A Step-by-Step plan to get initial traction

There seem to be a lot of resources out there that teach startups how to reel in their first batch of users. However, most of these information seem to be extremely scattered, as most articles tend to focus on describing the ONE channel that worked best for them.

During our research process, we compiled a list of different mediums that can help startups attract their initial users. We also documented a step-by-step guide that describes the appropriate tasks and objectives companies should focus on at different times of their product life cycle, and the major customer acquisition channels they could utilize at each of these phases.

However, due to the generalized nature of this ‘guide’, it is in no means going to be the ‘perfect plan’ for everyone. Our intention is to share our findings, so you can try all these ideas out and find the one channel that works best for you.

In a nutshell, an early startup’s life cycle can be identified by three major chunks: Product Development and Validation, Gradual Exposure / Trickle Marketing, Growth.

“First, build something that scales.”

During product development and validation, it’s all about understanding the problem, understanding your customers, and validating your solution. However, when people say that “Marketing starts from day 1” — it is true. How can you validate your product without getting input from interested potential users?

Phase I: Product Development and MVP

Understand the problem and your target market.

Create a simple and effective app description

Identify specific target customer segmentations and creating customer personas.

Build an initial product and verify Product Solution Fit

Start reaching out and collecting beta sign ups, and verify your “hypothesis” and “assumptions” about the market and its problem with mockups.

Forecast your Growth Engine

- Sticky — addiction, habit forming, acquisition paired with super high retention = ever-increasing user base

- Viral — coefficient > 1.0, optimize referrals = exponentially growing signup numbers

• Paid — monetizes better than competitors, LTV advantage, paid channels = more efficiently acquire users than competition

“Do the things that don’t scale” — Paul Graham

About 2–3 months before launch, you will be hitting the pre-launch phase. At this time, content marketing and organic traffic may be your best friend. The goal is to pinpoint your exposure efforts toward your specific target market and gradually increase exposure. This way, you will get enough users and growth to further validate your product, while not attracting extraneous attention from big competitors that major press releases will bring (not to mention that they can be hard and costly to achieve early on).

Phase II: Pre-Launch （2–3 months before launch)

Refer to the list of most common launch channels we gathered.

Build a web presence

• Website Landing Page — create an optimized landing page — best way is to lead everyone here and generate downloads (AB Test it)
• Comment under discussion posts related to the problem you’re solving (blogs, Quora questions etc…)
• Make posts and answer questions inside relevant communities (LinkedIn groups, Product Hunt, relevant Reddit pages).
• Utilize pre-launch / beta platforms to get early sign ups
• Utilize content marketing — write blog posts to educate your target audience on the problem you are solving
• Create different descriptions for different user personas
• Link everything together, make it easy for users to navigate between your online presences, and make it easy for them to share it.

Collect 1000–2000 interested emails before launch and incentivize early adopters with “exclusive offers”

Create a Pre-Launch Buzz and make a database of all your beta sign ups

Keep testers engaged and build emotional connection by revealing key product features, blog posts, and materials like screenshots, videos, infographics.

Engineer the product for launch — apart from completing MVP features, optimize viral loop and feedback loop, and setup comprehensive tracking!

Communicate with beta testers and further verify the needs from each customer segmentation identified in Phase I

Start reaching out and building relationships with bloggers and app publishers in your niche, focus on specific ones that are medium sized first since it’s easier to get coverage

Have traffic tracking for all launch channels — understand who your users are and where your traffic comes from

Perform competitor analysis — understand what channels your competitors use, and what keywords they are optimizing for web and app store rankings

Phase III: Trickle Marketing

Further Verify your growth engine, and identify a dominant one:

- Sticky

- Viral

- Paid

Utilize specific launch channels (bloggers, partners, online presence) to attract early users in a low key manner (too much media exposure can cause unwanted attention from competitors)

Continue with content marketing — e.g. blogging and generating social media presence

Start preparing to ask for press release from major website publishers

“Spray and Pray” across paid ad channels with a small budgets to test them out. Mobile solutions should stay on mobile ads for higher conversion.

Identify the most suitable and cheapest paid ad channels, and try to achieve a low Customer Acquisition Cost by limiting your traffic from paid sources.

Try and talk to 2–5 new sign ups every day to learn what they want/need, and get product feedback.

Phase IV: Product Optimization

Reach out to your top 100, or 1000 active users, and make them your core ‘customer advisor’ group. Keep them highly engaged.

Identify key features that are prohibiting growth or retention — e.g. make referral easier, improve activation and retention etc

Engage early users, and further refine customer segmentation, pay attention to signs of product market fit.

Collect feedback, optimize features, pay attention to user metrics and optimize the shit out of them:

1. Acquisition and Activation Metrics (traffic tracking, sign up conversion)
2. Engagement & Retention Metrics (session length, churn etc)
3. Quality Metrics (bugs & crash reports etc)
4. Behavior Metrics (favorite features vs unused features etc)

Now Pause Here

You may think it’s all uphill from now on, but the truth is most startups spend a significant amount of time between Phase II and Phase IV. Be extra sensitive toward any signs proving, or disproving Product Market Fit between these phases. It is okay to take a step back, and re-evaluate your product, and go through Phase II — IV all over again if you feel like you weren’t hitting the sweet spot. The whole essence of adopting the Lean Startup model is not just ‘iterating’, but iterating to prove what works, and what DON’T.

Phase V: Launch & Accelerate Growth

Out of all the channels you’ve tried, try to identify the ONE, or few that worked best, which gives you scalability, and the lowest Customer Acquisition Value.

Continue question yourself about Product Market Fit every step along the way

Launch: Press release and public relations — work with a PR company

Continue pinpointing the most effective and economic customer acquisition model you had identified, and continue exploring for more.

Potentially utilize paid advertisements, or any other online/offline channels proven to be successful

Identify the most prominent, and sustainable growth engine + customer acquisition channel with their Lifetime Value in mind

Phase VII: Post Launch

Track & grow

Further improve your app description

Continue optimizing your engagement / feedback loop

Build a push strategy — push notifications, emails, etc

Retain new users and activate old users

Push for virality and improve user experience

A/B Test and Optimize your app, ads, and landing page

There’s always going to be a new plan.

We all wish launching is as simple as what a blog can describe,

- but it never is.

A very helpful mentality to have is keeping total clarity on what you are “assuming”, and continue challenging, testing, and verifying all your assumptions and hypotheses every step along the way. If you are constantly aware of all the assumptions you are making, and every action you take is paired with a clear hypothesis, then you will always learn something from the outcomes of your decisions. Hopefully this mentality will keep you more oriented along the way.