ReddRadar
Agent skill
free-tool-strategy
When the user wants to plan, evaluate, or build a free tool for marketing purposes — lead generation, SEO value, or brand awareness. Also use when the user mentions "engineering as marketing," "free tool," "marketing tool," "calculator," "generator," "interactive tool," "lead gen tool," "build a tool for leads," "free resource," "ROI calculator," "grader tool," "audit tool," "should I build a free tool," or "tools for lead gen." Use this whenever someone wants to build something useful and give it away to attract leads or earn links. For downloadable content lead magnets (ebooks, checklists, templates), see lead-magnets.
Install this agent skill to your Project
npx add-skill https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/tree/main/skills/free-tool-strategy
Metadata
Additional technical details for this skill
- version
- 1.1.0
SKILL.md
Free Tool Strategy (Engineering as Marketing)
You are an expert in engineering-as-marketing strategy. Your goal is to help plan and evaluate free tools that generate leads, attract organic traffic, and build brand awareness.
Initial Assessment
Check for product marketing context first:
If .agents/product-marketing-context.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md 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:
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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?
-
Resources - Technical capacity to build? Ongoing maintenance bandwidth? Budget for promotion?
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
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
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
- 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
Task-Specific Questions
- What existing tools does your audience use for workarounds?
- How do you currently generate leads?
- What technical resources are available?
- What's the timeline and budget?
Related Skills
- lead-magnets: For downloadable content lead magnets (ebooks, checklists, templates)
- page-cro: For optimizing the tool's landing page
- seo-audit: For SEO-optimizing the tool
- analytics-tracking: For measuring tool usage
- email-sequence: For nurturing leads from the tool
Recommended Agent Skills
Expand your agent's capabilities with these related and highly-rated skills.
coreyhaines31/marketingskills
sales-enablement
When the user wants to create sales collateral, pitch decks, one-pagers, objection handling docs, or demo scripts. Also use when the user mentions 'sales deck,' 'pitch deck,' 'one-pager,' 'leave-behind,' 'objection handling,' 'deal-specific ROI analysis,' 'demo script,' 'talk track,' 'sales playbook,' 'proposal template,' 'buyer persona card,' 'help my sales team,' 'sales materials,' or 'what should I give my sales reps.' Use this for any document or asset that helps a sales team close deals. For competitor comparison pages and battle cards, see competitor-alternatives. For marketing website copy, see copywriting. For cold outreach emails, see cold-email.
coreyhaines31/marketingskills
lead-magnets
When the user wants to create, plan, or optimize a lead magnet for email capture or lead generation. Also use when the user mentions "lead magnet," "gated content," "content upgrade," "downloadable," "ebook," "cheat sheet," "checklist," "template download," "opt-in," "freebie," "PDF download," "resource library," "content offer," "email capture content," "Notion template," "spreadsheet template," or "what should I give away for emails." Use this for planning what to create and how to distribute it. For interactive tools as lead magnets, see free-tool-strategy. For writing the actual content, see copywriting. For the email sequence after capture, see email-sequence.
coreyhaines31/marketingskills
seo-audit
When the user wants to audit, review, or diagnose SEO issues on their site. Also use when the user mentions "SEO audit," "technical SEO," "why am I not ranking," "SEO issues," "on-page SEO," "meta tags review," "SEO health check," "my traffic dropped," "lost rankings," "not showing up in Google," "site isn't ranking," "Google update hit me," "page speed," "core web vitals," "crawl errors," or "indexing issues." Use this even if the user just says something vague like "my SEO is bad" or "help with SEO" — start with an audit. For building pages at scale to target keywords, see programmatic-seo. For adding structured data, see schema-markup. For AI search optimization, see ai-seo.
coreyhaines31/marketingskills
churn-prevention
When the user wants to reduce churn, build cancellation flows, set up save offers, recover failed payments, or implement retention strategies. Also use when the user mentions 'churn,' 'cancel flow,' 'offboarding,' 'save offer,' 'dunning,' 'failed payment recovery,' 'win-back,' 'retention,' 'exit survey,' 'pause subscription,' 'involuntary churn,' 'people keep canceling,' 'churn rate is too high,' 'how do I keep users,' or 'customers are leaving.' Use this whenever someone is losing subscribers or wants to build systems to prevent it. For post-cancel win-back email sequences, see email-sequence. For in-app upgrade paywalls, see paywall-upgrade-cro.
coreyhaines31/marketingskills
popup-cro
When the user wants to create or optimize popups, modals, overlays, slide-ins, or banners for conversion purposes. Also use when the user mentions "exit intent," "popup conversions," "modal optimization," "lead capture popup," "email popup," "announcement banner," "overlay," "collect emails with a popup," "exit popup," "scroll trigger," "sticky bar," or "notification bar." Use this for any overlay or interrupt-style conversion element. For forms outside of popups, see form-cro. For general page conversion optimization, see page-cro.
coreyhaines31/marketingskills
competitor-alternatives
When the user wants to create competitor comparison or alternative pages for SEO and sales enablement. Also use when the user mentions 'alternative page,' 'vs page,' 'competitor comparison,' 'comparison page,' '[Product] vs [Product],' '[Product] alternative,' 'competitive landing pages,' 'how do we compare to X,' 'battle card,' or 'competitor teardown.' Use this for any content that positions your product against competitors. Covers four formats: singular alternative, plural alternatives, you vs competitor, and competitor vs competitor. For sales-specific competitor docs, see sales-enablement.
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