Startup Marketing Strategy: It's Not About "The Next Big Thing"

(4 Minute Read) Why Diversification and Consistency Beat Single-Bet Strategies in Startup Marketing

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

👋🏼 I’m Alek, a repeat founder. I’ve built and sold one company so far. I share what I’ve learned from building companies in 5-minute reads every week.

Startup Marketing Strategy: It’s Not About "The Next Big Thing"

Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of going all-in. They invest too much in their game-changing move. That one ad campaign. That one viral post. That one feature launch will put them on the map. They spend weeks working on their ultimate plan. But then? They swing and miss.

Building a company is not about hitting a home run with a single swing.

Don’t Expect a Grand Slam

Successful startup marketing isn’t about launching the “next big thing.” It’s about consistent, moderate wins spread out across many bets. This approach yields more consistent results.

One Swing for the Fences

I’ve spent over four hours every week writing these articles. I’ve been writing for almost a year. That’s 200 hours.

My original goal was to build my personal brand, which would then draw an audience for my company. But after almost 12 months, I have ~40 subscribers. Most of them are people I already knew. My desired external result—audience growth—didn’t happen.

The outcomes you get aren’t always the ones you expect. That’s why relying on doing “one thing well” is rarely enough. Success requires diversification.

Doing What Nobody Else Wants to Do

If building a successful company were easy, more people would do it. Many people want a silver bullet—a single ad campaign or viral post that will bring in all their customers. That’s what I wanted with this blog. I thought, “I will do this one thing every week and to solve my marketing problems.” But that’s not how growth works.

You have to do more. You have to go beyond the easy or obvious. And, you have to do it consistently. There’s no shortcut. There’s no silver bullet.

Effective growth requires you to do more than everyone else.

Diversify Your Efforts: What “Doing Many Things Well” Looks Like

For SolidlyAI, I’ve learned that no single strategy would grow my business. To gain traction, I need a multi-pronged approach to marketing. Here’s what that looks like for me:

• FLFM (A Founder’s Life for Me). I’ll be continuing my blog. I've gotten a lot from doing this blog. The outcomes weren’t what I expected. I’ll discuss more in a my year-in-review post (4 weeks from now). Subscribe if you’re interested.

• Reddit Forums. People are having conversations in public about things that are hard for them. I need to be learning from those conversations. It can inform both product development and marketing language. Posting polls and questions is also an invaluable way to gather intel. I can build relationships with these random people to grow my network. I can use these relationships to market my company.

• LinkedIn. Posting under the SolidlyAI’s LinkedIn account is a direct way of gaining an audience. The earlier strategies build my personal brand. This one directly builds Solidly’s brand. SolidlyAI is a meeting-focused product. I can run polls about meeting practices and the share insights.

• 1:1 marketing and testimonials. The appeal of one-to-many marketing strategies is another silver bullet trap. I want to think, “I’ll just do this one thing on this one platform and bring in many customers.” Growth doesn’t work like that. So, I’ll do one-to-one marketing in parallel. Direct outreach. Requesting testimonials. Building personal connections with new people. Non-scalable efforts can lead to big outcomes over long time horizons.

The challenge in managing a multi-channel strategy is staying organized. But, I’m good at organizing. I’m preparing a calendar with tasks assigned for each day. I can spend 30 minutes a day planning a post 2 weeks from now. I can spend 5 minutes executing on the post I planned 2 weeks ago.

Conclusion: The “Next Big Thing” Isn’t One Thing at All

In startup growth, there’s no silver bullet. It’s not about putting all your eggs in one basket. It’s about spreading your bets across a variety of channels and strategies. Put in the work. Stay organized. Do the things others won’t do. You’ll achieve more than if you placed all your hopes on one big move.

#Entrepreneurship #SelfEmployment #Startups #Bootstrapping #Founders

By sharing my experiences, I hope to provide insight and advice to entrepreneurs facing similar challenges. Please leave a comment or email me with any questions.