🎯 What are modern marketing approaches that work?
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Making a product is one big challenge. But shifting your mindset from building to marketing it might be an even bigger one.
As makers, we spend so much time improving the product. Then comes the question: How do we get people to discover it - and ultimately turn that attention into real customers and sales?
I'm not sure traditional approaches like email marketing and constantly posting on social media are enough anymore. The way people discover products is changing.
So I'm curious:
How do you approach marketing your product?
And for the marketers here:
What would you consider a modern marketing approach in 2026-2027? What would you advise an early-stage founder to focus on?
I'd love to hear different perspectives...
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Replies
@aruna_polosofttech this is exactly what worked for us at Red Team Nation, sharing the actual mistakes and lessons from building Courses got way more engagement than polished feature posts ever did. People trust what looks real, not what looks like Marketing.
@bdennis11907 That's a great data point, and it tracks with what a "course" product especially need. A polished feature post doesn't prove that "a real mistake you made and fixed does".
Curious to know, how you decided which mistakes were worth sharing publicly, though.
@bdennis11907 @aruna_polosofttech Joining the question =)
@aruna_polosofttech @bdennis11907 Yes, this truth exists =) People like to see the real process - not polished, prepared content.
Actually I don't know and I am on it right now with different platforms. Creative thinking based product will survive with trends.
Cold Email Marketing => Not working
Promotion Marketing => Not working
@nikunj_kothiya Proving what doesn’t work is already great advice, thanks! =)
Working in B2B AI, the thing that's changed most for us is that buyers now ask an LLM before they ask a salesperson. So a lot of "marketing" has become making sure the product is described clearly and consistently everywhere the models read: docs, comparison pages, forum threads like this one. The old channels still work, but the first impression increasingly happens somewhere you don't control. Curious if consumer-side makers here are seeing the same shift.
@tony_tan10086 I agree that buyers increasingly ask an LLM first, and it's important to have relevant information everywhere possible.
@tony_tan10086
"making sure the product is described clearly and consistently everywhere the models read: docs, comparison pages, forum threads like this one"
Can you elaborate what might be the places where a model knows more about your products by a few examples ?
For a founder with only 5 hours a week for marketing, what would you do first: write content, join communities, or reach out to people one by one?
@oliver_graf1 Ah… that’s probably the hardest part for makers. Marketing really eats up a lot of resources for solo founders. But ig all the points you mentioned must be done, just keep going =)
for me showing the product in action works better than simply talking about features. a short demo can communicate value much faster.
@uttam_kumar35 What platforms are you showing your content on to generate interest in it?
Paid ads can bring traffic but they dont always build trust. real user stories and practical examples feel much more convincing to me.
@karishma_yadav3 Not a fan of paid ads either =) And where would you suggest sharing stories and examples? Which communities and platforms are working for you?
the one we spend most time on now is whether the ai assistants mention you. people ask claude or chatgpt what should i use for x and just go with the two or three things it names. we only worked out it was happening because signups had no referrer and we couldnt figure out where they came from.
what seems to help is being in the stuff those models read, reddit threads and comparison posts mostly. we build in this area so take that with a pinch of salt
@niveditha_patluri1 Thanks for sharing your observations! How do you approach Reddit? We're trying to get more familiar with how it works there =)
@adana honestly were early on reddit too. only thing thats clear so far is most subs strip links fast, so we just answer questions and let the profile do the work. we care abt it mainly bcoz the ai assistants read reddit, so one good comment keeps paying much longer than a post does.
@niveditha_patluri1 Yeah, I guess the best way to start there is simply by commenting " )
The thing that moved most for me this year was writing the help page that answers the exact question someone types into Google, then keeping the landing page short. Paid placements sent traffic that bounced in seconds. I launched on Product Hunt on Sunday and the comments told me more about my positioning than the vote count did.
@yelyzaveta_kibets Oh, did the help page really move the needle? That’s cool. PH feedback is really valuable - glad you benefited from it!
@adana Slowly, and only on question shaped queries, the ones with "how to" or "why" in them. Those are the ones a landing page never wins, so the help page is the only thing that can pick them up.
@yelyzaveta_kibets Got it. Thanks for sharing your experience !
@saman_bahmani1 We started to build RunEvr for our internal use in an animation studio, so we were sure there are users who need it =)
But marketing is changing every day, so we have to stay up to date not to miss a thing...
What product are you building?
I think the biggest shift is that discovery is becoming much more fragmented. For an early-stage product, I would go much narrower instead of trying to be everywhere. Pick the group that feels the problem most strongly, figure out where they already spend time, and build familiarity there. I would rather have 30 relevant people know the product well than get 10,000 impressions from people who were never going to care. I have also become much more interested in creating things people would want even before they care about the product itself. Research, playbooks, templates, benchmarks, small tools. If someone gives you their email because something was genuinely useful, email becomes a much stronger channel than starting with a cold sequence.
AI discovery is another big change. People are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google which tools they should use, so product pages and useful content now have to work for those discovery paths too, not just traditional search. For me, modern marketing is becoming less about pushing the same message across more channels and more about earning attention in the places where the right users are already looking for answers.
@roguetink Thanks for sharing your experience and insights!
AI discovery is probably the most modern approach now, I guess. What’s your approach to it?