Which marketing strategies worked best for your business at the different product life cycle stages?
My longest experience started in a startup with @minimalist phone: reduce your screentime . (originally a digital detox app for Android, then iOS).
From a marketing perspective, the following worked best for us (almost always):
paid ads
UGC videos (also as paid ads)
BUT, for example, an affiliate program has never worked very well for us (and we launched it at a time when the app already had 1 million downloads on Google Play!).
I am currently helping a new startup that is just starting in the AI+paytech field (B2B market), and currently the main marketing channel is growing the founder's personal brand – phase: preparing to raise funding.
We realise many unsuccessful attempts and strategies in retrospect.
It depends a lot on:
– what industry are you in?
– what is your budget?
– what is your competition?
– what is your product?
I'm trying to get an overview of possible marketing activities that work across industries/products and product life cycles – yes, to create a more comprehensive picture and possible marketing mix for me. 😀😁
Specifically in your industry, what marketing activities have worked to grow your product?
[write product/industry, in which product life cycle stage did it work, marketing tactic]
Replies
b2b saas, early stage, the one thing that worked before anything else was finding conversations where people were already describing the problem we solve. not outbound, not ads. just being present in the right communities at the right time. reddit threads, slack groups, niche forums.
when you show up there with something useful before you pitch anything, the conversion is completely different. the channel isn't scalable in the traditional sense but the quality of early users it produces is hard to match with anything else.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@priyanshu_singh23 With AI era, more people start to rely on communities and their strength, but unfortunately, soon, AI pirates will use automation to run them and authenticity will go away.
SelfOS lifestyle app (iOS + Android) - early stage (~3 months in)
What worked: Niche Telegram channels under 5K subscribers: $0.21/install vs $5.83 in big general channels. Audience quality matters way more than size.
One organic Threads comment in the right thread: 120 downloads overnight, $0 spent. Still haven't fully replicated it but treating it as a volume game now.
Micro-influencer outreach (just starting): first collab lined up with a slow living creator, early signals look promising.
What didn't work:
Apple Search Ads: conversion dropped to ~1%. Wrong keywords, wrong intent.
Big general Telegram channels: expensive and completely wrong audience.
The pattern I'm seeing: the smaller and more specific the community, the better everything converts. Broad reach is a trap at this stage.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@virtualviki How the 0.21/install was achieved? I assume it was organic. Or did you run any ads or?
Feel free to share that comment so I can know how I can comment better :D
@busmark_w_nika The $0.21/install was paid - a small Telegram channel (~3K subscribers) focused on aesthetic self-care content. Very niche, very targeted audience. That's what made the difference vs bigger channels.
The Threads spike was completely organic. I woke up one morning and saw a post asking "share a cool app you use every day." I just answered honestly — that I'd always been looking for a task manager with full personalization, never found one, so I built my own. That's it. No pitch, no link in the first sentence, just a genuine story.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@virtualviki aaa okay, I thought that in Telegram, ads are running the same way as in Meta (I do not have that one platform). Now I realised you paid someone with a bigger channel to publish your post there. Makes sense now to me :)
@busmark_w_nika Exactly! It's basically influencer marketing but for Telegram channels - you pay the channel owner directly to post your content to their audience. Much more straightforward than Meta ads, and way cheaper when you find the right niche channel 😊
I have seen those adds where the ad starts with 3 Reasons why minimalist phone..... something. I will be honest I saw it like 10 times atleast and in the end I gave it a try although my phone usage is not that much so I got rid of it but its a solid product. My point here is your ads do work in pushing customers try it out atleast!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@nayan_surya98 yeah, there are many retargeting ads, and we are trying to push them not only to new users, but also the existing ones to improve awareness and strengthen the position.