Creating programs that allow customers and affiliates to earn commissions from product sales, increasing brand exposure.
– Amplified product promotion
– Requires management and tracking
– Amazon Associates program for affiliate marketing.
Existing Platforms
Leveraging existing platforms and networks to bootstrap your brand’s presence with limited resources.
– Immediate access to established audience
– Limited control over platform changes
– Selling handmade crafts on Etsy.
Trade Shows
Participating in trade shows to connect with your target audience and establish a deeper connection.
– Face-to-face networking
– Costs associated with booth setup
– Showcasing new tech products at a tech expo.
Offline Events
Hosting or participating in offline events to extend your brand’s presence beyond the digital space.
– Brand exposure in physical settings
– Event planning and logistics
– Sponsoring a local charity event.
Speaking Engagements
Presenting at conferences or events to establish yourself and your company as thought leaders in the industry.
– Thought leadership recognition
– Preparation and travel time
– Speaking at a marketing conference.
Community Building
Fostering a community of like-minded individuals aligned with your brand’s mission and values, serving as loyal supporters.
– Loyal and engaged customer base
– Requires ongoing community management
– Building an online community for gamers.
In the book “Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth,” Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo Founder) and Justin Mares identified 19 channels for growth also known as traction channels:
Targeting Blogs: niche blogs that you can leverage to get your product known to a very targeted audience.
Publicity: or PR to get the word out about your business and product.
Unconventional PR: things that you can do outside the box to amplify your product. Perhaps DuckDuckGo used billboards as a cheap and yet effective strategy to amplify its brand.
Search Engine Marketing: thus leveraging paid campaigns over other search engines to make your brand show on top.
Social and Display Ads: to target your audience based on demographics.
Offline Ads: to find your audience beyond the online experience.
Search Engine Optimization: to enable potential customers to find your brand through search.
Content Marketing: to build a trusted audience through great content.
Email Marketing: to establish a trusted audience that is highly engaged with your brand.
Viral Marketing: as a cheap way to amplify your brand.
Engineering as Marketing: using free tools or product features to amplify the product (perhaps via free features that prompt users to become paid customers).
Business Development: To build the distribution channels to scale the customer base.
Sales: to build a customer base, one by one, and get proper feedback on improving the product fast.
Affiliate Programs: to amplify your product and enable customers and affiliates to make money from its sales.
Existing Platforms: by using the network offered by the existing platform, you can initially bootstrap your brand with limited resources.
Trade Shows: to meet your target audience and create a deeper connection.
Offline Events: to enable your brand beyond the digital space.
Speaking Engagements: to establish yourself and your company as a thought leader.
Community Building: to foster a group of people in line with your mission and as your most trusted supporters.
Yet each of those channels has to be tested. How do you determine whether a channel is suited for growth? Gabriel Weinberg‘s answer relied on the Bullseye Framework!
The growth of DuckDuckGo didn’t happen in a day but it took more than six years. After launching in September 2008 Gabriel Weinberg spent the next two years refining DuckDuckGo. As he admitted in his Forbes’ interview in 2016,
I launched DuckDuckGo at the end of 2008, and in March of 2009 my first son was born and I decided to stay at home with him for at least the first two years. Through those two years I just kept at it and tinkering with it. At the end of 2010 all the iterative work on the project became better. Something clicked and people started to switch to it. Then in 2011 I started to treat it as more of a real thing, and at the end of 2011 I went and raised $3 million from Union Square Ventures.
After raising the money it was time to think about business. As we saw, from his previous ventures, Gabriel Weinberg had learned that if he wanted to launch a successful enterprise he had to take care of the distribution side. He also figured that for a startup the growth process isn’t too linear.
In short, for each growth stage, there are channels that work and channels that don’t. Often to hack the growth of your startup at a certain stage you have to try several channels. At the same time when reached a threshold of growth, some channels stop to work and you have to experiment with new ones. Those ideas matured in his book, Traction.
DuckDuckGo makes money in two simple ways: Advertising and Affiliate Marketing. Advertising is shown based on the keywords typed into the search box. Affiliate revenues come from Amazon and eBay affiliate programs. When users buy after getting on those sites through DuckDuckGo the company collects a small commission.
The bullseye framework follows three simple steps, with the aim of hitting one target: traction!
The first layer is about what’s possible. In other words, this is a brainstorming phase in which the team starts to gather at least a strategy per channel that may be used to start “moving the needle of growth.”
The second layer is about what’s probable. In short, this is the phase where you start experimenting and testing the strategies that were brainstormed in the first step. Here it is crucial to start with cheap tests. That is not the phase where you have to go all in. Look at it as a testing phase. Where you start testing the market to see what works and what does not.
The inner ring is the bullseye. That is where you identified the channel or channels that are fueling the growth. Therefore, focusing on them at least until they will bootstrap your startup to the next growth phase. Eventually, you’ll restart the process to identify which channel or channels will work for the next growth stage (to dive more into it go to Medium).
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Case Studies
Targeting Blogs:
Leveraging niche blogs to reach a highly targeted audience.
Mint: Frequently guest-posted on personal finance blogs to establish authority and drive traffic.
Buffer: Started as a blog before it became a product, building an audience through consistent content.
Publicity:
Using PR to spread the word about the business and product.
Fitbit: Gained attention by being featured on TechCrunch after its initial launch.
Airbnb: Garnered significant media attention when they offered unique accommodations, like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
Unconventional PR:
Burger King: Introduced the “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign, where users had to unfriend 10 people on Facebook to get a free Whopper.
Tesla: Elon Musk released all their electric car patents to the public, gaining significant PR coverage.
Search Engine Marketing:
Booking.com: Used aggressive AdWords campaigns targeting hotel-related keywords to drive bookings.
Zappos: Utilized Google Ads extensively to dominate shoe-related search queries.
Social and Display Ads:
Casper: Ran innovative Snapchat ads to target younger audiences for their mattresses.
Blue Apron: Used Facebook and Instagram ads with appealing food images to attract new customers.
Offline Ads:
Squarespace: Ran a Super Bowl commercial, dramatically increasing its brand visibility.
Pepsi: Collaborated with celebrities for billboard ads to promote their beverages.
Search Engine Optimization:
TripAdvisor: Capitalized on user-generated reviews to rank for numerous travel-related terms.
Backlinko: Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique helped his SEO blog rank for competitive keywords.
Content Marketing:
HubSpot: Created a vast library of resources, blogs, and tools to establish itself as an inbound marketing leader.
Red Bull: Produced high-quality, adventurous content, including a space jump.
Email Marketing:
Sumo: Offered valuable tools and resources in exchange for email sign-ups, then nurtured these leads with valuable content.
Groupon: Gained traction by sending daily deal emails to subscribers.
Viral Marketing:
Dropbox: Offered free additional storage space for users who referred friends.
Hotmail: Added “Get your free email at Hotmail” at the bottom of every user’s email.
Engineering as Marketing:
HubSpot: Offered a free website grader tool, attracting users and then upselling them on their platform.
Mailchimp: Created the “Email Design Guide” to help users and promote their service.
Business Development:
Spotify: Collaborated with Facebook for easy sign-in and sharing, dramatically increasing user sign-ups.
Netflix: Partnered with device manufacturers to pre-install the Netflix app.
Sales:
Salesforce: Deployed a direct sales team to onboard big enterprises.
Oracle: Used aggressive sales strategies to dominate the database market.
Affiliate Programs:
Amazon: Launched one of the earliest and most successful affiliate programs.
Bluehost: Offered substantial commissions to bloggers promoting their hosting services.
Existing Platforms:
Slack: Built atop existing enterprise systems, facilitating easier adoption.
Candy Crush: Utilized Facebook’s platform for user acquisition before transitioning to mobile.
Trade Shows:
GoPro: Showcased their cameras at action sports events, attracting a dedicated user base.
Tesla: Exhibited at auto shows to showcase their unique electric vehicles.
Offline Events:
Apple: Hosted product launch events that fans and media eagerly anticipate.
Shopify: Organized “Shopify Meetups” for entrepreneurs and store owners.
Speaking Engagements:
Tony Robbins: Established his authority in personal development through numerous speaking engagements.
Gary Vaynerchuk: Used speaking engagements to promote his personal brand and businesses.
Community Building:
Harley-Davidson: Fostered a tight-knit community of brand loyalists.
Reddit: Built a platform where communities on countless topics can thrive.
Key Highlights
Traction Channels for Growth: The 19 traction channels identified by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares for achieving explosive customer growth in their book “Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth.”
Targeting Blogs: Leveraging niche blogs to reach a highly targeted audience.
Publicity: Using PR to spread the word about the business and product.
Unconventional PR: Employing outside-the-box strategies to amplify the product, such as billboards.
Search Engine Marketing: Utilizing paid campaigns on search engines to increase brand visibility.
Social and Display Ads: Targeting the audience based on demographics through social and display advertising.
Offline Ads: Expanding reach beyond the online experience through traditional offline advertising.
Search Engine Optimization: Optimizing content for search engines to enable potential customers to find the brand.
Content Marketing: Building a trusted audience through valuable content.
Email Marketing: Establishing a highly engaged and trusted audience through email communication.
Viral Marketing: Employing tactics to encourage word-of-mouth sharing and amplify the brand.
Engineering as Marketing: Using free tools or product features to promote the product and convert users to paid customers.
Sales: Acquiring customers individually and gathering feedback to improve the product.
Affiliate Programs: Amplifying the product and driving sales through affiliates who earn commissions.
Existing Platforms: Leveraging the network offered by existing platforms to bootstrap the brand with limited resources.
Trade Shows: Meeting the target audience and establishing deeper connections at industry trade shows.
Offline Events: Extending the brand presence beyond the digital space through offline events.
Speaking Engagements: Establishing thought leadership by speaking at events.
Community Building: Fostering a community of supporters in line with the brand’s mission.
The Bullseye Framework: A strategic approach to determine the most effective traction channels for a startup’s growth.
Possibility Phase: Brainstorming and gathering strategies for each channel that could potentially drive growth.
Probability Phase: Experimenting and testing the brainstormed strategies to identify what works and what doesn’t.
Bullseye Phase: Identifying the most effective channels that fuel growth and focusing on them to bootstrap the startup to the next growth phase. After reaching a threshold, reiterating the process to identify channels for the next growth stage.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
