The Joy of Vibe Marketing
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Sometimes, you just have to go for it.
That’s my been my main sentiment since I’ve chatted with a few indies about marketing. I’m glad the conversation is opening up, because we’re all starting to learn a universal truth:
When you ask someone to pay money for something, you have to sell it.
Though, so many of us aren’t sure where to start. It’s a new world for most — so my thinking is, let’s do what all of these new entrepreneurs are doing with vibe coding. They may not full understand it, but they know it does do something.
To that end, may I suggest to you: vibe marketing.
Enter Vibe Marketing
To vibe market is to not worry about attribution for a specific install. It’s the action of putting together several creatives to run as a paid ad even though you may not know best practices (I certainly don’t). It’s trying to reach out to an influencer in your space even though you have no idea how those deals work. It’s not really knowing how to target an audience just right. Or even understanding how Meta’s comically confusing ad manager works.
You’re just going for done, and far from perfect. Just try something, and keep a sheet somewhere as simple as this:
| Date | Ad | Spent | Earned |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 18th | IG Post | $40 | $50 |
| May 19th | IG Post | $40 | $41 |
You don’t have to full grok the hierarchy of a campaign, its ad sets and the ads within them. Or, know what to set for an auction price. Or even know what CPM stands for! Like those learning to program, there’s just too much to learn! So forget learning the ins and outs academically, just try something and learn on the job. This is certainly a situation where you learn balance by falling and scraping up your knees a bit.
If the Age of LLMs has taught me anything, it’s that I’m leaning more towards action than perfection. I’ve struggled with not letting something go until my footprint and design is all over it. And sometimes, you need that. But other times? It’s okay to pull out of the garage in a Toyota rather than a Porsche.
Vibe Marketing Ideas
So, what vibe marketing have I been trying lately? Here’s what I’m up to:
- Boosting Instagram Posts: I try to find a post that explains Elite Hoops well, shows it off in action, and I put $10 behind it and see what happens. Today, I have this one boosted.
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Exact Match with ASA: If you can find exact search terms people are looking for when it comes to your app, definitely run them with Apple Ads (seriously can’t believe these are called AA now, but I digress). These are high-intent users, looking for what we all are taught to find: someone needing a specific problem solved, and you have the app to solve it.
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Classic Website Views: I’m a bit new to this one, but seeing as how I just rewrote my entire website for Elite Hoops, I’m trying them out. Simply serve up a Meta ad with a goal of a website visit. I think my site sells the app fairly well, so I’m curious to see what effect these will have. They run a bit cheaper than app install ads, too.
And, things I want to try, but haven’t:
- Google search ads.
- SEO in general. Paralysis by analysis here, there’s too much data and techniques being thrown at me when I look at this. If you have any solid ideas here, I’d love to hear them.
- Good ol’ flyers at basketball tournaments. I want to make a compelling App Clip of the digital whiteboard, and hang up the QR code on the ubiquitous thumbtack board each basketball venue has.
Final Thoughts
“Vibe” marketing, coding — whatever you’re henceforth vibing, is a gamble. I couldn’t help but realize a few things as I rewrote Elite Hoop’s website in a brand new stack I’ve never used (modern web development), with a serverless backend I’ve traditionally not leveraged for auth (Supabase), and in a framework I don’t fully understand yet (React) — much less using another framework built on top of that one (next.js)!
But - I did do it! And there’s no way I could have without the help of Cursor and vibe coding. But, I’d be lying through my digital teeth if I didn’t proclaim how much I didn’t really understand at points. That doesn’t feel great. What was being done at some point in the next.js rewrite that was a critical error — but I was just too ignorant to know any better? Is there some massive flaw I just haven’t found yet? The feeling comes up, because I’ve spotted this type of thing with AI and iOS programming several times — because there, I do know.
That is the line we talk here. Vibe marketing is to do it but not fully grok it. And for my money? That’s a fantastic place to start. Far less a gamble here than it is with shipping production code. When it comes to this stuff, it’s not the mistakes that will kill you. It’s the not trying that will.
Until next time ✌️