Project Description
How do you market a tool that doesn’t exist yet?
When you’re building a new product, knowing how to market it effectively is one of the biggest challenges.
After all, if you don’t know who your customers are, how do you know what to build or how to message?
For many founders, this challenge can quickly become a guessing game, a sort of “chicken or the egg” type of situation, but with the FraudFindr team, the opposite was true.
After working as a forensic accountant for over a decade, Karen Webber, the founder of FraudFindr (a forensic accounting tool), knew her target audiences inside and out.
Not only that, but she had active relationships with them, ensuring her team (which included me and
Matt Olpinski, designer/developer extraordinaire) could get the information needed to design an effective product and marketing site.
Instead of wasting time trying to develop personas or find potential customers, we were able to hit the ground running, starting with research and strategy.
Step 1: Research & Strategy
Before I could create an effective information architecture or copy, I needed to understand the product that was being built, as well as the client’s goals.
To do that, I conducted a strategy workshop where we discussed the tool, how it would work, why it would benefit users, who would be using it, and more.
During these discussions, I learned that the tool would benefit a variety of target audiences, including forensic accountants, law enforcement, those who work in protective services, and even families who were victims of financial exploitation crimes.
Knowing we had to speak to so many different audiences with different needs, I decided to conduct one-on-one interviews with a few members from each of the aforementioned groups.
Doing so allowed me to get a better sense of each cohort, from their day-to-day lives to their styles of communication, work-related goals, challenges, and so much more.
After completing the interviews, I had Matt take me through the product wireframes so I could understand the user experience and exactly how the tool would work.
This helped me bridge the gap between the pre and post-conversion experience which was taken into account as I moved on to the next step: creating the information architecture for the marketing site.
Step 2: Information Architecture
When launching a new product, messaging is crucial.
Remember, no one knows what this “new thing” is, which means you need to clearly communicate what the product is, what it does, how it works, and who it’s for.
Not only that, but you also need to explain why it’s different from other solutions out there and how it will provide benefit or value to the target audience(s).
Finally, you also need to create a sense of trust, which can be difficult when you don’t have testimonials, star ratings, awards, press, and more.
For these reasons, I chose to include very specific content and pages within the information architecture for the FraudFindr site.
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