Growth Hacking & Traction for Startups by Can Ertugrul
This is a Traction Engine
The rollercoaster ride in search for growth
“A startup is a company designed to grow fast… The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.” - Paul Graham (YC)
Why you should care?
Traction
Team Tech
- Fred Destin (Accel) What Fred Destin and other investors look for
Traction = Growth
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Growth Hacking & Traction for Startups Not binary facts but one perspective
Growth Hacking & Traction for Startups Birdview on Traction
A startup is…
“…is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” - Steve Blank (author)
In search = exploration
An essential part of your Biz model
“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value - Business Model Generation (Book)
Traction is…
“…basically quantitative evidence of customer demand. So if you’re in enterprise software, [initial traction] may be two or three early customers who are paying a bit; if you’re in consumer software the bar might be as high as hundreds of thousands of users. It’s the [U.S.] Supreme Court definition of porn…. You’ll know it when you see it.”
- Naval Ravikant (Angellist)
Startup constitutution: The pursuit of growth
Startup Pyramid (Sean Ellis)
Product-Market-Fit (PMF)
„… being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market“
- Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz)
„40% or more of your users would be „very dissapointed“ without our product“
- Sean Ellis (Qualaroo/GrowthHackers)
Product-Market-Fit by Andreas Klinger (Product Hunt)
Life before and after Product-Market-Fit
Before PMF After PMF
Exploration Experiment Initial Traction Often „Manual“
Growth Hacking Optimizing Scaling Automate Death
„Must-Have-Product“
Channels… connecting people
Customer acquistion channels connect your company or your product with (potential) users or customers
YOU
Channel B
Tips out there might not apply to YOU
Fact: ALL channels have been „proven“ to work for some companies at a specific time Flood of information & different „best practices“
Beware of biases
Survivor Bias (typically from Post-PMF companies)
„We we‘re succesful, this channels worked for us“
Your own channel bias „I don‘t like calling people, but I love using Facebook, so it is probably the better way to reach my customers than sales calls.“
Truth: Every company is different
Different channels work differently well for different companies and industries.
Also most channels work even differently well for the same company over time.
The present is never like the past
„Law of Shitty Click-Throughs“ Channels change, become overcrowded, degrade, or become more expensive over time
That is why prediction is difficult
You can rarely predict which channel will work best for your company at particular time and particular stage
In search for a channel
Find channel(s) that will get YOU traction If no channel works: No PMF? Explore channels WHILE Product Dev
A proposed approach
Data
Mindest
Experiment Channels
Fundamentals
Mindset I – Traction from Start
Growing = getting traction = equally your „job“ like building a product (in parallel) Lessons learned from Traction => integrate to Product where possible
Mindset II – Measurement
What you measure is what you get Try to „move the needle“
Users in
Users out
Mindset III - Focus
Corporate Marketing = Startup Traction Building Traction Building = doing everything (or beeing
on every channel)
Focus No „free“ channels (you must invest time)
Fundamental I – Know Your Customer
Unterstanding your Customers Unterstanding their world (spent time,
substitutes, competitors, other used services/ products, regulary consumed channels,…)
Fundamental II – Metrics
Setting „right“ metrics for your startup and its current stage
Paid B2B SaS
FreemiumMobile App
Free B2C Platform
Hardware Search Engine
Acquistion
Engagement
Bottom-Line
Which metrics would you choose here?
Fundamental III – „Right Channel“
Pre-PMF Creating relatively most acquistions Moving needle (now) „Affordable“ / Executable for you
Post-PMF Acquiring at lower cost than other channels Acquiring better than competitors Suiting your Unit-Economics Repeatable & Scalable
Channels I – Structure
Draw here ;-)
Channels II – Do‘s
Understand specific Channel mechanics
Check peers/competitions/industry
Seek out under-utilized channels
Use over-utilized channels more creatively
Re-Test & Re-evaluate channels
Double Down on Winners
Channels III – Difference(s)
Demand harvesting VS. Demand generation Channels with customer intent VS. Channels with user interruption
Highly recommended read!
19 channels
Viral Marketing
Public Relations
Unconventional PR
Search Engine Marketing
Social and Display Ads
Offline Ads
Search Engine Optimization
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Engineering as Marketing
Targeting Blogs
Business Development
Sales
Affiliate Programs
Existing Platforms
Trade Shows
Offline Events
Speaking Engagements
Community Building
Examples of companies for which a specific channel
worked really well to siginificantly drive growth
Viral marketing
PR
Unconventional PR
Search Engine Marketing
Social and Display Ads
Offline Ads
SEO
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Engineering as Marketing
Targeting Blogs
Business Development
Sales
Affiliate Programs
Existing Platforms
Trade Shows
Offline Events
Speaking Engagements
Community Building
Discussion Time