How I'd grow Mindtrip

Mindtrip is a tool that helps plan travel using conversational AI.

My first question would be how it’s different from just using ChatGPT.

It turns out they have proprietary data, so the tool will tell you things that generic apps won’t.

This is their core differentiation asset. The other differentiation factor is the interface.

It's specifically designed for travel so you can fine-tune parameters like how many people, what days, and with what budget with just a few clicks.

But none of this is clear from the hero section

The copy (travel differently, bring the world to you…) doesn't mean much. It could be the site of a travel agency.

The visual is super important to let new visitors immediately understand the product. The current one doesn't achieve that goal.

I don't think a new visitor would immediately understand what the product is, but these are details compared to the one thing that I believe really needs to be fixed.

As a visitor you have no idea that you can use the product for free.

The "Get Started" CTA makes me think that if I click I will have to create an account.

But hidden beside that CTA there's an entire world.

Not only the core product with the AI chat but also a cool “Explore” section with interesting itineraries made by creators.

My radical idea would be to get rid of the landing page altogether and show the product to visitors immediately.

The user interface is pretty intuitive so with a few adjustments I think letting people immediately use it might help get better results.

Which brings me to the other big point: what's the price? Is it 100% free? There’s no pricing page and no mention of it.

As a visitor I might be a bit skeptical when I'm not sure how the product makes money and it's something I'd definitely address on the site.

This is a product that will be used in a very specific time frame.

I bet a lot of people who aren't planning trips will take a look at it, play with it, think it's cool, but since they don't need it right now they will close the site.

Only to forget the name of the product when in a couple of months they will actually need it again.

An idea could be to use the unique content made in partnership with creators for a newsletter.

This way they could capture visitors' emails, stay top of mind, and drive them back.

Considering that Mindtrip is a B2C product that uses AI I think it could do really well with short-form videos on social media.

If they come up with good creatives that recreate the "wow" effect a user gets the first time using the product, there's a very good chance to get a lot of views and engagement.

The problem with their current content strategy is that there's no storytelling or unique angle.

There are a bazillion travel accounts posting generic pics and videos showing beautiful destinations so people don't really have a reason to follow them.

Obviously a huge channel would be collaborations with traveler influencers.

The ones they did generated good engagement... on the surface.

But if you dig deeper and take some time reading all the comments, people are commenting about the destination (Bali) and aren't really asking questions about Mindtrip.

I think these collaborations can potentially work well, but they need to find a balance between giving creative freedom to creators and focusing part of the content on the product too.

Mindtrip is betting big on using creators as affiliate partners to create a growth flywheel.

The strategy works like this:

- The creator shares their travel itinerary with their followers
- There’s a link to Mindtrip that lets people book the same activities they did
- Every time someone uses that link the creator gets paid a commission
- New creators discover Mindtrip through these posts and join
- The network grows bigger and bigger driving more traffic to Mindtrip

I can see this working but only if they manage to recruit enough creators to get a critical mass.

Let's imagine for a second that someone uses Mindtrip to plan an itinerary for a trip they’re organizing.

There's a good chance that they'll want to share it with other people who will take part in the trip to hear their opinion on things to see, what they should do, etc.

That's a critical step for Mindtrip to acquire new users for free.

They don't want people to just send the routes they created to someone else. They need to persuade them to invite other travelers to collaboratively plan it together.

There's a huge difference between seeing a product and actually using it.

Once someone has already invested some time learning how to use it there is a greater chance they will come back to it for future travels.

Most people wouldn't think of search as a viable channel for Mindtrip.

It's a new product and obviously there's no keyword volume for new products because no one searches for things they don't know exist.

Travel is also a super competitive niche.

But there's a workaround they could use: all the user-generated content created by the influencers.

With a little bit of effort around link building and on-page optimization all those pages could potentially rank for long-tail terms.

If they do this and scale their creator program they could end up with a huge volume of content that covers less competitive but very relevant keywords.