How to Ensure Your Startup Gains Traction

One of the hardest things for a new company to do is gain traction. It’s hard for any company to become a success if they don’t have any customers, and without gaining traction, it’s hard for new businesses to let the customers know they exist, which is why gaining traction is, for sure, one of the biggest challenges new entrepreneurs will have to face.

The good news is, there are numerous things you can do to help your startup gain that initial traction, build momentum, and start being successful. Below you will find some of the most effective ways to gain traction as a new company right now:

Make sure your product is amazing

First and foremost, you are going to want to make sure that you create the best possible product you can create. If you come out with a mediocre product, few people are going to bother spending their money on it, which means few people will be talking about it or recommending your business to friends, and that initial traction simply won’t ever build up.

If you have a great product, it will almost sell itself. People will talk about it, or ask people using it what it is, and that’s like half of your battle won already. Tesla is an excellent example of this. They made an amazing product, which meant they didn’t need to bother with expensive marketing campaigns because everyone was just naturally talking about it! You might not be Elon Musk, but you can still use a great product to gain traction for your business by ensuring it’s a quality-built product that solved a problem for your target audience.

Make sure you have a great brand

What do Apple, Nike, and Tesla all have in common? They’re all wildly successful; they all have great products; AND they all have great, instantly recognizable branding.

If you want to give your startup the best chance of gaining traction and ultimately being a success, you need to create a startling brand. You need to create a brand that makes people sit up and take notice too. 

That isn’t to say that you need to develop a brand that is shocking or tasteless, but it should be eye-catching with a good slogan, or strapline that appeals to your target audience as a minimum. You should also invest in good graphic design, web design, and mobile app design, and make sure that you’ve carried out enough market research to be certain your brand will appeal to the right people.

One thing that can really help your branding help you to gain traction is a good origin story, so to speak. If you have a decent copywriter create a story around the creation of your business, starting with how you got the idea and ending up with the launch of your business, it will draw people in and get them more engaged with your business. This is something that takes a lot of skill to get right, so try to leave it to a professional if at all possible.

Make sure customers can find you 

There is absolutely no point spending a whole lot of time and money developing an amazing product and a compelling brand if no one gets to see them, which is why you need to think very carefully about your marketing strategy as a startup.

Many startups aim to avoid marketing costs altogether by doing their own SEO, but this rarely works out as well as they think it might. For sure, creating and optimizing your own content can, and should, be a part of your marketing strategy, but using paid SEO services, Google ads, professional copywriters, and content creators will help you to get noticed more quickly and propel you up the ranks much faster, which means you will be able to gain traction a whole lot easier than might otherwise have been possible.

Oh, and don’t forget social media. Right now, when it comes to advertising your startup, social media is where it’s at. So. as a minimum, you should be setting up business profiles on all of the most prominent social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, and publishing content on there every day without fail. The more you post, and the more engagingly you post, the more people who will find you, and hopefully you will be able to convert many of them into paying customers.

Partner with influencers

While we’re on the subject of social media, one strategy that can work really well for brand new startups is partnering with Instagram influencers who have a lot of sway with their target audiences. A formal partnership can be expensive, but you will get a lot more plugs if you pay well for them. If you don’t have a huge budget, then try simply sending your target influencers free stuff in exchange for a mention, Some of these influencers have tens of thousands even millions, of followers, so even a little exposure in their vlogs can help you to gain traction quickly so it’s always worth a try, even if you do have to settle for smaller influencers at first.

Give stuff away

Sometimes, for it to gain traction, you have to give your startup a little push, and giving things away is a really good way of doing that. After all, you want more customers, right? Well if you give things away to some people, they will hopefully use your products, and that means the people around them will hopefully see your products too. Hopefully, some of them will be impressed enough to ask about them and make a purchase themselves. At the very least, you should be able to get a few more positive reviews out of it. As Paul Graham says, sometimes you just have to do things that don’t really scale to give your business a break.

Find a partner

This might not be for everyone, but a lot of startup owners have struggled to gain traction until they’ve partnered up with another, more established company that can give them the exposure they need.

How would this work? Say you’re a company that sells healthy dog treats. Your product is great, but not many people know about it. What you can do is approach a local dog grooming parlor, veterinary surgery, or something like that and ask them to promote your products in return for a cut of the profits or in return for you advertising their services or whatever works for you both. By doing this, you can make sure that their customers get to see your stuff, and if you are lucky, like it enough to starter buying. This kind of agreement is so underused when it is such an efficient way of promoting both companies when it’s done right, so please do consider it!

Be a content creation machine

Content is what people come to the internet for, well good content anyway. So, if you want to really gain traction, a good way to do it is to start writing. Write how-to’s and guides; write funny pieces related to your niche; write opinion pieces; make videos; build a name for yourself. The more well-known you become, and the more people who read your content, the more people you can make aware of your company’s existence and the more traction you will gain. It might seem like a mammoth task, but if you really know your stuff, with a bit of practice, you should be able to create decent content without too much trouble.

Get out there and start building momentum in your business!