The Marketing Playbook For Startups
🔥 80+ hot tactics for marketers. Marketing can make or break your startup. But what actually works today?
Welcome to NEW ECONOMIES, rooted in my experiences working in venture capital. From inside the venture world, one thing is clear: we’re not just in a tech boom—we’re living through a full-blown economic rewrite. New platforms, new business models, and evolving public market strategies are reshaping everything.
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Marketing can make or break your startup. But what actually works today?
For this edition, we spoke with 50+ marketers who share their collective insights on how to build and execute an effective marketing playbook. Within this guide, you’ll find 80+ actionable thoughts, strategies and blueprints, organized into the following categories:
Acquiring customers
Building and growing the company brand
Building a community
GTM & Sales
Retention
Building a great company
Growing a personal brand
Let’s take a closer look at the latest marketing tactics for you to try!
🤝 ACQUIRING CUSTOMERS
Launch on Product Hunt (e.g. MarkeTeam).
Hire Reddit posters (e.g. on Upwork).
Times Square advert (e.g. Cheers).
Collaborate with creators (e.g. Attio). You can use platforms such as Passionfroot to hire creators.
Offer free trials.
Provide royalties (money) for each new customer referred by existing users (e.g. Onlyfans).
Add a price comparison page of your competitors (e.g. Clickup).
Launch on Hacker News (e.g. ElevenLabs).
Cold outreach with a personalized video (e.g. Loom).
Create “best tools for X” directories and rank them (e.g. Clickup).
Add customer testimonials (e.g. Breakcold).
Create industry-specific landing pages.
Run live product tours or webinars weekly (e.g. Gong).
Build an ROI calculator (e.g. BetterCloud).
Launch a waitlist (see tips here).
Automate outreach on LinkedIn (e.g. Swan).
Gamify onboarding experience (e.g. Userpilot).
Create a website that users understand what you do (e.g. Clay).
Showcase the product on TikTok—great for consumer products (e.g. Freddies Flowers).
Use AI voiceovers to localize videos in multiple languages (e.g. ElevenLabs).
Show product in “before/after” displays (e.g. Wix App Marketplace).
Highlight high-value integrations with other tools (e.g. Zapier).
Use motion graphics to illustrate complex product features.
Build a website within hours (e.g. Lovable).
🔍 BUILDING THE COMPANY BRAND
Start a community for customers (e.g. Monzo). You can use platforms such as Circle or Discourse to host the community.
Make your first few hundred customers super fans (Read Kevin Kelly’s '1,000 True Fans' for inspiration).
Give content for your customers to share (e.g. Spotify).
Provide merchandise (e.g. Hyrox).
Produce engaging content (e.g. Ryanair).
Launch a meme campaign (playful, product-relevant).
Create an internal style guide for brand voice.
Build a brand customers will love (e.g. Chewy who send you a bunch of flowers when your pet passes away).
Add 24/7 chatbot + human handover.
Write an email to new customers from your founders (e.g. Circle).
Don’t be too serious, be funny at times (e.g. Ryanair).
Add edgy words on your website.
🚀 GROWING THE COMPANY BRAND
Host/sponsor events.
Sponsor/launch podcasts.
Sponsor industry reports.
Hire brand ambassadors.
Employee Generated Content. This will be huge over the coming years (You can use platforms such as SoSha).
Build great relationships with journalists (You can use platforms such as Prowly).
Repurpose all your content.
Enable instant demos to be available with human 1:1 (e.g. Stripe).
🔥 BUILDING A COMMUNITY
Gamify the community such as using badges (e.g. Duolingo).
Ask for product feedback from your customers (e.g. through Typeform).
Have limited editions of your products.
Engage with all comments you receive on social media.
Allow community ambassadors to help fellow customers trouble-shoot bugs ( e.g. Monzo and Pory).
Promote highly engaged community members to admins (permissions up to you).