Great post by Gaurav Jain at Founder Collective on marketing. It backs-up my zero-budget marketing post with some striking examples.
- Mint is the classic case study in this area and got people excited about banking software by pioneering the use of infographics and content marketing with nearly no budget.
- SparkFun/AdaFruit/iFixit built marketing into their product. All three are part of the “maker movement” and created high-quality tutorials featuring the components they sold which were passed around eagerly by hackers.
- Wayfair is now a massive player in e-commerce, but built its business through smart Search engine marketing, buying up over a hundred domains with exact matches for popular searches.
- HubSpot became a billion dollar company by blogging and producing content that complemented their core marketing software.
- GoldieBlox created a web video that went viral and founder Debbie Sterling hustled to the point where she earned a Super Bowl spot, worth $4 million dollars, for free.
- Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe evangelized the dating app by going door to door at fraternities and sororities, tripling the user base in the process.
- ProductHunt is the new gold standard in early-stage, budget marketing. Before there was even much of a product, founder Ryan Hoover managed to whip up an energy around the concept like a latter-day PT Barnum.
- Plated, one of our portfolio companies, appeared on Shark Tank, sending tens of thousands of viewers to their site.
More here.