A Mathematical Model to Pick the Right Marketing Tactics

Get Traction

Gabriel Weinberg is the only Social Pros guest who has returned to talk about the same book as his first visit, because it’s just that good. The second edition of “Traction,” co-authored with Justin Mares, will be released on October 6, 2015.
The new version is actually shorter—better edited, more crisply defined to getting traction, and includes some new pieces as well. As with the first book, it’s intended for startups but is applicable to big business as well.
The book is designed to give companies a mathematical framework to think through all the different ways that they can go into rapid customer acquisition mode, often called “traction” in business.
Gabriel is a triple threat: He’s a serial entrepreneur, a technologist, and a marketing and communications juggernaut. As a physics major at MIT, the tech piece came early. Gabriel got sick of physics halfway through college, visited an uncle at his startup, and decided he would do that instead.
His first company tanked, but his second company thrived, in large part due to his work in customer support and, the third leg, marketing. Now he is the successful founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo.

In This Episode

• Wearing many hats (and visors)
• “Marketer’s fallacy” and overcoming biases to be more effective in your business
• 19 ways to achieve traction in marketing, developed through a massive amount of interviews with successful businesses
• Using a logic problem to narrow down from the 19 to your top 3
• The informed consent line that should be drawn when it comes to online privacy
• Scalable traction for big businesses

Quotes From This Episode

“Why not just use something you already know? Because that other thing you don’t know might be the best channel for you.” —@yegg
“You should be navigating towards underutilized channels in your industry, because those are the ones that have the capacity to have the biggest bang for the buck.” —@yegg
“In business and especially in social, it is really hard to admit that maybe your baby is getting ugly. There’s a psychological barrier to say, ‘You know what? Let’s just pull the plug.'” —@jaybaer
“When you approach a business problem, the business problem does not care what your experience is. The right channel may just be the one that you don’t know about.” —@yegg
“Marketer’s fallacy: the idea that as a consumer, which all of us as marketers and communicators also are, we think that if something is attractive to us, if a message is ingratiating to us, ergo that will work for our audience. Too often times, I don’t think that’s a case.” —@adamcb

Resources

• Gabriel Weinberg’s website
• “Traction,” Gabriel’s book he co-authored with Justin Mares
• DuckDuckGo, where Gabriel is CEO & Founder
• DuckDuckHack, Gabriel’s latest project providing instant search answers to developers