Giles Crouch

That's a very big open ended question! It all depends. Is it a mass consumer product like B2C? B2B? Who's your target audience? Have you done an alpha launch? Beta testing? Where does your audience hang out? Are you solving a real problem or one that you imagined? It all depends on your target audience and the channels they use. Sorry, but there is no simple formula and anyone who says there is...

Never forget that quality is better than quantity.

I actually went back to an old Blackberry phone to largely ignore social media and focus on texts and calls...so use my iPad Pro for any SM engagement and have my MacBook Pro M3 finely tuned to avoid social media. Keeps it clean and simple.

Estonia. Digital country, ,lovely people, so much to explore. Quite temperate if a wee bit chilly in January or February but not that bad. Affordable and energized.

So far it's comparable to Midjourney. It's also not publicly available and seems more about the ongoing hype from OpenAi to drive share price to attract more investment than anything else.

First, remember that a brand is decided by the customer. And that few customers have much brand loyalty. So a rebrand is usually a design change and unless the product/service itself is changed, doesn't impact the wider audience as much as marketers tend to think. It's also a great opportunity to get market feedback, to help understand how your customers perceive your brand and product.

We're more focused on marketing operations; MarTech stacks, analytics and ensuring marketing delivers on profitability, so we often work with agencies. www.nordspark.com and happy to connect!

This is a good list. But more process oriented. Start high level. Which of the four P's will be your strategic focus? Product, Price, Promotion, Place. Determine which is your north star, then build around the remainders and you'll find it easier to figure out the right digital tools, tactics and metrics to put in place.

I'm not sure it's "better" it's just part of the marketing mix. People have different ways they consume content. Some prefer video to reading...perhaps the better question is; what does your potential customer value and prefer?

What @sabrina_j_garcia says is perfect. I've found that the Mayday calendar app helps as you can use hashtags to colour code activities, while aligning them to jobs to be done (tasks.)

Dealing with stakeholder biases. When founders assume they know what the market/customer wants or needs and don't do any research to validate their idea. This causes more startups to fail than any other reason. Also, that they want quantifiable data only. You just can't quantify human behaviour. You need to mix the two and be open minded.

MayDay calendar app. Key reason? You can colour code your calendar with hashtags so you get an easy view of what the week looks like. Very slick.

It is likely that regulations will soon require an AI influencer to declare itself as such. Similar to current laws. They won't dominate over the longer term however. They'll have a part to play, but will be just part of the marketing mix. Beware of flashy trends in marketing, they rarely pan out as hoped for. Consumers are a fickle bunch.

It depends on who your target audience is. Research where they are, the channels they use. Could be Discord, a Reddit community, LinkedIn Group etc., use PH as your primary centre and reach out from there. Backlinks are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Always meet your audience where they are. Remember, marketing is still more art than science.

The best strategy is the one that works for your business, in your sector. And that strategy will likely take a while to evolve. If you're just launching, your first marketing strategy will likely fail because first contact with customers always changes the game. Only over time, as you collect evidence and data, can you evolve the best strategy. I've launched 15 technology products over 20...

Firing a co-founder. Which is why good governance and strong documentation at the start is critical because when there are co-founders, things can sometimes go wonky.

In Canada there is an excellent online mentoring/coaching service called The Forum focused on helping women entrepreneurs at various stages. Some men, like myself, are coaches as, unfortunately, there are still more male than female or transgendered entrepreneurs; hopefully that will change in the coming years.

Great question! Productivity tools are largely table stakes today. They're easy to create and implement. This has created a dearth of tools, but hurt productivity because there are so many and many companies use different ones for different parts of the organisation and they often don't play nice together. Except 2024 to be a year where companies start to slash their MarTech/SalesTech stacks...