Welcome to Break Point, your weekly hit of strategy, surf, and smart growth.

Each week, we send one high-impact growth move straight from the Pono Ventures playbook — and only Break Point readers get the goods.

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In Marketing, Everything’s Worth a Test

At Pono Ventures, we believe one simple thing: marketing is just structured experimentation. Whether you’re launching a digital ad campaign or sponsoring a local event, the goal isn’t to guess what works. It’s to test, track, and learn.

That’s why I loved this recent story from the podcast world. A podcast host (you can follow the thread here) did something that feels incredibly old-school: he bought a billboard to promote his show.

This wasn’t a flashy branding stunt. He approached it like a growth marketer:

• He picked a targeted location based on listener data.

• He tracked new subscribers from the moment the billboard went live.

• He shared the full results publicly.

And you know what? The billboard worked.

Not in the “we got a million impressions” kind of way, but in the most important way: actual listener growth in that location. The audience went up. Subscribers grew. The experiment paid off.

What’s the message here?

I share this not because I think every business should rush out and buy a billboard, but because it underscores two key beliefs we hold at Pono Ventures:

1. Be channel-agnostic. It’s easy to assume growth must come from Meta ads or LinkedIn. But sometimes, the most overlooked channels can drive the biggest impact. Direct mail, handwritten notes, industry sponsorships, even physical billboards can work if used thoughtfully.

2. Testing only matters if you track. What made this billboard experiment valuable wasn’t the tactic. It was the measurement. They watched the data every step of the way. Without tracking, it would’ve been just another guess.

At Pono, we help businesses test strategically. That means:

• Exploring both digital and traditional tactics.

• Targeting precisely, not randomly.

• Building tracking systems before spending dollars.

• Doubling down on what works and killing what doesn’t.

What’s the last “non-traditional” marketing effort your company tested? And more importantly: did you track what happened?

If you’re unsure where to start or suspect you’re spending money without clear insight let’s talk. We can help you set up smarter marketing tests, whatever the channel.

Want to talk marketing with the Pono team?

Book a call with one of our founders! We do four strategy sessions a week helping companies beat their growth targets (no strings attached).

Weekly Beach Vibes

In life, pono stands for righteousness and balance. In Hawaiian, if a person is living pono, it means that they have struck the right balance in their relationships with other things, places, and people in their lives. It also means that they've made a conscious decision to do right by themselves, by others, and by the world in general.

We live by Pono.