How To Market Your Minimum Viable Product

Marketing an MVP is nothing like marketing a mature product

“I’m not a marketer.”

That’s exactly what I told Dr. Aaron Dinin when he asked me to speak at his Social Media Marketing class at Duke University last week. As it turned out, that was part of the plan.

“You’re an entrepreneur,” he replied. “You know how to market.”

Dinin’s class is full of entrepreneurs. He wanted me to talk about how to market a product before it actually becomes the product — when it’s still in that nascent MVP stage and no one knows exactly what the product is yet — not the founder, not the marketing team, and certainly not the customer.

“Oh,” I said. “I do that all the time.”

Here’s what I talked about.

Rule 1: You’re Starting From Zero

When you’re marketing an MVP, you can’t use crutches. First of all, you don’t have brand to lean on. No one knows the name of your product. If you’re a startup, no one knows the name of your company either. No one knows what your credentials are or how much time or science you’ve put into the product. Customers don’t care. It’s all about what you can do for them.