Welcome to a new issue of Zero to Marketing.

Every month I pick a new startup and write a short case study explaining exactly how I’d grow it.

Let's dive in.
Screen Charm is an app that helps people without video editing experience create good-looking screen recordings.

It does this by automatically making recordings look professional thanks to features like auto zoom, smooth cursor movement and more.

Judging from what the founder has said online their intention is to position it as an affordable alternative to more popular but expensive tools.

However that’s not immediately obvious when you land on their website so they need to update their copy to make that clear right away.
Every product needs to communicate its differentiation immediately so that visitors care enough to keep scrolling and learn more
Competing on price can be a valid short-term strategy when you’re just starting out.


What’s key is reassuring people that they won’t be missing out on important features by choosing your product.

So Screen Charm should include something in their copy along the lines of: “Get the same results other premium tools offer at a fraction of the cost”.

But price-based competition is rarely a good long-term strategy and Screen Charm’s goal should be to gradually establish its own brand identity.


Right now everything from the name to the design feels a bit too similar to their main competitor Screen Studio.


They don’t want to be seen as just a cheap alternative forever so over time they should work on standing out more.
It’s hard to tell which product is which if you don’t look at the logo
But for now since they’re playing that game they need to double down on it.


They’ve just launched and are currently offering a lifetime deal for the first 100 customers.

The first thing I’d do is add the regular monthly pricing that will apply once the deal ends.

This helps create urgency and encourages people to act now.
Adding something like “Regular price: $99/year” would make the lifetime deal look like an incredible bargain and instantly boost conversions
At this stage nothing is more useful than doing things that don’t scale not just to get early customers but also to gather valuable market feedback.

So the first thing I’d do every single day is reach out to someone who has both:

- A landing page that could use a product demo
- A small but relevant audience of peers

I’d explain that I’m the founder of a new product and offer to create a free demo video for them with no strings attached.

If they’re happy with the result you can bet many of them will share it with their audience.
Almost every product could benefit from a short demo video on their landing page but most still don’t have one so it shouldn’t be hard to browse some popular directories and find products and founders that fit our criteria
Screen Charm’s ideal customers are definitely founders but also marketers so that outreach effort should be paired with building a strong personal brand.

A simple weekly content strategy for building a personal brand in this space could look like:

- A story of a recent win
- A sneak peek at an upcoming product update
- A joke about the industry
- A case study showing how a product video boosted conversions
- A lesson learned while acquiring customers
The Screen Charm founder is doing a good job staying active on X but they’re completely ignoring LinkedIn which means missing out on relevant conversations with marketers
Screen Charm is currently a one-page site. It needs more content especially since there’s already strong demand for tools like this. They need to intercept that demand with targeted pages.

Some examples of pages they should add include:

- Use cases (Create product demo videos)
- Features (Record your screen without showing the mouse)
- Alternatives (Screen Studio alternative)
- Comparisons (Competitor X vs. Screen Charm)

Over time pages like these will form the backbone of their search strategy capturing high-intent visitors who are more likely to convert.
Just looking at how many sponsored results show up in a simple search makes it obvious there’s a ton of demand for products like this
This is a competitive niche but by analyzing the SERPs it’s clear that for many keywords some of the top results are videos.

Since Screen Charm is a brand-new site with close to zero domain authority it would make a lot of sense to collaborate with a YouTuber to create dedicated content targeting those keywords.

That way they could potentially start ranking in a few weeks while traditional web pages might take months or even years.
And once Screen Charm’s own pages start ranking they could potentially double their SERP visibility owning both the text result and the video result for the same keyword
It’ll take time before they can show up in AI-generated answers to queries like “best screen recording tools.”

For that Screen Charm needs to build a recognizable brand and that means generating real signals like people mentioning them in forums, reviews and on social media.

To accelerate that process here’s what I’d do right now:

Step 1: Manual - Join relevant online conversations and participate actively

Step 2: Automatic - Build a flywheel to increase word-of-mouth organically
As Google rolls out AI overviews to more countries and ChatGPT continues to gain traction appearing in those conversations is going to be crucial for brands that want to future-proof their traffic
The first part of this strategy involves daily monitoring of conversations where people talk about screen recording tools, product demos and similar topics.

Jump into the discussion and when it makes sense mention Screen Charm while being transparent that you’re the founder.
A well-placed response to a relevant question could be the perfect opportunity to explain why Screen Charm is a great choice and not only helps win potential customers but also feeds AI systems training material they may use in future responses
The second part of the strategy is creating a system to encourage existing customers to spread the word.

One idea might be to offer each customer a unique, one-time discount code they can post on social media.

The first person who uses it gets the discount.

It’s a win-win-win:

- Screen Charm gets exposure and a new customer
- The existing user offers something valuable to their audience
- The new user gets a deal
Over time these posts willcompound building enough brand mentions and credibility to get Screen Charm noticed by AI search tools
That's it for today.

See you next month with a new case study.

Andrea
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