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--- name: suede-free-tools description: "Suede-affiliated engineering-as-marketing strategy for selecting, scoring, and scoping calculators, graders, generators, and other free interactive tools. Use when the user wants a lead, link, education, or product-adoption asset with a measurable path to the paid product. NOT FOR: downloadable lead assets (use suede-lead-magnets), implementation of a full website (use suede-site-alchemy), or search diagnostics (use suede-seo-audit)." metadata: version: 2.0.0 --- # Suede Free-Tool Growth Strategy Suede uses engineering as marketing when a genuinely useful tool can create qualified discovery and a natural bridge to the paid product. Select, score, and scope the smallest maintainable calculator, grader, generator, or utility whose output earns attention rather than merely capturing it. ## Initial Assessment **Check for product marketing context first:** If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task. Before designing a tool strategy, understand: 1. **Business Context** - What's the core product? Who is the target audience? What problems do they have? 2. **Goals** - Lead generation? SEO/traffic? Brand awareness? Product education? What is one lead worth (LTV and close rate from this source)? 3. **Resources** - Technical capacity to build? Ongoing maintenance bandwidth? Budget for promotion? Timeline? 4. **Existing Behavior** - What tools or manual workarounds does the audience use today? How are leads generated now? --- ## Core Principles ### 1. Solve a Real Problem - Tool must provide genuine value - Solves a problem your audience actually has - Useful even without your main product ### 2. Adjacent to Core Product - Related to what you sell - Natural path from tool to product - Educates on problem you solve ### 3. Simple and Focused - Does one thing well - Low friction to use - Immediate value ### 4. Worth the Investment - Lead value × expected leads > build cost + maintenance Populate all four terms before calling the go/no-go, and show the arithmetic: - **Lead value** = customer LTV × close rate for this lead source, from the intake numbers. - **Expected leads** = monthly search volume for the SEO target keyword × a stated visit-to-use rate × a stated use-to-capture rate. - **Build cost** = the MVP scope below, in engineer-days. - **Maintenance** = engineer-days per quarter to keep data, dependencies, and the hosting current. State every rate you assumed and where it came from. If a term cannot be sourced, say which one and mark the go/no-go unresolved rather than filling it in. --- ## Tool Types Overview | Type | Examples | Best For | |------|----------|----------| | Calculators | ROI, savings, pricing estimators | Decisions involving numbers | | Generators | Templates, policies, names | Creating something quickly | | Analyzers | Website graders, SEO auditors | Evaluating existing work | | Testers | Meta tag preview, speed tests | Checking if something works | | Libraries | Icon sets, templates, snippets | Reference material | | Interactive | Tutorials, playgrounds, quizzes | Learning/understanding | **For detailed tool types and examples**: See [references/tool-types.md](references/tool-types.md) --- ## Ideation Framework ### Start with Pain Points 1. **What problems does your audience Google?** - Search query research, common questions 2. **What manual processes are tedious?** - Spreadsheet tasks, repetitive calculations 3. **What do they need before buying your product?** - Assessments, planning, comparisons 4. **What information do they wish they had?** - Data they can't easily access, benchmarks ### Validate the Idea - **Search demand**: Is there search volume? How competitive? - **Uniqueness**: What exists? How can you be 10x better? - **Lead quality**: Does this audience match buyers? - **Build feasibility**: How complex? Can you scope an MVP? --- ## Lead Capture Strategy ### Gating Options | Approach | Pros | Cons | |----------|------|------| | Fully gated | Maximum capture | Lower usage | | Partially gated | Balance of both | Common pattern | | Ungated + optional | Maximum reach | Lower capture | | Ungated entirely | Pure SEO/brand | No direct leads | ### Lead Capture Best Practices - Value exchange clear: "Get your full report" - Minimal friction: Email only - Show preview of what they'll get - Optional: Segment by asking one qualifying question The gating trade-off itself — per-field conversion cost and how to frame the exchange — is owned by `suede-lead-magnets`. Use its gating tables when deciding what to ask for; the table above only covers where the gate sits in a tool. --- ## SEO Considerations ### Keyword Strategy **Tool landing page**: "[thing] calculator", "[thing] generator", "free [tool type]" **Supporting content**: "How to [use case]", "What is [concept]" ### Link Building Free tools attract links because: - Genuinely useful (people reference them) - Unique (can't link to just any page) - Shareable (social amplification) --- ## Build vs. Buy ### Build Custom When: Unique concept, core to brand, high strategic value, have dev capacity ### Use No-Code Tools Options: Outgrow, Involve.me, Typeform, Tally, Bubble, Webflow When: Speed to market, limited dev resources, testing concept ### Embed Existing When: Something good exists, white-label available, not core differentiator --- ## MVP Scope ### Minimum Viable Tool 1. Core functionality only—does the one thing, works reliably 2. Essential UX—clear input, obvious output, mobile works 3. Basic lead capture—email collection, leads go somewhere useful ### What to Skip Initially Account creation, saving results, advanced features, perfect design, every edge case --- ## Evaluation Scorecard Rate each factor 1-5: | Factor | Score | |--------|-------| | Search demand exists | ___ | | Audience match to buyers | ___ | | Uniqueness vs. existing | ___ | | Natural path to product | ___ | | Build feasibility | ___ | | Maintenance burden (inverse) | ___ | | Link-building potential | ___ | | Share-worthiness | ___ | **25+**: Strong candidate | **15-24**: Promising | **<15**: Reconsider Anchors for the three decisive factors — score these against the anchor, not on impression, and cite the evidence used: | Factor | 1 | 3 | 5 | |--------|---|---|---| | Search demand exists | No query with measurable volume | A query family in the hundreds of searches/month | A head term in the thousands/month | | Build feasibility | Needs a data pipeline, licensed data, or an ongoing integration | Two to four engineer-weeks with known components | One engineer-week, one screen, no backend state | | Maintenance burden (inverse) | Depends on data refreshed on a schedule or a third-party API | Occasional content or dependency updates | Static computation, nothing to refresh | --- ## Output Format Return exactly these sections: ### 1. Recommended Tool Name and the one-sentence job it does for the user. ### 2. Scorecard The filled table with a score per factor, the total, and the verdict band. For the three anchored factors, name the evidence behind the score. ### 3. MVP Scope Two explicit lists: **In** (what v1 does) and **Out** (what is deliberately deferred). No item appears in both. ### 4. Gating Decision Which option from Gating Options, and the trade-off accepted in one line. ### 5. SEO Target The single target query for the tool page, plus the supporting-content query. ### 6. Instrumentation Handoff The two or three usage events the tool must emit (use, complete, capture) so `suede-analytics` can read the funnel. This skill does not define the metrics plan itself. --- ## Boundaries - Do not claim search demand, lead volume, link potential, or build feasibility without evidence and dated assumptions. - Do not build, deploy, publish, collect leads, or connect production data unless the user authorizes implementation. - Do not invent tool outputs or use a calculator as disguised professional, legal, medical, or financial advice. - Do not decide pricing, data-retention, or consent policy for the user. ## Routing - Use `suede-lead-magnets` for downloadable assets and `suede-site-alchemy` for the public conversion surface. - Use `suede-seo-audit` for search validation and `suede-analytics` for usage measurement. - Use `suede-emails` for the post-capture lifecycle sequence. - Use `suede-content-strategy` for the supporting content around the tool page. - Use `suede-ads` and `suede-social` for tool distribution and launch promotion. - Use `suede-ab-testing` to design and evaluate tests on the tool page or its gate.