Traction

How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares

Publisher: Penguin, 2015, 222 pages

ISBN: 978-0-241-24253-7

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Marketing

Last modified: Oct. 31, 2022, 12:13 p.m.

Most startups don't fail because they can't build a product. Most startups fail because they can't get traction.

Building a successful company is hard. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn't the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It's how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers.

Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base,and offers a three-step framework to figure out which ones will work best for your business. No matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.

  • Preface: Traction Trumps Everything
  1. Traction Channels
  2. Traction Thinking
  3. Bullseye
  4. Traction Testing
  5. Critical Path
  6. Targeting Blogs
  7. Publicity
  8. Unconventional PR
  9. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  10. Social and Display Ads
  11. Offline Ads
  12. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  13. Content Marketing
  14. Email Marketing
  15. Viral Marketing
  16. Engineering as Marketing
  17. Business Development (BD)
  18. Sales
  19. Affiliate Programs
  20. Existing Platforms
  21. Trade Shows
  22. Offline Events
  23. Speaking Engagements
  24. Community Building
  • Appendix: Middle Ring Tests