Hey there,
I hope you’re having a fabulous and relaxing Sunday. I’m Julia, and every week in this newsletter, I break down marketing insights I’ve learned building software and consumer products (bootstrapped + VC-backed) and lean into the organic, creator, and paid strategies that fuel viral growth.
It was an awesome week in NYC, and if you didn’t catch my session at the AI Marking Summit hosted at the GroupM worldwide HQ, I really leaned into how bullish I am on betting on startups now that we can flex our nimbleness and agility by adopting AI tools without huge corporate pushback.
I also practically broke down what I’m doing with AI at Citizen, from using tools to get us 1.5 BILLION VIEWS to setting up remote teams that sound and operate just like me, to leaning into Agenic AI, product renderings, web flows, lifecycle email…and on and on. I miiiight have even told this audience of top CMOs that the goal would be for me to totally automate my entire workflow so I can move on and do something cooler. That’s the ultimate win, right?
Marketing AI Panel @ GroupM Worldwide HQ
Topic - AI, Influence & Brand Love: The New Marketing Playbook
Everyone loves to dream about building brands (I know it’s not just me!). Taking a dream to reality requires another form of execution. Personally, nothing is more rewarding than building something from a concept into a real-life product that has a personality, vibe, system, etc. Every input into your brand is like you’re architecting a person. I remember when I lived by the motto that people connect with other people, vs. objects, and that’s why you need to build your product into a beautiful version filled with tangible and intangible qualities.
Today, I’ll walk you through exactly what I’d do in the first 7 days of building a brand from zero, as someone who has started brands, social pages, worked with manufacturers, devs, and everything in between. Here’s exactly what I’d prioritize and the software stack I’d use:
Day 0: Look at Winning Brands in Your Vertical:
Personally, I dig through all the winning creative from competitors in my vertical. What makes their messaging and creative effective? What are customers in your category really craving from a brand? And how is this brand simplifying its message so people immediately understand the product (and, in turn, the problem it solves)?
Write a list of the best 5 brands in your category based on either highest sales, brands you’re personally obsessed with, or a mix of both.
Study what they are doing. These are some of my favorite areas to focus on when going beyond just how a competitor’s brand looks and feels:
How do they talk to their customers online?
Are they commenting back to people on their IG?
What is their lifecycle marketing (e.g. where are their customers most likely to engage with touchpoints? Email, SMS, phone?)
Are they promoting something on stories?
Is their founder making content?
WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THESE BRANDS THAT IS CREATING BUZZ AND WORKING FOR THEM?
Software you can use to look at competitors: Of course, their website and social pages are a given. If I’m going to stalk brands, I usually use tools like Foreplay and Meta Ads Manager
Looking at winning brands in your vertical is a healthy form of competition, whether you're in B2B, B2C, or even GovTech. Why? Because every brand needs marketing, and those who do it well will ultimately succeed.
Day 1-2: Craft Your Brand Brainstorm
If I were starting a brand over from scratch, I would focus on building content first, and I would need to do the brand brainstorm outlined below to get me there. I love thinking through things like, is my brand sexy, conservative, sophisticated, funny, bright, sultry……THIS brand brainstorm is where you can combine visual <> written text / copy / vibes and really begin architecting
Build a brand brainstorm in Figma: Start brainstorming what your brand will look and feel like.
Do you have a mood board? Go through the different elements of brands (imagery, copy, creative, extra stuff you love and think your brand would benefit from) and map them out. I’ve used Figma, Google Docs, or even my iPhone notes to keep a running tab of my brand brainstorms.
Upload that brainstorm into Lovable to make an MVP landing page: I ultimately will collect this into a Figma (and what’s fun now is that you can take screenshots of your Figma that collects everything you want to be included in your brand and put it into Lovable). Try this, and it will spit you out an interesting MVP (no, not a perfect one) that can inspire you to go deeper on what you like and cut what you don’t. That’s the ultimate beauty of using a website like Lovable: you won’t get a perfect version of your website, but it’s incredibly empowering to take something from Figma idea -> landing page that you can imagine your customer using
Day 3-5: Make Content ASAP
This will take the longest between getting comfortable, filming, editing, posting, and seeing what works. The reality is, you should just make your own content from the start, especially to get familiar with your brand and iterate on what you want the content to feel like to the end customer. Here’s exactly what I would start with:
UGC:
Make your own content. Talk into the camera as if you’re pitching your brand. Take vlog-style content on the street. I love living in a world where my brand is alive and well. Speaking it into existence is a great way to bring it to life. And you can document your approach to how your brand comes across based on what you like and don’t like.
From this content, I would edit 5-10 30s videos and scatter them on social with a mix of the below media:
Cost-Effective UGC: Hire affordable creators to make content for you. No, I’m not talking about an influencer who will cost you a few hundred or even a thousand dollars per video. I’m talking about inexpensive videos, from $15-30, from nano creators who can test different messaging.
(THIS is a super cost-effective and good website to dig for creators on. I also love working with Heave, my favorite agency that helps us find top-tier creators for $100/video. Reply here or DM me if you want an intro. You can also click on both of those resources to check them out.)
Customer + Prospective Customer Content: Talk to customers and make content from this – this is my favorite, underrated way to mix getting amazing customer feedback and building organic content that potential customers can really relate to.
If you are solving a good enough customer problem to build a business around, it’s going to be a repeated customer problem. Find a way to capture a product “aha” moment on camera. These are super compelling and effective to watch because they focus on the true emotional connection and understanding of your product.
At Citizen, this looks like a missing person being found through the app and the emotional reunion with their family captured on CitizenCam. But you can create powerful content at any stage of the funnel just by talking to your customers. I love blending these real moments with more curated, posed content because it brings a human pulse to brands.
BTW, at Citizen, 90% of our content looks incredibly raw and authentic, and only about 10% of our social content is edited/animated. As you can imagine, the organic content performs best, by far. If you scroll TikTok, YouTube, or IG, it’s clear: people want to see what brands actually offer through the noise. Don’t make it hard for them.
Day 6-7: Secure Your Brand’s Legal and Social Foundation
Setting up anything legal that you need is a given, but as a marketer, I can tell you my favorite trick is to grab the handles for any social platforms that go with your brand, with a twist.
This includes handles that are directly related to your brand name, and even indirectly related by using keywords in your content category (e.g. if I were Tesla, I’d want to grab the handle “@electricvehicle” or even “envirocars”).
If these handles are already taken, you can find a Username Broker to get them for you. I would go this route over messaging the account owner because I find more success with this, but you might be able to strike up a deal with a brand owner.
Fun fact, in 2020, the owner of the account @ spice offered to sell it to me for $2K…. I should have taken him up on it. One big regret I have is not buying the names of city handles for Citizen, like @ Chicago. If you have the opportunity to buy handles for usernames in your domain, take advantage of this and think about this like modern SEO.
Legal Basics: This is important, and I’m no legal expert, so I'll keep this brief and explain a few things I’ve done in the past as I’m setting up brands. I try to umbrella everything for my brand under an LLC.
I’ve opened up a few business bank accounts before, and it’s incredibly easy through whatever bank you currently operate with. I then put business expenses on the CC, register accounts with the LLC name, and so on and so forth.
If you are making any products that need additional legal work, I would start by asking ChatGPT or Perplexity to impersonate a lawyer and see what advice it gives you. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t actually get a lawyer, but why not do as much work up front as you can so you know the situation you’re walking into? Lawyers bill by the hour, so make sure you’re smart enough not to waste away capital with work you can do yourself.
Well, How’d I Do?
This step-by-step guide should get you up and running from Day 0 to Day 7 (or as we like to phrase it in product roadmap terms, “D0” to “D7”). These are some of my personal favorite tips, tricks, and hacks from a marketing/brand builder POV on what I’d focus on. You can get lost thinking you have to do a ton of random things, and we definitely don’t want that.
Building a brand gets you deep into the trenches, but is there truly anything more rewarding than seeing your vision come to life? Few things come to mind, IMO. Now, take this playbook and get going. The world is looking for more brands like the one that is sitting right in your mind to come to life! Your future self will thank you 7 days after you run this playbook (you can hold me to this).
Share this with a friend who you know has the power to start a killer brand. Also, if you want any feedback, I’m here to share advice, so feel free to reply to this thread and let me know what you have cooking.
I hope you have an excellent week!
Julia
