These are the exact marketing principles Noah Kagan used to grow:
- Facebook to over 50 millions users;
- Mint.com from $0 to over 1,000,000 users;
- Appsumo.com to an 8-figure business with millions of customers;
- The most important thing in marketing
- Case study: How to get customers for TAPP Water?
- Subtle referral program built into your product
- It is 10 times easier retaining than finding new customers
- You want omnipresence in your marketing
- 50X
50% of small business owners are operating without a marketing plan. (source: Google)
That’s sad!
These takeaways will help you to be on the better side.
But before you start creating your marketing domination plan, you must do the basics.
1.) What problem are you solving?
This is the number one thing on marketing.
Many books on marketing start with – what’s your market size, who is your customer avatar, let’s do an analysis…
(for real)
At the end of the day, what matters is asking yourself:
“I’m selling something important enough that people want to give me money for?”
No amount of marketing money will solve a product problem.
(fact)
So, how do you know that you’re solving a real problem?
a.) people want to give you money without you doing much convincing. If they are not doing that, you’re not solving a problem that’s important enough for them.
b.) if you’re doing content marketing (YouTube, TikTok, Blogging) you want to be creating content where people are saying… “give me more of this!”
2.) Who is your customer?
The more specific you can choose who your customer is, the more successfully you will be.
For example, it is much easier to convince people that are already at the GYM to work out, then it is to get new people to come to the GYM.
(focus on warm and hot traffic first)
3.) Where are they online?
Ask your customers these 2 questions:
Which person do you normally learn from?
This will tell you who is the go-to YouTube influencer.
Is there a site that you trust and follow?
This will tell you who is the content marketing influencer.
Doing this enough time, and you’ll get a list of sites, places and people that are your marketing opportunities.
These 3 questions are the basics of marketing.
Now, let’s apply them to a real company.
Example: How to get customers for TAPP Water?
In 2020, I started my recycling journey. Now I’m trying to reduce plastic usage because I want to protect our present and future generations.
So I’ll be very excited to do marketing for TAPP Water.
They are trying to solve the problem of single-use plastic bottles which are damaging our ecosystem.
They are selling sustainable and easy-to-install tap water filter.
Noah’s advice – if you’re looking to be a great marketer, just go work on a product you already like.
So, how you would start right now to organize the marketing for this brand.
Good question…
Call Noah; have him do all the work?
It’s not a bad idea. :))
(problem solved)
Before you’re doing the What, Who and Where thing, do…
PICK A GOAL
If you’re starting with what’s the problem, who is the person, where are they, you’ll be shooting in the dark and hitting nothing.
You need to know where you want to end up!
So, if you were doing the marketing for TAPP Water, it’s critical to have a clear goal, that has a deadline.
Those are 2 of the most important things, frankly, in any planning, but specifically on marketing.
Let’s assume their goal is to hit $1,000,000 by the end of the year.
Now you go back and answer the 3 questions:
1.) What’s the problem they are trying to solve?
Pretty straight forward – people that care about the environment, want to save money, but don’t want the side effects of drinking sink water.
That’s a pretty strong problem.
And is a growing market.
And another thing you want asking yourself…
It is this problem IMPORTANT and UNIQUE?
I think way too many people, open a restaurant that’s exactly like everybody else, and they are wondering… “Why is nobody coming to mine?”
…you’re the same as everybody else.
(he got a point)
Next you’re going to ask…
2.) Who is the person that is using TAPP Water?
Here is important to be really, really narrow. You want to find your advocates, which will lately represent your brand.
On this case, I choose women.
Because after a quick search on Google, I can see that women are recycling more than men.
Now… Do you target Spain or internationally?
I’m on Spain, but the data shows that USA is the first traffic source, so I’ll probably start focusing more on the USA market.
And now, let’s be even more specific than that.
- marry vs non-marry
- single with kids
- in what cities do you start
So, how do you find this?
Start by talking to women, via email, via text, or any real-time channel that allows you to get that feedback to start creating the right profile.
The more narrow the better.
I already found out with a quick Google search that couples are more likely to recycle than single people.
So, now my client looks something like this:
Age: 25 – 35 yr old (on relationship)
Location: Cities of South and West of North America
Activities: Volunteer – plastic picking, Yoga (it’s always great to find a complementary product or activity; they are more likely to use your solution, because they are already showing interest about the problem)
Now, let’s put a name on it.
This it might sound strange, but is really, really helpful.
I’ll call it Isabella.
So, now I have a goal of $1,000,000 by the end of the year, I know Isabella is in the West Coast of North America, she likes Yoga and Volunteer on weekends, and she really cares about the plastic problem.
Next…
3.) Where is Isabella online?
So, how do you find this out, especially if you’re not the customer?
Go and discover:
- “Who is she following on Twitter?”
- “Who is she following on Instagram?”
- “Who is she watching on YouTube?”
This will start creating a profile of where is this person online.
- Isabella is probably reading Grist’s Blog;
- She might have a Yoga membership;
- She probably is following a few specific influencers on TikTok, on Instagram, maybe on YouTube;
You really want to try to do a sponsorship with these influencers.
(that’s one of my favorite strategies)
Now that you have all these details, you start to think about all the distribution channels.
4.) How do you engage this person?
You have your goal. So this is what you have to do.
Thinking in the marketing activity to reach Isabella, you write down a couple of different channels:
- Facebook Ads;
- Content marketing;
- YouTube;
Because with filtered water, you want to taste it…
…a great marketing activity will be offline events, with smaller influencers.
I’ll reach out to them and say:
“hey, let’s have this party, where everyone is having fun.”
I’ll then have everybody, at some point, drinking water in real-time from the sink, using TAPP Water as a filter.
Great product demo and brand positioning.
I actually really like the offline events for demonstrating the taste of filtered water, because it creates an experience for the customer…
…and it helps to answer their no. 1 question.
How does it tastes??
Now, what marketing is going to work for your business, nobody can say.
Take for example Sumo and Mint.
The blogging strategy at Sumo.com didn’t work for 7 years, but lately it’s starting to work.
Same for Mint.com – their main source of traffic is blogging.
So, not the same marketing tactics will work for your business.
The main takeaway is that you’ll have all these marketing activities to reach your ideal customer.
You’ll then estimate how much revenue you think each of these channels will bring in and by doing so…
You start believing that it can be possible:
“Oh, I really think I can hit the $1,000,000 by the end of the year if I do all of these activities.”
Noah’s point here is to help you align towards your goal.
Now, it’s important that once you start doing all that marketing on this sustainable and easy-to-install tap water filter…
You really want to look at the next month.
And here you observe 2 things:
1.) See what is working and 10X it.
Maybe these offline events are working very well; so you must find a way and do 10 of them daily.
Other thing you really have to consider is…
2.) “What am I going to stop?”
This is the thing people are missing on marketing all the time… and if you’re getting anything out of this, pay attention.
STOP and KILL things.
But, please stop doing stuff.
Stop doing things that are not promoting your product.
You can notice that everyone is doing the same thing because of this reasoning: “I do a Facebook Page, because everyone does.”
(I’m a victim of this sometimes)
¡You don’t have to!
What it does it take time, attention and money from the things that matters and drives growth for your business.
What you want to do, is going to the buffet of marketing, trying things out, and once you understand what’s working…
…really 10x it.
Try these tactics, and probably a few more, see what’s driving the revenue, double down… kill; and hit your goal at the end of the year.
4 Marketing Lessons
Lesson #1 Can you build marketing into your product?
Lesson #1 Can you build marketing into your product?…meaning, when people are using your product, can they market it for you?
(this is a subtle referral program)
Example:
Intercom – business messenger.
So every time someone is texting on their platform, there is a thing on the bottom that says “we run on intercom”.
In your service business, in your physical product business, in your software business, build a subtle referral program.
It makes everything so much easier.
Turn your customers into your marketers!
Lesson #2 Retention is easier than finding new customers
…meaning that it is 10 times easier & cheaper to keep a customer.
That’s just a fact!
(I fall on this trap as well)
If you ever went into a restaurant…
They work so hard to get you in the door, or deliver food to you, and then they are just like: “see you later. Hopefully you’ll come back to me.”
That is so stupid.
(totally agree)
Think about that in your own business.
Really is so much better to get a phone number, get an email, and…
Keep in touch with the existing customers you have!
Lesson #3 You want omnipresence in your marketing
…when someone is coming to you saying: “I have seen your Ads and your business everywhere”, that means you’re marketing to a very targeted people extremely well.
This is not retargeting. (where they show you Ads everywhere online)
This is when your ideal customer goes to YouTube, and they are like: “Hey, I saw this tap filter before.”
And then they go to a TikToker, they read a blog post, and they are like…
“Man, everyone is drinking water using this tap filter.”
All great companies use omnipresence marketing.
Lesson #4 50X
People are talking about 10X these days, but 50X is the new 10X.
(what?? 
)
So, if you find anything that works in your marketing, 50X.
Advertising, 50X.
Blogging, 50X.
YouTube, 50X.
So, what that mean is that you’re doing it until you exhaust the channel and is not more profitable.
Meaning that if you’re doing 1 video a week, and it’s working in terms of driving you new audience and customers.
Do 5 a week.
Do 50 a week.
YES! – and when you’re seeing, like, oh now I’m not getting any more new views for this work, then you pull it back.
But, you can definitely go a lot further than you think.
I promise you.
That’s all.