How to gain traction for a business, emphasizing controlling the press by researching and directly engaging with reporters,.
How to gain traction for a business, emphasizing controlling the press by researching and directly engaging with reporters, and reaching out to users for feedback in the early stages.
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 sure that you hit the Like button below. Also, leave a comment and subscribe to this channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the good videos that we’re launching every week. Then, don’t forget about checking out the fundraising training, which is the program where we help founders every step of the way with everything related to fundraising. We provide
live Q&As, templates, agreements, a community of hundreds of founders all over the world, helping each other. I think that you would find tremendous value in it. So, thank you. Thank you so much for watching.