Authors: Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Publisher: Portfolio Penguin
Reviewer: Faye Hawkins, MD, First Base
Traction is an interesting read but definitely most relevant either to a client-side start-up business looking to do or buy-in marketing, or for marketing agencies that work with a lot of start-ups.
It contains a lot of useful perspective on what marketing looks like to non-marketers and there are some interesting insights into how investors might view a business, so in terms of understanding what matters to start-up entrepreneurs when they procure marketing services its certainly a good read.
I always try to learn one new thing from each new book – in this book there are a couple of marketing golden nuggets that stood out:
1. Test before you optimise – find the best performing channel before you start tinkering with the details. Often agencies cut to the end without having tested all of the possible channels – the book rightly makes the point that you’ll sometimes be surprised at what actually works against all the perceived wisdom of marketing theory. Includes details on actual tests you can run to identify the right channels.
2. Only aim at the ‘bullseye’ – focus on what works to the exclusion of everything else. This rankled a little with my ‘integrated approach’ instincts but the argument is well made and the bullseye framework makes it simple to implement and work through.
There are plenty of real-life references and examples to add colour and credibility to the strategy the writers are recommending – and they need it too – for marketing pros, some of what they discuss is either very elementary or goes against the grain of what we know to work in B2B. Roll with it though and it does give a fresh perspective that I found triggered a few new ideas and a bit of inspiration! The discussions around how Marketo and Hubspot gained their own traction gave some useful insights into how the rest of the marketing world responded to solutions in marketing itself – plenty of food for thought on these.
