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Traction trouble? Here’s where to start.

Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.

Let’s be honest: if you’re struggling to gain traction, there is no silver bullet that kickstart your growth.

I’ve seen this exact situation play out time and time again. An eager CEO or VP Sales, dismayed at plateauing growth (or worse), pins all hope on ‘the next thing’ to change the game. The next thing comes, and… as predicted, the results aren’t as expected. But never mind; “The next thing will help!”

There’s definitely a lot to say about keeping motivation up, or creating a reality distortion field to eke out extra performance. But a white lie can quickly snowball and create mismatched expectations which leads to ambiguity and inertia.

Traction is tricky to define, but people generally refer to it as top-of-funnel lead generation, sales revenue, and ‘being seen’ – a mixture of qualitative feels and quantitative evidence.

There’s no quick fixes, only work. Here’s some tips to help overcome the challenges you’re facing.

Positioning is strategy in action

The way you describe your product in your customer’s world is a vehicle to define your go-to-market strategy.

  • Who is your customer, and what’s going on in their world?
  • What value do they desire – and how does your product help them get closer?
  • What are the features that matter – and how do you communicate that?
  • How are you positioned in the market, against competitors, and priced?

But most of the time, the concept of positioning is relegated to just marketing fluff, ignoring the strategic process that goes into it.

Here’s how you remedy it.

Firstly, get your assumptions out on the table: who do you think your customers are, and what do they value? I recommend doing a customer empathy map to see not just where you and your team are aligned, but where you have low confidence – and where the gaps are.

Positioning (and strategy) is much easier when you are the thing for someone, rather than something for everyone. Focus on niche customer segments: a group of people linked by a common pain that they’ll pay to solve. You can’t please everyone either. Make the hard decisions and say no to certain segments.

The definition of positioning is “to occupy a space in your customer’s mind”. How are you supposed to do that effectively, if you don’t understand their world?

Research is key to that. Don’t just think about your product – look to build empathy with their broader jobs, pains, gains, and triggers.

Then look at how you differentiate. It’s much easier to compete for a customer, rather than compete against a competitor. Know the customer so well that you’re positioned as the best option for them against all others.

Once you’ve understood your customer and what they need, think about how you communicate to them. Elevate away from technical features and simple benefits, and instead focus on communicating the holistic value you customer desires.

Lastly, get creative! Step up your messaging with language and tone-of-voice that drives action. Life is too short to use boring words.

How does your customer buy?

The process that your buyers go through, complete with the questions they have, the touchpoints they interact with, what they need to move to the next stage, and who exactly is involved.

This process will broadly look like:

  • Identify a need
  • Explore how to solve it
  • Evaluate solutions
  • Negotiate and purchase
  • Adopt
  • Expand

At each stage, you can identify and rank opportunities to feed into marketing (like the channels and messages you use), sales (e.g. collateral, narrative, and process), and product (e.g. onboarding flows, product improvements, and so on).

Force progress through product launches

If you’re investing time and energy in building new product features, whether to support existing customers or to help attract new ones – but not planning how you introduce it into the world – then you’re missing out on free energy.

Haphazardly announcing a feature on social media isn’t a launch, and a blog post announcing a feature that nobody reads is a waste of time.

Developing a tiered approach to launching features will help you standardise how you release products out into the world. Think about the five A’s of feature releases: audience, awareness, action, affinity, and accountability.

Don’t just think about launches tactically either. Plan activity from first principles from the perception that you want to convey to your customers, your prospects, and others in the market.

There’s no silver bullet, only work

Traction depends on everyone putting the same step forward at the same time.

Positioning is the embodiment of your business strategy. Your buyers journey is how you meet them in the marketplace. And your product launch strategy is how you build perception, time after time.

Good luck!

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