Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

by Gabriel Weinberg

The first step in Bullseye is brainstorming every single traction channel. If you were to advertise offline, where would be the best place to do it? If you were to give a speech, who would be the ideal audience? Imagine what success would look like in each channel, and write it down in your outer ring.

In particular, your tests should be designed to answer these questions: How much does it cost to acquire each customer through this channel strategy? How many customers are available through this channel strategy? Are the customers you are getting through this channel the ones you want right now?

Do you really need feature C or marketing activity Y? This is where founders often mess up: by focusing their limited company resources on things off Critical Path. You are generally competing with companies with significantly more resources than you. You cannot afford to waste what little resources you have.

Mint did something that few startups had done before to increase awareness and build excitement for its launch: it asked people on its prelaunch waiting list to recommend Mint to their friends in return for priority product access. As part of the signup process, users could embed an “I Want Mint” badge on their personal blogs, Facebook, or other Web sites. Users who drove signups through these badges were rewarded with VIP access before other invitations were sent out.

Sponsor small blogs, especially personal blogs. Providing influential bloggers early access or offering early access in exchange for spreading the word are other effective strategies.

The news has fundamentally changed. Think of The New York Times. When they decide to publish an article about you, they are doing you a huge favor. After all, there are so many other people they could write about. There are a finite number of spots in the paper. Blogs are different, as they can publish an infinite number of articles and every article they publish is a chance for more traffic (which means more money in their pockets). In other words, when Business Insider writes about you, you are doing them the favor.

Tech startups frequently get exposure this way. Sites like TechCrunch and Lifehacker often pick up stories from smaller forums like Hacker News and subreddits. In turn, The New York Times often picks up content from TechCrunch and wraps it into a larger narrative they’re telling.

Subject: Quick question Hey [name], I wanted to shoot you a note because I loved your post on [similar topic that did a lot of traffic]. I was going to give the following to our publicist, but I thought I would go to you with the exclusive because I read and really enjoy your stuff. My [company built a user base of 25,000 paying customers in two months without advertising / book blows the lid off an enormous XYZ scandal]. And I did it completely off the radar. This means you would be the first to have it. I can write up any details you’d need to make it great. Do you think this might be a good fit? If so, should I draft something around [their average] words and send it to you, or do you prefer a different process? If not, I totally understand, and thanks for reading this much. All the best, [Your Name] PUBLICITY TACTICS

Good customer support is so rare that, if you simply try to make your customers happy, they are likely to spread the news of your awesome product on that basis alone. Zappos is one of the best-known examples of a company that has incredible customer service.

Several sources have mentioned that an average CTR for an AdWords campaign is around 2 percent, and that Google assigns a low quality score to ads with CTRs below 1.5 percent. If any of your keywords are getting such low CTRs, rewrite those ads, test them on a different audience, or ditch them altogether.

You can use negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for certain keywords. You specify words that you don’t want your ads to appear for: if you’re selling eyeglasses, you want to prevent your ads from showing to people who search “wine glasses” or “drinking glasses,” as those keywords will convert poorly. This technique can significantly improve your CTRs.

Niche ad networks focus on smaller sites that fit certain audience demographics, such as dog lovers or Apple fanatics. One such network is The Deck, which targets the niche audience of Web creatives. As an advertiser, you know exactly the audience you’re reaching.

Content only goes anywhere if people care about it…. With social, it’s word of mouth on crack. You should only employ social advertising dollars when you’ve understood that a fire is starting around your message and you want to put more oil on it. Getting that spark started is based on what you’re trying to say: startups do the opposite of this all the time where they waste tens of thousands of dollars trying to push a message that nobody cares about. With social platforms, the burden of success is on the advertiser as opposed to the platform.

Google currently provides a useful tool for this process called Keyword Planner (part of Google AdWords). You can type in search terms that describe your products and then see the search volumes for these terms. You can also get keywords by looking at your competitors’ Web sites and seeing what words they use in their home page titles and headers.

Rand suggests using infographics, slideshows, images, and original research to drive links, as these are all things people naturally share.

The secret to shareable content is showing readers they have a problem they didn’t know about, or at least couldn’t fully articulate. A solution is nice, but it’s not as good for drawing in readers as showing them they’ve been going about some aspect of their life all wrong.

Another popular approach to building an email list is creating a short, free course related to your area of expertise. These mini-courses are meant to educate potential customers about your problem space and product. At the end of the course you put a call to action, such as asking people to purchase your product, start a free trial, or share something with their friends.

In addition to your own email list, consider advertising on email newsletters complementary to your product. Many email newsletters accept advertisers, and if not, you can contact them directly and ask for a special arrangement.

For infrequently used products, email marketing can be the primary form of customer engagement. Mint sends you a weekly financial summary that shows your expenses and income over the previous week. This keeps its product at the forefront of customers’ minds and allows it to provide value even if they aren’t always signed in. BillGuard, a service that monitors your credit cards for suspicious transactions, sends you a similar report every month.

Timing is especially relevant to get higher open rates: many marketers suggest sending emails between nine a.m. and twelve p.m. in your customer’s time zone or scheduling emails to reach them at the time they registered for your email list (e.g., for people who signed up for your list at eight p.m., email them at eight p.m.).

WP Engine, a WordPress hosting provider, is another prime example of a company using this channel successfully. The hosting market is saturated with hundreds of hosting companies, yet WP Engine has cornered the market on high-end WordPress hosting. This is thanks in part to its free tool that checks how fast your WordPress site loads. The WP Engine speed testing tool asks for only an email address in exchange for a detailed report about your site’s speed. It also gives you the option to opt in for a free mini-course about improving the speed of your blog. Once WP Engine has a user’s email, it sends her tips about improving her site speed and ends with a sales pitch.

I think of free tools as content (albeit interactive content). At HubSpot, we really believe in marketing channels that have high leverage (i.e., write it or build it once—and get value forever). As such, we take a very geeky and analytical approach to marketing. We think of each piece of content (blog article, app, video, whatever) as a marketing asset. This asset creates a return—often indefinitely. We contrast that to buying an ad, which does not scale as well. When you advertise, the money you’re spending is what drives how much attention you get. Want more clicks? Spend more money. Contrast this to inbound marketing whereby the cost of producing a piece of content is relatively constant. But, if it generates 10x more leads in a month, your marginal cost for those extra leads is almost zero. Further, with advertising (outbound marketing), the traffic you get generally stops when you stop paying. With inbound marketing, even after you stop producing new content, the old content can still drive ongoing visitors and leads.

Building noteworthy tools that your target audience finds useful is a solid way to gain traction that also pays dividends down the road by helping build your SEO. A simple roadmap to executing this technical strategy includes: Providing something of true value for free, with no strings attached. Making that offering extremely relevant to your core business. Demonstrating that value as quickly as possible. When you build valuable tools for prospective customers, you get more leads, a stronger brand, and increased awareness while also solving a problem for the individuals you want to target.

We interviewed Maneesh Sethi, popular blogger at HacktheSystem, to talk about how companies can build relationships with people like him. Maneesh has been an affiliate for many products he has personally used. As an example, Maneesh was a customer of a program that taught SEO tactics. He loved the program, so he contacted the company himself and worked out a deal with them to give him a commission for each new customer he sent their way. After agreeing to terms, Maneesh sent out an email to his list mentioning how the SEO program had helped him get better rankings on Google. That single offer has made him nearly $30,000 in two years, and has made the company much more.

With the number of smartphone users well above one billion and growing every day, we’ve seen an explosion of apps reaching millions of users in short periods of time: months, rather than years. The most efficient way for an app to get discovered in the app stores is through the top app rankings and featured listings sections. These rankings group apps by category, country, popularity, and editors’ choice. The story of Trainyard illustrates the impact an App Store feature can have.

1.Ads get the [app] somewhere into the charts. 2.Now it’s in the charts, more people see it. 3.So it gets more organic downloads. 4.Which makes it go a bit higher up in the charts. 5.Now even more people see it and it gets more organic downloads. 6.People like it and start telling their friends to get it too. 7.It goes up higher in the charts. 8.Repeat from

Companies use many tactics to get into the charts initially. They buy ads from places like AdMob, buy installs from companies like Tapjoy, cross-promote their apps (through cross-promotion networks or other apps they own), or even buy their way to the top of the charts through services like FreeAppADay.

Your preparation for a trade show will determine how successful you will be. This is one of the few times during the year when nearly everyone in your industry is in one place; you’ll want to be at your best. To prepare, make a list of key attendees you want to meet at the trade show. Then schedule meetings with them before you attend the event. Brian sent well-researched emails explaining what SureStop did and how its technology could benefit the people he wanted to meet. He also attached a one-pager with more information about the company. This strategy allowed him to meet the people he wanted at every event he attended.

Editors of online and offline magazines. Often overlooked, editors are your key to real press. I’ve been published in every major programming magazine; almost all of that I can directly attribute to talking with editors at trade shows! It works.

If publicity is one of your goals, reach out to media that will be in attendance. Media members attend trade shows specifically to see what’s going on in an industry—give them something to write about! This could be a new product, feature, or deal with a big customer.

The other secret conference trick that is orchestrated by the true Zen masters is to schedule a dinner and invite other people. It’s a great way to get to know people intimately. Start by booking a few easy-to-land friends who are interesting. Work hard to bag a “brand name” person who others will want to meet. All it takes is one. Then the rest of your invites can mention that person’s name on the guest list (name others, too … obviously) and you will be able to draw in some other people you’d like to meet. Another similar strategy is with customers. If you invite three to four customers and three to four prospects to a dinner with two or three employees and some other interesting guests you’ll be doing well. Potential customers always prefer to talk to existing reference customers than to talk to just your sales reps. Final tip: picking a killer venue is one of the best ways to bag high-profile people. Everybody loves to eat somewhere hot. However, sometimes a dinner can be too expensive for an early-stage company. So why not go in on the dinner with two other companies? That way you’re all extending your networks and splitting the costs.

I think the overarching thing for marketing is [startups] need to try more things, and fail faster and more quickly…. Trying all of this stuff and seeing what works is paramount. The tried and true approaches like Facebook and AdWords are so crowded now. People need to think about doing things that don’t scale. Early on when you’re trying to get those first one thousand customers, you have to do things that don’t scale. You have to take more risks.

Speaking is funny. You know to me, it’s the old-school concept that teaching sells…. Teaching is what content marketing is all about: webinars, blog posts, and the like. I look at [these] things as the future of good marketing. The opportunity to teach and be in front of a room for forty-five minutes introducing your company and your story to potential customers is time well spent.

Steve Barsh, a serial entrepreneur and former CEO of PackLate, has successfully pitched conference organizers to present many times. Rather than pitch them directly on what he wants to talk about, he contacts them and asks them about the ideal topics they want to have speakers cover at an event. Once that is known, he then crafts the perfect pitch: one that hits on key points the organizers want to cover.

Dan Martell will even try to leverage social media during his talk. He asks for the audience’s “divided attention,” meaning he wants them to tweet and share good content from his presentation as he gives it. To facilitate this, he includes his Twitter handle on every slide and asks people to tweet at him if they really identified with something he said. This way, he can find out the content his audience enjoyed the most, while also growing his reach.

There are some businesses that lend themselves to doing this very well. Companies whose core function is the connecting of people are best set up to take advantage of community. Whether that’s a trade show thing, an investment thing, whatever: when a company’s underlying value is in bringing people together, and where people matter in the system, that’s where this community stuff can really take off.