This document discusses finding alternative marketing channels to acquire customers. It recommends using a "Bullseye Framework" approach of brainstorming potential channels, ranking them, prioritizing the top ones, testing them, and then focusing marketing efforts on the best 1-2 channels found. The document is authored by Jason Cohen and encourages using the Traction Book website for channel-specific content and tools.
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Finding Your Distribution Channel talk at Product Austin
8. Channel Selection
Its
a
compe,,ve
advantage
if
you
can
acquire
customers
in
channels
that
your
compe,,on
cannot.
Thats
more
interes,ng
than
duking
it
out
with
AdWords
compe,tors
in
posi,ons
13.
-Jason Cohen
@jwmares
14. In Closing...
1. Use Bullseye to find your 1-2 channels
2. For content resources and tools for each
channel, discuss.tractionbook.com
@jwmares
15.
Thanks to Product
Austin for having me!
@jwmares
Editor's Notes
#2: My background. I run growth group meetup in SF, marketers from Pinterest, Lyft, Hubspot, Hotel tonight share whats working to grow
#3: 1500+ startups launch each year from accelerators and incubators. Seed funding is plentiful. Building a product is now the easier part. The hard part is traction.
#5: If traction is as important as product, and the reason most startups fail, it stands to reason that you should focus on traction as much as product. This is what we call the 50% rule.
You need a strategy to approach traction dont just throw things at a wall
#6: How most startups and marketers approach this process randomly! They throw things against the wall hoping something sticks.
#7: Including founders of Wikipedia, Kayak, Mint, Reddit, Twitch.tv and more. Collectively, the founders of the companies we interviewed are worth more than $5b
Found that startups get traction through 19 different channels
#8: Each channel could make sense for different kinds of businesses, depending on the stage youre in.
Generally, the channels that worked to go from 0-10,000 will be different than the channels youll use to go from 10,000 100,000 customers
Dropbox story
#9: Worth thinking about channels your competitors wont consider using
Dropbox went into massively competitive file hosting and sharing space, and were the only company (at the time) using referral system to acquire customers
#10: How do you go about figuring out what channels make sense for your business? Bullseye!
Bullseye is a 5 step system that will help you find your traction channel. Its to traction what the lean startup is to product development.
This is the framework companies like Uber, Lyft, Pinterest are using to achieve massive scale. We include these steps to counteract natural biases of founders and marketers:
Only going with whats worked in the past
Not experimenting with channels the competition isnt using. Following the herd
This is especially dangerous given how quickly channels mature. If you want to build the next Zynga, you need to find a new channel. Wont be able to leverage FB the way Zynga did
Going to take you through some examples of how you can test a channel
#11: Case study: Facebook
This channel works really well for companies who have low/no marginal costs for new customers, and those that naturally engage others in an individuals social circle
Dropbox did B2B virality well, but still wasnt truly viral
Test to run:
A 2-sided rewards program via email
Get your current users to share with friends, see how often they do it. Is it meaningful?
#12: Case Study: Virgin Airlines
Test to run:
Follow this article to get the names of 40+ reporters who cover your industry - http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/09/24/google-news-api-mturk-press/
Email them using scripts from our book, or the ones here - http://fourhourworkweek.com/2012/07/18/ryan-holiday/
#13: Case Study: OkCupid
Hockey stick graph
Also helped control and normalize online dating
How to test:
Create best piece of content you could imagine creating. Market it in the best way you could imagine marketing it. Then, measure
Repurpose your content