Can't afford a full launch? Start with one thing.

If you can only fix one thing, fix the thing standing between your customer and their first purchase. What that is depends on where your business is right now.

Fix the barrier to entry

If you're just starting out and trying to prove people want your product, focus on the place where people actually buy.

If most of your sales happen on Amazon, make your Amazon pages great. Your A+ content should be clear, concise and do a good job of showing what the product is. That's how you'll get to your first buyer.

If you sell direct through Shopify, you need a store that looks presentable and trustworthy. People will browse your site asking themselves one question: is this thing a scam?

Most of us have bought something online that showed up looking nothing like the pictures or the description. That experience sticks, and it damages a brand. So shoppers look for a reason to trust you. That reason is your brand.

Find the biggest leak

Think of your business like a bucket of water. If there's a giant hole in it, it doesn't matter how much water you pour in.

To find the hole, look at what's happening:

• Lots of traffic, no sales. Something is wrong with the page. Change what shoppers see and test what gets more of them to buy.
• Not enough traffic, or traffic that costs too much. The ad, or whatever is driving people to you, isn't connecting. Try different creative and different angles.

Fix the biggest hole first. Then look for the next one.

Don't go big too early

The mistake isn't starting small. It's spending big before you know what works.

Once your brand is ready for market, hold off on paying to reach as many people as possible. Start with founder-led sales, friends and family, reaching out to distributors, or going to conferences. See if you can get some natural sales first.

You'll hear directly from buyers: what they liked and what they didn't. You can even give the product away for free. That feedback tells you whether there's a real fit, or what to adjust, before you start investing in reach.

When it's time for the full package

It's time when you have momentum. People want to buy it. In our experience, that's something like $40,000 to $80,000 in sales already. You know it's working, and you have a good idea who your customer is.

Then it's about getting everything together, putting money behind it and finding out which channels work. You're trying to answer three questions: where is this audience, which channel are they on, and how do we optimize for it?

What works for one audience won't work for every audience

When we ran the campaign for How to Change the World, a YouTube series, the goal was simple: get people to watch it. We used PR, influencer marketing and paid advertising on YouTube.

The PR was good. We got coverage in The Hollywood Reporter. The influencers we worked with had big followings.

But the quickest, most cost-efficient way to scale was advertising on YouTube. If you want people to watch something on YouTube, reach them where they already are.

PR and influencers aren't bad tactics. They just weren't the best fit for this audience. That's the point of testing channels: you find the one that works for your audience, then put your money there.