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