Traction

you should be running several cheap tests (perhaps two social ads with two landing pages) that give some indication of how successful a given channel strategy could be. In other words, you should not be getting too deep into tactics at this stage; stick to the strategy level.

Social media connections filled out the consultation (lead-generation) form at a 179% higher rate than the typical customer. Sales? They were 217% more likely to make their first payment. For one particular problem area (people who partially fill out the sign-up form then quit), social media prospects went back and completed the form at a 680% high

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.

Phase I is very product focused and involves pursuing initial traction while also building your initial product. This often means getting traction in ways that don’t scale—giving talks, writing guest posts, emailing people you have relationships with, attending conferences, and doing whatever you can to get in front of customers.

When you constantly test traction channels by sending through a steady stream of new customers, you can tell if your product is getting less leaky over time, which it should be if your product development strategy is sound. In fact this is a great feedback loop between traction development and product development that you can use to make sure you’r

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 somet

DEFINING YOUR TRACTION GOAL You should always have an explicit traction goal you’re working toward. This could be one thousand paying customers, one hundred new daily customers, or 10 percent of your market.

These first channel strategy tests are often very cheap and short. For instance, if you spend just $250 on AdWords, you’ll get a rough idea of how well the search engine marketing channel works for your business. In general in phase I, you shouldn’t be spending more than a thousand dollars and a month’s time on a middle ring test, and often signifi

First focus on changes that, if they worked, would result in a 5–10x improvement in a key metric. This could be something like an entirely new email auto-responder sequence, a new Web site design, or a new onboarding flow. Once you’ve made big changes, then optimize the smaller stuff.

If your pitch doesn’t draw a line in the sand—with some people shaking their heads and some people nodding—it won’t get discussed as widely as you hope.