5 growth-tactics nobody will tell you

Hey,

This week, here’s what we have:

• 5 no BS tactics to actually make progress nobody will tell you

• Something interesting I saw last week

• I answer a PR question from you

Let’s get to it.

5 no BS growth-tactics nobody will tell you

Tactic #1: Avoid what everyone is doing

In marketing, there’s a concept called The Law of Diminishing Returns. 

When too many people are using the same marketing strategy, it’s hard to get a return on your marketing budget. Instead, do it differently. 

At madeby, instead of trying to compete on IG, we doubled down on TikTok when nobody believed it would take over. We’d do hours-long QVC-style events and became TikTok’s best-selling brand on the platform. Now, 4 years later, everybody is talking about TikTok Live Shopping.

We skipped the influencer partnerships and PR events that every brand was doing. Instead, we went after “stunts” that created more shareability and reach.

Some ideas you can steal:

• Send potential investors/big clients personalised videos from their favourite celebrity using Cameo. Then use that in your story-telling content.

• Organise “hidden camera” type of content in the high-street around your product.

• Roasting customers or sharing funny customer service interactions. 

Tactic #2: Skip building in public, build with it

Over the past few years, my team and I developed or built a few products that we discontinued because we didn’t involve our customers.

Rather than read some trend report and come up with a product that would make sense on paper, build with your customers. 

Create something as simple as a WhatsApp group of your most loyal customers and include them in creating your products or services.

Tactic #3: Look outside your own industry

Looking at your direct competitors will only lead you to playing behind. 

Instead, look for inspiration in completely different verticals. 

When you start consuming differently, you start thinking differently. 

And that has a big ROI in business. 

How?

• You have a pet business, look at what tactics Techcrunch-covered startups used to get customers

• You have a construction business, study what creators are doing

• You’re building a SaaS, read about legacy consumer businesses

You get the gist.

Tactic #4: Getting new customers isn’t what it’s about

Simple: new entrepreneurs focus on customer acquisition. Experienced entrepreneurs focus on customer retention and referrals. 

One way to automate this is from email flows. Most teams focus on email flows on repeat for new subscribers to make them buy. But they forget all about their existing customers.

Schedule emails from the CEO, the marketing team or even the warehouse to personalise rapport between you and your existing customers. This way you can stay top of mind when they make a decision to purchase. 

And you get to milk your email list for what it’s worth instead of panicking about rising acquisition costs.

Something interesting from last week

Silicon Valley startups received half of global funding in 2024.

If you didn’t know, I have a fund basically trying to fight this.

We're betting that the next generation of founders won't come from Silicon Valley. They'll come from everywhere. And they’re as likely to be self-taught creators turned founders as they are engineers or MBAs.

You can apply here to get funded. 

A Question from you

Every week, I’ll pick a question I receive via email or DMs and answer it here. This week’s question is from Adam.

Q: Do you have any PR agency to recommend?

Stop wasting huge amounts of money on expensive PR agencies. Instead of spending tens of thousands on a monthly retainer to get featured in online articles no one reads, use that budget to either work with an agency or hire content creators internally that can help you create and post short videos a day. 

The new way to get noticed is telling your own story + regular people sharing videos and live streams about you. It’s the PR that actually works. Skip the vanity driven articles and you’ll thank me

If you’ve made it this far, let me know what you think of this issue and how I can help. I’d also love to hear about what you’re building. For real.

Until next week,

Chaymae