Explosive promotion, target audience and positioning

After launching a release or MVP (the first minimal version of a product), startups are faced with the problem of promotion and marketing on the Internet. Attracting customers through Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords can reach $ 1 per referral and more, and the cost of articles on well-known media sites is usually more than $ 1000 per campaign. A young startup, even on angelic or pre-seed investment, cannot afford to walk on such a wide foot.



Or maybe, but this story is well known - all the funds merge in a couple of months, there was no sales either, but the money for the further development of the product ran out.

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Very often from start-ups I hear: “We don’t know how much we need for marketing, how do we evaluate it?”, “We need ten million for marketing, hmm, no, let's get twenty ...”.



Then they buy advertising, spend money quickly and to no avail, and they understand that marketing is a hell of a lot, the product is awesome, everyone likes it, everyone would use it, but in order to promote it you need a lot of money for advertising. Well, then look for investments only in marketing.



So, marketing and promoting an IT startup on the Internet is expensive, incomprehensible and unpredictable.



Familiar?





In fact, startup promotion is understandable and predictable. And expensive or not depends on the situation.

An IT start-up can really be promoted with little or no financial investment while achieving impressive and surprising results.



In the world, these techniques are called growth hacking, I freely translate it as "explosive progress."

And immediately a small faq on explosive progress:



1. Wow, and why is it possible to promote any project without money and without doing anything?

- No, not any. Need to work. But a lot of money does not have to spend.

2. Oh, not any project ... and what?

- First of all, IT start-ups or projects with an Internet component. But in general, general principles apply everywhere.



3. Can you forget about the purchase of advertising?

- Yes and no. Advertising will always be a great help if you can afford it, and sometimes the only possible option.



4. I do not need to learn marketing or hire a marketer?

- You need to know the basics. Growth hacking and marketing are related, but not tight. This is a kind of approach from the side, where more sane mind, logic, entrepreneurial ingenuity and no hack are important.



How explosive promotion works

The basic idea of ​​an explosive product is very simple and logical. If your product is good, then users will tell about it, they only need to help to do it.



Almost all the techniques are reduced to the increase in virality without any special expenses.

The obvious condition: your product must really solve the problems of users, be necessary, useful and convenient. Your product must be of high quality .



I am sure that all startups consider their product necessary, but this is not always the case.



Explosive promotion works well for an IT startup, because users can easily tell about it and attract other users, the Internet is here to help.

In addition to this, explosive promotion is a pack of small tricks on how to get to your audience, motivate you to talk about the product, check ideas, increase conversion, and so on.



So summarize:



1. “Standard Way” - more money in advertising, more audience reach, more new users.

2. Explosive promotion - users themselves are attracted by their friends. Avalanche exponential growth. The right and quality product

1. Divide all your customers into segments for problems your product solves. The homogeneous segment, the better (but without fanaticism)

2. Check No. 1 - the segment is very easy to explain what you are offering. Without any "and" and "or".

3. Check # 2 - product positioning for the segment, tagline, the main message should fit into the tweet.

4. Segmentation and positioning are closely related. One will help shape the others and vice versa.

5. Segmentation and positioning give an understanding of what clients to look for, how to look for, where to look for, what exactly to offer. You can write instructions for sales.

6. Structuring allows you to highlight the main problems that the product solves and a lot of other artifacts that can be used, for example, to create a landing page.

Positioning and Target Audience

Positioning is important.

It is so important that by skipping this item you can ruin all other efforts to promote the product.

Good positioning is brief, unambiguous and understandable, so it can often be described in one sentence or put in tweet.



Positioning should be related to the main user problem that the product solves.

The difficulty lies in the fact that usually the product solves different problems for different users. For example, online accounting provides the same opportunities to solve different problems for an entrepreneur and an accountant.

As well as the question “Who are you?” You will most likely give different answers depending on who asked the question.



Positioning is closely related to the segmentation of the target audience.



I have heard many times from startups that the product is made for all Internet users, or something like that, which certainly is delusional segmentation.



Start splitting your users into segments, try any signs: gender, age, income level, interests, etc.

The task is to divide all users into segments so that all within one segment are all homogeneous. Those. from the point of view of the product, all users of one segment will be like twins, meaningfully indistinguishable.



Take one user segment and tell him about the product. Then take any other user of the same segment, your story about the product should not change.



Begin to divide users from larger to smaller.

For each segment, indicate what problems your product solves.

If there is more than one problem for one segment, then the segment should be divided into additional subsegments.

As a result, you should get:

1. Segment, its characteristics (feature set)

2. The problem that is solved by users of this segment

3. Positioning for this segment. In this case, the product can be positioned in one sentence.



Automatically from this scheme, you get ready-made advertising campaigns for Yandex.Direct, Vkontak, Google, Twitter. And on the basis of the characteristics of the segment, you can understand where to look for leads, what channels of attraction to use.

Looking at the segment tree you can go in the opposite direction, summarize a number of problems and get the main product positioning. And detailed lists will be a good start for developing a landing page.



Take, for example, the development of sites, because the “figacinu” of sites will soon enter into innate abilities.

For whom?

1. For all, sites are needed after all. - Well yes. Rave.

2. For business - Yes, okay?

3. For businesses that have heard something about the Internet, are interested in finding customers. - Already warmer

4. Does this business have a website?

5. Is it a young business?

6. Volumes (for example, how many employees)

7. Spheres of activity



As a result, we get for example the following segment:

1. Young companies (up to 6-12 months),

2. with a small staff (up to 10-20 people).

3. Recently launched, while the site is not, did not reach the hands, etc.,

4. not ready to allocate a lot of money for the development of the site

5. On the question of whether the site is needed, most likely they will answer "well, of course we need it"

6. No plans to actively attract customers via the Internet.



Situation from the category of "the site is needed, well, that was."

Problem: not represented on the Internet

Positioning: “We are launching the business of young companies to the Internet in 1 week and XX rubles”. Not perfect, but the essence is clear.

Offering low-cost, possibly standard or template solutions, landing pages, with minimal customization, cheap, good and fast.

It is worth noting that in the field of sitemaking young companies just need to position and nishevatsya. Sites solve a lot of problems and are needed for a large front of tasks, so cram it all together will not work.



So summarize.

1. Divide all your customers into segments for problems your product solves. The homogeneous segment, the better (but without fanaticism)

2. Check No. 1 - the segment is very easy to explain what you are offering. Without any "and" and "or".

3. Check # 2 - product positioning for the segment, tagline, the main message should fit into the tweet.

4. Segmentation and positioning are closely related. One will help shape the others and vice versa.

5. Segmentation and positioning give an understanding of what clients to look for, how to look for, where to look for, what exactly to offer. You can write instructions for sales.

6. Structuring allows you to highlight the main problems that the product solves and a lot of other artifacts that can be used, for example, to create a landing page.



The following parts:

I don't know how much I need for marketing