How Noah Kagan uses his personal brand to grow AppSumo

• Growth breakdown: How AppSumo grows because of its founder’s, Noah Kagan, personal brand.

• Cool things I saw to take your growth to the moon.

• Top tools to level up your growth.

AppSumo: Driving growth with Founder-Led Marketing

🏆 The one thing:

If you’re short on time, here’s the one thing to take away:

As the barrier to entry for building great products continues to be lowered. Products are starting to look more similar.

Brand will only become more important.

But the reality is that today personal pages get 40x more engagements than company pages on social media.

It’s harder than ever to build a meaningful following for your business page.

Why is this the case though?

People want connection and trust. And it’s hard to connect with a brand you’ve never even heard about. It’s much easier to connect and trust with the face behind the business.

Founder-Led Marketing is a great way to grow both your personal brand but also your business. Positioning yourself as a subject matter expert and creating a social presence that generates inbound demand.

📚 The tactic:

A brief explanation of the tactic.

Noah Kagan has become synonymous with entrepreneurship over the last few years.

For both his company AppSumo (a curated marketplace for the best deals on new products), but probably more so for the personal brand he’s built around it.

Noah and AppSumo are one of the best examples of Founder-Led Marketing. With Noah’s personal brand becoming a key growth channel for AppSumo.

It’s tough to put a value on this, but what we do know is that AppSumo now pays Noah $1M/year specifically for this. But my estimate is that the true value of his personal brand is multiples higher than this to AppSumo.

Noah is reaching millions of people every month. Which converts to (probably) hundreds of thousands of qualified visitors for AppSumo.

Noah has become one of the most followed and loved creators in the entrepreneurship space and all this personal brand equity and trust that he’s built gets attributed to AppSumo as well.

Plus it gives potential AppSumo users a friendly and relatable face to attach to the brand, increasing the chance of purchases and referrals.

🎯 The execution:

3 actionable insights from the tactic.

👨‍🔬 1. Aligned ICP

The first step to create a compelling personal brand is to understand who you’re talking to.

There’s a saying, that although is a little overused, is true:

“If you try to speak to everyone. You end up speaking to no one.”

There’s so much noise online today that we’re all on a mission to find what content is worth us consuming. People want highly specific content, that feels like it was made just for them.

The best entrepreneurs and creators understand this.

This part is also crucial when it comes to your business. You can’t be posting cat memes and then think you’ll convert people to use your revenue optimization tool.

Your brand needs to be aligned with your business.

Noah does this excellently.

Noah’s content is very targeted at a specific ICP: The entrepreneur.

To be even more specific, people early on in their entrepreneurial journeys, who typically fit into one of these buckets:

• Want to start a business

• Have a side hustle they want to scale

• Running an early-stage startup

You can see this clearly in his content. Which is often focused on the inspirational side of entrepreneurship:

• Asking millionaires how they got rich

• Advice on starting a business

• Noah’s transformations in his life, career, and business

Because AppSumo sells new products that may or may not succeed. This targeting is also very practical. As AppSumo is great for people you would describe as “early adopters” - people who are on trends before they take off.

And AppSumo gives them the chance to get lifetime access for a massive discount.

Perfect for someone starting a business who wants to save on costs and can take a risk on a new product, without layers of bureaucracy.

Noah is a great example of personal and company brand alignment, which combined give him a clear pitch:

To help founders turn ideas into actual businesses with the right products.

🖇️ 2. Multi-channel repurposing

One thing Noah does better than most founders and creators is creating a content ecosystem.

Everything is connected and feels a part of one larger story. Noah’s world. With each platform having a slightly unique angle.

What you listen to on his podcast, continues on his YouTube videos, and often in his newsletter as well. And then those get chopped up for our LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok feeds.

A whole story told in different parts. For different preferences. And with unique takeaways.

I’m not sure on the structure of his whole team, but I know that Jay has had a big part to play in this and deserves a mention - His work was a massive driver behind the successful launch of Noah’s NYT bestseller Million Dollar Weekend.

Noah has created an almost Marvel-like Universe with his content. You see a snippet, you want to see the full video, which then leads you to the podcast. And the cycle continues.

But how do you do this practically?

Look at content like a pyramid:

• Long-form content: Create a video, podcast or newsletter to start.

• Short-form content: Chop up that long-form piece into TikToks, Carousels, or threads.

• Snippets: Break it up a step further into short posts on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Tweets.

The great thing about the pyramid is that it can actually work both ways.

Snippets can easily be downstream of long-form. But they can also be a great place to test ideas for longer-form content.

Just remember: The more touch points = the higher chance someone will become a fan and an AppSumo user.

I want to end this section by saying that Noah is over a decade into his social media journey. He has developed processes, has a team supporting him, and knows the game.

I say this because this part of his strategy is hard if you’re new to posting on social media - so if you don’t have the expertise or budget to hire a team or agency, I would recommend going all in on only one long-form and one short-form platform. Then only expanding once you’ve seen some success and have built out systems.

If you are looking to build a personal brand that grows your business, but don’t know where to start, my team and I have some resources to get you started! Click here to reach out.

🌮 3. Honest and authentic

You can have a super-targeted and high-value ICP, and be on every platform, but if you’re not authentic people will be able to tell.

Noah does this and more. Creating a genuine connection with his audience by being:

1. Valuable: Noah has a wealth of experience. From being employee number 30 at Facebook to growing AppSumo to almost $100M in revenue. He doesn’t shy away from sharing this knowledge and has become a top resource for anyone looking to grow their business.

2. Vulnerable: Noah often tells personal stories in his content. He’s open about his mistakes, his income, his losses, and his learnings. He doesn’t hold back from being real.

3. Inviting: Noah is awesome at making his audience feel a part of his journey. With subscriber events, subscriber giveaways, and subscribers starting businesses on his channel. Noah’s content feels more like a community than a class.

Because of these Noah has become more legitimate and likeable. And ultimately people are more likely (and wanting) to check out and use AppSumo because of it.

My picks to take your business to the moon 📽️

• The Reddit playbook for founders (link)

• Product Messaging mistakes and how to avoid them (link)

• Lessons from raising billions in VC funds (link)

Tools of the week 🔨

• Replit: Build software faster with AI.

• ZeroBounce: Email validation and cleaning.

• SmartLead: Convert cold emails to revenue.