Marketing doesn't work in the past. Look onboarding. It kills every conversion rate if people need to wait 2 weeks.
Add Marketing works (and should work for different front ends), but influencer marketing works 100x better. But here again, hive cant absorb 50k sign-ups a day (or even less).
btw, it's all about a vision. There are competitors blockchains and it's simple. If they work better hive dies.
I've got a whole lot of statistics that show that marketing DID work in the past.
Here is my post about it https://peakd.com/marketing/@apshamilton/advertising-works-it-worked-amazingly-for-steem-in-the-past-and-it-can-work-for-hive