As a marketer who is trying to improve a companies flywheel, from customer acquisition to activation, revenue, and retention, your role can feel a little overwhelming.
How do you create a model for success?
Well, luckily for you, in this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Corey Haines about mental models for marketers. We discuss four models to help improve your results:
1. First-principles model, how you can boil things down to the fundamental core of that problem, and how Elon Musk used this model to start SpaceX.
2. The five stages of awareness model and how to market to each stage.
3. The circle of competence model, why it's so important to lean into your strengths and become competent at the things you're weak at.
4. The Inversion technique, how to reverse engineer a problem and identify the potential pitfalls that could halt your success.
Time Stamped Notes:
[4:25] - When Corey first got into marketing, he didn't find there were a lot of great resources to learn all of the different things you had to do. He started to take notes of the mental models and frameworks he used to learn new tactics and strategies.
[5:55] - Corey's favorite mental model is called "First Principles." It's used to break up complex problems into their most simplistic form (so they can't be broken down anymore). Corey gives an example of how Elon Musk used that principle to start SpaceX.
[8:15] - When Corey first started as 'Head of Growth' at Baremetrics, one of his first goals was to determine where was the best place to spend his time - acquisition, activation, revenue, retention, revenue expansion.
Corey started with revenue by making their pricing page easier to understand and making that conversion process a lot cleaner.
Next, he moved onto referrals. When a customer signed up to a paid Baremetrics account, Corey would offer to promote that company via their accounts. It helped to improve word of mouth.
He then moved onto retention, looking at common reasons people left and trying to improve upon them.
[14:10] - When deciding on what to prioritize, Corey started with the foundational elements a user would experience when signing up for Baremetrics - the pricing page, their onboarding, upgrade points, before deciding to focus on customer acquisition.
[16:30] - We discuss the product awareness mental model that has five key stages:
1. Completely unaware: People at this stage are not even thinking about the problem your product solves.
2. Problem aware: People at this stage are aware they have a problem.
3. Solution aware: People at this stage are aware there are solutions to their problems.
4. Product aware: People at this stage are aware of specific products that can solve their problems.
5. Most aware: People at this stage have all of the information needed to make a purchase choice.
A marketers job is knowing how to market to each category, and how to move people through each of those stages.
[20:45] - Corey walks us through an example of how he uses questions in Baremetrics 14 day free trial experience to discover what stage a person is in. As a growth marketer, he likes to spend the majority of his time in the solution aware and product aware stages.
[26:35] - We talk about another mental model called your 'Circle of Competence.' As a marketer, you should lean into your strengths and aim to become at least competent in the things you're weak at.
We debate the merits of being a T-shaped marketer vs. focusing on being a specialist.
[35:30] - We recap the three models we talk about in the show:
1. First-principles, we boil things down to the fundamental core of that problem.
2. The five stages of awareness and how to market to each stage.
3. The circle of competence, why it's so important to lean into your strengths and become competent at the things you're weak at.
[36:20] - We end the show by talking about the inversion principle, which helps you reverse engineer a goal and ask what could prevent us from hitting that goal.
[37:45] - Corey walks us through an example of how he uses the inversion technique to hit project deadlines.
You can signup for Corey's course Mental Model for Marketers here.
– Corey on Twitter / LinkedIn
– Kieran on Twitter / LinkedIn / Medium
– Scott on Twitter / Linked / Medium
