Core marketing frameworks
There are thousands of marketing books, but the handful of thinking tools you actually need to carry with you are below. They're not jargon decoration — they're mental models that help you make decisions. Each one is cited so you can dig deeper.
① Positioning: which slot you occupy in the user's mind
Positioning answers one question: when a user thinks of "a certain kind of need," do they think of you? For an indie product, the most useful positioning formula is:
For [target audience], when they [run into a certain situation], [product name] is the tool that helps them [achieve a result], unlike [the main alternative], because [your key difference].
Note that "the main alternative" is often not another piece of software, but "using Excel," "doing it by hand," "paying someone to outsource it," or "just not doing it at all." Your real competitor is the user's current workaround.
② Jobs to Be Done (JTBD): the user is "hiring" your product
Laid out systematically by the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in a 2005 paper (the idea traces back to Drucker, Levitt, and earlier discussions of "marketing myopia"). The famous metaphor is the milkshake story:
A fast-food chain wanted to boost milkshake sales. Research found that nearly half of all milkshakes were bought early in the morning by people commuting alone by car — they weren't hungry, they wanted "something to do" during a boring long drive. The shake was thick enough, could be drunk one-handed, and lasted until they reached the office. So the milkshake's real competitor wasn't other milkshakes, but bananas, donuts, and bagels.
—— Christensen used it to show that a user is "hiring" a product to get a certain "job" done.
How you use it: don't just stare at "my features." Ask "in what situation, to get what job done, does a user come to use me?" This directly changes your copy (talk about the job and the result, not the specs) and your feature trade-offs.
③ The marketing funnel: TOFU / MOFU / BOFU
Turning a stranger into a paying user is a process that narrows layer by layer. Split it into three layers by how far the user is from "pulling out their wallet":
| Layer | User state | What you should do |
|---|---|---|
| TOFU — top of funnel | Doesn't know you yet, may not even be aware of the problem | Use content, social, and SEO to get discovered and build awareness (explainers, opinions, useful free content) |
| MOFU — middle of funnel | Knows this kind of solution exists, is comparing options | Comparisons, case studies, tutorials, free trials — prove you're the better choice |
| BOFU — bottom of funnel | Ready to buy, just needs the final nudge | Clear pricing, remove doubts (refund guarantee, reviews), strong CTA, limited-time offer |
Diagnose where you're stuck: lots of traffic but nobody signs up → your TOFU content is reaching the wrong audience; lots of sign-ups but no payment → your MOFU/BOFU persuasion and pricing have a problem.
④ AARRR "pirate metrics": what to measure
Coined by investor Dave McClure in 2007 — the name comes from the initials reading out like a pirate shouting "Aarrr!" It breaks a product's user lifecycle into 5 measurable stages:
| Stage | Meaning | Example metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition | How users find you | Visits, sources by channel |
| Activation | First time they experience the core value (the "aha moment") | Share who complete sign-up / first successful use |
| Retention | Do users come back | Week-2 / month-2 retention rate |
| Revenue | Do users pay | Paid conversion rate, MRR, average order value |
| Referral | Do users bring in new ones | Referral rate, NPS |
⑤ 1,000 True Fans
The famous 2008 essay by Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired. The core idea: you don't need millions of casual followers, just about 1,000 "true fans" — people willing to buy almost anything you make. If each one spends about $100 a year on you, 1,000 of them is $100,000/year, enough to support a creator or an indie developer.
What it means for you: reset your goal from "get massive traffic" to "win and keep a small group of people who genuinely value you." This also explains why "build in public" (developing your product openly, shipping continuously) works so well for indie developers — it's exactly how you accumulate those 1,000 true fans.
⑥ Product-market fit (PMF): the "it clicks" feeling you're hunting for
PMF (product-market fit) means your product happens to satisfy a strong need in a real market. There's no single formula for it, but there are signals you can feel:
- Users recommend you spontaneously, word of mouth spreads, and growth doesn't depend entirely on you pushing it;
- Churn is low — they use it and want to keep using it;
- You're busy keeping up with growing demand, not begging people everywhere to try it;
- The classic self-test: ask users "how disappointed would you be if this product disappeared tomorrow?" — the higher the share who'd be very disappointed, the closer you are to PMF.
Before PMF, don't pour money into aggressive promotion (that just amplifies something that hasn't clicked yet); only after PMF is it time to hit the gas on growth.
What to remember from this chapter
- Positioning: occupy a clear slot in the user's mind; the competitor is often "the makeshift old way."
- JTBD: the user is hiring your product to get a job done — talk about the job and the result, not the specs.
- Funnel: TOFU/MOFU/BOFU helps you pinpoint which layer conversion is stuck at.
- AARRR: early on, grind activation and retention first, don't just watch traffic.
- 1,000 True Fans: what you want is a small group of true believers, not casual traffic.
- PMF: find the "it clicks" signals before you hit the gas.
With these lenses in hand, the next chapter gets into the hardest-core practical work: exactly which channels to use to put your product in front of these people.