Advertising is one of the ways to get traction, but for most brands it takes over 6 months (or a year) to build any income at all. It's a good way to promote local stores or coffee shops, and cheaper products, but the cost per click is high for online products and the initial investment is significant, and often acquiring a customer costs more than profit.

For some brands getting a large number of initial users is essential to get the business profitable at a later point. Many startups invest in different forms of inbound or content marketing and build their steady traffic from freebies, tutorials and other relevant resources for their users, referral programs, freemium models and other tactics to bring users without investing in standard advertising.

Advertising is a helpful addition when you implement retargeting pixels and promote to the right channels.