TL;DR
Before you spend anything on paid acquisition, work through this 30-item checklist covering foundation, infrastructure, content, distribution, and measurement. Most founders skip steps and light money on fire. This prevents that.
I’ve watched a lot of founders light money on fire. They’re excited, the product is live, and suddenly they’ve got a Google Ads account and a £1,000 weekly budget. Two months later they’re spending £20k a month and they still don’t know what their ideal customer looks like.
Before you spend anything on paid acquisition, you need to know what problem you’re solving, who you’re solving it for, and why they should care. You need the scaffolding in place. Otherwise you’re just amplifying a confused message.
Here’s the 30-item checklist. Work through it before the credit card comes out.
What’s Your Foundation? (8 items)
This is the thinking work. You can’t skip it or outsource it. You need to know these things in your bones.
Define your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Not ‘B2B SaaS companies’. ‘Series B companies in the developer tools space with 20-50 engineers, led by founders who’ve sold software before, burning £5k+ per month on tooling’.
Write your positioning statement. In one sentence, why is your product different? Not ‘better’. Different. What job does it do that nothing else does? Own that job.
Articulate your unique insight. Why does this problem exist now? Why didn’t it exist five years ago? What’s changed in the market that makes this solvable? Ground it in reality, not hype.
Map your value drivers. What three things matter most to your ICP? Speed? Cost? Safety? Security? Compliance? Pick three. Everything else is secondary. Messaging comes from these.
Clarify your business model. Are you selling to users or buyers? Who signs the cheque? Is it procurement? Finance? Engineering? Where does the buying conversation happen?
Name your hero outcome. What does success look like for your customer in 90 days if they adopt your product? Be specific. Not ‘saves time’. ‘Reduces deployment time from 3 hours to 15 minutes’.
Define your distribution channel. Where does your ICP spend time? Product Hunt? Twitter? LinkedIn? Sales calls? Community Slack? Pick one channel where they already hang out. Own it before you build a moat.
Write your brand tone. How do you speak? Are you formal or casual? Playful or serious? Are you B2B corporate or D2C? Your messaging flows from this. Lock it down.
What Infrastructure Do You Need? (7 items)
This is the plumbing. Get it right and everything flows. Get it wrong and data moves nowhere. Most founders skip this and regret it six months later.
Build a proper landing page. Not a squeeze page. A proper page that explains what you do, for whom, and why they should care. Include a video of you explaining it. Include social proof if you have it. Test copy ruthlessly.
Set up Google Analytics 4. With conversion tracking. Track: signups, free trial starts, user invitations, first feature adoption, upgrade events. You need to know where users are dropping off.
Connect a CRM. Doesn’t have to be fancy. HubSpot free tier is fine. But you need to capture leads and track where they go. Most founders don’t do this and lose institutional knowledge.
Set up a basic email tool. Substack, Beehiiv, or ConvertKit. You need a way to stay in touch with users. One email per week. No more.
Create a simple analytics dashboard. One page. Traffic. Signups. Trial starts. Conversions. Churn. Pull numbers manually if you have to. You should know these numbers by heart.
Build a social media presence. One channel. Pick the one your ICP uses most. Post three times per week consistently. It’s not viral marketing. It’s signal sending. ‘We exist and we’re shipping.’
Document your onboarding flow. Walk through your product as a new user. Map the path to first value. If it takes more than 10 minutes, it’s broken. Most founders skip this and wonder why retention is terrible.
What Content Proves You Understand the Problem? (5 items)
You need five pieces of proof-of-concept content before you start demand generation. This is how you show that you understand the problem.
Publish a founder’s story. Why did you build this? What problem bit you so hard that you had to solve it? One blog post. Make it personal. 800-1,000 words. This is your proof that you care.
Write a customer journey map. From ‘aware we have a problem’ to ‘using your product happily’. Map the jobs they’re trying to do at each stage. What content do they need to move forward?
Create a features-to-benefits doc. For each feature, what job does it do? For whom? Why should they care? Don’t tell people about buttons. Tell them about outcomes.
Publish your framework or playbook. Share something useful. Not a sales pitch. A framework you’ve developed. ‘How we built onboarding in 48 hours.’ ‘Five questions to ask before hiring a CFO.’ Give away your best thinking.
Record yourself selling. Do a sales call or demo with someone. Record it. Transcribe it. Extract the language they use when they’re confused. Extract the objections. This is liquid gold for messaging.
How Do You Actually Distribute Your Message? (6 items)
You’ve done the thinking. Now you need to put your message in front of the right people. This doesn’t start with ads. It starts with channels you can own.
Build a newsletter. Recruit 50 people to your newsletter before you buy a single ad. Go to where they hang out. Ask them to subscribe. This is your direct channel to stay top-of-mind.
Engage in one community deeply. Slack community, Discord, forum, subreddit. Pick one. Be helpful. Answer questions. Don’t sell. Don’t promote. Just be useful. Organic growth happens here.
Create a referral incentive. Give users a reason to tell their mates. It doesn’t have to be money. It could be account credits. It could be features. But if it’s worth spreading, users will spread it.
Pitch press/podcasts. Write five 1-paragraph pitches to journalists and podcasters in your space. Why should they care? What’s newsworthy? Not ‘our product is great’. ‘Here’s a trend we’re seeing that affects your audience.’
Partner with one complementary tool. Find a tool your ICP uses that doesn’t compete with you. Offer value to their users. Co-market something. Split the effort.
Host one event (virtual or in-person). A workshop, a panel, an office hours session. Invite your ICP. This is not about selling. It’s about demonstrating expertise and building a room of potential users.
What Should You Measure Before Spending? (4 items)
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. These four things will tell you if your fundamentals are sound before you scale acquisition.
Track unit economics. How much does it cost to acquire one customer? How much revenue do they generate in year 1? CAC / LTV. If LTV < 3x CAC, don’t scale yet.
Measure onboarding friction. Of users who sign up, what % complete onboarding in the first 7 days? Less than 40%? Your onboarding is broken. Fix it before you acquire more.
Calculate baseline retention. Of the users you’ve acquired organically (newsletter, community, word-of-mouth), what % are still using you 30 days later? If less than 30%, your product isn’t ready yet.
Set a clear success metric. By the end of month 3, what number proves you’re on the right track? 100 organic signups? £10k ARR? 50% retention? Pick one and be ruthless about it.
Ready to Spend on Ads?
If you’ve worked through all 30 items and you’ve got clear ICP and positioning, solid infrastructure for tracking, at least one content piece published, an organic channel starting to move the needle, and baseline retention above 30%, then yes. Spend on ads. But not before. Paid acquisition at that point is multiplying what’s working, not trying to manufacture demand where there is none.