Testing new channels for acquiring customers is not only challenging, but also time – and resource-consuming. Especially when you're at the beginning of your business journey, searching for this one channel to drive a significant portion of new revenue. Is there any way to speed up this process? We've figured it out and want to share it with you. We called it Traction Highway, so that you can use it to move forward on your way.
According to Weinberg and Mares there are 19 channels that startups can use to gain traction. This is good because there are a lot of varied options to choose from so everyone can find something suiting their skills and market. On the other hand, it is also bad because of choice overload – with too many options it’s very tough to make a decision.
The process that authors recommend is as follows.
In this article we will present you a predefined list of six traction channels to test first. Or as we call it – Traction Highway – as they are very likely to get you to traction fast!
Why these five? There are a couple of reasons.
Also, each of these traction channels soaked deeply into the tissue of our everyday life.
On top of these five, there is also one more channel that we recommend to test early. It differs from company to company. This channel should correspond with your superpower, as we call it, which can be your founder’s special skill or a company’s asset. This super power must be able to produce some tangible results. For example, „having a great team” by itself doesn’t produce any specific output. On the other hand, if you built a community around a certain topic and it targets the same audience as your product, you should certainly give it a try as a traction channel.
This list is giving you more ideas for what skills and assets may become your unfair advantage, and what are their corresponding channels.
Let’s sum up! Based on Weinberg's and Mares’ work and combining it with our experience, we have come up with a Traction Highway framework. It goes like this:
If you like the 19 traction channel framework, but don’t know where to start, you should certainly check out our Traction Highway, which is a predefined list of six proofed channels to test first. Five of them are universal and one is unique.
Give them a try and tell us how it went!