Why Andrea Bosoni started Zero to Marketing and how he's growing the newsletter

Me and the team at EmailOctopus like to know all the cool things our users get up to with the platform. And recently, we've noticed more and more newsletter creators signing up to build an audience and deliver their take on all sorts of topics.

One of those users is fellow Indie Hacker Andrea Bosoni, founder of Zero to Marketing. It's a weekly dose of actionable growth and marketing tips, using one new case study each week.

I caught up with him to find out more about why he started the project, how he's growing it and what's he's using in his tech stack.

Hi Andrea! Tell us a little about your background.

I’ve been poking around the internet (and digital marketing) for a long time, ever since we had those weird email addresses given by our ISPs. After graduating from college, I was working in the corporate world.

But I have to love my job, and the corporate world just wasn’t giving me the same feeling I got from working in digital marketing. So I’ve switched, and I’ve been working as a marketing consultant for 10 years now.

Those first few years, I got my hands dirty running all sorts of experiments with SEO, Facebook Ads, and so on. These days, I focus on the high-level strategy part: positioning, choosing the best channels, etc. My clients call it “setting the foundations for marketing success.”

But I’m still that kid who loves to experiment with every marketing tactic under the sun. So I still work on my own projects, and I spend way more time than I should in front of a screen.

What motivated you to start Zero to Marketing?

The funny thing is, Zero to Marketing started by accident. I just tweeted an idea about picking a new online project every week, and explaining how I’d grow it. My tweet went semi-viral, and folks really seemed to want to learn from the examples I’d cover. I got so many positive comments and messages!

And since I’ve always wanted to share my marketing knowledge with others, a newsletter turned out to be a great way to do it at scale. I was excited to get going! (I still am.)

How have you grown this project since its inception?

Zero to Marketing is still a side project, so I haven’t spent a lot of time promoting it. My main strategy was promoting Zero to Marketing on relevant online communities like Indie Hackers, where other entrepreneurs were looking to grow their own projects but didn’t have the marketing knowledge.

Thanks to my content, I also got some traffic from Twitter and Google, as well as organic mentions and reshares on popular websites. For example, I wrote a guest post for Really Good Emails after they took a liking to my content.

I also invested a few bucks and got good results from Reddit Ads. Unlike other platforms, Reddit gives you a really cheap CPA (cost per acquisition), and you can target the people who would be interested in your product.

What platforms are you using in your tech stack?

I have a confession to make – I was initially going to use MailChimp. However, their pricing gets super expensive as you grow. Since I had an optimistic feeling about growing Zero to Marketing, I wasn’t convinced I should commit.

Then, a friend recommended EmailOctopus to me. I was impressed by the features, reviews, and the competitive pricing. I haven’t looked back ever since.

Right now, I only use three tools.

Carrd for my landing page. It’s a simple, one-page website builder. You can tweak all the little details, and save your time (and money). It also has an integration with EmailOctopus.

Apple Pages for my case studies. With iCloud, I can access my files on all my devices, so I can switch from my iPad or iPhone to my Mac seamlessly.

Finally, I use Canva. My case studies are full of visual examples, so I need a simple, free tool to create the newsletter slides with consistent branding.

Finally, what does the future hold for Zero to Marketing?

Right now, I just want to reach out to more people and create content that they find valuable and helpful. Marketing really isn’t about how big your numbers are – it’s about how many people care about what you have to say.

In the long term, I’m going to be exploring options to make the project profitable so I can dedicate more of my time to it. I’ll likely create some additional premium products to help out business owners and founders who want to increase their sales.

Hopefully, the next time we talk, I’ll be working on Zero to Marketing full time!

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This is an adapted version of an interview published on the EmailOctopus blog.

Thanks for reading!