The founder's 30-day marketing plan

Most founder marketing fails from spreading thin: a few posts here, an ad test there, a half-finished blog. The fix is a short plan with one goal.

Pick one number. Trials started, demos booked, first orders, waitlist sign-ups. One. Write down where it is today.

Pick your time. 30–60 minutes a day is enough for this plan if you protect it. Mornings work for most founders, before the product work eats the day.

Pick a budget. Even $0 works. If you have money for a paid test, decide the cap now (for example $600 for the month) so you don't decide it emotionally later.

Know your buyer. One sentence: who they are, what triggers the search, and what they use today. For Shiftly, our fictional example: "Managers of single-location restaurants who do the staff schedule in a spreadsheet on Sunday night."

Nothing else works if visitors don't understand you or you can't see what they do.

Positioning (day 1–2)

• Write your one-liner: what it is, for whom, and the outcome. Under 20 words.
• List your 5–8 real competitors and what you do better and worse than each. Be honest; you'll use this for comparison pages.

Homepage (day 2–3)

• Headline that's your one-liner, in plain words.
• One clear call to action.
• Price visible, or a clear reason it isn't.
• Proof you actually have: a number, a customer quote you have permission for, a short demo.

Tracking (day 4–5)

• Analytics installed (GA4 or similar) and Search Console verified.
• Your key event tracked: sign-up, trial or purchase.
• If you'll run ads, the pixels or conversion tags installed and tested.

Machine-readable basics (day 5)

• A sitemap, a robots.txt that allows the crawlers you want, basic schema and an llms.txt.

Choose the one channel you can keep up for a year. Owned channels compound; abandoned ones don't.

For B2B founders: founder-led LinkedIn

• 3 posts a week, from your own profile.
• Write from real material: a customer call, a product change, a number you learned, a mistake.
• Reply to every comment within the day. Comment on 5 posts from people your buyers follow.

For products people search for: SEO + GEO

• Write your first two comparison pages ("you vs your top competitor") and one "alternatives" page.
• Open with the answer in the first two sentences. See the GEO playbook.

For visual consumer products: Instagram or TikTok

• 4–5 short videos or posts a week, mostly showing the product being used.

Whichever you pick, plan two weeks of content in one sitting so the daily habit is publishing, not inventing.

This week gets you onto the pages where buyers and AI assistants look for options.

• Directories. Submit to 20–50 launch directories, starting with comparison and review sites. The order is in launch on 50 directories in a week.
• Review profiles. Claim G2 or Capterra and ask your 5 happiest users for an honest review.
• Product Hunt or Show HN, if you're ready to be online all day to answer. If not, plan it for next month.
• Your own list. Email everyone who ever signed up or asked about you: what's new and one clear ask.

At the end of the week, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity your five most important buyer questions and write down who they name. That's your baseline for AI search visibility.

Both are tests with a cap and a stop rule, not commitments.

Outbound test

• One list of 40–60 people with a shared reason to hear from you (intent signals).
• A 3-step email sequence from a separate, warmed domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up. See cold email that doesn't burn your domain.
• Success line: for example, 3 or more positive replies.

Paid test

• One platform where your buyers are: Meta for most consumer products, Google Search when people search for the problem, LinkedIn for narrow B2B roles.
• 3 creatives built from patterns in competitors' longest-running ads.
• A capped daily budget and a target cost per result. Stop anything well above it after it has spent enough to judge.

Write down the result of each test in one line, whatever it is.

Block an hour. Answer these in writing:

Then decide:

• Keep the owned channel if you kept it up, even if results are early. Owned channels are slow.
• Scale the test that hit its line, with a new cap.
• Cut the test that didn't, unless you know exactly what to change.
• Write next month's plan on one page, with one number.

If a plan needs a lot of willpower, it won't survive week 3. Make the daily part small:

1. 5 minutes: numbers. Yesterday's sign-ups, spend and anything unusual.
2. 15 minutes: one piece of work. Publish the post, send the batch, approve the article.
3. 10 minutes: replies. Comments, DMs, email replies, directory questions.

Everything else (writing the next two weeks of content, building lists, making creatives) happens in one weekly session.

This is roughly the plan Cosmo writes on day one, adjusted to your site, competitors and goal. Then he runs it: he writes the posts and pages, submits the directories, builds the lists and the paused ad tests, and sends you a morning brief with a few approval cards. The daily routine becomes a few 👍s.

A typical morning in the Shiftly example: "Morning ☀️ Yesterday: 9 sign-ups at $16 each, best day this month. 3 things for today: 1. LinkedIn post on the 'spreadsheet' angle, 2. Blog: '7shifts alternatives for diners', 3. Pause the $22 CPA ad set." Cosmo can lead with the plan, or follow when you tell him what to do. Nothing goes out without your yes. See what an AI CMO is.