What's the best thing you can do to gain traction?
I often see posts with people saying they struggle to gain interest or traction.
IMHO the best thing you can do is...build up your network now. Even if you have no product. Even if you don't know what you are going to make or do with your life!
Follow people. Help people. Be k
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In my opinion when people do not have traction it is either:
1/ Their product doesn't offer value
2/ They're not communicating efficiently the value of their product to customers (lack of trust, lack of education, bad communication...)
3/ They're just not doing enough marketing / nobody knows about them.
Let's see how to solve these 3 problems!
For #1:
For #2:
Build a MVP that has 1 landing page only: What you do. How you do it. Why it is important to solve that problem. How you solved it for others (testimonials), and a call to action (email / schedule a call / book a demo / book a webinar).
Get inspired by making a Google slides with all the MVP's/landing pages of your competitors / similar products.
Get help on IH to review it. And launch ASAP.
For #3:
After that scale with content / paid marketing or organic (referrals/WoM) :)
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Also important -- There is ALWAYS something you can do to get unstuck. Be comfortable with getting stuck. And we all get stuck. That's part of the process of entrepreneurship which is a less travelled road. If it was a cake road everyone would do it!
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Great question @rosiesherry!
I think this (and the rest of your comment) is great advice in general.
And especially good advice before you know you want to start a project/find traction.
For a founder who is already struggling to gain traction though, I think there's a slightly more impactful change you can make...
... stop thinking "how can I push my product onto people" and start thinking "how can I get people to explain their pain to me in detail, so we can solve it together"
When you stop pushing product and start pulling information from customers, it quickly becomes super obvious how to make sales, build a product people love, and get traction.
Hi Louis,
I totally agree that is super important to listen to the customers and understand their pain. But, I would not call it "super obvious". Getting people to explain their pain, find common points you can actually help with, and make an interesting offer/product out of it is far from super obvious or easy, in my opinion. Super important, but not easy.
Hey @Madamdo, thanks for the comment.
I agree totally that building a company and finding your first customers isn't easy.
But I think you slightly misunderstood what I meant by "it quickly becomes super obvious..."
I'm not saying it's obvious how to talk to people, to get them to explain their pains etc.
Instead, I'm saying that once you do that well, your audience makes it super obvious to you what arguments you can use to make the sale. What the perfect solution to their pain looks like (= your product) and so on.
The other comments have some great points!
One thing I am curious about and would love to hear some expanded points on is building a following prior to having a product.
This is one reason I've only lurked this community for so long - I didn't have anything to show so who am I to be giving advice, writing up content, etc.
If we're being honest I still feel that way, but I'm trying to break that mentality as everyone here shares a common goal and just wants to help each other out!
Well, if it helps. I love the idea of spaced repetition. I started this discussion a short while back on it.
So now, every time the subject of spaced recognition comes up I will hopefully remember @jeffshek and you. Though the chances are better if we keep (loosely) in touch.
If you can subtly teach me about all things spaced repetition (and learning in general), I'm all ears. I've had a sneak peak at your website too :)
Plus my husband and one of my boys does juijitsu too. So all kinds of things we can relate to and talk about.
SRSes are really useful but be careful! They're not a universal solution and a lot of people (particularly people studying languages) tend to get obsessed with them and hurt their learning as a result.
I definitely have no axe to grind against them, though. I'm an Anki contributor and have used it for quite a few things over the years.
Very cool, going to give that post a full read later when I have some time!
I really do appreciate you checking it out (noticed your email on my list of users right away!)
Always awesome to hear about others who train! Haven't given it a shot yourself?
But I agree and am learning that quickly - everyone in this community is likely more interested in you as an individual over your product, but if you make something useful, that's a plus!
Never underestimate the power of being kind and supportive. Anyone can do that.
It also helps to ask questions, It will help you learn, but also here on IH it can really help peeps think about and clarify what they are working on.
Excellent point!
It's great that you're upfront with yourself. There's a real possibility that - right now - you can't provide real value to an audience (which is the way to build a following).
But what you definitely can do is go out and learn.
Become an expert in something. Or - even quicker - become an expert in X for Y.
It's super difficult to be 'the' authority on copywriting, for example.
But pretty easy to become 'the' authority on copywriting for gyms.
Either way, the sooner you start discovering real people's problems and the language they use to describe them, the sooner you can start providing value and building your audience :)
Really appreciate the input!
I've definitely made a pact with myself to start releasing more content with a focus on learning by putting it out there. I think part of it is realizing that I don't always have to be correct as long as I'm open to meaningful critique and learn from it.
Honestly, I think all you have to do is make something people want.
Every time I've done that to one degree or another, a following has just sort of sprung up. The size of the following depends on just how many people want the thing and how badly, but I've done it at least half a dozen times under half a dozen handles.
The thing is, people are out there actively looking for things. When you build one of those things, people notice. I liked Adam's interview, too. He was making dozens or hundreds of little things that he—and others—wanted and sharing them. Maybe twitter isn't the ideal channel for everyone, but others can use the same methods to build a following.