![]() ![]() Public relations is the art of getting your name out there via traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines and TV. We also talked with Ashish Kundra of myZamana, who discussed using viral marketing to grow from 100k users to over 4 million in less than a year. We interviewed Andrew Chen, a viral marketing expert and mentor at 500 Startups, for common viral techniques and the factors that have led to viral adoption in major startups. Viral marketing consists of growing your userbase by encouraging your users to refer other users. Get one channel working that your competitors dismiss, and you can grow rapidly while they languish. Each traction channel has worked for startups of all kinds and in all different stages. When going through these traction channels try your best not to dismiss them as irrelevant for your company. You can make educated guesses, but until you start running tests, it’s difficult to tell which channel is the best one for you right now. It’s hard to predict the channel that will work best.This means that far too many startups focus on the same channels (search engine marketing, public relations) and ignore other promising ways to get traction. Most founders only consider using traction channels they’re already familiar with or think they should be using because of their type of product or company.We discovered two broad themes through our research: These are marketing and distribution channels through which your startup can get traction: real users and customers. We call these customer acquisition channels “traction channels”. Many successful startups experimented with multiple channels (search engine marketing, business development, etc.) until they found one that worked. ![]() Summary: Nineteen Traction ChannelsĪfter interviewing more than forty successful founders and researching countless more, we discovered that startups get traction through nineteen different channels. The pursuit of traction is what defines a startup. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.” Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of ‘exit.’ The only essential thing is growth. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. “A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Paul Graham, founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, puts it like this: Getting traction means moving your growth curve up and to the right as best you can. The whole point of a startup is to grow rapidly. If a consumer app, your daily active users are increasing quickly. If a SaaS tool, your monthly revenue is blowing up. If you’re a search engine, your number of searches is skyrocketing. It’s obvious in your core metrics: if you have a mobile app, your download rate is growing rapidly. Traction is a sign that your company is taking off. Traction: A startup guide to getting customers Chapter 1: Introductionīefore we get started, let’s define what traction is. The quotes below are pulled from the first edition, so be sure to check out the book website for the latest samples and chapter outlines. To really get a taste of the depth and usefulness of the book I’ve pulled out a couple of my favorite excerpts below. The Lean Analytics blog has a link to a sample pdf with the first 3 chapters and the book website has links to several more sample pdfs. The book is probably the best window into the modern growth hacker style of marketing being practiced in startups today. The idea behind the book is to derive practical lessons from how different startups have achieved their early growth. They are now in the process of publishing a 2015 second edition so I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my favorite parts of the book. Their first edition was also available as an audiobook on Audible. One of my favorite marketing books to refer to for ideas is Traction: A startup guide to getting customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. ![]()
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