Marketing for Startups: A Quantum Model

When I got a job at Mint, even before the product was launched, founder Aaron Patter set me a task to collect 100,000 users at mint.com 6 months after launch. I started by creating a marketing plan for a startup. Hell, I was worried, but to my happiness, after 6 months, Mint had over a million users.

How did I do it?

Firstly, it should be noted that the product itself was cool! And therefore all marketing had not a frank marketing character, but more looked like the exchange of useful and educational information with people. Yes, I know this stupid phrase about the sound of a falling tree (link), but I think it is clear what I mean.
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Instead of doing “sushiial midi marketing” and randomly posting posts all over the Internet, we decided to develop a new approach to pre-marketing.

Quantum marketing model

Work from the reverse, that is, from the goal you want to achieve, and record the activity in Excel. If you need inspiration for this, you can borrow it from Excel and Power Point gurus, Dave Maclura.

Here is an example of a document I did for Mint.

Objective: to attract 100,000 users in 6 months.



This is a key point for any marketing activity that you lead before launch.

Most people are waiting for something: send a letter to 1 friend, do 1 tweet about the project and pray on their knees to make it work.

There are two columns in this table: total number of users and number of confirmed users. When you set metrics in this way before launch, and after you check all marketing channels, you will not fail. Only verified users decide!

It is necessary to determine all marketing channels and activities in advance: blogs, paid tweets, context and everything else. Do not leave it until the "convenient" case.

The bottom line:

• - Define the target and schedule the tasks before launch.
• - Find your target channels and contacts through: wefollow.com , Buzzsumo , Google search, identify search niches (for Mint, these were personal finance, geeks (Paul Stamatiou) and people interested in personal performance) and other topics.
• - Fix everything that works and what does not in Google Spreadsheet.
• - Come up with 2-3 different messages that you will write to people in order to understand which one they will respond to better.
• - Use new methods to attract people. Do not do like everyone else!
• - And yes, make a twist product.

* Quantum marketing is a set of approaches to determining the most effective ways to promote any product (by Arthur Zotov). It is called quantum because all activity is based on quantization, measurement of indicators through different channels as they are worked out. (note by the author of the translation)