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

Summary

The author recounts his experience joining Mint.com in the early days, putting together a marketing plan to acquire 100K users within 6 months of launch. Key strategies included: building a newsletter and community pre-launch, creating targeted content marketing, sponsoring niche personal finance sites, tracking everything. They got 1M users in 6 months by laser focusing efforts on their target customer - young professionals interested in personal finance.

Takeaways

• 😀挖掘潜在客户需求对制定精准的市场定位至关重要
• 📌定期发送电子邮件、建立博客站以及发布有价值内容可以吸引目标客户群和建立信任关系
• 😌找准目标客户后,就可制定有针对性的内容策略并进行有效营销
• 👍先确定客户群和渠道,再上线产品
• 🤔优先赞助较小众的合作伙伴会获得更高的投资回报率
• 😮制定可衡量的营销目标时间和基准
• 😉对营销渠道进行持续追踪与评价以找到增强或停止的力度
• 😏成功的营销需要坚持不懈,把时间和努力结合起来
• 🤓首先获取客户而不是先开发产品或服务
• 😎下载模板并制定自己的营销计划

Q & A

曼特的创始人是谁?

曼特的创始人是Aaron Patzer。

2009年曼特以多少钱卖给Intuit公司?

2009年曼特以近2亿美元的价格卖给Intuit公司。

诺亚叔叔加入曼特时,公司处于什么阶段?

当诺亚叔叔加入曼特时,公司还处于早期阶段,没有产品,也没有客户。

Outlines

00:00

😊 讲述加入Mint.com初期团队制定市场计划的故事

第一段主要讲述了作者加入Mint.com初始团队,制定了一个6个月内吸引10万用户的市场营销计划,最终在6个月内吸引了100万用户的故事,以及将会在视频中分享当时使用的详细市场营销计划,供观众借鉴。

05:00

😊 分析Mint.com面临的两大挑战及确定目标用户的过程

第二段首先指出初始阶段Mint.com面临的两大挑战:1)不清楚目标客户是谁;2)只有一个不太稳定的原型产品。为了确定目标客户,他们通过访问咖啡店、访谈朋友等方式深入调查不同类型的人,提出了一系列问题以确定他们的理想个人理财工具的特征。通过这些调查,他们发现大多数人没有处理好自己的理财,而那些关心理财的人大多数是年轻有抱负的专业人士。这帮助他们确定了目标客户群体和市场营销计划。

10:01

🙂 在产品推出前通过邮件列表、内容营销等方式积累受众

第三段首先指出在产品上市之前,他们面临的挑战是没有产品。为了解决这个问题,他们通过建立邮件列表、内容营销和 sponsors 一些小众站点等方式积累受众和潜在用户。邮件列表可以帮助他们开始建立社区;内容营销则通过写博客文章吸引目标用户;sponsors 一些小众网站不仅可以直接带来注册用户,也能提高知名度和公信力。这些方式最终帮助他们在产品推出时吸引了大量用户。

Keywords

💡营销策划

营销策划指制定营销计划的过程,包括确定目标市场、定位、选择营销渠道等。视频讲述了Mint.com如何通过内容营销、邮件列表、赞助等方式做营销策划,在产品推出前夕就积累了大量用户。

💡目标用户

视频强调要明确目标用户,因为不同用户对金钱和理财的态度不一样。Mint.com 通过用户访谈,确定目标用户是有抱负的年轻专业人士和对个人理财感兴趣的人。

💡内容营销

内容营销指通过博客、视频等内容来吸引目标用户。Mint.com成立早期就开始在博客上发布个人理财内容,后来这些内容成为免费流量的主要来源。

💡邮件列表

在产品推出前通过邮件列表收集用户邮箱,保持联系。Mint.com发布每月理财技巧邮件,推出前邮件列表已有10万用户。

💡赞助

赞助指通过支付费用来获得曝光或推广。Mint.com 赞助个人理财博客文章,既获得用户也建立关系,这些博主后来在产品推出时提供了帮助。

💡营销渠道

营销渠道指用于推广和销售的平台,如社交媒体、搜索引擎、内容网站等。要选择目标用户活跃的营销渠道。

💡关联性营销

关联性营销指利用目标用户已有的偏好、兴趣点和活动场所进行营销。比如Mint.com选择个人理财博客作为营销渠道。

💡种子营销

种子营销指产品还未面市时通过内容、社区等吸引潜在用户。这为未来产品推广奠定基础。Mint.com文章、邮件列表等就是种子营销。

💡产品定位

产品定位指明确产品的目标用户和定位。Mint.com定位于有理财需求的年轻人,这决定了其营销定位和执行。

💡增长思维

增长思维指专注于产品和业务增长的思路。视频建议在开发产品之前,先关注用户增长和关系建立。

Highlights

2009年以近2亿美元出售Mint个人理财产品

制定了6个月内获得100,000用户的目标

最后一个月内获得了100万用户

确定目标用户和营销渠道至关重要

当没有产品时,构建关系和吸引关注

每周发布2篇博客文章,直到产品推出

赞助超级细分领域的网站和博主

最小化风险,最大化回报的营销渠道

产品推出前进行大量营销活动

制定明确的目标和时间表

直接与客户交谈了解他们的需求

确定客户活动的营销渠道

制定并跟踪你的营销计划

识别有效和无效的营销活动

模板可以下载使用

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