Picking the right marketing channels with the Traction Bullseye
One of my favourite books on the non-fiction bookshelf is Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares.
Traction
Available on Amazon
Both startup founders, the authors defined a model for gaining traction in the early days of a businesses’ life.
The focus of the book is on finding Product Market Fit and securing a first round of investment.
But the process is just as relevant as you pass through Series A and build out your go to market team.
Having raised your series A, at around $3m ARR, you will have found product market fit - and now it is time to find go to market fit - a predictable, repeatable and consistent revenue engine that gives Series B investors the confidence to pour more fuel on the fire.
Your Series A investor pitch will have been built around increasing your TAM,
and as you increase the size of your marketing team from around five to nearly 20 people you’ll be tempted into multiple directions to find these new customers
“At Zendesk we did this and it worked great…”
“At Twilio we activated the developer community by doing this….”
“At Salesforce we did Dreamforce…”
As I say consistently on the blog - you need to build your own playbook, not re-run someone else’s.
You have a different company, a different product, with a different set of customers at a different time.
You need to use your own eyes.
The Traction Bullseye
Gabriel and Justin define a bullseye similar to the image below.
In the outside ring are 21 different ways of reaching your prospects.
These 21 cover the majority of potential channels, and can act as buckets for any newer channels that get developed over time.
Note: in the book there are 19 channels - I had added in Customer Referrals (which become increasingly important once you have some customers) and Partners (resellers and system integrators) which are not adequately covered by Business Development
Most are self explanatory but I’ll highlight a couple for clarity:
Existing platforms: here we think of marketplaces like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Salesforce AppExchange, or social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter (X), or Facebook. If you are providing a mobile app then consider the AppStore or Google Play.
Engineering as Marketing: As buyers take more control over their buying process they want to be educated about the problem they face, the size of it and the economic impact of not solving it.
Your engineering team can create diagnostic tools, benchmarks, business case assessments that uses your corporate knowledge and data to provide value to potential buyers.
HubSpot’s website grader is one of the best known for this:
Business Development: here we are thinking about strategic partnerships - joint ventures, licensing deals and distribution agreements. An example might be an electronics company doing a deal with Volkswagen to have their technology embedded in every new vehicle.
Unconventional PR: you can include direct mail and gifting in this category. Sending targeted prospects gifts from champagne to cookies to open the conversation is increasingly popular to cut through the noise.
Step 1: Workshop a plan for every channel
As you scan around the outer ring you are mentally ticking off - good, good, possibly, no, definitely not…..
This is a mistake.
Get your core team into a room (a physical room) with a whiteboard and some flip charts.
I made a template for you. Make a copy to use it yourself.
Across a full day, spend 15 minutes workshopping how you would use each channel for your specific customer segment.
You might sell a developer-focused security tool. If you had to use affiliate marketing to reach developers how might you do that?
You’d think about the sites and communities and podcasts and YouTube channels that developers hang out in.
You’d think about the people that they trust to suggest tools that they might use.
You’d think about the newsletters they subscribe to to learn.
By forcing your team to spend 15 minutes on one channel, especially one you might have skipped over, you’ll come up with some innovative and unexpected ideas.
Top Tip: run the Bullseye exercise for each customer segment and persona you are targeting. You will use different channels to target a developer that uses your product from the CFO that pays for it.
Step 2: Pick two or three to test
Now we move into the middle ring.
Having worked through every channel, you can now run limited scope tests across two or three that have the highest potential for a specific persona.
You may come up with five or six that show good potential - but I encourage you to only focus on two or three at any one time otherwise you’ll lose the impact.
The tests you will run are cheap and quick and will guide you to answer these three questions highlighted by the authors:
How much will it cost us to acquire customers through this channel?
How many customers are available through this channel?
Are the customers that you are getting through this channel the kind of customers you want right now?
If we continue our developer affiliate marketing idea, we might register for an affiliate network that targets sites used by developers,
And we could contact 20 of the top developer focused blogs and propose a referral fee for any signups that come from a unique link you provide them.
Run these tests over a short number of weeks to test their effectiveness. We are looking for rapid insight into whether that channel could be successful if we scaled up our effort and investment.
Step 3: Focus on your core channel
Having completed your middle ring tests there will be one channel that stands out from the others.
This is your core channel and you’ll want to focus your efforts here.
Other channels may have provided meaningful results, but your team should focus on scaling up the most effective channel for this persona rather than spreading their attention too thin.
Once that channel is delivering, then start to look as your secondary and tertiary options.
A bullseye for each customer segment
At Series A you are expanding your TAM - you may be opening into new customer segments, new territories, or launching a new product.
One of the pitfalls founders can fall into is thinking product market fit in one area translates to another. It does not.
As an example, you will likely have a core channel for one customer segment (your users), and another for another customer segment (your economic buyer).
The bullseye exercise is one you should run multiple times, and in parallel for different sets of customers you are trying to target.
An example from my own business
I’ve used this tool for a number of years and it is my default for assessing how I’ll reach customers.
For my own business I am trying to reach founders who have just raised their Series A (or are just raising), and the VCs that invest in those Series A rounds.
Right now I have three middle ring tests I am focused on:
Content Marketing: regular focused content written for Series A founders. Content that is then turned into multiple formats across images, audio, video and printed.
Partners: building relationships with Series A focused Venture Capital firms, and Revenue Technology platforms to support their portfolio companies and customers.
Unconventional PR: I’m creating some unique and useful gifts for sending to Series A founders and their investors that should generate discussion and referrals.
Selecting external strategic advice is based on trust - and through these three I can demonstrate my thinking and generate warm introductions.
I’ll come back to update this article when I can confidently fill in the centre ring!
Summary
The Bullseye framework helps you prioritise which channels to use to reach your customers.
Create a Bullseye for each customer segment and persona you are targeting.
Continually re-evaluate as you build out your TAM and product set.
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Whenever you are ready, there are three ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.
Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your Revenue Operations strategy.
Business Model Design Workshops - I’ll work with you and your team to design or refine a business model for a new or existing product.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.