New Product Marketing 101Marco Muzzi, Marketing Director, linkett

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My Backstory

• Started first business at 16 (ecommerce), second at age 20 (marketing consulting)

• Named one of Canada’s Top 20 Future Entrepreneurial Leaders by Profit Magazine at 24 (2012)

• Previous start-up grew from 7 people to 70, plus

$10MM IPO

• Current start-up working to close first major round of funding

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today’s presentation

• I’m going to share “growth hacks” to launching a new product.

• There are 3 phases we’ll cover:

1. Product Development

2. Business Model Development

3. Marketing the Product

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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT HACKS4

one simple product development philosophy:

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WHAT IS THE CONSUMER TRYING TO DO?

Opportunity Identification: 5 C’s1. Problem Identification [Circumstance] - create a matrix of consumer problems

and possible solutions (products or services)

2. [Stalking] Context Immersion - observe a consumer as they attempt to solve a particular challenge

3. Barrier Crushing - understand why consumers aren’t solving a problem, especially if there are obvious solutions

4. Compensating Behaviours - identify if the consumers are using alternative, yet unrelated, products or services to achieve their desired outcome

5. Criteria Development - determine how consumers assess possible solutions and how to build these into your product or service

6Repurposed from: https://hbr.org/2012/10/the-five-cs-of-opportunity-identi/

bootstrap market validation: 3 steps1) Build a customer profile Using the information gathered from your opportunity identification, create a detailed “ideal customer” profile [i.e. who is most likely to buy this?]; leverage industry association contacts as soundboards.

2) Build a market profile Use secondary research to quickly assess the viability of the market you've identified; infographics, research reports, books and news articles will provide you with more than enough data.

3) Assess your market Once you're reasonably confident a market has potential, sit down with a handful of prospective customers, or people with experience, and ask pointed questions about how to penetrate the market and reach your desired audience.

7Repurposed from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/71816

Product Development: MVP• Everyone needs an “MVP”:

• A Minimum Viable Product is the smallest thing you can build that delivers value to your customer, while also generating revenue for your business.

• Why?

1. Market research 2.0 - get real-world feedback quicker

2. Identify evangelists - start engaging early adopters sooner, building a groundswell for forthcoming launches

3. Generate revenue (today!) - MVP revenue contributes to covering costs of product development and growing the business to it’s next iteration

8Repurposed from: http://leanstack.com/minimum-viable-product/

Product Development: bring it to life

• At the highest level, there are two methods to building a product: “DIY” and Licensing.

• DIY [Do it Yourself] - building the product from scratch, in-house

• Licensing - using non-internal inputs to create the product (in whole or in part)

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Building The Business Model10

The Business Model Challenge

• Food-on-the-table vs. Pie-in-the-sky dilemma: Early-stage companies often wrestle with building a business that makes money vs. creating the business they’ve envisioned in their minds (or that fills a long-term market opportunity).

• The challenge rests in needing to establish a sustainable business that meets consumer needs today and tomorrow, but with exceptionally limited resources.

• Examples - LINKETT + AcuityAds

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The Answer: All Of The Above• You’ll want to start by putting food on the table & building for the long

term at the same time:

• Short term model - easy to use/consume, habit building, address primary consumer needs at an adequate level, delivers immediate revenue

• Long term - potentially more involved usage/consumption process, build on previously established habits or form new ones, over delivers on primary needs and addresses tertiary needs

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How Tell If It’s Working: SWOT• The best way to do this is to complete periodic SWOT’s on your business

(and model):

• Strengths - what have we done well; what were our biggest successes; what’s moving in the right direction?

• Weaknesses - what didn’t work; what’s costing us money; what is moving in the wrong direction?

• Opportunities - where is the market trending; what are our customers asking for?

• Threats - what is the competition doing; what are governments doing?

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Marketing

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How to build a startup brand

1. Develop a relevant brand name [simple, easily pronounced, memorable]

2. Craft a unique tagline [5 words or less, focused on benefits]

3. Build detailed brand guidelines [objectify your brand]

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How to Build Your Marketing Plan

• Simple 4 step process (“4 M’s of Marketing”):

1. Motivations - identify the core needs you’ll focus on in your advertising

2. Messaging - craft messages that communicate your benefits based on the consumer’s need

3. Media - let the consumer’s behaviour and your message dictate which media you target (hint: it’s different for everyone)

4. Metrics - ensure you’ve developed simple, objective benchmarks to evaluate your performance

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Secret Sauce: Growth hacking• How startups generate buzz with zero budget (priority order):

1. Content Marketing - provide content of value (i.e. answer questions, inform on new trends, etc.), use intelligent scheduling, distribute aggressively

2. PR - consistently tell a story, involve media early, build relationships with media or work with someone who has

3. Social Media - build a launchpad for your content marketing, pr, and business development

4. Retargeting - leverage advanced, yet accessible online advertising tools to create highly targeted campaigns

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You’re Going to Need These• Early on, the 3 most useful digital marketing tools are:

• The explainer video - explain your product in 2 minutes or less (benefits, benefits, key features)

• Programmatic digital marketing - this is the most efficient and transparent way to invest marketing dollars early on (easily monitor and manage performance in real-time, hyper-target audience groups)

• CRM Software - serves as the “data hub” for your sales staff, helping to automate customer relationships and unearth consumer behaviour trends

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In The End

1. Build your product around helping consumers solve a problem.

2. Generate revenue from delivering value and understanding your market.

3. Develop a brand that is flexibly structured.

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Thank Youtwitter: m_muzzi

tenthousandcoffees.com/profile/marco-muzzi

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Bonus

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What working in a startup is really like

• Crazy hours

• Lots of fun or lots of pain - depends on culture

• Not as financially rewarding as you expect

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3 tips for getting a job

1. Killer Resume - BlueSky Resume Course

2. Solid Digital Profile - Linkedin, Personal Website, etc.

3. Networking - attend industry events, conferences, or even volunteer time on different boards to raise your profile

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Appendix

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Opportunity validation [Product Selection]

• How to prioritize the opportunities worth pursuing [research]

• Summarize questions here (try to reduce the list): http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237983

• Ansoff Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansoff_Matrix

• Set up transition into next slide (MVP) - i.e. “sell something…”

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Pricing• Depending on your business model, there is a pricing approach which is very popular in the

startup space [the Persona Approach]. Here’s how it works:

1. Segment your customer profile - what features/benefits do they care more about, what is their LTV and CAC, what will each group pay for what they want?

2. Bundle features - your profile segmentation will yield the most desirable features across all consumer groups - use this to build product feature bundles.

3. Determine your value metric - how are you going to charge the consumer (per unit, per

user, % of sales, etc.)?

4. Determine your price - use your data to set a price point that delivers value (for everyone); don’t be afraid to check the competition’s price.

26Repurposed from: http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/how-to-find-the-best-pricing-strategy-for-a-saas-product

Pricing Hacks

• Emotion based purchase decision - use round price ($19 vs. $19.99)

• Separate shipping and handling - $10 + shipping & handling

• Smaller pricing font affects perception - it’s seen as being less expensive

• Remove the dollar sign where possible - it triggers negative emotions

27Repurposed from: http://www.nickkolenda.com/psychological-pricing-strategies/#pricing-s2-t2