Get your first customers

What are the actual distribution channels I can choose from?

There are roughly 19 well-known ones, SEO, content, paid ads, viral/referral, email, sales, business development, PR, community, existing platforms, events, and more. You don't need all of them; you need to identify the one or two your customers actually flow through. Read 'Traction' for the full menu and how to test each.

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When you have no budget, the worst move is to pour your limited time into a channel that was never going to work for your product. Traction gives you all nineteen ways a startup can reach customers and a simple way (the Bullseye framework) to bet on two or three worth testing first. Treat it as a menu and a method, not a verdict: your free channels will come from this list, you just have to find the ones that fit you.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

From Portfolio (Penguin Random House) by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

  • Most startups die from no distribution, not a weak product, so give traction real time, not leftover time.
  • There are nineteen channels (content, SEO, communities, PR, sales, and more), and most founders ignore the ones that would actually work for them.
  • Bullseye: brainstorm across all channels, rank them, then run cheap tests on your top few instead of guessing.
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Terms in this answer

Search Engine Optimization

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