Let’s tackle a topic that feels intimidating for early-stage founders: When should you start thinking about marketing?

The truth is, that marketing should be on your radar from day one. It’s not just about flashy campaigns or big budgets. Early-stage marketing is much like early-stage sales—it's about understanding your market, your customers, and how your product fits into their lives.

Early marketing efforts help you build a brand, create awareness, and start conversations with your potential customers. Think of it as laying the groundwork for future growth. The sooner you start, the more time you have to experiment, learn, and refine your strategies.

Just like founder-led sales, founder-led marketing is key in the early days. With out spending a huge amount of time or money. Here are some easy steps to get you going on a marketing strategy:

Craft Your Message:

Start with a clear, concise messaging framework. Describe your product and the problem it solves in 1-2 sentences. Highlight how it helps customers operate more efficiently, save time and money, or grow and scale. This will be the foundation for all your sales and marketing efforts.

A good message is a story about your customer. It doesn’t need to include details about your product features or a history of the company's mission. The main point you want to get across is how your product will change your customers' lives.

Create a Simple Website:

Your website doesn’t need to be complex. A one-page site with a strong call to action, clear value propositions, and engaging visuals is all you need at this point. The goal is to get visitors to explore more, try the product, or book a demo.

Most of your sales will not come from your website in the early days but it's important that customers have a place they can reference if they search for your company online.

Establish Your Social Presence:

A lot of founders overthink building a social presence. Fighting the feeling that you are trying to become an “influencer” is difficult. As someone who feels uncomfortable with this myself, I get it. But I’ve seen time and time again founders use their own social media to build massive audiences, get customers, and unlock connections to investors.  

Start with LinkedIn and Twitter. These platforms are great for B2B networks. The most effective social media accounts have 3-4 key messages that they deliver consistently. These should relate to what you are building in the business but don’t have to be about the product.

Share your building journey, share cool products or people you are meeting in the space, and help answer questions that your prospective customers might have. Posting 1-2 times a week to start is great! To figure out what to write about or post about make note of what questions you get from customers, and other people in the ecosystem about the space you are building in.

Early-stage marketing doesn’t have to be daunting. It’s about using the same principles as early-stage sales—understanding your customers, crafting a compelling message, and engaging consistently. Start small, and stay consistent - the results will build up over time.

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