My 3 takeaways from "Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth" by Justin Mares
🔖 Summary in 3 Sentences
This book consists of 19 different marketing channels. Each traction channel is backed by a case study with companies that succeeds. Very helpful for startup founders that haven't found their bullseye traction channel.
🧑🏻 Who Should Read It?
Anyone looking to find their traction channel.
🔑 My 3 Key Takeaways
Scale up when your bucket is not leaky.
In the leaky bucket metaphor, phase I is when your bucket (product) has the most leaks. It really doesn't hold water. There is no reason to scale up your efforts now, but it is still important to send a small amount of water through the bucket so you can see where the holes are and plug them.
We want to get sales in and fast. But when we got a leaky bucket (product), all the customers coming in might be churned away pretty fast. We will waste a lot of money to drive the leads through our funnel. But it is still important to get some customer through it so we know what is the problem that causes customer leaves us. As we fix the bucket, with a good enough conversion rate, we will be able to scale up and really put every marketing money to good use.
Find the traction channel that moves the needle.
Instead, you are simply trying to determine if it's a channel that could move the needle for your startup. Your main consideration at this point is speed - to get data and prove your assumptions.
There are plenty of ways to market your product, but not all of them move the needle. You first need to know what is the goal you want to achieve, and how much customers are meaningful to you. Then you go out and test all the traction channels. Focus on the one that will have a significant impact on your goal. Different stages of the company might require different traction channels to move the needle.
Record results for each channel
The operative question then is, "Does this channel have enough customers to be meaningful?" A simple spreadsheet calculation can go a long way!
Calculate and record everything. You will never know how you do unless you put it into a spreadsheet.
💭 Afterthought
This is the best book I read for marketing advice. Although the takeaway is not really showing any real strategy. But the remaining chapters go through all 19 traction channels. At first, I thought it is impossible to do some of the channels, but after reading it, I think it's possible to test all of them. If you're finding a way to market your product, I highly recommend this book to you.
🛍 How to Buy?
I bought this Kindle e-book.
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