The term Lean Marketing refers to marketing strategies that are based on the Lean Startup concept. Lead acquisition and the sales funnel are approached differently in this way. Instead of creating a closed marketing plan without edges, the idea is to propose a series of actions and analyze how they work.
Based on this data we decide if we should stick to the original plan or pivot towards a different course.
The differential value of Lean Marketing is that companies can achieve a greater impact in a shorter time, and at a lower cost. It allows you to mold and modify the actions based on the feedback from the users themselves.
What is The Lean Startup?
Lean Startup is a concept developed by Eric Ries in his books “The Lean Startup” and “The way to the Lean Startup”.
The concept grew out of Ries’ experience at a venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. His goal was to help startups succeed using existing ideas such as:
- Lean Manufacturing, which focuses on eliminating the unnecessary things to create more value.
- Steve Blank’s Client Development Methodology.
- Agile techniques.
- Osterwalder Business Model Canvas.
- Design Thinking.
Lean Startup Cycle
As mentioned above, Lean Startup methodology involves a very specific work cycle. One of the distinguishing characteristics of this model that is already being employed in marketing is the following:
- How to know where your client is?
- How to impact the user to cause him to go from user to lead and from lead to customer?
- When is the time to communicate with your users?
- Which channel is the most suitable?
The first thing we need to do is build a prototype. It should be something very basic that allows you to get to the market quickly. A complete strategy with phases, times, and budgets is not required. Instead, it is a test based on a minimum viable product (MVP) that is simple, cheap, and quick to implement.
This is when the information of the users is collected. Measuring is the only way to know if you are on the right path. As a result, the interesting thing is to create a good collection of small experiments and collect real market data.
You can use this data to learn. If the experiments are well received, you should continue. If not, analyze the reasons for the failure and explore new possibilities with other prototypes. Knowing your users better comes from analyzing each experiment, each action, and each behavior. It will be important to understand, for instance, if Facebook is the channel you should rely on. Alternatively, you can capture leads through Google Ads.
The cycle that Eric Ries designed is applicable to Lean Marketing with the following stages:
- Build
Ries argues that everything must start from the definition of a hypothesis. Of course, it must be the result of analyzing the problems of potential customers. For this, Lean Marketing must be supported by the generation of buyer personas and the analysis of the customer journey.
- Measure
One of the essential factors when executing Lean Marketing in your organization is having an excellent measurement system. It’s more important than anything these results will lead to the validation of the prototype with the clients themselves. A minimum viable product is useless if the right users are not tested very, very quickly.
Do you need to create more than one landing page? What types of ads are the ones that impact your users the most? Should you use email marketing? All of these questions give rise to hypotheses that you must validate with the users themselves.
For this, it will be necessary to not only have the appropriate analytical tools but you must also define precisely the indicators on which you are going to base your learning.
- Learn
Eric Ries is committed to validated learning. There is no mistake if you learn from it. The data will tell you if your hypotheses were true or not. In the first case, you already know something to exploit and add to your overall marketing strategy.
If it’s wrong, it is data to learn from to keep looking for the right approach. And the best part is that you have saved valuable time and money on something that your client doesn’t demand.
The potential of applying Lean Startup to marketing is that you will have realistic information based on data. It’s no longer about assumptions but the client themself who has spoken to you in each of the experiments.
This is why it’s a continuous process. You must run the create – measure – learn cycle as many times as necessary to find the strategy that ensures you reach your users.
Advantages of Lean Marketing
As you can see, you can start applying Lean Marketing in your organization right now. The problem isn’t so much of tools but of processes. But if you decide to propose your marketing strategies based on the Lean Startup methodology, you can take advantage of the following points:
Reducing costs
The normal reaction is to look for a global approach if you don’t use Lean Marketing. Do not apply it until it is fully formed. Unfortunately, you aren’t sure if it’s going to work. How can Instagram be used to generate organic content? Should You Create an Automated SMS Marketing Strategy? Are you aware of the type of messages that make your users loyal?
You will not know the answer to these questions and many others until you put your strategy in motion. By applying Lean Marketing, you can go step by step allowing you to validate each of the actions with the consequent savings in investment.
You contact customers more quickly
It’s clear that the sooner you know the intentions of the users, the better you will adapt your strategies. When you start from a variety of hypotheses and contrast them one at a time, you will quickly discover who has to buy what you offer.
You will be in contact with users from the very beginning, which will even motivate you to form long-lasting relationships with those clients who are most important to you.
Get validated learning
The key to Lean Marketing is the following principle: It isn’t just about learning from each iteration, you will also learn about global issues with this set. Your results will be more factual after being verified by the users themselves.
Although it may seem otherwise, the truth is that Lean Marketing will bring a cruising speed to your approaches. Lean Startup methodology is influenced by agile, scrum, and other methodologies.
Segment better
One of the keys to current digital marketing is segmentation. Throughout the years, many brands have attempted this, with few brands succeeding.
Everyone knows the importance of showing the right message on the right channel at the right time to the user who is waiting for it, however there are many variables at play to achieve this.
By applying Lean Marketing, you can create tests for different segments. Their validation will mark you new paths that you will open because you have listened to them.
Lean Marketing y Growth Hacking
The Lean Marketing methodology acquires all the meaning related to growth marketing. By using a combination of marketing and programming, we are looking to achieve rapid and exponential growth.
Also born in the startup environment, growth hacking is a concept created by Sean Ellis. It focuses on the execution of many small experiments, in some cases bordering on the limit of legality. And for this it is necessary to pool engineering knowledge, but also to be very creative.
Without creativity it’s impossible to achieve the virality that growth marketing aims to achieve. Isn’t it creative to send a photographer to get quality images of the spaces that are promoted on Airbnb? And without engineering knowledge, this platform would not have been able to “hack” the Craigslist listings to get its first users.
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