The question I hear most from people building something early is: when should we start advertising?
My honest answer is: later than you think.
This isn’t because advertising doesn’t work early. It can. But advertising amplifies whatever exists when it brings someone to your brand. If what exists isn’t solid, you’re spending to expose people to something that won’t convert or retain them — and you’re learning the wrong lessons from the campaign because the problem isn’t the ad.
What needs to exist before advertising:
The product has to be right. Not perfect — nothing ships perfect — but right enough that a customer who tries it will be glad they did. This sounds obvious. It’s frequently skipped in the urgency to get to market.
The product pages or listings have to be functional. The images need to clearly show what the product is. The description needs to answer the questions someone arriving with no prior context would have. The price needs to make sense relative to the alternatives they can find with a single search. If these elements are weak, you can drive all the traffic you want and it won’t convert.
You need enough social proof that the brand feels real. For most categories, this means a handful of genuine reviews. Not fabricated — real ones from real customers, which means you need to have had real customers before the advertising starts. The earliest orders matter because of the reviews they can produce, not because of the revenue.
You need to know who you’re advertising to. Not in a demographic sense — that’s table stakes. In a behavioural sense: when is this person thinking about buying something like this, what are they trying to solve, where are they in the decision process? Without this, you’re targeting broadly and hoping. With it, you’re creating content for a specific person in a specific moment.
At Vedikaura, I waited longer than felt comfortable before running paid campaigns. The waiting was worth it. The campaigns that ran on solid foundations performed differently from the early ones that went out before the pages were right.
Build first. Amplify what’s working.