Step-by-Step Instructions

Click to print worksheet.

In this chapter you are going to bring together the essential elements of your offer so you can start prepping for your first experiment.

Problems it Solves

1. Developing your marketing strategy:

You're going to start developing the core of your marketing strategy. Here you will combine the elements of previous exercises to create your marketing strategy and put it to the test.

2. Where to market and what to say:

Most importantly, you are going to hone in on where to market your offer and what to say to your potential customers. This will be the cornerstone of your first experiment.

The Anatomy of an Offer

An offer consists of 3 essential parts:

1. Channel: where you are going to put the message.
2. Problem-Centric Message: the message itself.
3. Call to action: what you want your customers to do as a response to that message.

Before you Start

Take out your Problem Synthesis worksheet from Chapter 2. You will be using what you wrote in the Customer Problem, Emotions and Channels sections for this exercise.

Step 1

Take out your Offer Design worksheet.

In this first step, you're going to take the Channels you discovered during your interviews and prioritize them based on an estimated return on investment (ROI).

When you test these offers, you will collect actual data on which channel has the best - proven - ROI; however, at this point you are going to make your best guess.

Channels: First, list your channels from the Problem Synthesis worksheet on the left-hand side.

Investment: Next, you will complete the Investment section. This is how much time and money you will have to put into these channels in order to get something out of them.

Measure time using the following scale:

1. It will take a matter of hours to present an offer to this channel
2. It will take a matter of days to present an offer to this channel
3. It will take weeks or more to present an offer to this channel

As you can see from my numbers, it takes very little time (hours) for me to distribute an offer via my blog or Facebook ads, while doing so at the Lean Startup Conference requires much more time.

Measure money using the following scale:

1. It's free to present an offer to this channel
2. It will cost less than $100
3. It will cost less than $500
4. It will cost less than $1,000
5. It will cost more than $1,000

In my example, you can see blog posting doesn't cost any money, Facebook ads cost a little money and going to the conference costs between $100 - $500 for me.

Next, calculate the total for each row by multiplying TIME x MONEY.

The reason you multiply, as oppose to add, is to maximize for "1s", or low cost investments, and minimize 3+'s, or high cost investments. You want to see a clear distinction between what will likely have a high ROI and what will likely have a low ROI.

Now you will measure the return.  You will do this by measuring the number of customers you could potentially reach through this channel. This number will be the biggest number that you could realistically reach with the perfect message.

Here are some ways to estimate this number:

• For a one-time event: estimate the number of people who you will interact with at that event.
• For a long-running or ongoing channel, such as an ad campaign: estimate the number of customers you would be able to reach over two weeks.

Finally, to calculate your return on investment (ROI), use the next column to write down the return number on top, and the investment number on the bottom for each channel, then simply divide the return by the investment.

A note about these number: they doesn't mean anything by themselves - they are only useful relative to one another. A channel with an ROI of 1000 doesn't have any meaning, but when you compare it to a channel with an ROI of 2000, it becomes clear the second channel is a bigger bang for your buck.

The point of this exercise is to prioritize your channels so you know which to test first.

Let's look at a few examples from my worksheet.

• My Blog: It takes very little time for me to post an offer on my blog and it does not cost me anything, so my total investment is 1. I get about 100 visitors every weekday, so I estimate over 2 weeks I might be able to get around 1050 to see my offer. Here, my ROI is 1050/1, or 1050.
• Facebook Ads: This also takes very little time, but it does cost a little bit of money. At the same time, I can get a very wide reach over a short period of time. I estimate I could reach 11,000 folks based on the number of people who are on Facebook, who have an interest in Lean Start-up, who have purchased business marketing material, and who live in countries where I see frequent traffic to my website. My ROI for this channel is 5500.
• Lean Conference: This one is interesting because it requires a significant amount of time including submitting a proposal to speak or rent a booth, prepare material, and the time to attend. It can also require a significant amount of money for conference fees. The number here is not the number of people attending the conference: it is the number of people I could get to interact with me. That is a relatively small number (250 people), even with the perfect message. My ROI for this channel is only 27.7 which tells me it's not a great channel compared to Facebook or my blog.

Step 2

In this step you will develop your Problem-Centric Message (PCM), also known as Marketing Copy.

I've coined a new phrase here, Problem-Centric Message, because it helps stress the most important components of your copy. Below are hints on generating a great PCM and writing good marketing copy in general:

1. Your copy should center on problems, not on solutions.

You will not use this space to tell customers what your solution is - in fact, you don't know what solution they want yet.

The only thing you have data on is the problems they are encountering. Therefore, you will present them with...

An offer to solve their problems.

In this step, you are validating that you heard their problems correctly.

2. Your message should be emotional.

Make sure your message includes the emotions you discovered during your interviews. You will want to leverage this information because at the end of the day, your customer is buying a change in their emotional state.

More than buying a solution, your customers are buying feelings.

This is your chance to say: "Are you experiencing [an uncomfortable, unwanted emotion] when you encounter [their problem]?" and "Would you like to feel [a positive, preferred emotion] instead?"

Customers will flock to you when they can see you understand their problems and will help them resolve the unpleasant emotions associated with them.

3. Your message should be short.

While you've surely read every detail of this book, most people don't read like you do. Their attention spans are short.

Be sure to keep your Problem-Centric Message short.

4. Consider asking a question.

Can you remember a marketing message you responded to that asked a question?

You might find that asking a question is a short cut to convey a particular problem or emotion. Asking a customer a question encourages them to think about their own experiences and makes it more likely that your message will resonate with them.

5. It's about "You."

You is reportedly one of the most powerful words in marketing copy. Talk directly to your audience. Don't be afraid to use you or your in your copy.

With those suggestions in mind, take a look at the Emotions box on your Problem Synthesis sheet. Mine has one emotion that was overwhelmingly present in the interviews I conducted: overwhelmed.

Now it's your turn: come up with 5 Problem-Centric Messages that you could use in your best (highest ROI) channel.

In my case, it's Facebook ads. I'm going to think about my message with respect to Facebook ads specifically. Take a look at the worksheet example for my possible messages. Notice: I've identified a problem, highlighted the emotion, asked questions, kept it short, and used "your".

Notice that my statements are slight variations on each other, and that they use specific language from my Problem Synthesis worksheet.

Step 3

The Call to Action (CTA) is how you'll measure whether or not the customer actually cares about the offer you are putting in front of them.

You will start by choosing a Channel and a Message. Then you will measure whether they invoke your Call to Action.

Your Call to Action can have a hint of your solution, but it shouldn't go into detail. By offering just a hint of your solution, you can test the waters and see which potential solution is most interesting to customers, without overwhelming them with details about features or new functionality.

With that in mind, take out your Solution Ideation worksheet. This is where you brainstormed some possible solutions for your customers' problems.

Imagine a Facebook ad that says "Overwhelmed? How to find your Product-Market fit." My Call to Action is the text I use on a button that encourages a Facebook user to visit my landing page.

Notice that in my Problem-Centric Message, there is no reference to any solution. It's only in my Call to Action that I hint at a possible solution.

Using this strategy, I can test all 3 different potential solutions to see which elicits the most interest.

You can test which potential solution creates the most interest before you've designed or built anything.

Steps 4 & 5

Now that you have a handful of possible messages and calls to action, you can combine them to run an A/B test to see what combination is most powerful.

To do this, choose one Channel and one Problem-Centric Message. Write those in both Step 4 and Step 5.

Now choose two Calls to Action, one for Offer 1, and one for Offer 2.

In my example, I chose my Channel with the highest ROI, Facebook, and the message that will be most interesting to my audience, "Overwhelmed? HOW to find your Product-Market Fit." Then, I can test two different Calls to Action.

This will allow me to accurately measure which potential solution is most interesting, given a constant Channel and Message.

Alternatively, you could keep the CTA's the same, but change the PCM. As long as you only alter one of the variables at a time, you'll be set to run a great A/B test and determine your optimal Offer.

If you change more than one variable at a time, you won't know why a particular experiment failed...or why it was a success.

By the time you're finished your offer testing, you'll have optimized each of these variables - you just have to be sure you test them one at a time.

Recap

You have officially started developing your Marketing Copy. You know what to say and where to say it. You also know what you're going to test during your first Offer Testing Experiment.

Speaking of which, you'll need specific metrics to measure whether your Offer Testing Experiment passes or fails...you'll start estimating those, and every other metric that matters on your path to Product-Market Fit next in Path to Victory!