the actionable advice in this post.
Erik
P.S. Todo: expand this comment into a post on my company's blog.
Thanks for great article!
Has anyone here ever transferred their mobile app (or website) to a company or individual to handle all the marketing? Is that even possible?
I just finished building my app and need to do the marketing. But, my head is blowing, this is not my niche..
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Great read John!
Do you suggest any marketing channels to start or it entirely depends on the product / market?
Thanks
Curious about this question. My first thought was to run Meta (FB/IG) ads after I had found a budget. To get that budget I'm sure it's going to be a lot of grinding myself online in multiple places.
Also having years of experience in software marketing this post is gold.
Big thing I see among indie hackers is not wanting to sit down and pick a target audience.
If you have a product and you're not sure what the target audience is, I suggest testing target audiences in a similar way this article tells you to test marketing channels.
If you don't have a product yet, then you should start with the audience, not the product. This is a much easier and simpler way to get product market fit.
Thanks, many of these things I've said to clients in the past.
Now this time I'm launching my own product and I need to keep my head on straight ;-)
Thanks for your post John! We often forget it but marketing is mostly about showing up on a regular basis and committing enough time to nurture your community. And, as you said, three months is a bare minimum to draw conclusions.
In today's advertising landscape, where you no longer have to advertise to the masses via mass media, but instead to each individual on their personal devices, there is really no excuse for not being able to market a good product as a startup. I don't see why you need to guess & choose which channel to market on. Given that you can test with as little as $500 on any platform (FB, IG, TikTok, Google, etc) you should try your best to market with an MVP of an ad/creative and see what sticks, see what has the best chance of success and take it from there. When you see which channel works the BEST from those you test, and then put all of your focus there to begin with.
Yes, though I would argue that for most businesses, $500 is WAY too little to "test" with to get any semblance of signal about if the channel is going to be profitable for you to use to acquire customers. The "just start with $10/day" advice gets turned into "you only need to spend $10 a day to test a channel!"
Reality is, $10/day is easy to start. And getting started is the hardest part of spending on any marketing. But you can't stay there. You have to spend more to learn fast enough.
To be 100% honest, I never thought of it in this much detail. There's a lot of valuable information here, thank you very much for sharing! Taken notes of and saved for later reviews!
How do you 'maximize' your first channel ever? I'm still very new to marketing but would like to master it. What are the metrics or indicators that will say you have 'maximized' your marketing channel?
If you haven't started then you don't need to be worrying about maximizing it. You've maximized it when you're spending a substantial amount on a profitable and working channel, but your results stop growing as well as they were before.
Thank you for sharing this! It motivated me to keep going, keep investing time and waiting longer for the seeds to grow. I got a bit frustrated as the results after marketing our app for over a month haven't been very satisfying. But as you said:
The days of building a product that people just find and use are over, if they ever existed.
That's a great post! I'm very afraid of marketing for multiple reasons.
For me it didn't work out well for now. Blog posts barely get reads, reddit doesn't allow self promotion. Ads are expensive. I have no experience in social marketing, so twitter, facebook, insta don't work well for me.
I probably did everything wrong due to my limited experience and budget, but for now marketing is something I have no idea how to solve
This is why I am here! There are many channels available to you without budget. By the way, this is also where many companies, and basically all bootstrapped companies, start too. Learn SEO. Write content. Network and grow through referrals. You can do it!
Great post! As a tech guy looking to get more into marketing this helped me get a different perspective towards growth!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! It's true, selling can be a challenging aspect of building something. Leveraging your SEO skills on LinkedIn for B2B clients in the SEO space sounds like a smart strategy. Stay patient, keep it simple, and I'm sure you'll find success in your side hustle project. Best of luck!
While I appreciate the insights shared in this post, I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that every product needs marketing.
While marketing can certainly help in reaching a wider audience and boosting sales, there are cases where a truly exceptional product can generate organic growth through word-of-mouth alone.
Let's not discount the power of a groundbreaking product that captures the public's imagination.
My 2 cents :)
There are exceptions to every rule. This is why people worship the Zucks and Bezos's of the world.
But 99.99% of products need marketing.
Thank your for your inspiring post. It‘s easy to build something but it‘s way harder to sell. I have zero experience in Marketing except for SEO (organic traffic) and I agree that you have to be patient and keep it simple (just one channel at the beginning).
For my first real sidehustle project I think I‘ll use LinkedIn for some B2B clients in the SEO space.
100% right
this is a real art
I've been reading a lot of marketing articles, but this one has brought in a lot of impact on the knowledge I previously had.
Thanks for sharing, John!
Thanks for sharing and i like the example which you shared in this blog
thru digital marketing company
Thanks for sharing, and I like the maths example 🙌
I have been thinking a lot lately about how your marketing needs to be built in from the beginning. Almost like marketing is the product. Build for the marketing plan.
Thanks for the comment! Yes, I agree that knowing how you'll market the product from the start, and acquire those first customers, is super important. Too many build and then ask how to get customers.
Great post, John! Your wealth of experience in the marketing field shines through in your insights on choosing and "testing" marketing channels. It's impressive to hear about your successful ventures and the valuable lessons you've learned along the way.
Your emphasis on experimentation and trial-and-error is spot on. Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all game, and it's crucial to test various channels to find the best fit for each project. Your advice will surely resonate with fellow marketers and entrepreneurs who understand the importance of adaptability and continuous learning.
Your track record of building multiple six-figure annual revenue companies demonstrates your ability to navigate the complexities of marketing effectively. I appreciate that you're passing on your wisdom to others by advising software founders. Your firsthand experience in making mistakes and learning from them is invaluable.
Overall, your article is insightful and inspiring. It serves as a reminder that marketing is a dynamic field that requires constant exploration and innovation. Thank you for sharing your expertise and motivating others to embrace the art of choosing and testing marketing channels. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Ethan. Was this reply written with ChatGPT?
No, I just got the Neuralink installed 🤣
@dohertyjf - Amazing article and really good advice! Quick question - how do you know that you have maximized your first channel? If you still getting leads and when to stop focusing and start a new channel?
As I said in the post, it's when your continued investment starts returning worse results. Sometimes that means you need to shift up your strategy, but often it means you've reached a maximum for that channel, and thus to keep increasing growth you'll need to find other channels that work also.
Your post gives me a lot of inspiration. Thanks!
Focus on one channel once and put great effort to make it work. Marketing is really a game of patience and persistence.
Sure is! And you can do it.
Thanks John, this was a good post with some great perspective about playing to your strengths and setting realistic expectations for your efforts 🙌
I’m glad you got value from it!
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