Engineering as marketing is one of the most underused growth strategies in B2B. The idea is simple: build free tools that solve a real problem for your target audience, and let those tools do your customer acquisition for you.
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Why engineering as marketing works
Free tools work as a growth channel because they compound. Unlike a paid campaign that stops delivering the moment you turn off the budget, a useful tool keeps attracting and converting users for years. HubSpot’s Website Grader still pulls in around 65,000 visits per month — a tool first launched in 2008.
The characteristics that make this strategy effective:
- Solves one specific problem. The best tools do one thing well. They answer a single question your audience is already asking.
- Low friction. No long onboarding, no complex setup. Ideally no signup required at all — the tool works immediately.
- Clear handoff to your product. The tool demonstrates the value of your paid product without requiring a hard sell.
- Compounds over time. Unlike campaigns, tools build backlinks, earn search rankings, and generate word of mouth that grows with minimal ongoing effort.
Classic examples that still hold up
The playbook is well established. Companies have been using free tools to drive acquisition for over a decade:
HubSpot Website Grader — Enter your URL, get an instant audit of your site’s SEO, performance, and mobile readiness. It generated millions of leads by delivering immediate value whilst positioning HubSpot as the solution to every problem it surfaced.
Moz Keyword Explorer — A free keyword research tool that gives enough value to hook marketers, then naturally upsells to Moz Pro for deeper analysis and tracking.
Shopify Business Name Generator — Captures entrepreneurs at the earliest possible stage of their journey. Before they’ve built a product, before they’ve chosen a platform — they’re already inside Shopify’s ecosystem.
Canva’s acquisition of Kaleido — Rather than folding the background removal tool into Canva, they kept it as a standalone product. The tool drives enormous traffic on its own whilst nudging users towards Canva for further design work.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator — No signup required. The free output is good enough to be useful on its own, but good enough to make you want the full platform.
The old problem: marketing teams couldn’t build anything
Despite its effectiveness, engineering as marketing has historically belonged to companies with spare engineering capacity. Most marketing teams lack developers. And even when they have them, free tools rarely win the prioritisation battle against product features, bug fixes, and technical debt.
The result: a strategy everyone knows works but almost nobody executes. Marketing teams default to what they can control — blog posts, paid ads, ebooks, gated PDFs — because they lack the technical resources to build tools.
How vibe coding changes everything
Vibe coding platforms like Lovable, Bolt, Replit, and Cursor have changed this completely. Describe what you want in plain English. The AI builds it.
Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” in early 2025, and the tools have matured rapidly since. At Lovable alone, non-developers have built complete SaaS applications with full authentication, food-tracking apps, scheduling platforms, and even pitch decks that raised $450,000 in funding.
For marketing teams, this removes the engineering bottleneck entirely. You no longer need a developer to build an ROI calculator, a benchmarking tool, or an interactive assessment. You need an afternoon and an AI coding tool.
Satellite apps: engineering as marketing across the full funnel
Elena Verna and Jonathan Yagel argue that vibe coding does more than make engineering as marketing easier — it expands where the strategy applies. They call the concept “satellite apps” — free, lightweight micro-products that work across the entire funnel, not just at the top.
Their framework positions satellite apps as replacements for static content at every stage:
| Funnel Stage | Traditional Approach | Satellite App Alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Top of funnel | Blog posts, SEO content | Free tools, calculators, widgets |
| Middle of funnel | Gated PDFs, lead magnets | Interactive assessments, benchmarks |
| Bottom of funnel | Product demos, case studies | Personalised ROI calculators, interactive demos |
The key insight: satellite apps “show” rather than “tell.” Instead of writing a whitepaper arguing that your approach saves money, you build a calculator that proves it with the prospect’s own numbers.
Satellite apps share several characteristics:
- Free to use with no monetisation requirements
- Low maintenance — built quickly, requiring minimal ongoing optimisation
- Obvious value to your target customer
- Built-in distribution through SEO, social sharing, or integration into existing demand channels
- Clear handoff into your primary product
What to build: finding the right tool
The best tools solve problems your audience already searches for. Four ways to find the right one:
Start with keyword research. Look for “how to calculate,” “free tool for,” and “[your category] calculator” searches in your niche. High search volume plus low competition equals opportunity.
Mine your sales conversations. What questions do prospects ask repeatedly? What calculations do they do manually in spreadsheets? Those spreadsheets are your satellite apps waiting to be built.
Look at your onboarding friction. What do new users struggle to understand before they sign up? Build a tool that gives them the “aha” moment before they’ve even created an account.
Audit your existing content. Which blog posts get the most traffic but the lowest conversion? Those topics might work better as interactive tools than static articles.
Getting started this week
You don’t need a full SaaS product. Start small:
- Pick one problem your target audience searches for regularly
- Open Lovable or Bolt and describe the tool in plain English
- Keep the scope tight — one input, one output, one clear result
- Add a contextual CTA that links to your main product
- Publish it on a subdomain or dedicated page and track traffic and conversions
The barrier to entry is now almost zero. A marketer with no coding experience can build and ship a working tool in a single afternoon. The companies that move first will build a library of compounding assets whilst their competitors still debate whether to gate their next PDF.
Engineering as marketing has always been one of the highest-leverage growth channels available. The difference now: you no longer need engineers to do it.