Well, frankly that was the question hah. Ok, I realize it’s too industry-specific.
Let me ask you more practical question then:
It is time for us to fundraise – our team of 3 is running out of cash to finance full-time involvement. This investment round should include marketing expenses as well.
We can measure our viral growth, but our core monetization is to be commissions on the influencer ads sales. It is quite deferred – more like the 2nd product phase – the shoutouts for shoutouts will be accompanied by shoutouts for cash over time. So at this point I can't really make any judgement re marketing spend vs. ARPU / MRPU etc. – the nature of our influencers is pretty different from the other companies in the industry because, as I said, we cover lower segments of influencers. ...and it is awesome, because it's the hardest market segment to cover, it's the major part of the market and at the same time it has the highest level of credibility / engagement for advertising effect …but we have no time / resources to test it.
Moreover, we haven't tried any paid methods yet – so, we'll have to start trying different ones before we figure out what works best for our case.
Any ideas re how we justify our marketing budget for the investor?
For now, I am thinking to:
(1) take something like industry-average number for marketing spend – probably $7-14k per month (not sure how it'll work out but at least I have public reference to this number) and start trying out Instagram ads;
(2) get at least your respectful opinion and refer to it in talks, i.e. it is normal for such a first-in-its-kind venture like us not to know this stuff for sure – Aaron told me :))