What it does
Engineering-as-marketing planning: decide whether to build a free tool, what to build, how to scope an MVP, whether to gate, and how to promote. Runs ideation from audience pain, validates against search demand and lead quality, scores build vs no-code vs embed, and pressure-tests the payback against lead value.
Use it when a product team has dev capacity for a marketing project, when organic acquisition is stuck, or when a category would respect a "calculator / grader / generator" more than another blog post. Also use it to kill a free tool idea that sounds cool but doesn't pencil out.
Outputs an evaluation scorecard (8 factors, 1-5), a recommended tool type, an MVP scope, a gating decision, and an SEO plus link-building plan. Pairs with `lead-magnets` (for downloadable lead gen) and `page-cro` (for the tool's landing page).
Related skills