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:
-
Business Context - What's the core product? Who is the target audience? What problems do they have?
-
Goals - Lead generation? SEO/traffic? Brand awareness? Product education? What is one lead worth (LTV and close rate from this source)?
-
Resources - Technical capacity to build? Ongoing maintenance bandwidth? Budget for promotion? Timeline?
-
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
Ideation Framework
Start with Pain Points
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What problems does your audience Google? - Search query research, common questions
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What manual processes are tedious? - Spreadsheet tasks, repetitive calculations
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What do they need before buying your product? - Assessments, planning, comparisons
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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]"
Make the tool page indexable and quotable
A tool that is all JavaScript inputs gives search engines and answer engines
nothing to read. Around the widget, ship crawlable HTML text:
- A direct answer to the query the tool serves in the opening 40 to 80 words
("A [thing] calculator estimates [output] from [inputs]").
- How it works: the formula, data source, and last-updated date, so the output
can be cited and checked.
- A worked example with real numbers the user can reproduce.
- Question headings for the follow-ups people ask next.
WebApplication or SoftwareApplication JSON-LD with the visible name,
category, and price (0 only when the tool is actually free).
Answer engines cite methodology and worked examples far more readily than
they can run your widget. If the tool produces original benchmarks from
aggregate usage (with consent), publish them as a dated data page: that is
the most linkable and citable asset a tool can generate.
Link Building
Free tools attract links because:
- Genuinely useful (people reference them)
- Unique (can't link to just any page)
- Shareable (social amplification)
KPIs
Tool page impressions and clicks for the target query (Search Console),
referring domains earned (Search Console Links or a backlink tool, dated),
completions per visit, capture rate at the gate, qualified leads and pipeline
from tool users (analytics and CRM), and citations of the tool or its data in
AI answers (suede-ai-seo prompt panel).
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
- Core functionality only: does the one thing, works reliably
- Essential UX: clear input, obvious output, mobile works
- 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, the supporting-content query, the
literal opening answer, and the methodology note that makes the output
citable. Name the KPI the page should move.
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.