Obviously we have a marketing spend in the sense that we have a marketing team and I am fairly certain that they get paid
What we don’t do at the moment, is run specific paid campaigns to either advertise the product or for the sole purpose of customer acquisition / growth. Actually, we have deliberately not focused on growth for a while now in order to address economics and per user costs.
So really the term is referring to the fact that all of our growth is organic and through word of mouth. It isn’t a direct result of money spent in a certain way or place.
So whilst I agree that, in isolation, “no marketing spend” is a misnomer, it must be looked at in the context of the dialog and circumstances it’s referring to.
Man, did that article upset some people on Twitter.
I think we are reaching a point where startups can’t claim “we have zero marketing spend” with a straight face. Hopefully the various people from community members to journalists will challenge that statement whenever they hear it. I find @anon95680666’s post a particularly fun example.
@simonb’s answer is awesome as usual. You can only optimise “economics and per user costs” if you do have “economics and per user costs”. As an investor and customer, that’s good to hear.
Not sure if this exactly qualifies as in the media, but my friend was showing me his collection of Apple device boxes, because who doesn’t collect and keep those things?
The thing that caught my attention was a tiny little wallet in the corner of the photo. It looked nice. A long conversation later and I finally get the link for the place to buy the wallet.
Lo and behold, a Monzo card is used in the most of the product shots!