Ads are trash unless you already have PMF, and even then they're often still trash if you don't do it right or you don't have the right kind of product.
Ads are trash unless you already have PMF, and even then they're often still trash if you don't do it right or you don't have the right kind of product.
I consistently launch small vibe codes products. Slap ads on them and after a few weeks decide what to do with them without launching them anywhere else and am seeing good results. I see little to no reason to even launch them any other way at this point.
Which ad network do you use? Google, Meta, TikTok? I imagine you had pre-existing experience especially if it's Google, it's rare to get good RoI out of it unless you really know what you're doing. If you go with the defaults you'll get a few thousand "clicks", zero actual users among them.
Google and Meta. I did work for a Marketing agency for years handling automations development for them. So I have been exposed to hundreds of campaigns across different industries and have seen what works well and what doesn't. Not saying that you need this experience, but once you see stable results from others; and how to protect them, its hard not to chase after them as well!
How do you make the ads themselves? Are you a content creator yourself? Using AI? Hiring someone to make them?
Do you mean the creatives? I do outsource the creatives. For ads, I largely automate setting up and maintaining them; like rebalancing and demand generation scripts. But here we are talking good old spreadsheet magic not AI.
I do use some AI but its minimal; most scripts are still just algorithmic, but its easy to build them with Claude; while they are super expensive (couple of hundreds to thousands) if you bought them from some established marketeers (like Mike Rhodes demand gen script).
Yes, I was curious about the creatives. You're doing a lot, so I was just curious where you were choosing to spend your time.
Ads as a product validation strategy is old, and used to work great, but now is saturated and produces meh results in most niches.
If you're getting >CLV from your advertising cost of customer acquisition without PMF you're doing exceptionally well.