The odds were truly stacked against us: bootstrapped, crowded category, no network to speak of.
But we sold our startup for nine-figures thanks to an exceptional product—and some original marketing.
17 marketing strategies we used to outperform legacy brands. 🧵👇
Invest in personal relationships 🤝
☑ Wine and dine your partners. Send cards. Text them. Move the needle 5%, and you win the edge over your less-engaged competition
☑ Recognize network effects take years to build. Connections you make in year one will pay off 10x by year five
Write candidly and prove that you’re engaging 💁
☑ Your biggest advantage is your authenticity—develop a voice and be honest af
☑ If you wouldn’t text it to your friend, don’t use it in your copy
☑ Share customer convos on social, thereby inviting more and creating a flywheel
Leverage momentum 🛫
☑ When you get that big opp, flood advertising + promo to guarantee exceptional sales
☑ Take snapshots of performance and send to partners constantly
☑ Lobby for increased opportunities and SKU footholds everywhere you have momentum
Incentivize ambassadorship + loyalty 🔁
☑ Invite influencers to an exclusive program for free product and unique rewards
☑ Early access and exclusive drops for top customers
☑ Loyalty programs to keep customers coming back
Reach out cold 🥶
☑ Send hundreds of emails and DMs to press, influencers, YouTubers, and retailers—the ROI on a 5% conversion will be 🍌🍌🍌
☑ Can’t get a response? Mail your product directly to consumer publications with ATTN: Editor stamped on the package
☑ Be scrappy!
Go all in on trade shows 📣
☑ Put big $$$ into LinkedIn + FB ads targeting attendees within x miles of the event: “Come by our booth!” The ROI could literally be 100,000x. It will also be easier to win event hashtags
☑ Pitch panels to organizers—establish industry leadership
Scale and experiment ⚖️
☑ If revenue is up 300%, your ad spend better mirror that
☑ Reserve 15% of ad spend for experimentation in broadcast, radio, programmatic, display, OOH, streaming
☑ Mentality: If you’re not failing, you’re not scaling
Recognize customer support is marketing 💬
☑ Go hard on education at delivery triggers
☑ Review customer support reports with marketing team
☑ Never give up on lost customers; invest in winback campaigns
☑ Know that a “saved” customer is more loyal than a new one
Be a good partner 👫
☑ Share data openly and expect the same
☑ Give influencers outsized incentive to promote you
☑ Identify partners who overlap with your core audience, but represent an emerging target demo (we teamed up with Justin Bieber, Jane Goodall, and Megan Rapinoe)
Prioritize retention 🪝
☑ Shiny new campaigns are great, but are 😬 more expensive than the cost of keeping existing customers around
☑ Test your email onboarding, post-purchase flows relentlessly
☑ Invest in AI/machine learning to optimize
☑ Treat top customers like royalty
Inform marketing with customer data 🔮
☑ Conduct surveys, consumer studies, and review site behavior like there’s no tomorrow—customers will tell you what you need to know
☑ Identify purchase motivators, context for how customers use your product, and where you fall short
Do the unscalable whenever possible 😤
☑ Get on Zoom calls with customers, write personal notes to journalists, share your journey on social
☑ Activate real loyalty by leveraging your underdog status and doing what legacy businesses can’t—by being unapologetic and authentic
Create a content arm 🧑💻
☑ Gather SEO research and develop content around customer queries
☑ Gain credibility as a thought leader and educator to earn trust
☑ See long term gains to site rank and organic search results
Spend online to boost your offline 📍
☑ Target customers within x miles of retailers
☑ Use Google Store Locator extensions
☑ Promote UGC of customers buying in retail
☑ Develop case studies showing lift—represent value to acquirers + retailers who struggle with attribution
Merchandise the hell out of retail 🛍
☑ Conglomerates leverage b budgets to tell their story in retail—as a challenger, you must invest in storytelling opportunities
☑ See huge gains in brand awareness as customers are hungry for discovery and alternatives to heritage brands
Sequence your advertising 🎛
☑ Work up to your sell, don’t be heavy handed
☑ Imagine customers SEEING your brand, then THINKING about you, then ACTING on their thoughts
☑ After you win a customer, put them in a new sequence focused on retention + activating word of mouth
Ensure channel differentiation 🎯
☑ SKUs must be designed for the channel they’re sold in
☑ Optimize for price, size, and customer profile
☑ Resist going over the top with too many products—better to have lots of shelf space for three products than ten
For more content supporting the consumer industry, ecommerce, and retail, follow me @chriscantino.
And let me know what you would find helpful. It’s all about making an impact on the next generation of startup founders and operators.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Startups are hard as hell when you’re low on cash. But the upside is well worth the pain.
Here’s how we scaled into 30,000 stores and 30 countries from a household income of $30k 👇
1️⃣ Do the unscalable
It’s the little things. The personal phone call. The personalized note and customer service. Getting on Zoom with an influencer. Scaled businesses can’t embrace the “human side” of startups the way you can. Lean in.
The more unscalable, the better.
2️⃣ Leverage authenticity
Authenticity is your fastest path to forging brand devotion. Luckily, you have it in excess. Your story, your character, your VIBE. Everyone roots for the underdog. Take your customers behind the scenes.
To grow our brand into millions of homes, we gave away 100,000+ free products.
Simply put, sampling is HUGELY underleveraged, and commonly more effective than traditional advertising.
Here’s how the best in the biz strategize to get their products into the right hands. 🧵
The Power of Sampling
-Sampling to the right people unlocks EXPONENTIAL value—retail placements, virality, user generated content, & more
-Customer loyalty skyrockets because recipients feel valued and grateful
-Sampling within communities unlocks organic buzz and word of mouth
Your VIP List
-If anyone could try your product, who would you send it to?
-Make a list across press, celebrities, and industry influencers—go big and don’t hold back
-Do it in waves—the more clustered your samplings, the more clustered your conversations
I've advised dozens of businesses on product innovation, from six-figure startups to eleven-figure conglomerates.
Here are the surprising frameworks the most successful ones use to incubate and market their products. 🧵
They don’t just see purchases—they see routines
-Instead of hyper-focusing on acquisition, they obsess over how, when, and why customers use their products
-New SKUs aren’t just revenue drivers—they’re to embed the brand further into the customer’s daily routine
They don’t just see customers—they see networks
-Activating word of mouth is priority #1
-Marketing is to establish purchase behavior for entire households and social groups—not just individuals
-Their products are designed to be shared
A checklist of things it took for us to scale to a 9-figure acquisition:
🌀 Product, Pt. 1: The Star of your Business
☑ Nail a pricing strategy
☑ Root product development in customer intel + shopper data
☑ Substantiate claims with studies and trials
☑ Consistently test + iterate; development is never done
🌀 Product, Pt. 2
☑ Research + incorporate third party data; monitor + explore trends
☑ Quality check vendors and logistics partners like your brand depends on it
☑ Expand into categories that are not just opportunistic, but construct a larger brand narrative
99% of brands are skipping out on opportunities to earn trust and engagement.
Here’s how the best in the game do it, and examples of where startups can make huge gains while their competition stands on the sidelines. 👇
Transparency: a word that has lost its meaning.
Sharing where ingredients come from? Giving back by planting a few hundred trees? I cringe through every halfhearted about page, wondering: what does this brand really stand for?
One good deed does not translate into authenticity.
The ones worth rooting for? Those offering a look behind the curtain into how their businesses operate, and all the messy failures along the way. And more importantly, showing us what the hell our money is actually supporting.