Getting TractionSam Witteveen

Traction shows your idea is working

What is traction for you?

Users? Customers? Money?

B2B - Measure 1. Customers 2. Number of transactions 3. Size of transaction 4. Money

B2C - Measure 1. Traffic 2. Conversion to Users 3. User Engagement (desired actions) 4. Money

It’s the sign of real & consistent growth.

Define what it means to you. - vanity metrics are for press only

Know Your Customer

Who is really the customer?

The Customer is who gives you the money.

If your making an advertising play the customer is the advertiser not the users

If you are doing freemium play then not all your users are your customers

The Channels

Ads

PR

SEO/SEM

Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Virality

Social Marketing

Partnerships

Biz Dev

Direct Sales

Affiliates

Community Outreach

Events

Distribution Channels

Pick and test your channels carefully.

Don’t just use what everyone else uses.

You usually have one that delivers 80%

Often the disruption of big companies is a disruption of distribution.

No Traffic Problems

You don’t have a traffic problem you have an offer problem - offer not converting enough to buy traffic

Offer Problem - no offer , wrong offer , not sustainable offer.

Measurement Problem - Most startups don’t know what traffic is worth to them

Traffic is Everywhere

You just need to know how much you can pay

B2C - Kabam $13 / per user

B2B - R.E. $5,000

Do Stuff that Doesn’t Scale

Reach out to people manually

At the start going from 1 to 2 customers is 100% growth

Evangelize - Do whatever it takes to get people on board.

Read Paul Graham piece

B2B

The Musts

Everyday you need to something to get a new customer.

Send a email, make a phone call, visit people

You have to be the companies best sales person

Know Your Numbers

LTV - Life time value

CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost

Conversion Rate

Can you go negative?

If you have a high LTV then CAC can be more than the cost of the first purchase.

The more you can spend that your customers the more likely you can beat them.

SAAS - Freemium

Reward continuity - give a discount for yearly

$67 is the magic number

Most SAAS will plateau out at a few k paying users

B2C

A Good Goal

$1/ User / Month

Ads , Sell own products, Affiliate Offers

Early growth 1%/day

Know Your Numbers

Retention/Engagement Rates

ARPU - Average Revenue Per User

Cohort Analysis - Watch Phil Libin video

DAU/MAU percentage - you want 50% often get 10%

Measure Actions not people - Messaging / posts

Know What Causes your Traction

Facebook: 30 Friends = come back everyday

Starts with 10 Friends in 14 Days

On boarding Process

Virality & Sharing?

Ads - Adwords etc?

Virality

K Factor Viral Loop

Signup-> email friend (10) -> Email Opens(50%) -> CTR (40%) -> Sign Up (20%) = 0.4

0.9 is dying 1.1 is success

Buying Users/Downloads

Don’t buy users to look cool

FP didn’t buy till we had over 1 mil organic

You can buy to do tests of virality

If doing it Facebook is the best platform

Seeding

Reddit

Creating the community

Posting yourself - Kevin Rose Tiiny

Post to bring people back to your site

Overall

Focus 50% of your time on getting traction

Measure like crazy. Experiment like crazy.

As you grow try new stuff. What doesn’t work now could work later on.