Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

"In the early days at Thumbtack, so much of our growth was coming from SEO that it made sense for it to dominate our growth roadmap. We spent disproportionate time generating content, earning links, and optimizing conversion on SEO landing pages. Over time, however, it became clear that we were running into diminishing returns from these efforts, a... See more

Over the past two decades, top internet distribution waves included SEO & SEM arbitrage, email “spam,” and the Facebook newsfeed, among others. With each new wave, savvy internet upstarts leverage these platforms, channels, and communities as strategic ways to grow explosively.

Building an audience through a mailing list, blog or podcast is by far the best source of traffic. I encourage you to try at least one. And finally, search engine optimization (SEO) is a must. At a minimum you should create a keyword list and perform on-page SEO, with your next steps focusing on link building strategies to raise your organic search

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For consumer companies, there are only three growth “lanes” that comprise the majority of new customer acquisition:1. Performance marketing (e.g. Facebook and Google ads)2. Virality (e.g. word-of-mouth, referrals, invites)3. Content (e.g. SEO, YouTube)