Yōtei

The climb

Which marketing to do at each stage.

Mount Yotei, with the route and its five camps markedTrailhead1First stretch2Treeline3Above the clouds4Summit5

Trailhead $0

The signal test: find out whether anyone wants what you have put out, even if that is only a landing page.

  1. Decide what counts as success before you start

    Write down the result that would prove people want this, for example ten payments, twenty replies or five people asking when it ships. With no target set in advance every result looks like good news.

  2. Check that someone is already selling this

    A competitor is proof that people pay for the problem, not a reason to stop. If nobody sells it, find out why before you assume you are first.

  3. Talk to twenty people who have the problem

    Do it on calls or DMs instead of a survey and write down the exact words they use for the problem, because those words are your landing page.

  4. Put the real price on the page before you build the thing

    One sentence, one screenshot, one price, one button. A page people can try to pay for tells you more in a week than a month of building.

  5. Buy $100 to $200 of traffic across three platforms

    Google, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok. Set the ad accounts up now, approval takes a day or two. $100 to $200 in total over the first week tells you whether anyone clicks and which audience is warmest, well before you have built the thing. Once the first data is back, spend a second week trying different targeting and creatives on the platform that responded.

  6. Go where they already complainSocial listening

    Reddit, Hacker News, Discord servers, niche forums. Be useful there for two weeks without mentioning it, then mention it when it genuinely answers the question.

  7. Message thirty people who described this problem in public this weekFree tools

    Offer to set it up for them yourself. Free alerts will email you the moment someone posts the words you care about.

  8. Charge from the first day

    Free signups tell you almost nothing. A payment, even ten dollars, means someone chose you over doing nothing.

Not yet

  • Paid creators or influencers. You do not know the message yet, so you would be paying people to guess it.
  • SEO articles. You do not know which words your customers use.
  • An agency. Nobody else can find out for you whether the idea works.
  • A logo, a rebrand, a launch video. None of it changes the answer you are looking for.
  • Ad spend past the first $100 to $200 of tests.

First stretch To $1k

Your first real traction. People are paying, and every one of them came from you.

  1. Track where every customer came from

    One column in a spreadsheet, filled in by hand. Without it you will scale whatever felt busiest rather than whatever paid.

  2. Fifty conversations a week, written by hand

    LinkedIn, DMs, email, each one referencing something specific about that person. Aim for meaningful conversations or meaningful rejections, both are useful. Sequencers and lead lists come later, once you know which first line works.

  3. Reply in public, every daySocial listening

    One useful reply under a post from someone with your problem beats ten posts of your own.

  4. Set alerts for your category and your competitorsSocial listening

    Then answer within the hour. Being first in the thread is most of the advantage.

  5. Make every account today

    X, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit. Each is an organic channel and an ad platform. Add Search Console and Bing Webmaster, ten minutes each. Claim the handles even if you post nothing for a month.

  6. If it is an app, work the store listing

    Title, subtitle, keyword field, screenshots and preview video. Same job as an ad, and most people never touch it again after launch.

  7. Post daily and badly for thirty daysFree tools

    Reach is not the point yet. You are looking for a format you can keep up and getting comfortable making things. Free editors and video tools do most of the work.

  8. Launch where launches still work

    Product Hunt, the directories your buyers actually read, the subreddits that allow it. Space them out so you get several spikes instead of one.

  9. Get into the lists your buyers already read

    Directories, roundups, comparison posts. This one lands in days rather than months, because the models are already reading those pages and are not yet reading yours.

  10. Lay the AEO foundationsAEO

    Answer-shaped pages, schema, an llms.txt file. An AI coding agent does most of it in an afternoon, and it compounds for months, so starting late costs you the months you do not get back.

  11. Call everyone who cancels

    Before you spend anything on finding more people, find out why the ones you had left.

  12. Collect proof

    From every happy customer, one sentence you can quote and one introduction.

Not yet

  • Paying creators. UGC and influencer work start at five thousand a month, two camps up.
  • SEO articles at volume. Put the AEO foundations in now and leave the writing for later.
  • Cold email at scale. Sequencers, lead lists and an AI SDR belong in the next camp, once hand-written outreach has shown you which first line works.
  • Paid ads at a real budget. At this size, ads buy you data you can get for free by talking to people.
  • Hiring a marketer. There is nothing to hand over yet.

Treeline $1k to $5k

You are flying. Start the channels that take months to compound, while the founder-led work still carries you.

  1. Systemise the outboundOutbound

    Now is when sequencers, lead lists and an AI SDR earn their place, because hand-written outreach has told you which first line works. Automating before that just sends a message that does not land, faster.

  2. Clip what you already haveClipping

    Podcasts, demos, recorded calls, streams. One long video becomes twenty shorts.

  3. Write the pages that catch people already lookingSEO

    Comparison pages, alternatives pages, integration pages, and the how-do-I questions. This waited until here because you now know the words customers use.

  4. Get your name into places you do not own

    Podcasts, newsletters, community roundups, other people’s lists. Searches for your brand name convert better than anything else, and this is what creates them.

  5. Post on one platform, consistentlySocial drafting

    The one where your buyers already are. Drafting tools keep the pace when the week gets busy.

  6. Turn on lifecycle emailRetention

    Welcome, activation nudge, win back. Three emails usually do more than a new channel.

Not yet

  • Paying creators. UGC and influencer work start at five thousand a month, so make your own content until then.
  • Scaling ad spend. Prove the message organically first.
  • A third and fourth channel. Two that work beat four that are half run.
  • A full-time marketer. Contractors for specific jobs are fine.

Above the clouds $5k to $20k

You know what converts. Now hand it to other people, and buy more attention with it.

  1. Read the ad libraries before you spendAd research

    Meta, TikTok and Google publish every ad running. Study the ones that have been live for months, because a long run usually means it works.

  2. Run your first UGC campaignUGC

    Real creators making videos about your product. This waited until here because you now know what makes people say yes, which is what makes the message safe to hand over. Message ten small creators yourself and agree fifteen to twenty five dollars a video plus two dollars per thousand views, capped. A marketplace is faster and costs about a hundred a video.

  3. Find creators whose audience is your buyerInfluencer

    Audience overlap, not follower count. Look at who actually follows them before you pay anyone.

  4. Use AI video to test angles cheaplyAI video ads

    Script to actor in minutes, so you can find the angle before you pay a person to film it.

  5. Run the creator content as paid adsAd creatives

    Then make variations and test them weekly. At this size the constraint is how much creative you can produce, not budget.

  6. Scale the creator programmeUGC

    Once a format works, more creators, paid by verified views, posting from their own accounts so the reach compounds.

  7. Work on retention before you spend more on acquisitionRetention

    At this size a point of churn costs more than most new channels earn.

  8. Add a second channel because it fits the product

    Not because it is popular. Something people look for in an emergency will not work on a slow content channel.

Not yet

  • Brand campaigns with no outcome you can measure.
  • Generalist hires for channels you have not proved.
  • A new channel because a competitor is on it.

Summit $20k and up

Two or three channels compounding, and a name people repeat without you.

  1. Track how the answer engines describe your categoryAEO

    ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI. Then get into the lists and comparisons they cite when they answer.

  2. Give every channel a named owner

    Channels without an owner stop working quietly, and it usually takes a quarter to notice.

  3. Spend on the brand

    People searching your name convert better and cost less than anyone else. How many of them there are is a fair measure of everything else you are doing.

  4. Hire specialists for the channel that already worksTrail guides

    Before hiring generalists for channels you have not proved yet.

  5. Write down what you expect before each experiment

    At this size the wins are small percentages, so you need the prediction to tell a real result from noise.

Questions

Good to know

I am an engineer with no marketing experience. What should I do first?

Talk to twenty people who have the problem you solve and write down the words they use, then put up one page using those words with a real price on it. Put $100 to $200 behind ads on two or three platforms to see whether anyone clicks. Until someone pays you, marketing is customer research wearing a different hat.

How do I test demand before I build anything?

A landing page with a real price and a real button, plus $100 to $200 of ads across two or three of Google, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok. Set the ad accounts up early because approval takes a day or two. Decide what counts as success before you start, or you will read any result as encouraging.

When should I start UGC or influencer marketing?

At five thousand a month, not before. Both work by handing your message to other people, so you have to know exactly what the message is first, and you do not know that until a few thousand a month of steady payers has told you. Below five thousand the same money finds more customers by hand, and paying creators early just buys a wider audience for a pitch that does not land yet.

What marketing gets me from zero to one thousand a month?

Founder-led work only. Fifty specific cold emails or DMs a week, daily useful replies where your buyers already post, alerts on your category so you answer threads within the hour, and a few spaced-out launches. Every sale at this stage comes from you directly.

How do I get from one thousand to five thousand a month?

Start the channels that take months to compound: comparison and alternatives pages for people already searching, clipping your own long content into shorts, posting consistently on the one platform your buyers use, and getting your name into podcasts, newsletters and other people’s lists. Founder-led outreach still carries you while these warm up. Paying creators is not part of this stretch, it starts at five thousand.

When should I start SEO and AEO?

The AEO foundations go in early, around your first paying customers: answer-shaped pages, schema, an llms.txt file, and getting into the lists your buyers already read. That last part can show up in AI answers within days. Writing SEO content waits until about one thousand a month, once you know which words customers actually use.

Do I have to do the camps in order?

Yes, and skipping is the most common way marketing money gets wasted. Each camp proves something the next one depends on. Running creator campaigns before you know your message just buys a wider audience for a pitch that does not land.

How long does each camp take?

Reaching a thousand a month takes most solo founders somewhere between six months and two years. One to five thousand is usually the longest stretch, because the channels you start there take months to compound while you are still doing the founder-led work by hand.

The full list of tools by job is on the route index, the free ways to do it yourself are here, and people worth learning from are here.