Product Marketing: Start With the Users, Not The Solution
Cracking the Code of Product Market Fit — Part II
Entrepreneurs are passionate about their innovation and how to solve problems. Many may not see much value early on in marketing and the fundamental process of the 4Ps, which starts with the product. What matters is really the mindset that focuses on the users instead of the solution or the product itself.
When we launched AILA, we started America’s Got Baby social campaign right away, which was to bring the end users, toddlers, and their parents to our new brand from the beginning. We didn’t put our product or how great our preschool learning system is first, but our end users and how their parents went out of their way to make their children giggle, laugh, wave their hands, and touch their noses. When the families joined our social campaign and submitted their precious toddlers’ pictures and videos to our Facebook and Instagram, they were proud and gave us trust. That’s the beginning of the customer’s journey.
It takes a village to raise a child.
Startups building inside out, focusing only on their own solutions, would take longer to reach product-market fit compared to those who are mindful of creating a community upfront. It’s so important to have sounding boards for founders. Those who spend time connecting with advisors, users, customers, and partners have a better chance to win, given all the unknowns and challenges on the entrepreneur’s journey.
Going back to the four elements of product-market fit in Part I:
- Identifying a Compelling Problem:
In light of the disparities of the world today, education remains one of the golden roads toward building a more equitable future. Unfortunately, many young children don’t have consistent access to high-quality content because they are dependent on the adults around them to deliver such content in an attentive, supportive, and responsive way. Parents and caregivers are not always there to provide continuous curriculum-driven content by reading, singing, dancing, painting, or simply talking with the children. There is a gap between what a toddler can learn and what they have access to, especially for those whose parents work long hours with minimum pay and cannot afford high-quality daycare that comes with a preschool curriculum.
2. Designing an Intuitive Solution:
What an AI tutor does is deliver rich content consistently and tirelessly anywhere, anytime, and importantly, with our algorithm, it delivers the right content at the right time by tracking the learning journey of each learner. For toddlers, we designed a tablet on a stand, which looks like a little robot. And our curriculum was delivered by a group of animals living, playing, and studying on an island. Different from generic cheap tablets out there, AILA Sit & Play is a designated tutor and learning companion for each child.
The secret source is the AI-driven tutoring algorithm that makes sure that all the preschool content of letters, numbers, vocabulary, songs, storybooks, and math got delivered to each learner following the effective spiral learning methodology.
Animal Island Learning Adventure (AILA) Sit & Play Preschool Learning System is an AI super tutor on the cloud that delivers the right content at the right time to each toddler on a tablet. It connects with parents and caregivers on AILA Parent apps, both iOS and Android, so that they can check in on their own children via camera, send photos and videos to delight their kiddos, and keep track of their learning journeys.
3. Building an Ecosystem:
With the hardware, content and characters, AILA quickly expands into a line of accessories, plush toys, books, flashcards and posters. The sky’s the limit for this franchise due to high engagement of the child during the toddler to preschooler period of time. In addition, an AILA daycare concept came to fruition given the shortage of trained educators at nurseries around the country. Therefore, an AI tutor quickly grows into an ecosystem with many products in both home and daycare settings.
4. Timing and Market Readiness:
We’d never have thought that the launch of AILA, the AI tutor for toddlers, would coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic. It exacerbated the learning disparity with lockdowns and daycare centers shuttered. Grandparents became AILA’s advocates as they sent AI tutors to their grandchildren while they are isolated from each other.
Some may argue that AILA was just one off phenomenon due to the exceptional circumstances. Today, without advertising, the brand is even stronger organically. It’s the top organic search product for “preschool learning system” on Google search.
The grassroots marketing paid off with ravering reviews from parents and grandparents:
One of the top indicators of product-market fit is how customers would miss it when it’d be taken away. Here is an article by by Rahul Vohra, the founder and CEO of Superhuman — a startup building the fastest email experience in the world.
just ask users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.”
A friend of mine bought AILA as the first birthday day gift for his god daughter, Lee. She spent daily routines with with AILA along with her parents. They read and sing together. Lee was so attached to AILA, she attempted to carry it along. Afraid of not having AILA, the parents bought a duplicate. And my friend bought two more just to make sure that little Lee would not miss her AI tutor. This little anecdote testifies how essential AILA is for toddlers, the users, and the customers who are the parents and grandparents.
When I got on stage in Cannes, France at the inaugural World AI Cannes Festival for the Cannes Neurons Awards 2022, I told the authentic story of our AI tutor:
Two final notes for AI enthusiasts and edutech innovators:
The human-AI integration in seamless UI/UX leverages what AI can do that substitutes teaching and learning deficits.
Quantum computing unleashed the power of AI by processing so much data that accumulated over the past decades of digitalization. Humans take time to learn, comprehend and utilize information, knowledge and data. When it comes to repetitive tasks and routine processes, AI does the job tirelessly and predictably. That’s what AILA the AI tutor delivered to toddlers. Children with AILA learned more and better due to the consistency and spiral approach. AILA doesn’t yawn when reading the same story the 5th time, nor does it take a break in an energetic disco letter dance. AILA sings lullabies while the parents drive from point A to point B.
The contrarian leads to unexpected product-market fit and exponential return on investment (ROI) via the most effective marketing, that is word-of-mouth.
Many would not have considered launching a tablet like device for toddlers given all the resistance to such a screen based device. If we’d surveyed parents, the answers would have been NO. True innovation takes unique insights, guts to execute and resilience to succeed. If it’s easy, anyone can do it. It’s the hardship that sets winners apart.
How I Launched an AI Tutor Against All Odds: Cracking the Code of Product Market Fit — Part I
