Tom's workspace

Tom Ray

Playbook: Marketing Tactics for Indie Hackers

Playbook: Marketing Tactics for Indie Hackers

Tom Ray·Feb 5, 2026

Playbook (https://playbooktactics.com) is a tool designed for indie hackers and solopreneurs to generate bespoke marketing tactics for their digital side projects. It provides niche strategies beyond generic advice, helping users overcome the challenge of acquiring customers and growing their businesses.

Chapters

00:00

Introducing Playbook

Introduction to Playbook and its purpose

00:25

The Customer Acquisition Challenge

00:49

Playbook's Solution

01:19

App Example: PawChamp

01:50

Playbook demo

Transcript

00:00

Hi there, Tom here, the creator of Playbook.

00:03

is a tool built for indie hackers, SaaS, builders, solopreneurs, vibe coders, basically people that are building kind of digital side projects.

00:13

we, me included, love building these side projects, But really the challenge is for most of us is getting customers.

00:20

Getting that's what's really hard.

00:21

And a lot of the time it is hard because you don't have plan, don't have a strategy or you don't have specific tactics that you can implement to go and grow.

00:28

and that's what I built Playbook for.

00:30

So Playbook is this tool where you input your side project, you your business, you describe it, you describe who your target audience is.

00:37

Playbook will generate for you extremely bespoke and marketing tactics for your product.

00:43

Super niche, not generic advice, like not anything you'd get in chatgpt, you know, give me marketing ideas for my business.

00:50

It's It's like 10 times better value than that.

00:52

And I'll show you, you, as you can see on the left here, so I have created a playbook for a mobile app that I found on Product Hunt.

00:59

It's called Poor Champ.

01:00

So it's a mobile app to help train your dog, if you have a pet dog.

01:04

generates tactics for you in these different channels.

01:07

Let's start with this one.

01:08

Unscalable growth hacks.

01:09

These are do things that don't scale.

01:11

The classic Paul Graham quote.

01:13

so it's things like personal dms, onboard every user yourself, reply to relevant threads.

01:18

It's basically like kind of hustling your way to growth.

01:21

and it gives you specific tactics to do that.

01:25

So generated 12 here, for this channel for the unscalable growth faction.

01:29

And it's picked out three, which it thinks is the top pick.

01:32

So let's have a look at the first one.

01:33

so the first one here is super interesting.

01:35

So it's basically about finding people on Etsy who sell puppy related things and Offering to partner with them.

01:41

partnering sellers to include a physical card that inserts your brand at the moment of highest excitement.

01:46

That is a very cool idea.

01:48

so you first and it gives you the steps of how you can execute this tactic.

01:51

So first you identify Etsy sellers.

01:53

Then it includes an example message you can send to the Etsy seller.

01:57

it gives you the design of the card that you can send with the Etsy product and all these steps.

02:02

and even gives you a little AI prompt to give you more ideas.

02:05

So as you can see it gives you like super original ideas that you probably wouldn't have thought of yourself.

02:11

and as I said there's different channels here.

02:13

I'll show you that it gives ideas for engineering is marketing.

02:16

So this is about building tools, that you can kind of as lead magnets.

02:21

you can see here it's generated eight tactics online communities.

02:24

So this is about joining where does your audience hang out online, where do they, where do they talk, where do they engage with each other?

02:30

And it's about giving you tips of way to go to those places and then authentically show up and add value.

02:36

Don't be those, one of those people who just like sell.

02:39

You have to kind of give value and creatively give value so that people can kind of find your brand and you know, hopefully sign up.

02:46

So again it gives you.

02:47

There are a bunch of different Facebook groups here, Reddit threads, specific forums, dogforum.com a bunch of different ones that you can look at.

02:56

And again you've got the step by step, tips of what you can do to engage in that community.

03:01

niche sponsorship.

03:02

So these are basically again super niche specific sponsorship opportunities for your product and audience.

03:08

For this dog, product you can see that it's generated so it generates verticross blogs, online community sponsorships, podcasts and newsletters.

03:18

So for example there is a newsletter here called the Bark, which is the New Yorker for dog lovers.

03:23

Tells you why the newsletter fits and it talks through how you can to engage a sponsorship kind of opportunity.

03:30

It gives you the email address in this case, gives you some example ad copy you can do on the newsletter, add product launch sites.

03:36

so these would be a mixture of kind of like product hunt esque sites versus just other websites where you can publish your, your app or your product or your business.

03:46

And so for example, let's take this subreddit here, so Reactive dogs.

03:50

So it will give you the specific on what to do some requirements, a pre launch checklist in this case again super step by step instructions for you to execute the tactic basically.

04:00

And finally you've got influences.

04:02

So these are influences in again very relevant for you and your niche.

04:06

And here's an example here.

04:08

So walking with Nala is obviously a dog influencer person.

04:11

You can see, gives you the contact details, Instagram, dm, and and again step by step instructions on how to work with them.

04:18

So basically it gives you a playbook of tactics for you to go and find your first customers.

04:25

you can sign up for free, and get a free trial.

04:27

When you do that you choose one of these when you sign up.

04:30

So you put in all your product details, you describe your audience, your target audience and then you can choose one of these and it will generate for you the high level tactics for that channel.

04:39

It won't give you like a lower quality tactics.

04:42

It will give you the full kind of high quality ones that you would get if as if you pay and then it gives you a little snippet.

04:48

So if you basically get this section here and this, this steps to execute are hidden and when you upgrade which is a one time fee, happy to say no subscription.

04:56

we all hate subscriptions.

04:58

No more, no more subscriptions.

04:59

Just a one time fee for this to upgrade your playbook and get all the tactics.

05:03

but yeah as I said you can try it for free.

05:05

You get 10, 15 tactics for one channel.

05:08

You can see the results, see if you like it, see, see the value and then you can choose to upgrade if you'd like to.

05:14

That's it.

05:14

Thanks so much for your time, hope you like it and let me know if you got any feedback.

05:18

Thank you so much.

Playbook: Marketing Tactics for Indie Hackers — Tella