Startups – Gaining Initial Customer Traction

If you’ve ever worked in a new startup company, you’ll probably agree that gaining initial customer traction is one of the biggest marketing challenges you’ll ever face.  You have to invent/discover everything – effective positioning, messaging, media, and much more.

Last month SmartBiz.com asked me to document an effective process for gaining this elusive initial traction.  The article “Creative Discipline: Starting Your Startup” can be found here: http://www.smartbiz.com/article/articleview/1258/1/54/ .  Of course this process won’t work in every situation, but it has been highly effective in my past startups.

A few of the key elements are:

– Understand your target customer and their motivations for buying your product
– Google adword (tracking, limiting campaign scope, optimizing flow, etc)
– How to effectively scale campaigns
– Benefits of a “free hook”