Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

by Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares

In Traction , serial entrepreneurs Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares give startups the tools for generating explosive customer growth

'Anyone trying to break through to new customers can use this smart, ambitious book'
Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup

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.

'Here is the inside scoop, the latest, most specific tactics from the red-hot centre of the Internet marketing universe. From someone who has done it. Twice'
Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

Genres: Business, Startup, Buisness, Nonfiction

1 pages, Audio CD

Published March 1, 2021

About the author

Co-author, Super Thinking. Co-author, Traction. Author, The Great Race. CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo

Reviews

[Chip Huyen]

A good overview of different growth channels for technical founders who don't yet have experience in the space. The book is tactical, more like a high-level tutorial.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for startup CEO and head of growth. It's an overview of multiple different efforts you can take to grow your product.

You should spend 50% time on product development, and 50% on getting traction.

Traction channels:
1. Targeting niche blogs
2. Media mentions
3. Unconventional PR
4. Paid search
5. Social and display ads
6. Offline advertisement
7. SEO
8. Content marketing
9. Email marketing
10. Widgets, microsites and free tools
11. Customer referrals
12. Strategic partnerships
13. Sales
14. Affiliate programs
15. Existing platforms
16. Trade shows
17. Offline events
18. Speaking engagements
19. Community building

Bullseye framework - trying different channels, and iterating on the most promising ones
Critical path - reaching traction goals with fewest efforts possible

Every chapter has nice overview and tips for trying each of traction channels.

Good book/chapters summaries:
- https://visme.co/blog/traction-book/
- https://sipreads.com/traction
- https://www.slideshare.net/SpencerMar...

[Adrian Goh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: Did not finish

Tips are rather generic and not much to be acted on. There isn't really any secret sauce and I don't see it being that useful in achieving explosive growth. However, might be good for you if you have minimal marketing background and have not read much growth articles or books.

[Tuan Doan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a good overview of the various strategies that startups can use to grow. If you work in Growth, you will know that there isn't a universal, no one-size-fits-all winning formula; success often comes from throwing a lot of things on the wall and see what stick i.e. testing a range of approaches to see what works best. The author outlines more than twenty established growth channels, providing a valuable resource for those looking to experiment with different methods. However, the broad coverage means that the book only scratch the surface of each tactic, rather than examining any in great depth.

[May Al Dossary · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, hopefully as a future entrepreneur, I found the nineteen traction channels were very good methods to gain customers and expand business growth. Also, the number of examples provided to explain real-life issues and success stories were extremely helpful to deeply understand how these traction channels work. Moreover, the visuals and figures provided with each framework were simply explained, right to the point, and well captured, which eventually made this book a reference for beginners in the business marketing learning journey.

[Luis David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book talks about things you might not realize until after you’ve been through them or experienced as an entrepreneur. Great knowledge to be expected from this book. I’m a entrepreneur or have been for 4 years and it blew my mind how many things I did wrong or didn’t do at all or had no clue about them. Must read for all.

[Ahmad hosseini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author talks and examines 19 different marketing channels. He also talks about strategies and tactics for each channel and how you could use each channel efficiently.
I think if you want be a marketer this book could be an excellent starting point. It gives me a lot of inspiration about how you could use different channels on each stage of your business.

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not a start-up nor am I running a tech company so maybe I should’ve known better than to pick up this book but I tried anyway. There were a few good nuggets in here but most of it I found irrelevant.

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Many entrepreneurs think That if you build a great product, customers will be a path to your door. This is a fallacy. —“If you build it, they will come” is wrong!”

“Talk to people who previously failed at what you were trying to do.”

[Arie van Gemeren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid introductory text to marketing strategies. Probably too broad to be super useful but helpful in terms of exploring the various ways to try and grow your business. I got some good nuggets of wisdom from it and areas to dive deeper, and learned about some new channels I wasn’t aware of.

[Logan Streondj · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good fairly thorough book on the topic. Gotta test multiple channels to get clients and then pick something that works well. And once that one is no longer moving the needle redo the process.

[Walker Weitzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marketing manual that will help you focus your efforts. Extremely valuable info.

[Gregory Doermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book every startup founder needs to read.

[Rahul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kind of like Lean Startup for marketing - a useful if high-level overview of 17 different channels you can use to get traction for your product and case-studies for each.

[Valentin Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible, comprehensive and synthetic. I would have liked more abstraction/conceptualization.

[Soumyadeep Mukherjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great for absolute basics and overview. Not as depth oriented.

[Cj 888 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ideas, a bit repetitive. Can use as reference.

[Alexander Krastev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could’ve given 5 stars just because of the few ideas I took from the book, but it’s a timely read and it’s kind of old for a 5-star review now