Traction notes by Snehal Nimje

1. Traction
Traction = Growth

2. Traction Channels

3. Consider all channels
• Founders pursue traction channels they are most familiar with.
• Leads to crowding
• Most under-utilized channels are most promising
• It’s hard to predict which will work
• Only running tests can help

4. 19 Channels
Direct Sales Existing networks
Search Engine Marketing Publicity
Social and Display ads Unconventional PR
Search Engine Optimization Offline ads
Content marketing Viral marketing
Targeting blogs Trade shows
Email marketing/Webinars Offline events
Business development/Partnerships Community building
Engineering as marketing Speaking Engagements
Affiliate programs

5. Traction Thinking

6. 50 percent rule
• Focus 50% of time on traction development
• Marketo had 14k leads before product launch via content marketing –
blogs that discussed issues and solutions

7. 3 phases in product development
• Phase I – making something people want
• Lots of leaks in marketing, inefficiency
• Focus on getting product and PMF right
• Phase II – marketing something people want
• Fine tune positioning and marketing message
• Phase III – Scaling business
• Try to dominate and profit

8. Set traction goals
• Set goal for each phase of product dev and scaling
• Keep it quantitative
• Keep re-evaluating from time to time

9. Bullseye
• Outer ring – What’s possible
oThink of one idea for each channel
• Middle ring – What’s probable
oRun test in parallel
oCost of customer acquisition
oHow many customers are available
oAre the customers the right kind of customers
• Inner ring – What’s working
oFocus on one core channel
oUncover strategies and master it

10. Why bullseye?
• Structured
• Tells you to focus on all strategies
• Successful companies focus on underutilized strategies
• Get best ideas quickly and cheaply

11. Traction Testing

12. Middle ring test
Focus on –
• How much it costs to acquire customers
• Is the volume big enough
• Are they the right customers you want
• Spend max $150 per channel
• Total spending < $1000 per month.

13. Inner ring tests examples
• for targeting blogs,
oWhich blogs to target,
oWhat content to push
oCall to Action
• SEM
oKeywords
oDemographics
oLanding pages

14. Saturation – Constantly optimize
• Every channel keeps getting saturated
• Keep iterating with middle ring tests even when executing the inner
right tests

15. Critical Path

16. Traction goal
• Looking for growth or profit
• How many customers for next funding
• Things will go not as predicted, keep re-evaluating and re-setting path

17. Targeting blogs

18. Key strategies
• Run tests on small blogs – discover blogs from youtube, google,
twitter, delicious
• Sponsor blogs esp personal blogs.
• Build unique offers
• Mint.com used it to get 50k users from 600 blogs

19. Publicity

20. What journalists like
• Milestones: raising money, launching a new product, breaking a usage
barrier, PR stunt, big partnership or special industry report.
• Bundle small news items into one big item
• Exclusive content, new launches
• Emotional stories
• Build relationship with reporters
• Focus on right smaller sites

21. Sharing news
• Submit story to link-sharing
• Share it on social networks
• Email to influencers
• Ping it to blogs

22. Unconventional PR

23. Key strategies
• Do something big, cheap, fun and original
• Be awesome to your customers and good things follow
• Prepare for failure, might not work

24. Search engine marketing

25. Key strategies
• Use search engine ads to test product positioning and messaging
• Measure conversions so you can test SEM variables against
profitability
• Use longer keywords- long tail keywords, cheaper and can be
profitable
• Pay close attention to your ad quality scores

26. Social and Display ads

27. Key strategies
• Contact small sites for display ads. Use it for phase 1
• Use social ads to build awareness of products and create demand
• Create compelling social content

28. Offline ads

29. Key strategies
• Run cheap tests by first targeting local markets
• Seek out remnant ad inventory for highest discounts
• Use unique cords and web addresses to track effectiveness

30. SEO ads

31. • Moz beginners guide to SEO
Fat headed keywords
• Try to find keywords such that even if you capture 10% of the volume you get a
sizable business
• Determine the competitiveness - use Open site explorer. If the competitor already
ranks high, it is tough to crack it.
• Fat head strategy = significant amount of unique content
Long tail keywords
• Since it is difficult for the startups to rank higher in the fat headed keywords, its
better to bundle together multiple long tail keywords.

32. Key strategies
• Find search terms that have enough search volume to move the
needle
• Generate long tail landing pages by using cheap freelancers
• Focus on how to build links

33. Type of content
• Publicity PR articles
• Product
• Content marketing
• Widgets
• Target people who will share content like reports – images,
slideshows, infographics

34. Content marketing

35. Unbounce
• Worked on the blog from the beginning
• team relied heavily on social media - where they would ping the influencers on
twitter to get some feedback.
• answer on Quora
• free infographics and e-books to the mailing list
• biggest problem in content marketing - writers block - write about the customers
problem
• having a strong company blog can impact - seo, publicity, email marketing,
targeting blogs, community building, offline events, existing platforms, and
business development

36. Key strategies
• Dedicate 6 months
• Do things that wont scale – contact influencers, industry leaders, ask them to
share
• Produce in-depth posts you cant find anywhere else

37. Email marketing

38. Key strategies
• activating a customer
• vero and customer.io to automate emails
• write friendly emails
• email marketing for retaining customers
• reminders, reports and information of how you have been using and deriving
value from the product
• email marketing for revenue
• send special emails for customers nearing their plan limits

39. Key strategies
• Personalize your email marketing
• Build list of prospective customers
• Setup automated emails
• Optimize A/B

40. Viral marketing

41. Key strategies
K = i * conversion ratio
• build viral loop into the product
• shorten viral cycle time
• look for viral pockets - there are certain users who will do things to
make it viral
• keep on testing

42. Engineering as marketing

43. Key strategies
• Create stand alone low friction websites
• look internally for site and tool ideas
• make them as simple as possible

44. Business development

45. Key strategies
• partnering with businesses so that both benefit
• Create pipeline of leads
• Focus on meeting core metrics – don’t get distracted at all
• Partners - Standard, JV, Supply, Licensing,
• Think strategically

46. Sales

47. SPIN selling
Situation questions - Begin
• Ask only 2 questions – how many employees? How is your org structures?
Problem questions - Understand
• Ask few or 2 – Are you happy currently? What problems are you facing?
Implication questions – Scare them
• Are the problems hurting your productivity, revenue or employee
happiness?
Need payoff question – Your solution
Will our solution help? What impact will it create? Whom will it help?

48. Key strategies
• Don’t rule out cold calling
• Build a repeatable sales model
• Get buyer to comment to time lines
• Try to understand their common problems
• Your first customer is important – progressive, helpful, involved it
helping you build your product.

49. Affiliate marketing

50. Key strategies
• Use existing affiliate network
• Get 20 affiliate members - show them demos, train them
• Keep the payouts simple
• Make your customers as your affiliates
• Commission Junction (CJ), Clickbank, Affiliate.com, PepperJan, ShareASale,
adknowledge,LinkShare, MobAff, Neverbluw, Clickbooth, Retail me not.

51. Existing platforms

52. Key strategies
• Figure out where the potential customers hang out
• Create a feature to fill gap for that platforms users
• Focus on new and untapped platforms
• App stores, g2 crowd, Chrome plugins stores
• Use ads to list higher in app store –get better visibility and more
organic downloads

53. Trade shows

54. Key strategies
• Schedule meetings and dinners ahead of time
• Investigate the efficacy of shows before committing – visit one year
before, talk to previous exhibitors
• Have an inbound and outbound strategy for your booth
• Set clear goals – press, investors, major customers
• Write down all events in your industry- evaluate each event.
• Proactively set meetings - vendors, competitors, partners, bloggers,
editors
• Put up good booth, large banners, give discounts, giveaways like bags

55. Offline events

56. Key strategies
• Launch at a conference
• Test this channel – attend or host mini conferences
• Throw a party after the event
• Good for enterprise with long sales cycles.
• Start with Small local events, meetup groups

57. Speaking engagements

58. Key strategies
• You are doing a favour to organizers by presenting
• Submit authoritative proposals far in advance
• Organizers look for timing, topic and credibility
• Audience wants to know Why you? What can you offer?
• Story sells – What, why , how you got there?
• Call to action – signup to mailing list to get slides, offers
• Record videos- reuse it
• Network after talk, engage, etc

59. Community building

60. Key strategies
• Stack overflow used this
• Cultivate and empower evangelists - Use linkedin , google groups and
other forums where people hang out.
• Set high quality standards from the start – It’s challenging
• Bootstrap of an existing audience – from complimentary communities
online or offline events

61. Middle ring tests

62. Targeting blogs
Contact 10 niche blogs and get the to review your product. Give offer
for their audience(tshirts,etc ). Or Pay them and run ads $100/month.
Publicity
Contact 5 relevant local reporters and get them to write to about you.
Local stories flavor. Get contact from twitter
Unconventional PR
Random contest or funny video (Dollar shave club), Use facebook,
twitter ads to promote

63. SEM
Try Bing ads are way cheaper to experiment on, cheaper, big expansive
keywords
Social display ads
Try Fb twitter ads against groups and handles
Offline ads
Advertise on some local podcast, few ads on local paper

64. SEO
Create content rich pages, Put it in footer of home page. Run fat head
keywords ads
Content marketing
Company blog – one blog per month. Post on twitter, reddit. Double
down if it makes sense.
Email marketing
Contact 10 email newsletters. Ask them to run ads. Ask people to
download content for giving email.

65. Viral loop
Build viral loop in your product. Uber code/dropbox code sharing
Engineering tool
Make simple tool, easy to use like calculator. Travel policy generator
Business dev
Reach out to 3 companies in 2 categories – HRMS/expense
management. Strike one deal atleast

66. Sales
List 20 local customers. Get warm intros. Use SPIN approach.
Affiliate program
Contact relevant major affiliate network. Recruit 20 affiliates to sell.
Contact existing customers – get them to sell.
Existing platforms
Check marketplaces, criaglists, g2 crowd – get listed

67. Trade shows
List all trade shows for next year. Go attend, see if it makes sense to sponsor
Offline events
Put one day mini-conference with local speakers. Host it at college,
restaurant, etc
Speaking engagements
Contact 3 local meetup groups. Present your company as a personal story
Community building
Join 3 online forums, engage on 20 threads each. Create your own
community and seed members from those forums.