“Traction” by Weinberg & Mares
"Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares is a book that product managers can read to learn how to achieve rapid customer growth for their products. The book provides a comprehensive guide to the process of achieving traction, along with practical advice and case studies for each of the nineteen traction channels.
As a product manager, you know that achieving traction is critical to the success of any product. Without traction, your product will struggle to survive. Weinberg and Mares define traction as "the rate at which a business is able to acquire new customers." In order to achieve traction, you must focus on each stage of the customer acquisition funnel: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, and Referral.
The authors provide a deep dive into each of the nineteen traction channels: Viral Marketing, Public Relations, Unconventional PR, SEM, Social and Display Ads, Offline Ads, SEO, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Engineering as Marketing, Target Market Blogs, Business Development, Sales, Affiliate Programs, Existing Platforms, Trade Shows, Offline Events, Speaking Engagements, and Community Building. They provide practical advice and case studies for each channel, as well as tips for getting started and identifying metrics to measure success.
For example, if you are interested in using Content Marketing to achieve traction for your product, the authors suggest that you create high-quality content that provides value to your target audience. They provide examples of businesses that have used Content Marketing to achieve traction, including Moz, which provides SEO and Content Marketing software, and KISSmetrics, which provides web analytics software.
One of the key takeaways from the book is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to achieving traction. As a product manager, you must experiment with multiple traction channels in order to find the ones that work best for your product. The authors suggest that you start by identifying your target audience, and then experiment with different channels until you find the ones that work best for reaching that audience.
The authors also stress the importance of measuring and analyzing data in order to understand what is working and what is not. As a product manager, you should identify key metrics to track, and use data to make informed decisions about where to focus resources. For example, if you are using SEM to achieve traction for your product, you should track metrics such as cost per click, conversion rate, and customer lifetime value, and use that data to make decisions about where to allocate your SEM budget.
"Traction" is a resource for product managers who are looking to achieve rapid customer growth for their products. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the process of achieving traction, as well as practical advice and case studies for each of the nineteen traction channels. By leveraging experimentation, data analysis, and a willingness to try new things, product managers can take their products to the next level.