This totally has my entrepreneurial brain buzzing. What a cool idea! This feels like such a more fun and natural way to get things out there than more hard sell type stuff.
But here's my question--what are some ways this could be adaptable for individuals in creative fields? I'm talking about novelists or artists or musicians whose emphasis is on creative work, but who are trying to learn whatever they can from more traditional marketing and take care of their career and treat it like a business? I'm a novelist and would love to try and incorporate this idea, and hire someone to build a mini tool like this for me, but I'm trying to brainstorm what type of tools would be the most effective.
What kind of books do you write? Let's say it's 'fantasy' just for the exercise — I can think of many mini-tool ideas for your audience: Creature creator, language translator, potion mixer (for real-life cocktails)... and I believe any fantasy personality quiz could work here too (e.g. "which character are you from this world"). But my favorite idea here would be to create a "Daily Prophecy Generator" with a daily prophecy or fortune based on elements from your fantasy world!
Ooohhhh this is so fun!!! Ok I see what you're getting at here--gearing it more towards the world/genre/books themselves. I write a little bit all over the map, tbh but for example, with my kids horror novels, I could create a monster name generator or a monster creator. Ok this is fun and exciting!
Just saw this thread and got interested. For adult books you could also find a way of connecting Twiter/X to the tool you'll build. For example just like a "roast my twitter profile" tool, yours could be "which character am I from my twitter profile" (as suggested by Tom above but with a Twitter profile), or if it's a romance book "which type of romantic am I? in relation to my Twitter profile"...... something that will have easy share-ability and peak curiosity.
I share validated ideas here [ https://realideas.webuildish.com/ ] every week. Some are related to writing and books, some are not. You never really know, sometimes an idea about AI naming babies could inspire your next book. There's one on there about BookTok that I'm sure you'll appreciate. Please forgive the self promotion as well, it was not my intention but the moment seemed right. Cheers.
Thanks for the comment Ejiro. I'm sure that service-based businesses can crush it with mini tools too! I can think of ROI calculators for consultants, ad headline generators for marketing agencies, legal jargon translators for law firms, retirement calculators for financial advisors, home affordability tools for realtors, salary benchmarking widgets for HR managers... It boils down to "who is the target audience" and "what super specific problem can we solve" :) The secret? Create something that showcases your expertise and leaves users hungry for more. It's like offering a free taste test of your brain with an automated tool 🤓
Even services and physical products can leverage the digital space to sell more. For instance which makes shower head filters built a simple website that gives you the chemical composition of the water in your area. So it would show you the chemicals in the water that you bathe in and in turn you would see why you need to buy a Jolie shower head filter.
It really depends on the kind of business that you run, if it's a pet food or dog walking business, you could do an AI wrapper website that generates pet names for people who don't know what to call their new pets etc.
Btw I share validated ideas that interested people can work on ever week[ https://realideas.webuildish.com/ ]. if you have a service or business and you are looking for a tool to build I could also help you validate/look into it further.
I really like idea of mini-tools! Trying to build my own!
Today I published a piece about Substack Summary Tool - good for Authors(to send a catch-up to readers) and for readers(to check, if recent posts are interesting for them).
This is so cool. I work in the tourism industry and I work closely with travel creators and influencers but I can't seem to think of anything specific they need because their job requires them to move around often. I will appreciate some suggestions.
this is a cool way to get free publicity and traffic and has been used by wealth management / investment advisories companies since a long time. For examples they have so many different types of calculators for loans, wealth compounding, retirement solutions , etc and lots of keyword searches for these calculators drive traffic to their website.
your article throws up so many more ways this angle to marketing can be leveraged - thanks
Great stuff thanks. I've got loads of local SEO clients, and have a few ideas I'm working on, eg listicles, research articles to get shared, but yeah, micro tools as well. Tough to get it right, but this article certainly helps me out, thanks so much!
This totally has my entrepreneurial brain buzzing. What a cool idea! This feels like such a more fun and natural way to get things out there than more hard sell type stuff.
But here's my question--what are some ways this could be adaptable for individuals in creative fields? I'm talking about novelists or artists or musicians whose emphasis is on creative work, but who are trying to learn whatever they can from more traditional marketing and take care of their career and treat it like a business? I'm a novelist and would love to try and incorporate this idea, and hire someone to build a mini tool like this for me, but I'm trying to brainstorm what type of tools would be the most effective.
What kind of books do you write? Let's say it's 'fantasy' just for the exercise — I can think of many mini-tool ideas for your audience: Creature creator, language translator, potion mixer (for real-life cocktails)... and I believe any fantasy personality quiz could work here too (e.g. "which character are you from this world"). But my favorite idea here would be to create a "Daily Prophecy Generator" with a daily prophecy or fortune based on elements from your fantasy world!
Ooohhhh this is so fun!!! Ok I see what you're getting at here--gearing it more towards the world/genre/books themselves. I write a little bit all over the map, tbh but for example, with my kids horror novels, I could create a monster name generator or a monster creator. Ok this is fun and exciting!
Just saw this thread and got interested. For adult books you could also find a way of connecting Twiter/X to the tool you'll build. For example just like a "roast my twitter profile" tool, yours could be "which character am I from my twitter profile" (as suggested by Tom above but with a Twitter profile), or if it's a romance book "which type of romantic am I? in relation to my Twitter profile"...... something that will have easy share-ability and peak curiosity.
Oooooh that's so smart! What good ideas!!
I share validated ideas here [ https://realideas.webuildish.com/ ] every week. Some are related to writing and books, some are not. You never really know, sometimes an idea about AI naming babies could inspire your next book. There's one on there about BookTok that I'm sure you'll appreciate. Please forgive the self promotion as well, it was not my intention but the moment seemed right. Cheers.
This is good. But it seems like it applies only to digital products like softwares and digital tools.
Can this work for a service based product?
Thanks for the comment Ejiro. I'm sure that service-based businesses can crush it with mini tools too! I can think of ROI calculators for consultants, ad headline generators for marketing agencies, legal jargon translators for law firms, retirement calculators for financial advisors, home affordability tools for realtors, salary benchmarking widgets for HR managers... It boils down to "who is the target audience" and "what super specific problem can we solve" :) The secret? Create something that showcases your expertise and leaves users hungry for more. It's like offering a free taste test of your brain with an automated tool 🤓
This is incredible. I've definitely gotten a new marketing strategy
Even services and physical products can leverage the digital space to sell more. For instance which makes shower head filters built a simple website that gives you the chemical composition of the water in your area. So it would show you the chemicals in the water that you bathe in and in turn you would see why you need to buy a Jolie shower head filter.
It really depends on the kind of business that you run, if it's a pet food or dog walking business, you could do an AI wrapper website that generates pet names for people who don't know what to call their new pets etc.
Btw I share validated ideas that interested people can work on ever week[ https://realideas.webuildish.com/ ]. if you have a service or business and you are looking for a tool to build I could also help you validate/look into it further.
Very interesting.it is so true -you can use many things many different ways.
Great list! Definitely checking out a few of these. Thanks!
I really like idea of mini-tools! Trying to build my own!
Today I published a piece about Substack Summary Tool - good for Authors(to send a catch-up to readers) and for readers(to check, if recent posts are interesting for them).
I also did it for Marketing Ideas: https://substack-summary.jock.pl/s/RDC3blBXPF
This is so cool. I work in the tourism industry and I work closely with travel creators and influencers but I can't seem to think of anything specific they need because their job requires them to move around often. I will appreciate some suggestions.
Awesome Tom, thank you for that
this is a cool way to get free publicity and traffic and has been used by wealth management / investment advisories companies since a long time. For examples they have so many different types of calculators for loans, wealth compounding, retirement solutions , etc and lots of keyword searches for these calculators drive traffic to their website.
your article throws up so many more ways this angle to marketing can be leveraged - thanks
Great stuff thanks. I've got loads of local SEO clients, and have a few ideas I'm working on, eg listicles, research articles to get shared, but yeah, micro tools as well. Tough to get it right, but this article certainly helps me out, thanks so much!