Product Marketing Strategy: How to Build Multi-Million Dollar Businesses

Wondering how to successfully launch a new product? Looking for a proven framework to model? 

In this article, you'll discover the marketing strategy one entrepreneur used to grow Mint, AppSumo, and many other products.

Why Is a Product Marketing Strategy Important?

Launching a successful new product or service requires both creativity and analytical rigor. On the creative front, truly breakthrough products solve meaningful consumer problems elegantly. But even the most inspired products need skillful marketing to reach their full potential. 

Serial entrepreneur Noah Kagan outlines the product marketing strategy he has used to grow several businesses successfully, including Mint and the $80-million-a-year platform for software deals, AppSumo. From rapidly attracting over 1 million users to Mint in 6 months to publishing his book Million Dollar Weekend as a New York Times bestseller, Noah leans on a straightforward yet tactical three-part framework for effectively marketing any product or service.  

Product Marketing Strategy Framework

Noah has repeatedly created breakout wins and generated eight-figure revenues by validating demand, setting clear objectives, and relentlessly testing and analyzing product marketing tactics. While many marketers chase social media fads or mimic competitors, Noah sticks to a successful product marketing strategy focused on understanding consumers, mapping the path to stated goals, and determining the highest-impact channels for acquisition and sales.

First, Noah recommends understanding the “80/20” rule, which states that 80% of your results often come from 20% of your efforts. Even though most marketers try many different marketing tactics, only a few of those tactics actually drive the majority of business success.

So, the critical question is, how can you systematically determine which 20% of marketing activities generate 80% of your results? Once you identify what's working, you can focus your time and money on those high-impact areas to get even better marketing results.

For example, AppSumo makes $200K–$250K in daily sales, but they don't market on TikTok, X/Twitter, or Instagram. Instead, they focus on what works best for their target customer: Google Ads, affiliate marketing, and video campaigns. They've seen incredible growth by doubling down on their most effective marketing channels instead of spreading themselves thin.

The 80/20 principle applies to any business and any marketing strategy. The key is having a process to continually test new ideas, then optimize and scale up what drives actual results. 

#1: Validate Market Demand for Your Product, Then Define Your Marketing Goals

Do you have a product or service that people want or that solves a problem they have? Many business owners believe their marketing is the problem when their business might be the issue. 

The critical first step in Noah’s approach is determining if there is genuine demand for your product or service. Before investing time and money into marketing, validate that people actually want what you’re selling through concrete actions like pre-orders or views. 

To gauge interest, Noah suggests that if you’re just starting, aim to get 3 paying customers within 48 hours—a weekend. He did just that when starting AppSumo by manually finding one software creator to partner with, posting the deal offer on Reddit, collecting payments via PayPal, and manually sending discount codes directly to buyers.

The core questions to ask yourself are:

• Is my product or service addressing potential customers' real needs or desires?
• Can I get people to take concrete action to demonstrate interest quickly?

If you can get a few sales almost immediately, even in an ultra-manual fashion, you likely have something customers want. That demand is the raw material for powerful marketing.

The same goes for content creation. When Noah restarted his YouTube channel, he filmed a simple video of himself talking into his phone. It got 300 views even with no fancy equipment. He realized he didn't need an expensive studio or production quality—he just needed content people wanted.

Now, Noah’s channel has a million subscribers. He got there by identifying the type of video people naturally enjoyed versus trying to convince them to watch something less compelling.

Set a Singular Goal With a Timeline

It's also essential to set a single, concrete goal with a specific timeline, Noah says. For example, AppSumo's primary goal this year is $56.6 million in net revenue. Noah’s singular goal for his book launch was 1,000 reviews in the first 30 days. He aims to reach 1.25 million YouTube subscribers by the end of 2024.

Having a clear, measurable goal helps you work backward to plot the marketing to get there. It's like using your phone's map app—you enter the destination first, then it shows you the route to take. 

Without a precise endpoint, most marketers take a scattered approach, trying random tactics and hoping something works. But that's like driving around without GPS and getting stuck in traffic.

You need both a desired destination AND a roadmap to reach it efficiently. The destination focuses your efforts, while the marketing plan helps you navigate obstacles and find faster routes. So, set a single revenue, sales, or growth goal, put a timeline on it, and then systematically work backward to make your marketing as effective as possible.

#2: Create an ‘Experiment Framework’ to Test and Refine Your Marketing Tactics

With demand confirmed and an actionable goal set, construct what Noah calls an “experiment framework.” The aim is to discover the marketing tactics that will have the highest impact on driving results, a continual testing and refining process.

For example, for the launch of Million Dollar Weekend, Noah had a goal of 1,000 reviews. He brainstormed marketing ideas like paid ads, referrals, and YouTube videos. But he realized he could just direct message (DM) people on X/Twitter to request reviews.

He tested this idea manually by tweeting to join his book launch team. Around 300 people responded, so he DM'd them individually. Approximately 70% bought the book and left an honest review.

Noah offered launch team members early book access, business coaching, and a behind-the-scenes look at his marketing strategy to incentivize purchases. In exchange, he asked them to pre-order and write a review.

Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. Noah says that if you’re trying to get 10 customers, simply list your “dream 10” customers. For high-dollar items with a small customer base, you can easily mine your existing contacts and connections. There’s no need to over-engineer various ad channels when direct outreach works.

Once Noah reached the 1,000 reviews milestone, the subsequent goal became hitting 25K sales within 30 days. He then brainstormed potential marketing ideas and ranked them from highest to lowest expected impact, including:

• Promoting to an existing email list
• Cross-marketing on AppSumo
• Enlisting “pre-influencers” on social media and in communities
• Paid ads
• Referral program

Noah and his team hypothesized that some blend of those efforts could add up to 25K sales. Then, they used the “test and invest” philosophy: Try a small amount in each channel, see what demonstrates traction, and then scale up investment in the 1–2 experiments that show the best early results. Noah executed, measured, and compared these marketing tactics to determine his return on investment (ROI).

To help you create your product marketing experiment framework:

• Clearly identify your target customers and where they consume information. Who they are, and their preferred channels will suggest relevant tactics.
• Ask yourself, “If I had to double business in 30 days without any extra money, what would I try?” Think creatively without limitations.
• Consider how to over-delight existing happy customers to drive referrals and repeat sales.

Going through that brainstorming focuses your experiments on the highest potential activities matched to your target audience. It's about aligning the customer profile with the right channel and offering combinations that could effectively reach them. 

#3: Analyze Your Experiments and Improve Your Marketing Efforts 

‘Test and Invest’

Once you've set goals and brainstormed marketing ideas, the next phase is testing and optimization. There are two key questions to ask yourself continually:

• Does this experiment indicate my idea will work?
• What experiments convert customers?

These questions help you determine where to invest and double down on successful tactics. 

For example, AppSumo's marketing advisor suggested affiliate video marketing on social platforms to get video ambassadors—video content creators on channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. So, they paid 1–2 people $1,000 plus a 15% commission to post about them. Within a week, they fully recouped the $1,000 through their sales, indicating a good early sign. The payback period was under a week, which is incredibly fast. 

So, this small test showed positive potential. Because those video affiliates already paid for themselves and even profited quickly, AppSumo is expanding the experiment into a broader program.

This is how you evaluate tests: track key metrics, watch for green shoots of ROI potential, and then scale up ones demonstrating the best early conversion and engagement.  

When a goal isn't working, admit what's failing and try new things.

For example, Noah had a 1,300-person book launch team, but only 6 people referred others to buy the book, which was not worth more effort. His YouTube channel typically gets 100K views, but book videos only got 12–20K views—that didn't work either. Similarly, Noah spent $100K on unsuccessful X/Twitter ads for AppSumo.  

On the other hand, other experiments did work well. For example, Noah sent emails that included customer testimonials from people who had read his book. Then, he turned those testimonials into social posts, which drove more conversions. After pre-ordering, people clicked an auto-tweet button to share that they had bought the book. Now, the AppSumo team will add a similar “share your purchase” button for AppSumo customers to use. 

The key is looking where other marketers don't. For example, Noah’s first book goal was 1,000 reviews at launch. Social media outreach to potential “pre-influencers” was hugely effective for little cost.

Pre-influencers are people with engaged followers who have yet to charge premium rates. Noah searched YouTube, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, etc., for reviewers of similar books with less than 100K subscribers and DM'd them.

Most people replicate existing successful tactics like ads or content, but channels can get expensive and oversaturated. Noah scanned for untapped avenues, like micro-influencers, who were excited to partner with him since they were undiscovered. Though it's more manual, the engagement and costs are far better, and their audiences are good targets.

Keep testing various uncrowded channels, Noah says. Even if ideas fail, you'll eventually uncover new avenues others overlook. Think outside the box and avoid just copying what's worked before.

Track Your Experiments 

Noah recommends tracking your experiments to log key metrics and analyze what’s driving your results. He assigned one dedicated person to be the “CEO” of each project to track all of his marketing tests. They own measuring what's working and provide reporting.

For early testing, use spreadsheets for each tactic to track clicks, sales, etc. Bitly or Google Sheets works fine—you don't need complex software. 

Once you scale, advanced analytics becomes worth investing in. AppSumo spends about $1 million annually on its business intelligence software, such as Snowflake, Fivetran, and Google’s Looker Studio. They analyze customer behavior to help improve their marketing strategy and product decisions.

For example, Noah wrongly believed lowering prices would increase customers. However, his team’s analysis showed that existing buyers got better deals while new customer growth remained flat. So, AppSumo lost profits. Without data, they wouldn't have realized that mistake quickly.

‘Kill Your Darlings’ and Double Down on What Works

Most marketers never stop any activities—they keep piling on more tactics without evaluating what works.

The key to success is identifying the 1–2 marketing channels truly driving results, then doubling down investment on those while eliminating the rest, Noah says. This is hard because we think, “Well, it's still working a little bit.” But that small return could become 10X bigger if you focused time, money, and creative energy entirely on what already converts best.

It's crucial to be disciplined, review everything you're doing, and “kill your darlings”—initiatives that aren't top performers, even if you “have always done them.” Only keep programs that contribute most to your key goals. At AppSumo, paid ads and affiliate marketing massively outperform other efforts, so the team concentrates the majority of budget/people there. They still test new ideas, but less extensively.

The framework should help you spend 80% of your resources on proven top activities and 20% on experimental new tests. More experiments can come later once you scale up what already clearly works. This optimization mindset is difficult to maintain with many emerging social/marketing platforms and new tactics. However, reviewing, stopping, and focusing on the few most effective channels is essential to maximize your results.

Build With Your Customers

Customers want to help build your business if you engage them. For example, when Noah wrote Million Dollar Weekend, he had a launch team of 20 people review each chapter and give feedback before publication. He’d email them, thanking them for their thoughts, and send the next draft to continue the conversation.

It's obvious but critical—involve target customers early and often in your process rather than creating in isolation. Noah’s seen companies launch products without asking why no one's buying. He says to email non-buyers asking what would convince them to purchase. One flower business did this and made sales from hundreds of replies.

Noah also emailed and posted weekly book marketing updates to Slack for six months. Supporters would share ideas, make introductions to the media, and advocate for him. Making the journey public turns fans into collaborators and advocates, giving you free ideas and promotion.

It's easy to scale ads and technology, but Noah has had success replying to every DM, email, and YouTube comment. It’s just as easy to thank your customers or ask them how things have been going in their business if you notice they haven’t purchased anything from you in a while. The key is constantly building WITH your customers, not just selling TO them. That brings exciting word of mouth and a community eager to help your business grow.

Debrief After Each Marketing Campaign 

The last critical piece is doing regular debriefs after each marketing campaign. At AppSumo, Noah and his team religiously reviewed what worked well to repeat and what didn't work to eliminate.

For example, after their Black Friday and Sumo Day sales, they’ll analyze which promotions users responded to and which flopped. Over the years, they continually fine-tuned their skills to improve results steadily. Noah did the same post-launch review for the marketing campaign for his book. He looked at which marketing tactics drove sales. That helps him determine the methods to double down for the following product launch.

Essentially, you want to build an ever-evolving product marketing playbook over time. Look at each effort as an experiment, track results continually, and then keep evolving your strategy based on what converts customers. Continual optimization is key rather than guessing what might work. Review both wins and losses to expand on what's successful.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on Twitter.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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