Been running a bunch of marketing experiments at DermaQ lately. If you're an early-stage startup, the worst thing you can do is blindly follow marketing advice from random YouTube videos or Instagram reels. Most of it is designed to grab attention, not help your business. 1% is actually useful but you only find it after wasting hours. And please, stop copying stuff you overhear at VC events about "going omni-channel" or "building B2B partnerships". Those things are great, but till you have some traction, the effort-to-return ratio just doesn't make sense.
The only real shortcut I've seen? Learn from people who've actually done it from zero. Big-company marketers aren't wrong. They're just solving different problems. You're figuring out survival; they're optimising scale. And yes, the most honest advice still stands: "fuck around and find out". Just make sure you're tracking so you actually find out.
What's been working for us so far
Data, data, data
Track everything. Conversions, clicks, leads. You have to make sure your ad platforms know what's happening.
Creatives matter way more than you think
Quality, quantity, relevance. Keep shooting, editing, iterating.
If it's a new type of product, go sales-led
If your mom doesn't get it, no ad will get you sales. Get people curious, collect leads, explain manually.
Use the free intel
Meta Ad Library literally lets you see what your competitors are running. Analyse and breakdown everything.
Patience + speed
Be patient with results, but fast with iteration. Try → measure → tweak → repeat.
Keep metrics in sight, not in worship
CAC and ROAS matter later. For now, direction > precision.
We're still figuring things out. Breaking stuff. Fixing it. Breaking it again. If this helps someone avoid one mistake it's worth it.