Lean Marketing: If you had $1 to spend, where would you spend it?
The game plan for today • Little bit about me • What is “lean marketing?” • Laying the groundwork – Branding – Customer Segmentation and Targeting What you’ll walk away with: • Guide to marketing in a lean environment • Thoughts on how to lay the foundation for brand strategy • Methods for better understanding your early customers
Why me? • Head of corporate marketing at TaskRabbit • Nearly 2 years of trial and error in a resource-constrained and lean environment • I’ve tried everything…
What is “lean marketing?”
If you only had $1 more to spend, where would you spend it?
PR
Daily Deals
Email SEM
Radio Ads
Direct Sales
SEO Social Media
Street Teams
Direct Mail
Billboard Ads
The process: Determining where to spend #1 #4 Reinforce effective channels Scale these channels
Build
Develop new channels Develop new campaigns
#2 #3 Positioning Target customers Messaging
Top of funnel
Learn
Measure
CPA Customer churn Lifetime Value
We measure impact of individual channels & campaigns every day
How do you know where to spend your $1? Constant Channel Measurement Adopt a Highway (-$85) 5%
Billboards (-$3,000) 4%
Everything else ($25) 3%
Guerilla ($87) 8%
SEM (-$25) 10% Radio ads ($100) 58% Word of mouth ($95) 12%
When you’re young and scrappy, do what you’re good at!
Test, test, test
Be Holistic • Test everything, not just channels • It’s brand, design, geo, messaging, value proposition, AND channel testing 5% Disp. Conv.
10% Disp. Conv.
Brand
Geo
Be Holistic cont. • Test everything, not just channels
Positioning
PR Channel
Branding
Laying the groundwork: Learning where to spend
Build a strong brand identity
• • • •
Who we are Vision Positioning Value Proposition
•
Who will use us?
Demographic segmentation • Ethnographic study
•
What do they need us for?
Where will they realize they need us?
Customer pain points
•
Channel identification
Brand Strategy: Building the foundation
Value Proposition • Who are we? • What is the value we provide? • What are the company’s core values?
Customer Profiling • Who are our beachhead customers? • What do they look like demographically and ethnographically ? • What issues are we solving for them? • Where do they feel the pain the most?
Competitive Landscape & Positioning • Who’s the competition? • What makes us unique? • What’s our advantage? • Our brand is the only {category} that {what we do unique} for {target customers}
Messaging & Design • Consistent with the foundational elements • Consistency across customer touch points, i.e., site, ads, newsletters, etc
Channel • Which is most appropriate • Where are our customers feeling the pain the mosthit them there
Know your customers
“Chrissy” • 20-22 year old female • Lives in “the suburbs” • College educated • Professional - working over 40 hours per week • Pain point: Time Strapped; Relentless competing priorities Wants to focus on important tasks
“Steve” • 35-45 year old male • Lives in city • Has children • Professional career • Pain Points: limited transportation options
Wants time to relax
The take-aways • Lean environment = discipline… embrace it Build
• Test, test, and test some more • Take the time to build the foundation early on • No one else has your answer – you know your business best