Marketing
Strategy, mindsets, and techniques to grow demand and brand
All Cards in This Deck
Explanation
Marketing expert April Dunford explains that positioning isn't about being better than everyone—it's about being the obvious choice for a specific group of customers in a specific situation. You're not competing with all similar products, just the alternatives that your target customer actually considers. It's better to own a small niche than to be mediocre for everyone.
Example
Superhuman: Not 'better email.' Instead: 'Email for executives who get 100+ emails/day and need to hit inbox zero.' Feature decisions become obvious. Pricing ($30/month) makes sense. They said no to millions to be perfect for thousands.
Explanation
Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen discovered that customers don't really buy products—they 'hire' them to make progress in their lives. This job has functional aspects (what needs to get done), emotional aspects (how they want to feel), and social aspects (how they want to be perceived). Your real competition isn't similar products but anything else that could do the job.
Example
Milkshake job: Morning commute entertainment that lasts 20 minutes, one hand, not messy. Competitors: Bagel, banana, radio, nothing. NOT other milkshakes. Solution: Thicker shake, chunks of fruit. Sales up 30%. They weren't optimizing for taste—for commute.
Explanation
In product-led growth, the product itself drives customer acquisition, activation, and expansion rather than traditional sales teams. Users can discover value, try the product, purchase, and expand their usage all through self-service. This dramatically reduces customer acquisition costs because satisfied users become your sales force through word-of-mouth and viral features.
Example
Zoom: Free tier that just works. Meeting link = viral loop. Participants become users. Users become buyers. No sales needed until enterprise. Grew to $1B with minimal sales team. Compare to traditional video conferencing: months of sales cycles.
Explanation
Created by startup investor Dave McClure, this framework helps you diagnose where your growth is breaking down. Unlike a simple sales funnel, it includes the viral loop where happy customers refer others. Each stage requires different strategies and metrics. The key insight: most companies focus on getting more customers when they should focus on keeping the ones they have.
Example
SaaS with 10K visitors, 1K signups, 100 activated, 10 retained, 5 paying, 1 referring. Biggest drop: Signup → Activation (10%). Fix onboarding before driving more traffic. Another: Great retention, no referral. Add sharing features before paid acquisition.
Explanation
While traditional marketing funnels eventually exhaust their effectiveness, growth loops can compound infinitely. In a good growth loop, each user action creates content, data, or network effects that attract more users, who create more value, attracting even more users. The goal is designing systems where growth feeds on itself rather than requiring constant input.
Example
LinkedIn: User adds profile → Creates public page → Ranks in Google → Professional searches find it → They join to contact → Add their profile. Uber: More drivers → Shorter wait → More riders → More demand → More drivers.
Explanation
The authors of 'Play Bigger' discovered that companies who create and dominate new market categories capture most of the economic value in their space. Instead of competing in existing categories where customers have established preferences, you create a new category where you set the rules. The company that defines the problem and names the solution typically becomes the leader.
Example
Salesforce didn't sell 'better CRM.' They created 'No Software' category (cloud). HubSpot created 'Inbound Marketing.' Drift created 'Conversational Marketing.' Each owned the category they created. Competition became irrelevant.
Explanation
Business professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne identified two types of competitive spaces. Red oceans are existing markets where companies fight over the same customers using the same competitive factors, leading to price wars. Blue oceans are new market spaces where you change the rules of competition, making existing competitors irrelevant.
Example
Cirque du Soleil: Eliminated animals and star performers (costly), Reduced thrills and danger, Raised artistic quality and venue, Created theatrical experience. Result: New market between circus and theater. Higher prices, lower costs.
Explanation
Lead generation focuses on capturing people who are already looking for solutions like yours through forms, gated content, and qualifying leads. Demand generation creates awareness of problems people didn't know they had and educates them about new solutions. Most B2B companies focus entirely on lead gen but struggle because there isn't enough existing demand to capture.
Example
Gong created demand by teaching 'revenue intelligence' before selling it. Produced ungated content about sales conversations. When people understood the problem, Gong was obvious solution. Lead gen would have failed—no one was searching for their category.
Explanation
A North Star Metric is the single most important measure that captures the core value your product delivers to customers. It should be a leading indicator of business success and something every team can influence. Unlike vanity metrics that make you feel good but don't predict success, the North Star directly correlates with customer satisfaction and business growth.
Example
Facebook: Daily active users (not signups). Airbnb: Nights booked (not listings). Spotify: Time spent listening (not subscribers). Slack: Messages sent (not teams created). Each reflects actual value delivered.
Explanation
These three metrics determine whether your business model is sustainable. Lifetime Value is how much revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship with you. Customer Acquisition Cost is how much you spend to get that customer. Payback Period is how long it takes to recover your acquisition investment. If you spend more to acquire customers than they'll ever pay you, you'll go out of business no matter how fast you grow.
Example
Company A: LTV $3000, CAC $1000, Payback 4 months. Can raise funds, grow fast. Company B: LTV $1000, CAC $900, Payback 18 months. Looks profitable but will run out of cash. The difference: Payback period.
Explanation
Activation is the moment when new users first experience the core value of your product. Users who reach this 'aha moment' quickly are much more likely to become long-term customers. The challenge is identifying what specific action or experience creates this moment, then designing your onboarding to get users there as quickly as possible.
Example
Slack's activation: Team sends 2000 messages. Until then, it's just another app. After, they're hooked. They redesigned onboarding to reach 2000 messages faster. Retention increased 30%. They measure time to 2000, not just signups.
Explanation
Instead of sending the same message to everyone, lifecycle marketing tailors communication based on where someone is in their journey with your product and how they're behaving. A brand new user has different needs than someone who's been active for months or someone who hasn't logged in recently. Automated systems can deliver the right message at the right time without manual work.
Example
Day 0: Welcome + quick win. Day 3: Feature they haven't used. Day 7: Success story. Day 14: If not active, personal outreach. Day 30: Case study. Day 60: If active, referral request. If inactive, sunset. Each message based on actual behavior.
Explanation
Most sharing happens in private channels like text messages, email, and private chats that analytics tools can't track. While you can measure likes and public shares, the majority of word-of-mouth happens in 'dark social' where your content gets discussed and shared privately. This hidden sharing often drives more actual purchases than public social media activity.
Example
Executive screenshots your pricing page, sends to team Slack. Team discusses for a week. Someone googles your brand, signs up. Attribution says: Direct traffic. Reality: Week of dark social sharing. Your content needs to be screenshot-worthy.
Explanation
Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly calculated that many creators and businesses only need 1,000 people who are deeply passionate about what they do. These true fans will buy everything you create, refer others, provide feedback, and forgive occasional missteps. This concentrated loyalty is often more valuable than having millions of casual followers who don't really care.
Example
ConvertKit grew to $29M ARR focusing on 'creators earning a living.' Not millions of bloggers—thousands of professional creators. Superhuman: Ignored millions, focused on power users who'd pay $30/month. Both built true fans first, scaled later.
Explanation
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or LTV) represents the total amount of money a customer will spend with your business over their entire relationship. Understanding this number is crucial because it tells you how much you can afford to spend to acquire customers and which customer segments are most valuable to your business.
Example
SaaS customer pays $50/month, stays average of 24 months, costs $5/month to serve = CLV of $1,080. This means you can spend up to $360 to acquire them (3:1 ratio) and still be profitable. E-commerce customer buys $100 twice per year for 3 years = CLV of $600.
Explanation
Cohort analysis groups customers by when they first engaged with your product (usually by month) and tracks their behavior over time. This reveals whether your retention is improving, how different customer segments behave, and the long-term impact of product changes. It's much more insightful than looking at overall metrics.
Example
January cohort: Month 1: 100 customers, Month 2: 80 active (80% retention), Month 3: 65 active (65% retention). February cohort shows different pattern, revealing that a product change affected retention. Without cohorts, you might miss this trend in overall averages.
Explanation
A positioning statement is an internal document that clearly defines who you serve, what need you address, what category you compete in, and what unique benefit you provide. It's not a tagline for customers but a strategic tool that guides all marketing decisions and ensures consistency across your team.
Example
For busy executives who need to stay on top of email, Superhuman is the email client that makes email feel magical and fast. For developers who need to deploy code quickly, Vercel is the platform that makes deployment feel instant and effortless.
Explanation
Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable information that attracts and engages your target audience, building trust and awareness over time. Unlike advertising that interrupts, content marketing provides value first and builds relationships that eventually lead to business outcomes. It's particularly effective for complex or considered purchases.
Example
HubSpot built a massive audience by teaching inbound marketing through blogs, ebooks, and courses before selling their software. Buffer shares social media insights and research. Stripe publishes detailed technical guides. All build trust and awareness that converts to customers over time.
Explanation
Viral coefficient measures the viral growth of your product by calculating how many new users each existing user generates through referrals, invitations, or organic sharing. A viral coefficient above 1.0 means organic growth—your users are bringing in more users than you're losing. This is the holy grail of sustainable, low-cost growth.
Example
If 100 users each invite 0.5 new users who actually sign up, your viral coefficient is 0.5. You need 2 existing users to generate 1 new user. If each user brings 1.2 new users, you have viral growth—your user base will grow exponentially even without additional marketing spend.
Explanation
Competitive intelligence involves regularly gathering and analyzing information about your competitors' strategies, products, pricing, and marketing activities. This isn't about copying competitors but about understanding the market landscape, identifying opportunities they're missing, and making informed strategic decisions.
Example
Track competitor pricing changes, new feature releases, hiring patterns, marketing campaigns, customer reviews, social media activity, and partnership announcements. Use tools like SEMrush for their SEO strategy, LinkedIn for hiring trends, and customer review sites for their strengths/weaknesses.
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