Key Takeaways for Founders from the book “Traction” by Weinberg and Mares

Traction is a quantitative measure of customer demand. The book Traction by Weinberg and Mares perfectly guides founders on gaining traction, experimenting with the 19 marketing channels and explaining the real meaning of traction. In this article we share 7 key takeaways/quick summary from the book

Takeaway 1: Traction is growth -> Real Customer Growth -> Traction Trumps Everything

Takeaway 2: Are you thinking of gaining traction but don’t know how to start ?

This is how to get started?

• Give 50% attention to traction
• Run traction parallel to product development

Note: Building something people want is certainly required for traction, but it

isn’t enough. Four common situations where you could build

something people want, but still not end up with a viable business:

1. You could build something people want, but for which you just can’t figure out a viable business model
2. There are just not enough customers to reach profitability, too small market 
3. Hard to reach market, cost-prohibitive
4. Hypercompetitive market 

Takeaway 3: Build the right product because you can incorporate knowledge from your traction efforts

From the perspective of getting traction, you can think about working on

a product or service in three phases:

Phase I—making something people want

Phase II—marketing something people want

Phase III—scaling your business

Takeaway 4: TO PIVOT OR NOT TO PIVOT

Look for evidence from real product engagement, see the bright spots , if you find one don’t pivot

Takeaway 5: Hitting the Bull’s Eye (Strategy to gain traction: How to select the traction channel)

Step 1 Outer Ring : What’s Possible 

Brainstorm every single traction channel

Step 2 Middle Ring : What’s Probable

The second step in Bullseye is running cheap traction tests in the channels

that seem most promising. Go around your outer ring and promote your best

traction channel ideas to your middle ring.

These tests should be designed to roughly answer the following three questions:

1. How much will it cost to acquire customers through this channel?
2. How many customers are available through this channel?
3. Are the customers that you are getting through this channel the kind of customers that you want right now?

Step 3 Inner Ring : What’s Working

The goal of this focusing step is quite simple: to wring every bit of traction out of your core channel. To do so, you will be continually experimenting to find out exactly how to optimize growth in this traction channel

Takeaway 6: Choosing the Right Traction Goal out of 19 marketing channels

The right goal is highly dependent on your business. There are 19 possible marketing channels

1. Targeting Blogs

2. Publicity

3. Unconventional PR

4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

5. Social and Display Ads

6. Offline Ads

7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

8. Content Marketing

9. Email Marketing

10. Viral Marketing

11. Engineering as Marketing

12. Business Development (BD)

13. Sales

14. Affiliate Programs

15. Existing Platforms

16. Trade Shows

17. Offline Events

18. Speaking Engagements

19. Community Building

You can get a competitive advantage by acquiring customers in ways your competition isn’t

Takeaway 7 : Traction from fundraising perspective

Learn what growth numbers potential investors respect. How much traction is needed for investors is a moving target, but a sustainable customer growth rate is hard for investors to ignore. Prospective investors who understands your business are likely to appreciate your traction and hence invest earlier. Traction trumps everything.

Hope you enjoyed reading this brief summary!