Any interest in gamified startup marketing?
Since a lot of us hackers struggle with marketing, I wanted to gauge this community's interest in a gamified marketing solution which will take you through a series of tasks completing which will lead to you having done marketing.
What I have in mind is a slack bot which asks the right "nudge" questions at appropriate time intervals to guide you through a series intermediate tasks which make up startup marketing.
At any point in time, you can see the health of your marketing efforts and how close you are to finishing this round of marketing.
At the end of every round of marketing, you will have some insight into how close you are to product-market fit.
The underlying claim which makes this possible is that, fundamentally, marketing anything is a series of identical tactical steps which any one can implement to get results.
Great idea! I would especially put effort in, what you call, "nudging" since a lot of people need some sort of pressure/encouragement to do stuff out of their conform zone like talking to people, writing blog posts, etc.
Make sure there is a sense of accomplishment from the start, even when the results are not there yet.
I'm deeply interested in things that are gamified, as long as it's not a shallow PBL (points, badges and leaderboards) approach.
..as in using a gamified product xor helping build one? I'll accept either response ;).
Both. I used to spend a great deal of time playing games of all types and I also think it's a great tool, maybe even the best tool, for learning. Games are also great for motivation.
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While I appreciate the idea, I think this statement is false. Marketing tactics will change substantially from one product to another.
(Oops, I had posted this response under the wrong comment)
It sounds farfetched but from a high enough level of abstraction, marketing (like programming or medicine or space flight or war) is a series of less complex composable steps.
This bot will nudge people to take execute those steps. What they do during those steps is open to interpretation.
For example, one step may be: "Ask a high level question about your problem domain in a channel of your choice".
What high level question to ask is guided by your strategy but you can't avoid the tactical step of asking a high level question just to discover who else is thinking about your problem and how well-defined it is in their minds.
Even this question - "Any interest in gamified startup marketing?" - is a high level question which elicited a deep response from you. The answers in this thread brought me a bit closer to identifying product-mkt fit and potential early users. Otoh, if this post had died without interest, I'd know IndieHackers is not a market where my gamified startup marketing product is going to resonate, ergo, not a product market fit.
I'm trying to identify more such tactical steps.
Definitely, if I had some sort of a score on how my startup is doing, I'd work a lot harder to generate traffic, write content...
I feel that score you are looking for would come from Google Analytics (rising user counts, falling bounce rates, conversions). This product will simply nudge you to execute certain tactical steps on a periodic basis and score you on compliance with those nudges.
E.g., consider Apple Watch reminders to get up and walk if it detects that you have been sitting for a while. They act as nudges towards a healthier body. Only your physical exam can tell you if your body is actually becoming healthier or not. Apple Watch can only report on how you have complied with the nudges.
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This is definitely something that would be beneficial for me as I start tasks and then without encouragement or any instant reward I lose interest too quickly.
What rewards were your envisioning - a public leaderboard, stickers, private progress bars?
I think a private progress would be beneficial as then can see how far have come along as well as how much is left to go however the problem that may put me off is if all is on "1 level" so the end goal seems to far away and incremental steps not helping.
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