Marco Muzzi, marketing director at Linkett, shares key insights on launching a new product through three phases: product development, business model development, and marketing. He emphasizes the importance of understanding consumer needs, creating a minimum viable product (MVP), effective market validation, and employing growth hacking techniques for budget-free marketing. Additionally, he provides strategies for building a strong brand and pricing effectively to meet customer expectations.

1. New Product Marketing 101
Marco Muzzi, Marketing Director, linkett
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2. My Backstory
• Started first business at 16 (ecommerce), second
at age 20 (marketing consulting)
• Named one of Canada’s Top 20 Future
Entrepreneurial Leaders by Profit Magazine at 24
(2012)
• Previous start-up grew from 7 people to 70, plus
$10MM IPO
• Current start-up working to close first major
round of funding
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3. today’s presentation
• I’m going to share “growth hacks” to launching a new product.
• There are 3 phases we’ll cover:
1. Product Development
2. Business Model Development
3. Marketing the Product
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4. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT HACKS
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5. one simple
product development philosophy:
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WHAT IS THE CONSUMER
TRYING TO DO?

6. Opportunity Identification: 5 C’s
1. Problem Identification [Circumstance] - create a matrix of consumer problems
and possible solutions (products or services)
2. [Stalking] Context Immersion - observe a consumer as they attempt to solve a
particular challenge
3. Barrier Crushing - understand why consumers aren’t solving a problem,
especially if there are obvious solutions
4. Compensating Behaviours - identify if the consumers are using alternative, yet
unrelated, products or services to achieve their desired outcome
5. Criteria Development - determine how consumers assess possible solutions and
how to build these into your product or service
6Repurposed from: https://hbr.org/2012/10/the-five-cs-of-opportunity-identi/

7. bootstrap market validation: 3 steps
1) Build a customer profile
Using the information gathered from your opportunity identification, create a detailed “ideal
customer” profile [i.e. who is most likely to buy this?]; leverage industry association contacts
as soundboards.
2) Build a market profile
Use secondary research to quickly assess the viability of the market you've identified;
infographics, research reports, books and news articles will provide you with more than
enough data.
3) Assess your market
Once you're reasonably confident a market has potential, sit down with a handful of
prospective customers, or people with experience, and ask pointed questions about how to
penetrate the market and reach your desired audience.
7Repurposed from: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/71816

8. Product Development: MVP
• Everyone needs an “MVP”:
• A Minimum Viable Product is the smallest thing you can build that delivers
value to your customer, while also generating revenue for your business.
• Why?
1. Market research 2.0 - get real-world feedback quicker
2. Identify evangelists - start engaging early adopters sooner, building a
groundswell for forthcoming launches
3. Generate revenue (today!) - MVP revenue contributes to covering costs
of product development and growing the business to it’s next iteration
8Repurposed from: http://leanstack.com/minimum-viable-product/

9. Product Development: bring it to life
• At the highest level, there are two methods to building a product:
“DIY” and Licensing.
• DIY [Do it Yourself] - building the product from scratch, in-house
• Licensing - using non-internal inputs to create the product (in whole
or in part)
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10. Building The Business Model
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11. The Business Model Challenge
• Food-on-the-table vs. Pie-in-the-sky dilemma: Early-stage companies
often wrestle with building a business that makes money vs. creating
the business they’ve envisioned in their minds (or that fills a long-
term market opportunity).
• The challenge rests in needing to establish a sustainable business that
meets consumer needs today and tomorrow, but with exceptionally
limited resources.
• Examples - LINKETT + AcuityAds
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12. The Answer: All Of The Above
• You’ll want to start by putting food on the table & building for the long
term at the same time:
• Short term model - easy to use/consume, habit building, address
primary consumer needs at an adequate level, delivers immediate
revenue
• Long term - potentially more involved usage/consumption process,
build on previously established habits or form new ones, over delivers
on primary needs and addresses tertiary needs
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13. How Tell If It’s Working: SWOT
• The best way to do this is to complete periodic SWOT’s on your business
(and model):
• Strengths - what have we done well; what were our biggest successes;
what’s moving in the right direction?
• Weaknesses - what didn’t work; what’s costing us money; what is
moving in the wrong direction?
• Opportunities - where is the market trending; what are our customers
asking for?
• Threats - what is the competition doing; what are governments doing?
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14. Marketing
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15. How to build a startup brand
1. Develop a relevant brand name [simple, easily pronounced,
memorable]
2. Craft a unique tagline [5 words or less, focused on benefits]
3. Build detailed brand guidelines [objectify your brand]
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16. How to Build Your Marketing Plan
• Simple 4 step process (“4 M’s of Marketing”):
1. Motivations - identify the core needs you’ll focus on in your advertising
2. Messaging - craft messages that communicate your benefits based on
the consumer’s need
3. Media - let the consumer’s behaviour and your message dictate which
media you target (hint: it’s different for everyone)
4. Metrics - ensure you’ve developed simple, objective benchmarks to
evaluate your performance
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17. Secret Sauce: Growth hacking
• How startups generate buzz with zero budget (priority order):
1. Content Marketing - provide content of value (i.e. answer questions, inform on
new trends, etc.), use intelligent scheduling, distribute aggressively
2. PR - consistently tell a story, involve media early, build relationships with media
or work with someone who has
3. Social Media - build a launchpad for your content marketing, pr, and business
development
4. Retargeting - leverage advanced, yet accessible online advertising tools to create
highly targeted campaigns
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18. You’re Going to Need These
• Early on, the 3 most useful digital marketing tools are:
• The explainer video - explain your product in 2 minutes or less (benefits,
benefits, key features)
• Programmatic digital marketing - this is the most efficient and transparent way
to invest marketing dollars early on (easily monitor and manage performance in
real-time, hyper-target audience groups)
• CRM Software - serves as the “data hub” for your sales staff, helping to
automate customer relationships and unearth consumer behaviour trends
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19. In The End
1. Build your product around helping consumers solve
a problem.
2. Generate revenue from delivering value and
understanding your market.
3. Develop a brand that is flexibly structured.
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20. Thank You
twitter: m_muzzi
tenthousandcoffees.com/profile/marco-muzzi
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21. Bonus
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22. What working in a startup is really like
• Crazy hours
• Lots of fun or lots of pain - depends on culture
• Not as financially rewarding as you expect
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23. 3 tips for getting a job
1. Killer Resume - BlueSky Resume Course
2. Solid Digital Profile - Linkedin, Personal
Website, etc.
3. Networking - attend industry events,
conferences, or even volunteer time on
different boards to raise your profile
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24. Appendix
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25. Opportunity validation [Product Selection]
• How to prioritize the opportunities worth pursuing [research]
• Summarize questions here (try to reduce the list): http://www.entrepreneur.com/
article/237983
• Ansoff Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansoff_Matrix
• Set up transition into next slide (MVP) - i.e. “sell something…”
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26. Pricing
• Depending on your business model, there is a pricing approach which is very popular in the
startup space [the Persona Approach]. Here’s how it works:
1. Segment your customer profile - what features/benefits do they care more about, what
is their LTV and CAC, what will each group pay for what they want?
2. Bundle features - your profile segmentation will yield the most desirable features across
all consumer groups - use this to build product feature bundles.
3. Determine your value metric - how are you going to charge the consumer (per unit, per
user, % of sales, etc.)?
4. Determine your price - use your data to set a price point that delivers value (for
everyone); don’t be afraid to check the competition’s price.
26Repurposed from: http://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/how-to-find-the-best-pricing-strategy-for-a-saas-product

27. Pricing Hacks
• Emotion based purchase decision - use round price ($19 vs. $19.99)
• Separate shipping and handling - $10 + shipping & handling
• Smaller pricing font affects perception - it’s seen as being less expensive
• Remove the dollar sign where possible - it triggers negative emotions
27Repurposed from: http://www.nickkolenda.com/psychological-pricing-strategies/#pricing-s2-t2