How I Growth Hacked Mint.com From 0 to 1,000,000 Users in 6 Month

Summary

This video narrates the remarkable journey of Mint.com's growth from a startup to a successful personal finance tracker, sold for nearly 200 million dollars. The speaker, who joined as the fourth employee, shares the strategic marketing plan that led to acquiring a million users in six months. The plan involved identifying the target audience, creating engaging content, building hype through newsletters, and leveraging undervalued marketing channels. The speaker also provides practical advice on creating a marketing plan for any business, emphasizing the importance of setting specific goals, understanding customers, and tracking the effectiveness of marketing channels.

Takeaways

• 🚀 Mint.com was acquired for nearly 200 million dollars in 2009, starting from a concept with no product and zero customers.
• 📈 The initial marketing goal was to attract 100,000 users within six months of launch, but they achieved a million users by targeting a specific demographic.
• 🔍 The importance of identifying and understanding the target customer base was crucial, which was achieved through extensive interviews and understanding their financial strategies and needs.
• 🎯 Mint targeted young, ambitious professionals and individuals deeply interested in personal finance, focusing marketing efforts on these specific groups.
• 📝 The marketing plan included building hype and collecting emails, leveraging a monthly newsletter to engage with the audience and build a community.
• 📝 Content marketing was a key strategy, with a blog serving as the primary channel to provide valuable financial advice and attract the target demographic.
• 🔗 Consistency in content production was vital, with two blog posts published every week leading up to the product launch.
• 🤝 Collaborations with influencers and guest posts were used to expand the audience and build credibility within the personal finance community.
• 💰 Sponsoring niche sites in the personal finance space was an effective, cost-efficient marketing strategy that provided a high return on investment.
• 🏷️ The 'Powered by Mint' badge was a creative way to generate buzz and SEO benefits, encouraging users to sign up for updates and place the badge on their sites.
• 📊 The success of Mint's marketing plan can be attributed to setting a clear goal, understanding the customer, choosing the right marketing channels, and tracking the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

Q & A

What was the primary goal of the marketing plan for Mint.com when it was launched?

The primary goal of the marketing plan was to acquire a hundred thousand users within six months of the product launch.

Who was the founder of Mint.com and what was his initial role?

Aaron Patzer was the founder of Mint.com. He initially built a prototype of the product by himself.

What was the speaker's role when he joined Mint.com and what was his marketing strategy?

The speaker joined Mint.com as employee number four and put together a marketing plan aimed at building hype, collecting emails, and establishing relationships with the target demographic.

How did Mint.com identify its target customers before having a product?

Mint.com identified its target customers through interviews with various people, asking questions about their financial strategies and needs, which helped in tailoring the product and marketing message.

What was the impact of the marketing strategy on Mint.com's early growth?

The marketing strategy significantly contributed to Mint.com's early growth by creating buzz and attracting a large user base quickly.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Mint.com's Marketing Success Story

This paragraph tells the story of Mint.com's journey from a startup with no product and zero customers to a successful personal finance tracker, which was sold for nearly 200 million dollars in 2009. The narrator, who joined as the fourth employee, shares the marketing plan that helped achieve a million users within six months of launch. The plan involved identifying the target audience through extensive interviews, creating a product and marketing message tailored to young professionals and personal finance enthusiasts, and building hype before the product even existed. The narrator emphasizes the importance of targeting a specific audience and the strategy of collecting emails and building relationships with potential customers and influencers.

05:00

📈 Building Pre-Launch Momentum with Content and Sponsorships

The second paragraph delves into the strategies employed by Mint.com to build an audience and credibility before launching their product. This included starting a monthly newsletter to engage with the community, consistent blogging to attract personal finance enthusiasts, and collaborating with influencers for guest posts. The narrator also discusses the effectiveness of sponsoring niche personal finance blogs, which helped in driving email sign-ups and building relationships with bloggers. The 'Powered by Mint' badge is highlighted as a creative way to generate interest and SEO benefits. The paragraph concludes with the narrator's advice on focusing on consistency in marketing efforts and leveraging underutilized marketing channels for higher ROI.

10:01

🛠 Crafting a Marketing Plan for Your Business

In the final paragraph, the narrator transitions from recounting Mint.com's marketing strategies to providing guidance on how to create a marketing plan for one's own business. The advice includes setting a specific goal with a clear time frame, understanding the target customer's needs and preferences, choosing the right marketing channels, and tracking the effectiveness of marketing efforts to optimize them. The narrator suggests that marketers should focus on what works and eliminate ineffective strategies. A template for a marketing plan is offered for those interested in applying these strategies to their business, and the paragraph ends with an invitation to subscribe for more content and a mention of another video detailing the launch of a new product.

Keywords

💡Mint.com

Mint.com is a personal finance management tool that was sold for nearly 200 million dollars in 2009. In the video, it serves as the central example of a successful marketing strategy. The speaker joined the company as employee number four with no product or customers, and was instrumental in creating a marketing plan that led to rapid growth and acquisition.

💡Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines the steps a business will take to achieve its marketing objectives. In the context of the video, the speaker created a marketing plan with the goal of acquiring a hundred thousand users within six months of the product launch, which was successfully exceeded.

💡Customer Demographics

Customer demographics refer to the characteristics of a company's target audience, such as age, gender, income, and interests. The video emphasizes the importance of identifying and understanding the customer demographic to tailor marketing messages and strategies effectively. The target for Mint.com was young professionals and individuals highly interested in personal finance.

💡Content Marketing

Content marketing is a strategy that involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a clearly defined audience. In the video, the speaker discusses how Mint.com used content marketing, specifically blogging, to become a leading source of personal finance advice and attract their target audience.

💡Newsletter

A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication that provides information or updates to subscribers. The video script mentions using a monthly newsletter as a means to build community and maintain contact with potential users, which was a key part of Mint.com's marketing strategy.

💡SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a piece of content in search engine results. Although not heavily emphasized in the video, the speaker implies that creating content tailored to the target demographic could indirectly benefit from SEO, making the content more discoverable to those interested in personal finance.

💡Collaborations

Collaborations in the context of marketing refer to partnerships with other entities, such as influencers or industry experts, to create content or promote a product. The video describes how the speaker sought out collaborations, such as guest posts or interviews, to enrich the content on Mint.com's blog and grow their audience.

💡Sponsorship

Sponsorship involves supporting an event, organization, or individual in exchange for some form of recognition. In the video, the speaker talks about sponsoring niche personal finance blogs, which was an underutilized marketing channel at the time, to build relationships and credibility within the target demographic.

💡Product Launch

A product launch is the introduction of a new product to the market. The video discusses the successful launch of Mint.com's product, which was preceded by significant marketing efforts to build an audience and generate hype, resulting in over a million users within six months.

💡Marketing Channels

Marketing channels are the various platforms or methods used to reach potential customers. The video emphasizes the importance of identifying where the target audience spends their time and focusing marketing efforts on those channels, such as personal finance blogs for Mint.com.

💡Powered by Mint Badge

The 'Powered by Mint' badge was a marketing tool used by Mint.com to create a sense of community and anticipation for the product. It allowed users to sign up for updates and display their interest in the product, which also contributed to SEO benefits as more sites displayed the badge.

Highlights

Mint.com sold for nearly 200 million dollars in 2009 and had a marketing plan to acquire a hundred thousand users within six months of launch, ultimately acquiring a million users.

The speaker joined Mint as employee number four with no product and zero customers, and was tasked with creating a marketing plan from scratch.

The importance of identifying the right customer base for a product is emphasized, as it was a challenge for Mint in its early stages.

Interviewing potential customers to understand their financial strategies and needs was a key strategy used by Mint to tailor their product and marketing.

Mint targeted young, ambitious individuals and those already interested in personal finance, as they were more likely to adopt a new financial tool.

Building a product and marketing message for a specific demographic is crucial for effective marketing.

The strategy of creating a newsletter to build hype and collect emails before having a product was a successful approach by Mint.

Content marketing through blogging was a pioneering strategy by Mint to attract their target audience before launching the product.

Consistency in content creation, such as posting two blog posts per week, was a key factor in Mint's marketing success.

Collaborations with influencers and guest posts were used to expand Mint's audience and credibility in the personal finance space.

Sponsoring niche sites in the personal finance sector allowed Mint to gain high ROI and build relationships with bloggers.

The 'Powered by Mint' badge was a creative way to generate interest and SEO benefits before the product launch.

Mint's pre-launch marketing strategies were focused on building relationships and audience before having a product to sell.

Setting a specific goal and time frame for a marketing plan is essential for creating a sense of urgency and clear objectives.

Understanding customer needs and using their language in marketing is more effective than using jargon.

Selecting the right marketing channels based on where the target audience spends their time is crucial for reaching them effectively.

Tracking and mapping out a marketing plan helps in identifying which strategies work and which need to be abandoned or scaled.

The video offers a marketing plan template used by Mint, which can be adapted for other businesses.

Transcripts

you have probably heard of mint.com it

is the number one personal finance

tracker out there that sold into it for

almost 200 million dollars in 2009. when

i joined the company as employee number

four

we had no product and zero customers i

put together a marketing plan with the

goal of getting a hundred thousand users

within

six months of launch we ended up getting

a million in this video i'm going to

tell you the story of how we did that as

well as share the exact marketing plan

that we used

so that you can copy it for your

business by the way stick to the end

where i show you exactly how to create

your own marketing plan

let's dive in after getting fired from

facebook which is a story for another

time i did a bunch of random

gigs i worked in korea i did consulting

for scanner.com but dave mcclure the

founder of 500 startups invited me to

come check out this product of an

unknown company called

my mint aaron patzer wanted to build a

tool to help people manage their

finances

and he actually built a prototype by

himself for the past six months i saw

the product and i was

blown away at the time i was blogging on

okay dork about personal finance and i

immediately saw

that this could be huge think about it

do you want more money yeah guess who

else wants more money

everybody and so i was excited also use

it myself because it's something i

was actively doing i said i want to be

your director of marketing aaron

he said you don't even know how to do

marketing

fair but i still wanted the job so

instead of giving up i actually put

together this marketing plan that we're

going to be going through today you can

see the original version hopefully on

screen

somewhere up here and i pitched it to

aaron he was impressed i was hired on

the spot and the rest

is what you're seeing in this video so

when aaron patzer hired me we were still

a super early stage startup number one

we didn't know exactly who our customer

was number two

we needed a product only a buggy

prototype that aaron built by himself

so challenge number one is figuring out

who your or our customer was

so having a marketing plan is great i

can tell you exactly what to do but if

you're marketing it to the wrong person

no one's gonna be interested so people

interested in personal finance might

sound pretty specific but it's extremely

broad

males treat money differently than

females families differently than

someone that's had student debt

so actually who the product could be for

was really broad so to figure it out we

interviewed a lot of different people so

we met people at coffee shops we

interviewed friends we interviewed

people that we thought would be good

fits here are some of the questions that

we

asked to figure out who our customer

would be what's your current financial

strategy what do you need the most help

with

when it comes to personal finance how

would your ideal personal finance tool

work very exciting very stimulating and

some really fascinating things came out

of this that helped direct how our

marketing and product was targeted at

first off most people don't do anything

with their personal finances i don't

know what you do but this actually

shocked me second thing was that the

people who did care about their finances

were really young ambitious people

who are already reading personal finance

blogs they were already at the gym

saying hey i want to be doing the stuff

in personal finance

teach me more i think what a lot of

people do in marketing is doing

correctly is that they're trying to

change behavior

hey come to the gym come to the gym now

it's much easier to help people when

they're already at the places you want

doing all these customer interviews

allowed us to build our product and

create a marketing message targeting

specifically these people

so who are you targeting in your current

business and the more narrow

you're targeting the better think about

any of the most gigantic companies

facebook

harvard students microsoft super

targeted developers a lot of these

companies we're super niche but for

somehow every other person who's

starting a business out there's like i'm

going to go extremely broad

good luck don't forget to like this

video and subscribe to the channel if

you want more videos from uncle noah

so the specific takeaway from this

marketing was two key things one we were

going to target us yopos or young

professionals we were calling them at

the time

as well as people hyper interested in

personal finance what we realize from

that is that the messaging

is going to be targeting to these two

groups of people as well as the

marketing all marketing is at the end of

the day is who

and where and so now we're like all

right we know it's going to be personal

finance and young tech geeks let's go

after those people challenge number dose

we didn't even have a product one of the

huge challenges for me as a marketer

uh is for about a year there was nothing

to even tell people to go use

so what do you do when you don't have a

product that exists and this is a common

thing i've seen a lot of companies

my engineers are taking too long i have

to sell a prototype elon musk sold a

model 3 a billion dollars worth without

a car anyone actually even touched so

what did i do to actually fix that

problem

my plan was to build a lot of hype and

collect a lot of emails and

relationships

around people specifically targeted in

the demographics i was talking about

so here are some examples of what we did

number one a newsletter and i'm still

doing this today with appsumo.com we

didn't have a product people could sign

up for so we needed a way to start

building the community and interactions

so monthly newsletter was amazing

there's a lot of services like

sendfox.com maybe mailchimp.com and the

ways that we're actually able to get

that is we had a blog we did ads we did

a website i'm gonna talk about that a

little bit more

we also sent a monthly financial tips

newsletter to add value and stay in

touch with people by the time we

launched the tickers i believe we had

over a hundred thousand people on our

newsletter excited for when we finally

came out

i think a lot of times when you guys are

building your business and trying new

marketing it's like let me code code

code make make me make

is there any customers out here anybody

anybody do it reverse get customers

first

and if you don't have a product start

building relationships with either

influencers or people you want to help

promote

or people you eventually want to be

buying your product or service second

way that we built up an audience without

having a product is content marketing so

mint was one of the pioneers of content

marketing aka

blogging before this was even a thing so

we knew who our target customers were

and we knew that they were on personal

finance blogs so we figured why not

build the

number one place online for them to

learn about personal financial advice

and that's what we set out to do so i

put together a content schedule with a

bunch of articles i knew our target

demographic would love

so you can actually see our content

calendar probably up here somewhere on

the screen

yeah so this is awesome so we knew

exactly if you look at the categories on

this thing you could see

we were targeting money hacks and young

professionals and we got through most of

the articles that we thought would do

really well of this

to target that demographic there wasn't

as much seo this was like a little bit

over 10 years ago

but the idea here is that once you know

who your target customer is now you can

start writing content specifically

tailored for them

one thing that i've used definitely over

the years is look at the questions that

these people email you or when you're

talking to them they'll ask you a

question

write that down and that becomes content

you can use on social media blogging

or on youtube two pieces i want to

highlight with the content marketing is

number one is consistency and this is

the part

i always have to say it out loud for

myself is that we posted two blog posts

every single week until we launched one

thing i was thinking about today with

my friend andy beal was that success is

hard work compounded by a long time and

it's yes

do something for a very long period of

time and ideally keep improving and you

will have success so focus on

consistency in your marketing

another thing that was really great aka

i did last work is collaborations

so i would go out to people and say hey

we have a little bit of an audience we

have a blog

can i interview you or do you want to do

a guest post for our blog they would

give me all the information

we would promote it they get some

attention and then we would be able to

build our audience from that so some of

the results from this is that our blog

became a huge driver if not the key

driver

of free traffic that was able to grow

into the size that we were able to sell

for almost 200 million dollars

third thing we did before we even had a

product is we sponsored super niche

sites and this is something you could

still do today

in different mediums so one of the best

powerful things to do as a marketer is

to find

underutilized or undervalued marketing

channels facebook ads you ever heard of

them yeah

so is everyone else youtube ads oh wow

guess what everyone knows about that at

the time with mint i noticed that a lot

of these blogs didn't have a lot of ads

they didn't have a lot of sponsors

so i would email them and my subject

line was can i pay you a thousand

dollars i ended up being able to meet

and sponsor almost every single blog in

personal finance now

mostly people wouldn't even respond to

me for a thousand dollars the results

for this is we got a ton of micro

sponsorships that paid a huge roi

because they drove a lot of email

signups and the other thing that's

really interesting is that they built

relationships so when you send someone

money or you want to sponsor someone

they'll probably take your calls and be

your friend or be able to work with you

in the future

it also had a nice side effect this

build up our credibility because we're

associated with the personal finance

blogger

which is our targeted demographic guess

what they're like oh that guy's legit or

woman's legit

mint.com is also legit too the thing

about this is that it doesn't scale as

well as facebook ads like facebook ads

you just put in the money and then it

goes up if you keep spending

with this it's harder to do that but the

roi meaning the amount you spend

is way higher so one key thing that

still applies today about this is

sponsoring super targeted people that

are not mainstream yet you get the best

deals on this goes for tick-tockers

youtubers

instagramers twitterers even bloggers

this day which is not as popular

but the point i'm trying to make is that

going out and sponsoring super giant

ones yeah get a lot of attention it

might be good but if you go to actually

some of the up and comers you're gonna

get amazing deals

and you'll get the best roi that i've

ever seen so as you can imagine we tried

a lot of other marketing strategies but

these are some of the top three that

were the most effective so copy them

start a newsletter and engage with your

audience on a regular basis do content

marketing it doesn't have to be on blogs

it could be on different types of

mediums youtube podcast

ish instagram whatever that is and three

go and actually find people to sponsor

that are not as gonna be expensive as

some of these main streamers

one other kind of tiny quick tidbit that

we did that i thought was really cool

was we did this powered by mint badge

so people could go sign up for me and

say hey i want to find out about this

product when it launches

and if you wanted priority access you

got a badge called powered by men or i

want mint that you'd put on your site

the cool thing is that people would

start seeing it then they would want the

mint badge as well

as it gave us a lot of seo juice so

these are the things that worked for us

let me talk to you a little bit more and

we'll break down a little bit more of

the marketing in act 3 which is when we

did the launch so in terms of the launch

of the success we finally took all this

audience we built all this traffic we

built we launched a techcrunch 40 and we

had over a million users within six

months which is pretty much

bonkers uh in terms of performance

especially we did a lot of marketing

before we ever had a product so one key

thing to think about is

whatever business you're in right now

how can you start planting seeds for

relationships and marketing

even before you have the product it's

way way better than trying to do it

after the fact so act four how do you

actually create your own marketing plan

most importantly if you are watching

this you probably have a business or you

want to start a business

leave a comment with what that is below

i'm going to break down briefly how you

can use the same strategies that i did

to grow mint in your own business

number one pick a specific goal and a

time frame i learned this from mark

zuckerberg i use it at mint i've used it

at appsumo

it works the reason mid marketing plan

was successful is that when i was hired

aaron said i need a hundred thousand

signups within six months of launching

very very specific time frame very

specific objective so for you

if you don't have a time frame there's

no sense of urgency and there's no clear

thing you're trying to accomplish so

let's say you have a business and you're

making a hundred dollars a month

all you have to do is say hey by

december 31st i want to make a thousand

dollars a month now you can work

backwards and say all right well each

month

i need to make this much money and break

down how do i plan on getting it i would

say that's probably the key thing to

take away from the mint marketing plan

number two

go talk to your customers call me i miss

you who is your customer

what actual problem are you really

solving for them what messaging should

you use

in your marketing use their language not

yours and where are they hanging out

online number three

pick your marketing channel so now you

have a goal you know who you're trying

to target what are the different

marketing channels you could think you

could reach these people

is it partnerships is it pr is it

youtube is it podcast figuring out where

your customers hang out and you can just

ask them

this is exactly then you have to go

market in their parties so at min we

were really successful because we

identified

two key customers and then we went to

their marketing channels to their

personal finance blogs

to the ads that specifically targeted

them number four map out and track your

marketing plan so i know that sounds

super generic but a lot of this time

it's

we over complicate these things or a lot

of you what i've noticed is that you

don't actually do any of the tracking

you just kind of are like

yeah i'm just going to wing it see how

it goes i know mexico's south i'll just

drive down

so map out hey if i want to get to this

target here are my expectations from

these marketing channels

and when you start implementing it one

of the key things that again marketers

as well as ourselves at appsumo don't do

always perfectly is

what channels are working that i can 10x

and what channels are not working i have

to kill

if you're not killing some of your

marketing activities you're probably

doing too many things if you want to

download the template of this marketing

sheet i use for min i'll put that below

in the description

if you like this video check out the

video where i walk you through exactly

how we built and launched our own latest

product tidycal.com

within 20 days and don't forget to

subscribe to the channel i'll see you

out there and i love you