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Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers Hardcover – August 25, 2014

by Gabriel Weinberg (Author), Justin Mares (Author)

311 customer reviews

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Most startups end in failure. Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don't have is traction -- real customer growth.

This book introduces startup founders and employees to the "Bullseye Framework," a five-step process successful companies use to get traction. This framework helps founders find the marketing channel that will be key to unlocking the next stage of growth.

Traction is a guide to getting customers, written for startup founders, marketers, and those interested in how today's startups grow and get traction. This book shows you how the founders of several of the biggest companies and organizations in the world like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Paul English (Kayak.com) and Alex Pachikov (Evernote) have built and grown their startups. We interviewed over forty successful founders and researched countless more growth stories to pull out the repeatable tactics and strategies they used to get traction.

"Many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don't have a good distribution strategy." -- Mark Andreessen, venture capitalist

Too often, startups spend months (or years) building a product only to struggle with traction once they launch. This struggle has startups trying random tactics - some ads, a blog post or two - in an unstructured way that leads to failure. Traction shows readers how to systematically approach marketing, and covers how successful businesses have grown through each of the following channels:

Viral Marketing
Public Relations (PR)
Unconventional PR
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Social and Display Ads
Offline Ads
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Engineering as Marketing
Target Market Blogs
Business Development (BD)
Sales
Affiliate Programs
Existing Platforms
Trade Shows
Offline Events
Speaking Engagements
Community Building

This book draws on interviews we conducted with the following individuals:
Jimmy Wales, Co-founder of Wikipedia
Alexis Ohanian, Co-founder of reddit
Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup
Sam Yagan, Co-founder of OkCupid and CEO of Match.com
Jason Cohen, Founder of WP Engine
Chris Fralic, Partner at First Round Capital
Rand Fishkin, Founder of SEOmoz
Noah Kagan, Founder of AppSumo
Jason Kincaid, Blogger at TechCrunch
Alex Pachikov, Co-founder of Evernote
Ryan Holiday, Exec at American Apparel
Andrew Warner, Founder of Mixergy
Garry Tan, Partner at Y Combinator
and many more.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a must-have, essential book if you want to be good at growth." - Aaron Ginn, Growth at StumbleUpon

"Traction is an absolute must. The Bullseye Framework Gabe and Justin layout is probably the greatest tool in my catalog over the past year. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or just getting started, Traction offers a framework that creates efficiency, clarity, and focus. With startups as crazy as they are, I strongly encourage you to take the time to make your life a little easier. Traction is equal to and should be read alongside The Lean Startup." - Adam Kearney, Founder & CEO, Saunter

"Traction is a critical guide for entrepreneurs looking to grow and scale their businesses." - Patrick Vlaskovits, bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur

"I've read quite a few books about startups over the years, and apparently this was the only one worth keeping." - Chris Stucchio, Data Scientist

"Traction belongs on every startup founder’s bookshelf. I’m buying copies for the CEOs of my current Angel Investments." - Kevin Dewalt, Angel Investor

"Anyone--founders, managers, and executives--trying to break through to new customers can use this smart, ambitious book." — Eric Ries, bestselling author of The Lean Startup

“Here is the inside scoop, the latest, most specific tactics from the red-hot center of the internet marketing universe. From someone who has done it. Twice.” — Seth Godin, bestselling author of Linchpin

“The entrepreneurs who walk out of our offices with term sheets walk into them with Traction. It's a pragmatic guide to solving the entrepreneur's number one challenge.” — Fred Wilson, cofounder of Union Square Ventures

“The question every founder asks after shipping is always: how do I get traction? This book actually answers it.” — Alexis Ohanian, cofounder & Executive Chairman of reddit

"A common question I get is: 'How do I know if my business is getting traction, or how do I get traction for my business, or how do I get users?' Traction answers all of these questions and more.” — James Altucher, bestselling author of Choose Yourself

About the Author

Gabriel Weinberg is the Founder & CEO of DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn't track you with over a billion searches in 2013. He is also an angel investor in early stage startups. Weinberg has been featured on CBS, FOX, the Guardian, the Washington Post and many more. Previously he was the Co-founder & CEO of Opobox, which was sold to United Online in 2006. Weinberg holds B.S. in Physics and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT. He is based on Valley Forge, PA with his wife and two boys.

Justin Mares is the former Director of Revenue at Exceptional, a software company that Rackspace acquired for 8 figures in 2013. He has previously founded two startups (one acquired, one bust) and runs a growth meetup in San Francisco. You can find his writing on marketing and personal-development on his blog, justinmares.com.

Hardcover: 258 pages
Publisher: S-curves Publishing; First edition (August 25, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0976339609
ISBN-13: 978-0976339601
Package Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Average Customer Review: 311 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #306 in Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Marketing
- #380 in Books > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Web Marketing
- #1200 in Books > Computers & Technology > Internet & Social Media

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Thomas D. Kehoe

Weinberg and Mares beat me to it!

September 29, 2014

Verified Purchase

I was outlining a book proposal when I found "Traction." My proposal first explained that product development gets easier, faster, and cheaper every year, so startups no longer fail because they can't build their product. Instead, startups fail when they hit the marketing wall.

According to The Economist (2014 Sep 13), "marketers say they have seen more change in the past two years than in the previous 50."

According to the Harvard Business Review (2014 July-August, p. 56) "In the past decade, what marketers do to engage customers has changed almost beyond recognition....we can't think of another discipline that has evolved so quickly."

It can seem like marketing is getting harder each year, but actually in some ways it's getting easier and cheaper, e.g., Facebook's targeted ads. What's needed is a guide to how marketing is changing.

Unlike the zillions of e-books about Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, etc., my book would cover and compare all marketing channels. Unlike the e-books, my book would include case studies of real companies. Unlike the marketing textbooks, my book would focus on tech startups, not on dog treat bakeries and corner grocery stores. Unlike the books that say you'll get rich if you follow their formula, my book would say that marketing is changing rapidly now, and the marketing plan that worked even a few years ago won't work now. I proposed teaching entrepreneurs instead to make small-scale experiments, see what works and what doesn't, and continuously evolve their marketing.

I scrapped my book proposal because "Traction" is that book.

There are some things I would add (and perhaps Weinberg and Mares will in a second edition). My proposal included case studies of both success and failure. "Traction" only has successful case studies, leading to a sense that every marketing strategy leads to success. Including both successes and failures would lead to a framework for what channels work for what types of companies. E.g., viral social media likes may work for a microbrewery, but not for colonoscopies!

Points I like about "Traction":

- Entrepreneurs should spend 50% of their time on product development and 50% on marketing, but product development sucks up all your time. It's more satisfying to add a new feature to your product than to spend your limited capital on a marketing test that completely fails. We feel comfortable developing our products but feel clueless marketing them.

- Integration with Lean Startup. That was the book I proposed a few years ago, and Eric Reis beat me to it!

- How much traction (downloads, press coverage, sales) investors want to see before they invest increases every year, as marketing gets faster and cheaper to some startups.

- Every entrepreneur has to hand sell the first few customers.

- Building a viral marketing campaign will take one or two engineers three to six months! I.e., viral marketing doesn't magically happen just because your product is so cool.

Stuff that's missing:

- Celebrity endorsements is a 20th channel.

- A chapter about market research, e.g., why you should ask open-ended questions instead of closed-ended questions.

- The PR chapter needs a section on finding journalist contacts, se.g., whether to use the Meltwater or Cision databases.

- Tradeshows are about having outgoing, enthusiastic salespeople, not about having a flashy booth.

107 people found this helpful

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Thomas K

This is the book for next-gen marketers who are actually responsible for revenue

August 20, 2015

Verified Purchase

I've been head of marketing and strategy for startups and interesting brands for several years, and this was the first book I've ever read that is actually useful and something I frequently reference in channel, strategy and overall marketing brainstorming sessions. Why? Because it provides a comprehensive view of contemporary best-practices in marketing, without all the old baggage and fluff to which many marketers still cling. Today's marketing means you're actually responsible for revenue. If you're still doing the kind of marketing that focuses on activity and top-of-funnel vanity metrics (like how many unsuspecting tradeshow attendee badges you zapped thanks to your TV giveaway, or passing a huge seemingly impressive number of crappy MQLs to sales so you can hit your quotas), then please don't waste your time reading this. You won't get it, or you work somewhere where you can't actually apply this learning due to all the internal risk-adverse forces working against you. For everyone else who believes in the new of ways of marketing (basically, marketing without all the BS), this book and others in the series should be in your e-reader or physically sitting next to your laptop right now.

9 people found this helpful

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Steven Fies

Doesn't tell you how to implement each channel, but does a great job of challenging you to think outside the box for cust acq.

December 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Traction was extremely helpful for me as a budding entrepreneur and author. In the book, Weinberg and Mares lay out 19 different "traction channels" everyone looking for their next client should consider. Furthermore, they challenge you to give a hard look to some of the channels you would normally dismiss without a second thought. Why? Sometimes the channel you least thought would work turns out to be highly effective.

Something I appreciated about this book was how much objective research went into it. The list of traction channels wasn't something they pulled out of their backside, but rather something that resulted from extensive interviews with entrepreneurs and business people who have experienced real-life success with them.

The only reason I didn't give Traction five stars is because many of the sections lacked the practical advice needed to put these strategies into action. To that extent, I felt like it left me hanging in quite a few areas. Not every reader is going to know who to contact for a PR campaign, how to get started with SEO, or the best way to setup a sales process/team. If you are looking for very specific information like this, realize that this book won't deliver it to you.

Now to be fair - each of the 19 channels probably deserves its own book to describe such detail, and I don't think this book was intended to be an encyclopedic guide to implementing every channel. This book was surely intended to be more of a top-level overview. To that end, it was great for calibrating one's understanding (from a leadership/executive perspective) of each channel. It inspired me to think outside the box with my own business and projects, and I still found a lot of value in it.

Anyone new to the startup world or who plans to start their own business deserves to read this book - and probably also the Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Some have said Traction and the Lean Startup go hand-in-hand, with Traction focusing more on customer acquisition and Lean Startup focusing more on product development. The build-measure-learn concept is present in each, however, and is a clear theme for all new business owners.

Once again, would certainly recommend to anyone new to the startup world or entrepreneurship. It's a quick and easy read with many good ideas.

6 people found this helpful

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Amzn Shopper

19 tactics, how to analyze, deploy, and change them for growth

March 29, 2017

Verified Purchase

Simple, but worthwhile book. I've re-read it a few times. It's basic point is that there are (at least) 19 channels to gain traction (customers) for a product or service, and we tend to only look at a few we might be familiar with. The second point is that after traction in one channel is achived, for additional traction, a different channel or tactic is likely needed for the next phase. Detailed discussion of the different channels and examples of their use in various organizations. Definitely worthwhile for those who are doing product marketing, at any stage of an organization's growth.

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