free-tools skill
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.
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Install the free-tools skill
A skill is a folder. Copy it into your agent's skills folder and the agent loads it when the task matches its description.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills.git /tmp/marketingskills mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills cp -r /tmp/marketingskills/skills/free-tools ~/.claude/skills/free-tools
In the Claude apps, zip the folder and upload it from the Skills settings. The folder on GitHub
The instructions your agent would load
SKILL.md as published, without the frontmatter. Read it on GitHub
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.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?
- Resources - Technical capacity to build? Ongoing maintenance bandwidth? Budget for promotion?
Core Principles
"Your product is my marketing opportunity." Bezos said "your margin is my opportunity." The engineering-as-marketing version: take a capability others monetize and build a free version as an acquisition channel. Unsplash gave away the stock photos Getty sold — and Getty acquired it. See references/tool-benchmarks.md for named cases and conversion numbers.
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
For detailed tool types and examples: See references/tool-types.md
For named case benchmarks (Unsplash, HubSpot Website Grader, Moz, Buffer, Shopify) with real conversion numbers: See references/tool-benchmarks.md
Ideation Framework
Start with Pain Points
- What problems does your audience Google? - Search query research, common questions
- What manual processes are tedious? - Spreadsheet tasks, repetitive calculations
- What do they need before buying your product? - Assessments, planning, comparisons
- 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
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:
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?
Common Pitfalls
- Over-engineering — Shipping a bloated tool when the winning cases were tiny (Unsplash: 3 hrs; Website Grader: 2 engineers, 2 weeks). Scope to the one job.
- Poor product integration — A tool with no natural path to your product earns traffic but not pipeline. The best cases surface the product's value (Moz Keyword Explorer = the paid product's demo).
- Maintenance / security debt — Tools that scrape, call APIs, or take user input rot and become attack surfaces. Budget for upkeep before you build.
- Vanity metrics — Visitors and usage feel good but don't pay. Track leads, qualification rate, and trial/signup conversion — the numbers the case library reports.
Related Skills
More skills from coreyhaines31/marketingskills
- Aab-testingWhen the user wants to plan, design, or implement an A/B test or experiment, or build a growth experimentation program. Also use when the user mentions "A/B test," "split test," "experiment," "test this change," "variant copy," "multivariate test," "hypothesis," "should I test this," "which version is better," "test two versions," "statistical significance," "how long should I run this test," "growth experiments," "experiment velocity," "experiment backlog," "ICE score," "experimentation program," or "experiment playbook." Use this whenever someone is comparing two approaches and wants to measure which performs better, or when they want to build a systematic experimentation practice. For tracking implementation, see analytics. For page-level conversion optimization, see cro.
- Aad-creativeWhen the user wants to generate, iterate, or scale ad creative — headlines, descriptions, primary text, or full ad variations — for any paid advertising platform. Also use when the user mentions 'ad copy variations,' 'ad creative,' 'generate headlines,' 'RSA headlines,' 'bulk ad copy,' 'ad iterations,' 'creative testing,' 'write me some ads,' 'Facebook ad copy,' 'Google ad headlines,' 'LinkedIn ad text,' 'static ads,' 'ad templates,' 'iMessage ad,' 'chat reveal ad,' 'ChatGPT ad,' 'Apple Notes ad,' 'AirDrop ad,' 'creative strategy,' 'creative roadmap,' 'creative retro,' 'hook writing,' 'creative review page,' 'present ad creative for approval,' 'motion video ad,' 'faceless video ad,' 'UGC ad,' 'greenscreen ad,' 'TikTok/Reels ad format,' 'which ad format to make,' 'Meta ad format tier list,' or 'creative format taxonomy.' Use this whenever someone needs to produce ad copy at scale or iterate on existing ads. For campaign strategy and targeting, see ads. For landing page copy, see copywriting.
- CadsWhen the user wants help with paid advertising campaigns on Google Ads, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), LinkedIn, Twitter/X, or other ad platforms. Also use when the user mentions 'PPC,' 'paid media,' 'ROAS,' 'CPA,' 'ad campaign,' 'retargeting,' 'audience targeting,' 'Google Ads,' 'Facebook ads,' 'LinkedIn ads,' 'ad budget,' 'cost per click,' 'ad spend,' 'should I run ads,' 'ABM,' 'account-based marketing,' 'B2B ads,' 'lead quality,' 'negative keywords,' 'Performance Max,' 'thought leader ads,' or 'when should I kill an ad.' Use this for campaign strategy, audience targeting, bidding, and optimization. For bulk ad creative generation and iteration, see ad-creative. For landing page optimization, see cro.
- Aai-seoWhen the user wants to optimize content for AI search engines, get cited by LLMs, or appear in AI-generated answers. Also use when the user mentions 'AI SEO,' 'AEO,' 'GEO,' 'LLMO,' 'answer engine optimization,' 'generative engine optimization,' 'LLM optimization,' 'AI Overviews,' 'optimize for ChatGPT,' 'optimize for Perplexity,' 'AI citations,' 'AI visibility,' 'zero-click search,' 'how do I show up in AI answers,' 'LLM mentions,' 'optimize for Claude/Gemini,' 'llms.txt,' 'llms-full.txt,' 'OKF,' 'Open Knowledge Format,' 'knowledge bundle,' 'agent-readable site,' 'agent readiness,' 'is my site agent-ready,' 'WebMCP,' 'do listicles still work for AI,' 'ChatGPT stopped citing comparison pages,' or 'AI citation format shift.' Use this whenever someone wants their content to be cited or surfaced by AI assistants and AI search engines. For traditional technical and on-page SEO audits, see seo-audit. For structured data implementation, see schema.
- AanalyticsWhen the user wants to set up, improve, or audit analytics tracking and measurement. Also use when the user mentions "set up tracking," "GA4," "Google Analytics," "conversion tracking," "event tracking," "UTM parameters," "tag manager," "GTM," "analytics implementation," "tracking plan," "how do I measure this," "track conversions," "Mixpanel," "Segment," "are my events firing," or "analytics isn't working." Use this whenever someone asks how to know if something is working or wants to measure marketing results. For choosing attribution models, comparing multi-touch/MMM/incrementality, or reconciling conflicting numbers across tools, see attribution. For A/B test measurement, see ab-testing.
- AasoWhen the user wants to audit or optimize an App Store or Google Play listing. Also use when the user mentions 'ASO audit,' 'app store optimization,' 'optimize my app listing,' 'improve app visibility,' 'app store ranking,' 'audit my listing,' 'why aren't people downloading my app,' 'improve my app conversion,' 'keyword optimization for app,' or 'compare my app to competitors.' Use when the user shares an App Store or Google Play URL and wants to improve it.
- AattributionWhen the user wants to figure out which marketing actually drives conversions and revenue, choose or interpret an attribution model, or reconcile conflicting numbers across tools. Also use when the user mentions "attribution," "attribution model," "first-touch vs last-touch," "multi-touch," "which channel drives revenue," "what's my real CAC," "my dashboards disagree," "Google/Meta says X but GA says Y," "media mix model," "MMM," "incrementality," "geo lift," "holdout test," "how did you hear about us," "self-reported attribution," "dark social," or wants to instrument attribution themselves — "stitch my bookings to their source," "SavvyCal/Calendly attribution," "close the identify gap," "track conversions on a third-party domain," "first-party / self-hosted attribution." For event tracking setup and UTMs, see analytics. For ad-platform pixels/CAPI, see ads. For pipeline and CRM revenue reporting, see revops. For the AI-search attribution blind spot, see ai-seo.
- Achurn-preventionWhen 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 emails. For in-app upgrade paywalls, see paywalls.
- Aco-marketingWhen the user wants to find co-marketing partners, plan joint campaigns, or brainstorm partnership opportunities. Use when the user says 'co-marketing,' 'partner marketing,' 'joint campaign,' 'who should we partner with,' 'integration marketing,' 'cross-promotion,' 'collaborate with another company,' 'partnership ideas,' or 'co-brand.' For customer referral programs, see referrals. For launch-specific partnerships, see launch.
- Acold-emailWrite B2B cold emails and follow-up sequences that get replies. Use when the user wants to write cold outreach emails, prospecting emails, cold email campaigns, sales development emails, or SDR emails. Also use when the user mentions "cold outreach," "prospecting email," "outbound email," "email to leads," "reach out to prospects," "sales email," "follow-up email sequence," "nobody's replying to my emails," or "how do I write a cold email." Covers subject lines, opening lines, body copy, CTAs, personalization, and multi-touch follow-up sequences. For warm/lifecycle email sequences, see emails. For sales collateral beyond emails, see sales-enablement.
- Acommunity-marketingBuild and leverage online communities to drive product growth and brand loyalty. Use when the user wants to create a community strategy, grow a Discord or Slack community, manage a forum or subreddit, build brand advocates, increase word-of-mouth, drive community-led growth, engage users post-signup, or turn customers into evangelists. Trigger phrases: \"build a community,\" \"community strategy,\" \"Discord community,\" \"Slack community,\" \"community-led growth,\" \"brand advocates,\" \"user community,\" \"forum strategy,\" \"community engagement,\" \"grow our community,\" \"ambassador program,\" \"community flywheel.\"
- Acompetitor-profilingWhen the user wants to research, profile, or analyze competitors from their URLs. Also use when the user mentions 'competitor profile,' 'competitor research,' 'competitor analysis,' 'profile this competitor,' 'analyze competitor,' 'competitive intelligence,' 'competitor deep dive,' 'who are my competitors,' 'competitor landscape,' 'competitor dossier,' 'competitive audit,' or 'research these competitors.' Input is a list of competitor URLs. Output is structured competitor profile markdown files. For creating comparison/alternative pages from profiles, see competitors. For sales-specific battle cards, see sales-enablement.