How to Start Marketing as a New Founder

When you go freelance and want to start marketing, you quickly get the feeling that you need to be everywhere at once: Instagram, LinkedIn, newsletter, AI tools, ads. The advice is well-intentioned — but it starts at the wrong point.

The decisive question is not which channel you tackle first. The decisive question is whether you know what you stand for and who you are there for. Those who cannot answer that clearly will not truly reach anyone on any channel — no matter how often they post or which tools they use.

Why Most People Start Too Early With the Wrong Step

It is tempting to become visible immediately. An Instagram account can be set up quickly, the first post written in minutes. The problem is not the channel. The problem is the missing foundation beneath it.

Marketing that is not built on a clear positioning fizzles out — regardless of how much time, money or creativity is invested. That applies to classic marketing just as much as to the use of AI. Those who work with AI without a strategy do not produce better marketing — they produce bad marketing faster.

What Comes First: Positioning

Positioning is your place in the market — the area you occupy, from which you are the best answer to a specific problem for a specific target audience.

Positioning = Perception + Value + Target Audience.

All three dimensions must align. What do you claim for yourself? What concrete value do you offer? And for whom exactly? Those who cannot clearly answer one of these three questions do not yet have a positioning — only a description.

That sounds manageable, but it is not. Positioning covers multiple dimensions: your own strengths analysis, a deep understanding of your target audience, analysis of the competition, clearly working out your unique selling point — and translating all of these insights into a message that truly lands. Each of these dimensions takes time, honest reflection and often an external perspective as well.

Those who take positioning seriously invest more than an afternoon — our positioning course spans 21 hours, and there is a reason for that: real clarity requires depth. That is not effort that doesn’t pay off. It is the most important strategic step a freelance business can take.

⚡ Quick Win — Apply Right Now

Before you read on, a small exercise. No analysis, no research, no lengthy thinking. Just write down what comes to mind spontaneously:

This is your first personal assessment — not a finished result, but a starting point. This sentence reflects where you stand right now. In the course of real positioning work, it will either deepen or you will reinvent yourself — but then sharply positioned and market-relevant.

Write the sentence down and set it aside. At the end of a structured positioning process, you will see how close it actually was to your finished positioning.

Truly Understanding Your Target Audience — Not Guessing

Positioning requires a deep understanding of your own target audience. Not on the surface — not “women between thirty-five and fifty-five who want to build their own business” — but concretely and humanly.

What drives them? What frustrates them? What problem do they have that they haven’t been able to solve so far — and why not? The more precisely you know this, the more targeted your communication will be. Not because you become more manipulative, but because you truly understand what people need — and can align your offer precisely with that.

A helpful step: finding out where your target audience gets their information. Do they read specialist blogs? Are they active on LinkedIn? Do they listen to podcasts? Do they meet at local networks? This question determines which channels you should be visible on — and only then do the channels come into play.

Where AI Provides Meaningful Support

AI is not a replacement for your own thinking — but it is an excellent sparring partner for exactly this process. You can use AI to sharpen your positioning, develop questions that give you clarity about your target audience, and test your message before it goes out.

What AI cannot do here: it does not know your offer, your story or your target audience better than you do. It can help you reach clarity faster — but the clarity itself must come from you.

The Sequence That Works

Those who want to start marketing today get the furthest with this sequence:

1. Clarify positioning. Who am I, who am I there for, what is my promise — and what distinguishes me from others?

2. Deeply understand your target audience. Not guessing, but researching, observing, listening. The language of your target audience is the most valuable material you can have for your marketing.

3. Find out where your target audience gets their information. Only then do you decide which channels to be active on.

4. Develop a strategy. Not as a rigid plan, but as orientation: which content, which topics, which rhythm suit me and my target audience?

5. Few channels — but consistently. Those who are truly good on one channel reach more people than someone who is half-heartedly present on five. Less is genuinely more here.

Three Practical Tips for the Start

While you are working on your positioning, there are three measures you can tackle early — they pay into any marketing strategy in the long term.

Tip 1: Build a website — even as a solopreneur. The website is the destination of your marketing activities. All channels, all content, all advertising ultimately lead there. For an online business it is indispensable; for a local business it is the most important basic information. And one more thing: in a world where AI increasingly answers search queries, Google alone is no longer enough. Those without their own website are barely findable in AI-powered search. With AI, a professional website is possible today even without an agency and without a large budget.

Tip 2: Set up a Google Business Profile. This step is particularly valuable if you have a business address or run a physical location — but it is worthwhile for online offerings too. The effort is manageable, the benefit considerable: you become visible in local search, can collect reviews and display opening hours, contact details and offers directly in search results. A fully completed Google Business Profile is one of the most effective free marketing measures available.

Tip 3: Choose a single channel — and build it consistently. For an online business: better to play one channel really well than to be half-heartedly present on five. With AI, this is now realistically achievable even as a founder or solopreneur — content creation becomes faster without losing quality. For a local business, word of mouth remains one of the strongest levers. See which channels local associations and businesses are active on, network there and build a visible presence in your region.

The Next Step

Positioning is the most important strategic step you can take as a solopreneur — and it is more complex than a quick exercise. The Positioning Course for Founders guides you through this process: strengths analysis, target audience understanding, competitive view, message development — structured, with AI as a sparring partner, in 21 hours, at your own pace.

To the Positioning Course for Founders →