Original post can be found here
In the app development industry, we hear the term Minimum Viable Product (MVP) thrown around a lot.
MVP is about making a product (app) with core functionality only; the “must haves” over the “nice to haves”, usually a product needs to hit the market within 8 weeks.
To me, MVP is more than just a way to develop quicker products, MVP is a mindset. A mindset that is commonly found in growth hackers, some marketers but more times than not, absent in entrepreneurs.
To me, marketing makes or breaks good products. So, similar to MVP, I've developed the MVMF - a framework to apply before you build your product.
What is the Minimum Viable Marketing Framework (MVMF)
I know it sounds complicated, believe me – it’s not. In Layman terms think of it as a “pre-launch”. A method to determine customer interest before you spend time & money developing your product.
What a business looks like without MVMF
To illustrate what MVMF is, it’s easier to show you what a business without MVMF looks like:
Parking how much you actually spent aside, we’re saying that you took circa 10-12 months to start get something in front of your users.
What’s the massive issue here?
What if your customers aren’t interested in the product you’re solving?What if your customers are too hard to target using your advertising?
In my opinion, If you had this information prior to building your product, it could even sway whether you choose to build it or not, right?
Enter the MVMF methodology
The MVMF is about building out your dream backwards. Build the marketing first, then the website. Make everything extremely basic, use stock images, use landing page software – spend as little time & money as possible and ensure the vast majority of your budget goes towards your advertising spend.
By doing this, you can understand the two biggest concerns of your business:
- How much will it Cost to Acquire Customers (CAC)
- Can I target my audience easily?
This means better business decisions, easier financials to interpret i.e. if it costs me $25 per customer and my profit is $150, I’m in a good position to scale my business with positive cashflow.
What do I need to run the MVMF
- Logo designed for cheap/free (Launch A Co or Logo Joy)
- Online advertising accounts (Facebook business account / Linked In business account / Google Ads)
- Images/videos for site & advert (Pexels royalty free images or Video Hive)
- Landing page w/ opt in form (check out Unbounce or Instapage)
- Clearly articulated customer pain points (refer to Copy Hackers for some insight)
- Google Analytics, Google Tag manager & Hotjar
- (Optional) A marketer to help you put it all together (growthrunner.com)
With these set up and configured, you’re pretty much ready to begin your marketing.
The marketing flow should be the following:
Okay, let’s talk ethics
Granted, part of you may be thinking you’re upsetting your users with a “fake” website, your brand reputation may be affected, customers may not use you again; you’re probably right.
But let me explain the scale to you. If you invest $100 into advertising, you’ll have approximately 4-8 customers. That’s it.
So, in reality, the big question is:
Are 4-8 people with a sour taste in their mouth more important than spending 10-12 months building an app, spending your money & your time?
Personally, no. I’m happy with select few hating my brand because once I have an interest indicator and I choose to build my product, I will go and give them lifetime access to my product for free as a thank you. Try and hate me now people.
Last few words
Once you’ve executed a successful MVMF, you move onto really building your business and spending the time & money to create the brand and execute the vision you’ve had. I hope this helps you understand the mindset behind MVP and the testing velocity needed for success.
I hope you also understand the emotional detachment to your product and treat the project as just that, a project. It doesn’t carry your self-worth attached to it, it doesn’t mean if you don’t get the results you were expecting you’re a failure – it just means it’s time to pivot, choose another idea or, more commonly, time to hire a marketer to help! :)
Thanks for the post, @nsharoff 🙌🏻 I have one point of criticism, though.
Not trolling but hoping to pass along my opinion on your post and very interested in your opinion on my feedback ✌🏻
It might be just semantics, but I still want to be clear on my mindset on the fact that an MVP consists out of an actual Minimum solution, a Product and is Viable.
Building a landing page to check if the product has product-market fit and to see if it could be viable is a great approach to investigate before spending a lot of time and money, but this isn't an MVP IMHO.
An MVP is a solution that actually works and is viable because people put down money for it so they can use it. This alone is the absolute proof that people use it and that it can sustain itself (thus being viable to both the user and developer).
In my experience, there still is a gap between the crowd that shows interest (and subscribes) and the ones that actually pay you.
Although adding a stripe payment button to the landing page would validate the viability of your solution more, it also creates more obligations. For a one time purchase-able product like an ebook or something similar this could work, though.
I've had a recent great implementation where I used Google Forms, Zapier, Excel(!), and some other SaaS web services to put together an MVP for whom we are now receiving income. It provides value for our users and we get paid. Even a non-coding solution that is hacked together like this (in less than 3 days) can be a viable product.
My point is: an MVP delivers value and is viable by receiving income. Your landing page idea is somehow a Mockup of the MVP. So I'd call it an MMVPF (Mockup MVP Framework) rather than MVPF.
Interested on your take on this.
Hey Edwin! Thanks for your comment, much appreciated. Not at all, I encourage constructive criticism!
I agree with you MVP is a viable product, the mindset however is more the focus of the article. People aren't building Perfect Products initially, they're constructing the least amount of features to get in front of users, and to me, that's what I recommend people start doing with their marketing before building.
You're right pointing out if I used MVP in the framework name it should be changed, but I haven't actually used MVP in the framework name, I've named it MVMF :) Minimum Viable Marketing Framework - just to illustrate you need the marketing to be minimal and not build a product before you build the marketing.
You're right that you have more obligations, to me, real interest can only be validated with a "real" purchase or at least, purchase intent.
The fact that you've created an app using Zapier and non-coding solutions means you're definitely applying the MVP mindset I'm sharing. Specifically because IF the app failed, really you've spent a minimal amount of time putting it together - that to me is the right approach.
There is a lot of talk about "the IKEA effect" where, because you build the furniture yourself, their is a part of you that's invested in it, Betty Crocker did the same thing with her cake mix where when the milk and eggs needed to be added, people felt it was their cake as oppose to a cake mix from the packet - this is what I want people to avoid - the emotional investment in their products.
If you build your app from scratch, code it for 6 months, polish it, love it like a child - you're so invested in it, you're reluctant to part ways with it.
If you're working on the MVP mindset, you've spent, like you, 3 days on it - if it doesn't work - you're more than happy to spend another 3 days pivoting, changing or even scrapping and keep going until you strike oil.
I do appreciate your feedback and really good work on getting your app up and running in 3 days!
MVMF it is, indeed. Incredible how fast a mind can hop over these details ;)
I totally agree 💯 that investing before validating is a waste of resources (unless learning to build or getting better at it is your goal).
And we didn't even talk about the market that is constantly moving and might be looking 👀 for other things by the time you deliver your built-in-6-months product.
Thanks for the cudo's! 🤛🏻
That's so true!
I'm working with a client right now that took 2 years to build a product that complimented their business - I was brought in and I told the directors they needed to totally revamp it as it was quite poor as the market changed.
They all got so mad and went off on a rant about how they told their development team the same thing - I'm censoring most of that conversation out, but curse words were definitely thrown around!
If you're in London at any point Edwin we're planning several IH meetups so it would be great to meet you at one of them!
@nsharoff I haven't planned any trips there anytime soon, but i'll hook us up on LI; never hurts to connect 🤝
IH goal: connecting creators allround ✅
Absolutely!
LI sounds good :)
Great post!
This reminds me of how Amazon work on products: https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backwards.html
Any Product Manager with a new product to pitch has to first write the press release for that product, use it to convince their peers of the project’s worth, and then work backwards to the actual product.
Thanks for sharing Ghyslain, I wasn't aware of this but it's a great little read! Couldn't agree more.
Recently I had a close friend working at a large bank tell me that the bank themselves do this with new products being launched - they sell it before it's fully developed - really interesting to hear this is a shared view amongst larger companies.
Using MVMF, probably we will burn our money.
To validate, it's much cheaper to shout out to our target audiences (reddit, Facebook group, forum or telegram group), tell them their problems and offer an idea.
I consider, build the pool first, fill it with a fish and feed them to grow bigger inside our pool then take it when we ready.
What i mean is, build community first, feed them with contents. When we ready, launch our solutions. If it fail? Create another product and launch it again, fail again? Repeat! Remember, it's our pool! We can do, whatever we want.
Yep, this definitely works too.
To me, time is money too - if building your pool of a specific niche takes you time and by the time you display your product to them, you don't get the results you were expecting - you're back where you started.
If you can create the pools quickly and get valid interest, then by all means you're executing the MVP mindset so we're on the same page! :)
Value read indeed, just dropping my 2cents here - the framework can be expanded by complementary readings such as Principles of marketing by Kotler Competitive Strategy by Porter (hardly a revelation for anyone w background in marketing, but hey classic never hurts) and more "hands-on" The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy: Classic Concepts and New Perspectives and more generalist McKinsey Mind
Thanks for sharing!
Happy to be of help!
A very good read. What about creating a community first and launch later? Do you think sales on a pre-launched product is the same thing as customer development? Steve Blank thinks that if you do sales, it doesn't mean that you found your market and a lot of founders fall into this trap.
Hey Dragos! Thanks for the great comment, I seem to have missed this and answered you in Slack! I'll post my reply here for other readers too:
Personally I believe a lot of founders fall into the trap of believing their product may solve a bigger problem than it does.
In my opinion the only real proof to validate your business is paying customers.
If your product is so niche you can't access your potential users, you know there and then you're going to struggle later on.
I do understand Steve Blanks point - unfortunately with this new digital age I think getting sales is harder than it seems so that in itself is a very powerful interest indicator - surveying people always leads to a "yes yes I'd like it" - until you say "okay I have it now pay for it" and suddenly things change.
I'm a big fan of community first and launch later - thing is every successful one I've seen is an 18 - 24 month time investment which, if you're after interest indicators and the answer to the question: "is this business worth my time?", it's a heavy investment as there is no proof either that that community will buy your product later on.
I think there is a lot of value in the post. With the caveat, if there's one thing I've learned about/from marketing, people lose interest fast.
If the time between what you've offered and what you've built is too long they'll probably have already moved on.
Hey Bob, I couldn't agree more. You'll definitely piss off the first 8 customers if not more - but in return you have validation that people actually care about your product.
That to me, warrants the angry 8 which when your app is ready, you can give it to them for free (as a thank you!)
Just trying to say don't try building up a giant initial customer list it's a waste. Sell them something.
Very true. Thanks Bob