Traction

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

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.

TARGETS Run tests on a variety of smaller blogs. See what type of audience resonates best with your product and messaging. There are a variety of tools you can use to uncover relevant blogs, including YouTube, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Twitter, search engines, Google Alerts, and Social Mention. You can also ask people! Sponsor small blogs, especially

Tactics that once worked well will become crowded and ineffective. All it takes is one other competitor seriously pursuing traction in the same way to drive up its cost and drive down its efficacy.

it’s hard to predict the traction channel that will work best. 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.

Mint did something that few startups had done before to increase awareness and build excitement for its launch: it asked people on its prelaunch waiting list to recommend Mint to their friends in return for priority product access.

over time, all marketing channels become saturated. As more companies discover an effective strategy, it becomes crowded and expensive or ignored by consumers, thus becoming much less effective.

Content only goes anywhere if people care about it…. With social, it’s word of mouth on crack. You should only employ social advertising dollars when you’ve understood that a fire is starting around your message and you want to put more oil on it. Getting that spark started is based on what you’re trying to say: startups do the opposite of this all

consider advertising on email newsletters complementary to your product. Many email newsletters accept advertisers, and if not, you can contact them directly and ask for a special arrangement.