Traction is paramount in the business world and in startups. . Traction is a validity statement for the start-up. As the managing partner of Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson, says :-
“Traction is certainly one of the most overused words in the venture capital vernacular. But it is also the “shorthand” people use to talk about how much uptake a given project has gotten in the marketplace.Many want to understand the business model. We don’t need any of that to pull the trigger. But we want to see the most important thing – uptake. We think that’s the hardest nut to crack.”
Fred Wilson
Director of Union Square Ventures
Traction indicates that the start-up is world-friendly (and investors). It really was common sense. If the startup adds value, people use it. People won’t use it unless it provides sense.
Traction is not exclusively confined to the client base or there are also several different sizes of a sector, and traction across these facets is advantageous.
Types of Traction Chart
Types of traction to focus on for E-commerce Businesses :
- Revenue growth
- Average sales or gross margins
- Customers
- Average return visits/customer
- Units sold
Types of traction to focus on for Consumer Products :
- Units sold
- Revenues
- Number of retail outlets product sold in
- Distribution partners
Types of traction to focus on for Premium SaaS product for small business :
- Revenues
- Conversion to paid customers
- Registered users
- Customer acquisition costs
- Lifetime value/customer
- Distribution partners
Types of traction to focus on for Enterprises :
- Revenues
- Number of clients
- Average contract size
- Qualified sales pipeline
Types of traction to focus on for Fashion Q&A Consumer Internet product :
- User numbers
- Engaged users and type of engagement
- Virality
- Partnerships
Types of traction to focus on for Retail :
- Revenue growth
- Units sold
- Average sales or gross margins
- Customers
- Lifetime value/customer
Modes of Demonstrating Traction
Formation
A firm without yet the legal entity is not as impressive or exciting as a legally constituted business with a full-time working team as a tax identifier, a business bank account, collateral, or team/employees. The tendency towards legitimacy is evident.
The fundamental steps to build up a legal entity, create a basic website and start creating collateral legitimize your enterprise past the idea. Luckily, they’re pretty easy to do. You will not be taken very seriously without these initial steps.
Think of it like an adage, that in an interview you won’t get the job, but without it you won’t even be seen. Potential customers and investors cannot be pitched on a company that only exist in your head
Creation Of Product and Team
Every product creation and iteration shows traction. Taking note of the various steps in the production of a product (alpha, beta, full release) represents a significant achievement for your market development and an opportunity to illustrate what you learned.
In order to shorten your and paint a clearer and more detailed picture of your development, Baker recommends frame the traction in various product stages.Besides building a product, it is a significant sign of traction to demonstrate the growth of your team. It is widely said to be their real ideology for investors, ‘Bet on the Jockey, not the horse”
The founding team and initial staff is important for a successful start-up early on. It is necessary to take time and fire quickly to ensure that startup time and resources are used efficiently during its crucial phase of development.
Great talent represents your own vision as an entrepreneur and seller, as well as the potential of your company. It shows that other intelligent people see and appreciate the business potential you present to a start up company for other opportunities.
A organization should aim to gain social proof and encouragement from other strong or influential people in addition to drawing great talent for the team itself.
Customers
Although its not easy to bring the investor community much attention, it gives the startup traction. It is not enough. It is the finest possible form of support for displaying pay customers consistent with money, product, and cost.
You are in an excellent position to start-up if you can pull payment customers without collecting funds. Indeed many start-ups believe it is important to increase capital first and foremost to concentrate on early momentum and the acquisition of paying users.
The contractor will start to create or produce his product offer for sale immediately in the ideal situation. Unfortunately, financing is a requirement of building a product to market to consumers for many entrepreneurs. In this situation, traction in the form of sales or profitability cannot be demonstrated, and this is OK.
While testimonials are an important tool to demonstrate a need or say a story for a consumer, Brendan Baker from Greylock Partners warns against depending too much on them and also warns against ads as traction.
Final consumer forms used to prove traction are free customers or consumers. Not all customers have to pay to show the value of the product. There has always been a concept of offering a free demo to the customer to want more.
Initial beta customers will early access an early discount to gain real customer reviews and start developing a user base. Google’s pitch deck has been rumored to consist of a single slide: user development.
One recent trend was to follow a new-and-try-to-monetize revenue model for acquire-users. Few companies have had some measure of success with this model, and time will say how these few will do in the years ahead.
15 Early Traction Growth Hacking Strategies For Startups
All right, so you now know numerous ways of showing traction. But how can this traction be created and pushing and attracting users in particular? According to Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo,
“The second major thing I’ve learned from interviewing people on getting traction is that initial traction can happen in a lot of different ways, often unpredictably.”
Gabriel Weinberg
Founder / DuckDuckGo
He also said there are a range of successful techniques including traditional non-traditional, Search Engine Labeling and Optimization (SEM/SEO), blogs, viral videos, etc. Besides you can try other strategies too. As following :
- Have A Clearly Defined Goal
- Using Your Pre-Launch List
- Do Things That Don’t Scale
- Build an Awesome Product
- Find Good Partners
- Get Your Analytics Right
- Strongly concentrate on email list building
- Case Studies & Use Cases Are Amazing
- Leverage Adjacent Markets
- Embrace Freemium
- Invite Based Rewards
- Utilise Branding To Your Advantage
- The Hack of Community
- The Social Profile Hack
- The Email Signature Hack
Traction for some is simple, but most difficult. Early adopters, consumers and reviews are critical to your product’s continuous development. These 15 traction growth strategies can help you boost your business.