GROWTH VERSUS TRACTON: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!
According to Brian Balfour, startups go through three stages: Traction, Transition, and Growth. The startup’s goals, metrics, channels, focus, team structure etc. evolve and change as a business passes through these three phases.
There’s a lot of talk across industries regarding “growth” vs. “traction” and the different tactics that support each.
While the term “growth” refers to a positive rate of change, this could be short-term in nature. Traction, on the other hand, refers to sustained growth over time and presents a far greater challenge.
Knowing where you are on this track helps you understand what you should be spending your time on.
1. Understanding Traction
Build a great product: To build a great product, you need to keep one thing in mind; build something that people want.
Have a clearly defined mission and goal that includes specific metrics and time bounds.
The hustle has to be real. For a new company, the biggest constraint isn’t really money, it’s you and your time.
Measure everything. Even early on when your volume is low, you have to start keeping track of the effectiveness of your efforts.
Have an awesome customer experience. Keep in touch with your customers. Ask them for feedback. Understand why they chose you over your competition. You can gain a good competitive advantage with these insights.
Keep innovating. Continue to develop your product and improve your customer experience.
Investors want evidence that the “dogs are eating the dog food”. They want proof your financial projections are not like Alice chasing the ever-elusive rabbit. Are your financial projections concrete? Investors want to know!
Breaking Down Traction
Goal: Your one and only goal at this stage should be to find the product-market fit among your target market.
Metrics: You should be all about retention. If your product does not keep its users, there is no point in growing the top of the funnel.
Volume: Your resources are very limited at this stage. So, resources spent increasing sales volume might work against you especially if you are still struggling with your product-market fit. These resources could be spent on understanding retention. It’s a waste.
Channels: Try out a few to find the one that works best for your business. Once you find it, focus on it. Avoid dabbling in a bunch of channels at once.
Team: You should have one-person leading growth who is thinking about sustainably growing your numbers every time.
2. Understanding The Transition Phase
During the transition stage, the business will go through some growing pains; making mistakes and learning from different experiments.
This is the stage where the foundation is laid for the team, tools and process needed for growth. The process makes the growth machine. Every business needs a process that will help build a scalable, predictable and repeatable.
Breaking Down The Transition Phase
Here you take the information you receive from the first phase and build on what you have to take it to the next level.
Goal: This is when you start to identify and understand different growth levers that are catered toward your particular business.
Metrics: During this phase, you should watch and understand your Cost Per Acquisition and Life-Time Value.
Volume: Your small inflow of people should now get larger at this stage.
Channels: It’s time to focus and choose the most effective channel(s). Build on it and the growth rate will continue to increase.
Optimization: Switch your attention from macro-optimization to micro-optimization.
Team: Switch from just 1 person and start building a team with specific job descriptions to help with growth.
3. Understanding The Growth Phase
During the Growth phase, you’ll want to increase staff and support as well as make small changes based on the activities carried out during the previous phases.
Goal: Start altering the growth levers you identified in the transitioning phase. Make them fit your specific needs.
Metric: The growth rate is still very important, but it shouldn’t be your only focus anymore. Since growth is now occurring, you’ll want a shorter payback period in order to have a better investment.
Volume: With volume in mind, you’ll want to get as many people as you can to create buzz about your company or product.
Channels: Do everything you can with the channel you have to fulfill its full potential.
Optimization: It’s now time to focus solely on small changes that can also gain large results.
Team: You’ll want to create more positions on your team so continued growth and success is possible.
Many new businesses often fall flat on their faces and find it difficult to get off the ground.
It’s not enough to have a eureka idea. You have to have paying customers in order to stay in business. The most well-meaning organization with a clear business plan may still struggle with traction.
In most cases, business owners invest time and resources in gaining a ton of traction. However, they may not have a sound strategy for morphing the product.
The reality is unless you give users a great experience, they will abandon you.
You have to get feedback from the customer and find out the customer’s needs. This will help you correctly transform into the business that will succeed. Most businesses pivot once or twice before real traction starts to occur.
*Published by www.thestarta.com
*All content and images are not mine.
There’s a lot of talk across industries regarding “growth” vs. “traction” and the different tactics that support each.
While the term “growth” refers to a positive rate of change, this could be short-term in nature. Traction, on the other hand, refers to sustained growth over time and presents a far greater challenge.
Knowing where you are on this track helps you understand what you should be spending your time on.
1. Understanding Traction
Almighty traction. Nothing trumps it. Nothing!
Not strategy, not beautifully developed growth plans, not Nigerian Jollof rice.
Nothing!
Traction is king to all. So, what is it exactly?
Almost every new business founder who has asked investors for funding has heard the harmless rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.”
Simply put, traction proves that somebody wants your product. It is substantial growth in sales, revenue, customers (those who actually buy) and market penetration.
To measure traction, a company needs to know what metrics it will use to define success. Depending on the industry and market factors, traction may be measured through sales, customer response or market research.
Traction is a key point in a company’s growth.
Not strategy, not beautifully developed growth plans, not Nigerian Jollof rice.
Nothing!
Traction is king to all. So, what is it exactly?
Almost every new business founder who has asked investors for funding has heard the harmless rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.”
Simply put, traction proves that somebody wants your product. It is substantial growth in sales, revenue, customers (those who actually buy) and market penetration.
To measure traction, a company needs to know what metrics it will use to define success. Depending on the industry and market factors, traction may be measured through sales, customer response or market research.
Traction is a key point in a company’s growth.
So, how can you go about gaining traction?
Build a great product: To build a great product, you need to keep one thing in mind; build something that people want.
Have a clearly defined mission and goal that includes specific metrics and time bounds.
The hustle has to be real. For a new company, the biggest constraint isn’t really money, it’s you and your time.
Measure everything. Even early on when your volume is low, you have to start keeping track of the effectiveness of your efforts.
Have an awesome customer experience. Keep in touch with your customers. Ask them for feedback. Understand why they chose you over your competition. You can gain a good competitive advantage with these insights.
Keep innovating. Continue to develop your product and improve your customer experience.
Investors want evidence that the “dogs are eating the dog food”. They want proof your financial projections are not like Alice chasing the ever-elusive rabbit. Are your financial projections concrete? Investors want to know!
Breaking Down Traction
Goal: Your one and only goal at this stage should be to find the product-market fit among your target market.
Metrics: You should be all about retention. If your product does not keep its users, there is no point in growing the top of the funnel.
Volume: Your resources are very limited at this stage. So, resources spent increasing sales volume might work against you especially if you are still struggling with your product-market fit. These resources could be spent on understanding retention. It’s a waste.
Channels: Try out a few to find the one that works best for your business. Once you find it, focus on it. Avoid dabbling in a bunch of channels at once.
Optimization: Focus on large macro optimizations. Try big changes in messaging, target audience, etc. Try not to focus solely on micro-optimizations such as word tweaks.
Team: You should have one-person leading growth who is thinking about sustainably growing your numbers every time.
2. Understanding The Transition Phase
During the transition stage, the business will go through some growing pains; making mistakes and learning from different experiments.
This is the stage where the foundation is laid for the team, tools and process needed for growth. The process makes the growth machine. Every business needs a process that will help build a scalable, predictable and repeatable.
Breaking Down The Transition Phase
Here you take the information you receive from the first phase and build on what you have to take it to the next level.
Goal: This is when you start to identify and understand different growth levers that are catered toward your particular business.
Metrics: During this phase, you should watch and understand your Cost Per Acquisition and Life-Time Value.
Volume: Your small inflow of people should now get larger at this stage.
Channels: It’s time to focus and choose the most effective channel(s). Build on it and the growth rate will continue to increase.
Optimization: Switch your attention from macro-optimization to micro-optimization.
Team: Switch from just 1 person and start building a team with specific job descriptions to help with growth.
3. Understanding The Growth Phase
During the Growth phase, you’ll want to increase staff and support as well as make small changes based on the activities carried out during the previous phases.
Goal: Start altering the growth levers you identified in the transitioning phase. Make them fit your specific needs.
Metric: The growth rate is still very important, but it shouldn’t be your only focus anymore. Since growth is now occurring, you’ll want a shorter payback period in order to have a better investment.
Volume: With volume in mind, you’ll want to get as many people as you can to create buzz about your company or product.
Channels: Do everything you can with the channel you have to fulfill its full potential.
Optimization: It’s now time to focus solely on small changes that can also gain large results.
Team: You’ll want to create more positions on your team so continued growth and success is possible.
Many new businesses often fall flat on their faces and find it difficult to get off the ground.
It’s not enough to have a eureka idea. You have to have paying customers in order to stay in business. The most well-meaning organization with a clear business plan may still struggle with traction.
In most cases, business owners invest time and resources in gaining a ton of traction. However, they may not have a sound strategy for morphing the product.
The reality is unless you give users a great experience, they will abandon you.
You have to get feedback from the customer and find out the customer’s needs. This will help you correctly transform into the business that will succeed. Most businesses pivot once or twice before real traction starts to occur.
*Published by www.thestarta.com
*All content and images are not mine.
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