Hi. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be talking about how to get
traction for your business. Traction is that keyword – that specific and secret keyword
that all the investors are talking about. That traction comes to mind like a hockey
stick that goes up, where people are super excited, and things are working. Perhaps,
you’ve already achieved product/market fit. In today’s video, we’re going to cover
this and really understand what goes into it and some of the different tactics that
you can actually use for your own business. So, with that being said, let’s get into
it. The first thing that you want to do is, you
want to control the press to a certain degree. You want to do your research, you want to
know which reporters are covering your segment, which ones could be interested in covering
your business, and getting those reporters to dive deeper into what your business does,
what are some of the ins and outs of it. The way to do this, and the big mistake that
I always see founders making, is that they hire a PR agency, and they delegate to others
to do this. Now, we live in a world where everything is transparent. You can see who
is excited about your specific segment as a reporter, and there is no reason why you
can not reach out and build that relationship via Twitter, via LinkedIn, or via other mechanisms.
You can even leave a comment on the articles that they’re publishing. That is a good
way for them to keep you top of mind because, at the end of the day, reporters are very,
very busy, but if you are top of mind, and you keep up, and you keep following-up; eventually,
they will cover your business. With that being said, don’t delegate the PR components of
the outreach and the coverage. Take it upon yourself to have those press mentions covering
your business. Then, you want to go where your users are.
Especially during the early days, you want to make sure that you’re getting as much
feedback, as much quantitative and qualitative analysis on what they think about your service
and what they think about your product. You can go, for example, on Eventbrite, or
even CrunchBase to understand what kind of events are happening right now. Maybe you
can join a meetup group to see where your potential users are hanging out. Go to those
events and meet people, create a network around those potential users, those potential customers,
and tell them what you’re up to and how you can address some of the problems that
perhaps they may be experiencing. The next is invite testers, people that are
going to be early adopters, like people that have an interest in this. They may be very
influential, and by them using it for free, they would tell their friends, maybe they
have a large following. So, things like that where you’re building a network of people
that are using the product and creating that nice word-of-mouth that ultimately is going
to give you momentum. Sometimes, giving it for free to certain people could end up being
a really nice advantage to kick it into high gear when it comes to progress.
The next thing is partnerships because distribution is everything when you’re thinking about
traction. One thing that you can do is, take a look at who some of the players that may
benefit from your company solution or service and reach out to them to build that relationship
and to essentially build a partnership because you never know. Maybe they have a large newsletter
or a large following, a ton of subscribers that maybe, for them, sending an email and
mentioning your product. Maybe you’re giving a kickback to this company or giving a referral
fee. Maybe it makes sense. I think that partnerships and business development
deals could come in very handy. Maybe you have some friends working at certain companies
that can also help you and give your business a push. So, partnerships and business development
deals can help you out from a distribution perspective.
Let’s face it. Places like LinkedIn, where you’ve worked so hard at developing a network
– all these people that you’ve made over the years, maybe there’s a certain keyword
that you can use on the search of LinkedIn. Then, there are going to be certain people
that are going to pop up that can make the right introduction to either the right customer
or to the right company for a business-development deal.
Don’t be afraid; you’re never going to know if you don’t ask. There’s nothing
to lose. You’re already coming to the table with nothing that has been gained, so you’ve
got to get out there and ask for those introductions from people that already know you.
Then, you want to track the data. There are great tools like Google Analytics, which is
free, or Kissmetrics for tracking how people are interacting with your own platform because
having access to that data is going to help you understand what some of those channels
are that you’re using to onboard people that are working, and what are the other channels
that are not working. So, what you want to do is, you want to see
what those challenges are that are giving you the absolute best return and double down
on those, whether it’s an advertising channel, whether it’s a content channel, marketing;
on the communications side, PR. Whatever that is, you really want to know
which ones of those not only are bringing people in, but also people that are engaged
with your product and engaged with your service because, at the end of the day, you may have
a graph of people that are coming in, but then, eventually, that may go to zero.
You want to have the graph that goes up, but then also, the graph inside of that, which
doesn’t go to zero, but the people that you are going to be able to maintain – those
people that are going to be engaged and that contribute to a positive retention of your
customer. And that’s essentially what you want.
With that being said, hopefully, you liked this video, and if that was the case, make
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the world, helping each other. I think that you would find tremendous value in it. So,
thank you. Thank you so much for watching.