Explosive promotion, target audience and positioning

After the launch of the release or MVP (the first minimum version of the product), startupers are faced with the problem of promotion and marketing on the Internet. Attracting customers through Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords can reach $ 1 per conversion or 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 presowing investments, cannot afford to walk such a wide foot.

Or it may, but this story is well known - all funds are merged in a couple of months, there have been no sales, but the money for further product development has run out.

Very often, from start-up startups, I hear: “We don’t know how much we need for marketing, how do we evaluate this?”, “We need ten million for marketing, hmm, although not, let's twenty ...”.

Then they buy advertising, spend money quickly and to no avail, and realize that marketing is a hell of a lot, the product is cool, everyone likes it, everyone would use it, but you need a lot of money to advertise it. Well, then they are looking for investment only in marketing.

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

Is that familiar?


In fact, the promotion of a startup is understandable and predictable. And expensive or not depends on the situation.
An IT startup can really be promoted with virtually no financial investment, while achieving impressive and amazing results.

In the world these techniques are called growth hacking, I will freely translate this as "explosive advancement."
And right away, a small faq on explosive promotion:

1. Wow, can you directly promote any project without money and without doing anything?
- No, not any. We have to work. But you don’t have to spend a lot of money.
2. Ah, not any project ... but which one?
- First of all, IT startups or projects with an Internet component. But overall, 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. Do I need to study marketing or hire a marketer?
- You need to know the basics. Growth hacking and marketing are connected, but not much. This is a kind of approach from the side where more common sense, logic, entrepreneurial ingenuity and no trash are more important.

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

Almost all techniques come down to increasing virality without any significant cash outlay.
An 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 far from always the case.

Explosive promotion works well for an IT startup, because users can easily talk about it and attract other users, the Internet is here to help.
In addition to this, explosive promotion is a bunch of small tricks on how to get to your audience, motivate you to talk about a product, test ideas, increase conversion, and so on.

So, to summarize:

1. “Standard way” - more money in advertising, more audience reach, more new users.
2. Explosive promotion - users themselves are attracted to their friends. Avalanche exponential growth. The right and high-quality product
1. Divide all your customers into segments for the problems that your product solves. The more homogeneous the segment, the better (but without fanaticism)
2. Check No. 1 - it is very easy for a segment to explain what you offer. Without any "and" and "or."
3. Check No. 2 - product positioning for the segment, tagline, the main message should be tweeted.
4. Segmentation and positioning are closely related. One will help shape the other and vice versa.
5. Segmentation and positioning give an understanding of what customers to look for, how to search, where to look, what specifically to offer. You can write instructions for sales.
6. Structuring allows you to highlight the main problems that the product solves and a host of other artifacts that can be used, for example, to create a landing

Positioning and Target Audience

Positioning is important.

It is so important that skipping this item can ruin all other efforts to promote the product.
Good positioning is concise, unambiguous and understandable, so it can often be described in one sentence or fit in a tweet.

Positioning should be related to the main problem of users that the product solves.
The difficulty is that usually a product solves different problems for different users. For example, online accounting providing the same opportunities solves 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 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 is certainly crazy 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 within one segment all are homogeneous. Those. from the point of view of the product, all users of the same segment will be like twins, significantly indistinguishable.

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

Start sharing users from bigger to smaller.
For each segment, indicate what problems your product solves.
If more than one problem is obtained for one segment, then the segment must be divided into additional sub-segments.
As a result, you should get:
1. A segment, its characteristics (a set of attributes)
2. A problem that is solved by users of this segment
3. Positioning for this segment. In this case, you can position the product in one sentence.

Automatically from this scheme you get ready-made advertising campaigns for Yandex.Direct, VKontakte, Google, Twitter. And based on the characteristics of the segment, you can understand where to look for leads and which channels to attract.
Looking at the tree of segments, you can go in the opposite direction, summarize a number of problems and get the main positioning of the product. And detailed lists will be a good start for developing a landing page.

Let’s take the development of sites as an example, because the "figin" of sites will soon enter into innate abilities.
For whom?
1. For everyone, everyone needs sites. - Well yes. Rave.
2. For business - Yes, okay?
3. For businesses that have heard something about the Internet, they are interested in finding customers. - Already warmer
4. Is there a business for this site?
5. Is the business young?
6. Volumes (for example, how many employees)
7. Areas of activity

As a result, we get for example such a segment:
1. Young companies (up to 6-12 months),
2. with a small staff (up to 10-20 people).
3. Recently launched, while there is no site, hands on, etc.,
4. are not ready to allocate a lot of money to develop the site
5. When asked whether the site is needed, they will most likely answer “well, of course it is necessary”
6. Not plans to actively attract customers through the Internet.

The situation from the category of "a site is needed, well, that was."
Problem: not represented on the Internet
Positioning: “We bring the business of young companies to the Internet for 1 week and XX rubles.” Not perfect, but the point is clear.
Offer inexpensive, possibly standard or template solutions, landings, with minimal customization, cheap, cheerful and fast.
It is worth noting that in the field of website development, young companies simply need to position themselves and to niche themselves. Sites solve a lot of problems and are needed for a large front of tasks, so it’s not possible to cram everything under one comb.

So to summarize.
1. Divide all your customers into segments for the problems that your product solves. The more uniform the segment, the better (but without fanaticism)
2. Check No. 1 - it is very easy for the segment to explain what you offer. Without any "and" and "or."
3. Check No. 2 - product positioning for the segment, tagline, the main message should be tweeted.
4. Segmentation and positioning are closely related. One will help shape the other and vice versa.
5. Segmentation and positioning give an understanding of what customers to look for, how to search, where to look, what specifically to offer. You can write instructions for sales.
6. Structuring allows you to identify the main problems that the product solves and a host of other artifacts that you can use, for example, to create a landing.

The following parts:
I don’t know how much I need for marketing