This is the third in a five part series in an interview with Matt Ronge, CEO, Astropad: an extension of our April 20th webinar hosted by Modern Logic and Lighter Capital.
Is advertising the lynchpin for scaling your startup? Yes and no. Matt Ronge, CEO of Astropad, joined us for a conversation to bust the myths and misconceptions about how advertising can help you reach exponential growth.
There is a silver bullet for marketing.
“I wouldn’t expect that you can find a 100% repeatable process that works every time to scale things up. It’s going to be a mix of things: blog posts, podcasts, updates, interviews, PR. You’re going to have to try a lot of different things that compound and build on each other. It might not even be clear what your main cause of growth is!”
Paid acquisition should be a top priority.
“A lot of people expect they can scale their businesses through things like Google Ads. While Google and Facebook ads can be part of your strategy, you can’t rely on them by themselves now. Perhaps in the heyday of Facebook you could grow like crazy, but it doesn’t work that way anymore.”
The impact of your advertising is always measurable.
“People believe you can measure everything. That’s a worthy goal, but in practice, it’s far too messy. At the end of the day, you need your inputs and outputs. If you have too many inputs at once, you won’t be able to see what’s influencing the output. Try a smaller group of inputs to start.”
Slow results means nothing is working.
“You need to be patient. If you’re blogging, you can’t give up after two blog posts. Did you do 100? Let me see the topics you covered and then let’s talk about whether blogging is an effective strategy for you. These kinds of things take a long time and a lot of iteration. You need to give the people putting effort into it the space and time they need. You’re building something for the longer term.”
You need to chase the newest advertising method.
“Sometimes, the old and boring works well. Email and blogs have been around a long time, but they still work well. In e-commerce, text message advertising is becoming more popular. I don’t get it, but maybe I’m just old! Try different things, but don’t try everything. That leads to a master of none scenario.”
This article is Part 3 in our Thought Leadership series with Matt Ronge from Astropad. Stay tuned for three impactful tips on pivoting!