Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

idea. It is very likely that one channel is optimal. Most businesses actually get zero distribution channels to work. Poor distribution—not product—is the number one cause of failure. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished. So it’s worth thinking

Surveys, sites like usertesting.com and asking users directly are great ways to uncover this psychology.

When determining which strategy to use, you should keep in mind that the percentage of clicks you get drops off dramatically as you rank lower on a search results page. Only about ten percent of clicks occur beyond the first ten links, so you want to be as high up on the first page as possible. In other words, your ability to rank on the first page

Implication questions. These questions are meant to make a prospect aware of the implications that stem from the problem they’re facing.

A common way to drive revenue through email marketing is doing lifecycle campaigns aimed at upselling customers.

Google currently provides a useful tool for this process called Keyword Planner (part of Google AdWords). You can type in search terms that describe your products, and then see the search volumes for these terms.

Roughly how much will it cost to acquire customers through this channel?

Two of their free SEO tools, Followerwonk and Open Site Explorer, have driven tens of thousands of leads for Moz.

what messaging is resonating with potential users, what niche you might focus on first, what types of customers will be easiest to acquire, and major distribution roadblocks you might run into.

Followerwonk allows users to analyze their Twitter followers and get tips on growing their audience. Open Site Explorer allows users to see where sites are getting links, which is valuable competitive intelligence for any SEO campaign.