Software Growth

Traction

Traction is measurable proof that customers want your product, such as growing revenue or retention, plus the bullseye method for finding your channel.

Traction is proof that your product is getting somewhere with real customers. It shows up as growth in revenue, paying users or usage, and as customers who stay. Investors ask about it, and so should you, because it tells you whether to keep building, change course or spend more on marketing.

For a practical guide to acquisition, read growth channels: the 19 traction channels, sponsorships, and SaaS experiments. It explains where each channel fits, what to test, and how to measure customer quality.

Traction vs product-market fit

Early traction means a few customers and some signs of interest. Product-market fit is the stronger state in which demand pulls the product along. You can have traction in one small channel without fit, but you cannot have fit without traction.

Weinberg's definition and the bullseye framework

Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo, wrote the book Traction with Justin Mares. Their view is that startups usually fail from lack of customers, not lack of product, and that founders pick channels badly: they use the ones they know or try everything at once. The book names nineteen traction channels, including viral marketing, PR, search engine marketing, social and display ads, offline ads, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, business development and offline events.

To choose among them Weinberg describes the bullseye framework in three rings:

  1. Outer ring: what is possible. Brainstorm an idea for every channel, even the ones you doubt.
  2. Middle ring: what is probable. Pick the most promising and run cheap tests on each.
  3. Inner ring: what is working. Focus on the one channel that moves the needle, your core channel.

Example

You run a $29 per month tool and want 100 new customers. You test three channels with $300 each. Content marketing gets 4 customers, a directory listing gets 9 and cold email gets 2. The cost per customer is $75, $33 and $150. 300 divided by 4 is $75. 300 divided by 9 is about $33. 300 divided by 2 is $150. Directories win on cost, so you put your next dollars there. That test is your customer acquisition cost by channel.

What good traction looks like

There is no universal number. It depends on your price, market and stage. Look for growth that repeats, customers who keep paying and acquisition costs you can afford. A single launch spike is not traction. Paul Graham's advice in his essay on doing things that don't scale is to recruit your first users by hand, and to aim for steady week-over-week growth, not a one-time bump.

Common mistakes

  • Spreading effort over many channels without measuring any of them.
  • Counting free signups as traction when nobody pays.
  • Relying on a channel you do not control, such as a single platform.
  • Scaling a channel before you know why it works.

For bootstrapped founders

Rob Walling's stair step approach echoes the bullseye idea: use one channel for your first product, preferably free and organic. Channels like programmatic SEO can fit when you have the data. The goal is to get one channel working before you add another.

Sources

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