Why do some products capture public’s imagination while others fizzle out of public consciousness? How do some products and services become a part of our daily routines?

Is there an underlying process that companies follow to create successful habit-forming products like Instagram, Candy Crush, and Netflix?

Nir Eyal has the answers to all these questions and more in his groundbreaking book Hooked.

Originally published in 2013, Hooked is arguably one of the best marketing books ever written. It’s a must-read business book for all marketers, product designers, and business owners.

Based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience, the book dives deep into the Hook Model, a four-step process used by successful companies to create habit-forming products. Eyal deconstructs the subtle tactics used by companies like Apple, Facebook (now Meta), Pinterest, and many more to link their products to their users’ daily routines and emotions.

Anchored around the Hook Model and filled with fascinating examples and anecdotes, Eyal’s book doesn’t just reveal the secrets behind building better products, but also the moral implications involved in creating highly addictive products.

As I share before every article in my “Book Lessons” series, I’d be doing a massive injustice to the book if I were to summarize its content in this compressed blog post. Please treat these lessons below as highlights or my key takeaways from the book. I’d urge you to pick up a copy of Hooked to get a deeper understanding of the Hook model and how successful companies leverage it to create products used habitually by customers.

In the meantime, here are 7 of the most important marketing lessons I learned from Nir Eyal’s Hooked.

How the Hook Model Works

Before I delve into the marketing lessons I learned from Hooked, it’s important to understand the methodology that the book is based on. And that methodology is the Hook Model.

Here’s a quick preview of what the Hook Model looks like:

Let’s quickly deconstruct the Hook Model:

1. Trigger

A trigger cues the user to take action. Triggers come in two types: external and internal.

External triggers tell the users what to do next by placing information within the user’s environment. Examples include emails, website links, or the app icon on your smartphone.

Take a look at the big “Start Free Trial” button on Apple TV+. This is an external trigger.

Internal triggers occur when a product becomes closely associated with a thought, an emotion, or a preexisting routine. Negative emotions like boredom, loneliness, frustration, and indecisiveness are powerful internal triggers and habit-forming products leverage these internal triggers by connecting these emotions to their products.

Think about the last time you were bored and binge-watched the entire season of a show on Netflix. Ring a bell? You were just cued by an internal trigger.

New habits always begin with an external trigger, but are sustained for a long period of time through internal triggers. In other words, it’s the internal triggers that keep users hooked.

2. Action

Action is the behavior done in anticipation of a reward.

A simple action like clicking on the “Get Started” button enables you to create an account on Netflix where you can check out the wide collection of movies and TV shows on the world’s favorite streaming service.

3. Variable Reward

If you’d like users to use your product frequently, then it must deliver what it promises. In other words, you need to offer them a reward for their actions.

But a predictable reward isn’t enough to keep users hooked to the product. It needs to be unpredictable.

Studies show that the unpredictability involved in variable rewards serves as a much bigger motivation for users to keep using the product.

Put differently, it’s not the reward that keeps users hooked to a particular product. It’s the anticipation of a reward.

Bottom line? The reward needs to have an element of unpredictability.

Imagine if Netflix had movies and shows from just one genre. What if they didn’t have Netflix Original shows or refused to add new movies to their collection? Would you still renew your Netflix subscription every month? Unlikely!

4. Investment

Investment occurs when the user puts something into the product such as time, effort, or money. The more time and effort that users invest into a product, the more they value it.

The investment phase increases the chances that the user will go through the Hook cycle in the future. Inviting friends to use the product, stating preferences, and learning new features are all investments that users make in a product to improve their experience.

The IKEA effect, which we will explore in detail shortly, is a great example of the investment phase. Another example is Netflix’s “My List” feature, which allows you to create a watch list of movies and TV shows.

7 Marketing Lessons from Hooked by Nir Eyal

1. All habit-forming products use the Hook Model

Companies behind habit-forming products like Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, iPhone, and several others use the Hook Model to stay relevant in users’ minds. These companies attach their products to internal triggers.

Throughout the book, Nir Eyal provides different examples of habit-forming products and services that change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement. These companies have mastered habit-forming product design.

Google’s search engine is perhaps the best example of a habit-forming product. Google commands a global market share of over 90%.

Image Credit: Oberlo

Why is it that more Google users haven’t migrated to rival search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo?

Because Google is a habit-forming product. And habits keep users loyal.

If a user is familiar with Google’s interface, switching to Bing would require a lot of cognitive effort. Even if Bing’s technology and features were superior, adapting to its interface would take time for new users who have just migrated from Google.

As a result, Google has such a stranglehold on the search engine market and Bing is the subject of widespread internet memes.

So in order to create a product that’s used frequently by your customers, you need to master the art of habit-forming product design, which incorporates the Hook Model.

2. Habits are good for business

Habits are great for the bottom line of companies that are able to harness the power of habits in an effective way.

In the book, before diving into the mechanics of habit formation, Eyal helps us understand the importance and benefits of habits from a business perspective.

Here are some of the ways in which habits are good for business:

1. Habits increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) is a metric that indicates the total worth of a customer to a business over the period of their relationship. Put differently, CLTV is the amount of money you make from a customer before he/she switches to a competitor.

Habits increase how long and how frequently customers use a product, resulting in higher CLTV.

2. Habits provide pricing flexibility

Habits give companies greater flexibility to increase prices. Eyal provides the examples of Candy Crush and Evernote to illustrate this point. Both these apps follow a “freemium” model.

In the case of Candy Crush, some of the users who’ve been playing the mobile game for free end up being paid customers, netting the company millions of dollars.

Similarly, loyal Evernote users typically upgrade to the paid version to use advanced features like calendar integration, increased note size, and more.

3. Habits supercharge growth

Users who are hooked to a particular product are more likely to tell their friends about it. In other words, they become brand evangelists, bringing in new users at no cost.

To elaborate on this, Eyal provides the example of Facebook which beat established social media platforms like MySpace and Friendster because of higher user engagement despite being late to the social networking game.

4. Habits sharpen the competitive edge

As the saying goes, “old habits die hard.” For new entrants to stand a chance against existing solutions, they need to build products that are not just marginally better, but substantially better and superior in every way.

Which is why user habits can be such a potent competitive advantage.

When you combine these four benefits, it’s easy to see why habits are good for business and why it’s worth investing your time and resources to build habit-forming products.

3. Successful companies understand users’ triggers

Successful companies have a deep understanding of users’ internal and external triggers. To demonstrate this, Eyal attributes a large component of Instagram’s success to the company’s ability to understand its users’ triggers.

In the book, Eyal deconstructs Instagram’s triggers and shows us how the app benefits from both internal and external triggers. Most users who are habitually using Instagram start using it because of an external trigger — a recommendation from a friend, media, or bloggers.

But with repeated use of the service, Instagram forms strong internal triggers with the users.

The fear of missing out on capturing a special moment that leads to stress is an internal trigger. It’s this pang of stress that keeps bringing users back to Instagram to share their special moments with their audience.

So in order to create a habit-forming product, you need to understand which user emotions are tied to internal triggers and know how to leverage external triggers to drive the user to action.

4. The importance of heuristics in product design

Heuristics are the mental shortcuts we take to make quick decisions and form opinions. Companies typically use a plethora of heuristics to increase engagement, but Eyal shares four of the most important heuristics in the book:

1. The Scarcity Heuristic

In this scenario, the appearance of scarcity affects the perceived value of a product or service. Scarcity, or perceived scarcity, of a product may discreetly signal the popularity of the product. It may also trigger the dreaded fear of missing out (FOMO) feeling.

Brands use scarcity effect all the time. Amazon is perhaps the best example of a company that uses scarcity heuristic to good effect.

How often have you searched for something you wanted to buy on Amazon only to notice the “only X left in stock” warning?

Case in point:

In this case, Amazon is using the scarcity heuristic to influence your buying behavior.

2. The Framing Heuristic

In this scenario, context shapes the perceived value of a product or service.

To illustrate this heuristic in action, Eyal shares the example of world-class violinist Joshua Bell’s popular social experiment. Typically, a ticket to Bell’s concert costs hundreds of dollars. Venues like Kennedy Center and Carnagie Hall are packed with his fans.

But when Bell played his violin for free in a busy subway station, very few people stopped to listen to his music.

You can check out the experiment here:

This is the framing heuristic in action. It doesn’t just influence our behavior, but it also changes how our brain perceives pleasure.

3. The Anchoring Heuristic

In this scenario, people often anchor to one piece of information when making a decision.

If you’ve ever walked into a clothing store with a signage of “Up to 50% off” or “Buy one, get one free”, you’ve been exposed to the anchoring heuristic.

In this scenario, even if we stumble upon better, less expensive (yet not discounted) products in the same store, we may end up buying products which are on sale because we have been influenced by the anchor of “50% off”.

4. The Endowed Progress Heuristic

This is a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal.

An example of this heuristic in action is how LinkedIn prompts its users to share more information about themselves with the Profile Strength meter.

The more information and content you add to your profile, the more strength your LinkedIn profile gains. The ultimate goal is to reach the LinkedIn All-Star status.

5. Companies use gamification with varying success

Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game environments. The use of points, badges, and leaderboards are examples of companies using gamification to increase user engagement.

But gamification is not a magical solution that will automatically drive user engagement. And when it comes to successful implementation of gamification, some companies do it better than others.

Gamification can enhance the features of a product if it’s already delivering value to its users. On the other hand, if a product fails to hook users at the basic level, no amount of gamification can save the product from impending doom.

As Eyal points out, if there’s a mismatch between the customer’s problem and the company’s assumed solution, adding game mechanics to the product will not make it instantly more attractive.

That said, there are companies that are using gamification to great effect. Duolingo is an excellent example of an app that utilizes gamification to drive engagement among language learners.

Duolingo’s game mechanics like XP points, leaderboards, and leagues target different types of users to keep them hooked to the app.

Related: 7 Marketing Lessons I Learned from “Traction” by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

6. The IKEA effect

IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, follows a unique approach to sell its furniture products. Instead of selling preassembled furniture, IKEA puts its customers to work by making them assemble the furniture themselves.

In addition to decreased labor costs and optimized distribution efficiency, there is a hidden benefit to making people assemble their own furniture — customers develop an irrational love for the furniture they built. As a result, they assign a greater value to it. This cognitive bias is called the IKEA effect.

Businesses that include DIY elements in their products can place a higher value to them because of the investment users have made in the products through their labor.

Companies like Basecamp, iDoneThis, and Wistia have employed the IKEA effect in their onboarding process to increase a new user’s commitment in their product.

7. Understanding the Manipulation Matrix

The Hook Model can be used to build remarkable products that seamlessly integrate into our daily routines. But as you may have rightly guessed by now, it can also be a recipe for manipulation. Since it involves changing people’s behaviors, you should use it responsibly.

How? Eyal proposes using the Manipulation Matrix as a guide.

Manipulation Matrix is a decision-support tool that entrepreneurs can use long before they launch their product.

Here’s a quick look at the Manipulation Matrix:

To use the Manipulation Matrix, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1. Would I use the product myself?
2. Will the product help users materially improve their lives?

Your answer to these two questions will determine where you fall on the Manipulation Matrix.

Let’s take a quick look at each of the creators who represent the four quadrants in the Manipulation Matrix:

1. The Facilitator

If your answer to both these questions is yes, then that means your product is facilitating a healthy habit. Facilitators have the highest chance of success because they truly understand the needs of their users.

2. The Peddler

If you believe your product can materially improve users’ lives but have no intention of personally using it yourself, then you fall into this quadrant.

While there’s nothing wrong in launching a product when you’re in this quadrant, the odds of success are very low because you’re designing products for a user you don’t know extremely well.

3. The Entertainer

Entertainers use their product but don’t believe it can enhance users’ lives. If your product falls into this category, then it can indeed be successful, but its success will be short-lived. Games like FarmVille and Angry Birds are classic examples of products that fit this category.

4. The Dealer

Dealers are the worst of the lot. They neither believe in their product nor use it themselves. If your product falls in this category, you’re simply exploiting users to earn a quick buck.

So these are the four quadrants in the Manipulation Matrix.

If you’re creating a habit-forming product, it’s important to assess the morality behind the techniques you’ll use to manipulate users.

The Manipulation Matrix helps you determine which of the four categories your product fits into. It helps you decide whether it’s the right move to push forward with the launch or hold back and make changes to the product before it’s finally released to the general public.

The Manipulation Matrix is a reminder to creators and innovators to consider the implications of the products they build.

Final Thoughts on Hooked by Nir Eyal

If you’re planning to launch a new product, you need to stop everything and grab a copy Hooked right now.

As I mentioned at the start, Nir Eyal’s Hooked is required reading for all marketers, product designers, and business owners.

Why?

Because you’ll not just get an understanding of the process involved in creating habit-forming products, but also gain a perspective on the moral implications of launching a product that has your users hooked. 

Successful companies and apps like Apple, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Candy Crush, and many more are using the four-step Hook model to get people to use their products over and over again.

Once you’re done with the book, you too will learn the exact techniques involved in building highly addictive products. You’ll also discover where you fall on the Manipulation Matrix and figure out whether it’s morally right to release your product to the market.

Click here to order Hooked on Amazon

Have you read Hooked by Nir Eyal? What lessons were you able to pick from this book? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on December 10, 2021 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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In their brilliant book Traction, authors Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares reveal nineteen different traction channels and offer a three-step framework, called the Bullseye framework, to figure out which traction channel works best for your business.

Of all the business books I’ve read over the years, Traction is one of those books that I keep revisiting. It’s also one of the most practical and actionable marketing book ever put to paper.

Before we get to the marketing lessons featured in Traction, it’s important that you know the definition of traction and the different traction channels discussed in the book.

What is Traction?

Traction is a sign that your company is growing. It can be seen in your core metrics: If you have a mobile app and your download rate is growing, that means your company has achieved traction. In other words, traction is growth.

The book uses this definition of traction by angel investor and serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant:

Traction is basically quantitative evidence of customer demand.

The pursuit of traction is what defines a startup. In their research, Weinberg and Mares discovered nineteen different customer acquisition channels, aka traction channels. These are marketing and distribution channels through which your startup can achieve real customer growth.

Here are the 19 different traction channels that the book deep dives into:

• Targeting Blogs
• Publicity
• Unconventional PR
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Social and Display Ads
• Offline Ads
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Engineering as Marketing
• Viral Marketing
• Business Development
• Sales
• Affiliate Programs
• Existing Platforms
• Trade Shows
• Offline Events
• Speaking Engagements
• Community Building

This book explains in length with examples and case studies how each of these traction channels can work for your business and how you can use the Bullseye framework to zero in on a traction channel that works best for you.

For me, the two channels that resonated the most were SEO and content marketing, because quite frankly, these are the two channels that have worked best for me and for my clients. As such, the last two marketing lessons featured here are from the SEO and content marketing chapters of the book.

But if you’re a small business owner, I’d encourage you to experiment with all of these channels to figure out which is the one best traction channel you can use to grow your business.

As I share before every article in my “Book Lessons” series, I’d be doing a disservice to the book if I were to summarize its content in this compressed blog post. Please treat these lessons below as a book summary of Traction or my key takeaways from the book. I’d urge you to pick up a copy of Traction to get a better understanding of all the nineteen traction channels featured in the book and the best way to implement the three-step Bullseye framework for your business.

With that said, here are the 7 marketing lessons I learned from Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares.

7 Marketing Lessons from Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

1. The 50 Percent Rule

“The 50 percent rule: Spend 50 percent of your time on product and 50 percent on traction.” 

Having a great product or service is only job half done. If you don’t have a good distribution strategy, you’ll not be able to acquire new customers. As Peter Thiel, venture capitalist and author of Zero to One puts it, “Poor distribution — not product — is the number one cause of failure.”

To solve this common problem that many startups face, Weinberg and Mares suggest that you spend your time building your product or service and testing traction channels in parallel. This is called the 50 percent rule.

This rule may seem simple, but it’s not easy to follow. This is because the temptation to focus solely on product is strong. For many entrepreneurs, a lot of traction activities fall outside their comfort zone. Furthermore, running traction tests in parallel can slow down product development; and building great products is probably one of the main reasons why most founders pursued entrepreneurship in the first place.

But the truth is, the 50 percent rule can speed up the process of launching your product successfully to market. This may sound counterintuitive, but it’s true. A key benefit to parallel product and traction development is that you can build the right product by incorporating good feedback from early customers.

By interacting with your early customers, you can find out how the market is responding to your product and what features are missing from your product. The 50 percent rule ensures that you’re not spending time on the wrong things in terms of product development.

Bottom line: If you follow the 50 percent rule right from the beginning, then you’ll have the best chance to avoid the traps that doomed startups fall into. This rule will guide you around these traps and toward the traction channel that’s best suited for your business.

2. The Bullseye Framework

“Bullseye is designed to be a straightforward way to direct your traction focus and maximize your results.”

With nineteen different traction channels, it’s not easy to focus on just one. To make things easier for entrepreneurs, Weinberg and Mares recommend the three-step Bullseye framework. They named their framework Bullseye because you’re aiming for the Bullseye — the one traction channel at the center of the target that will unlock your next growth stage.

Let’s examine the three steps involved in the Bullseye framework:

I. The Outer Ring

The first step is to brainstorm every single traction channel. For each channel, you should identify one channel strategy that has a chance of providing the best results. For instance, if social ads is the traction channel, then running ads on Facebook is a channel strategy.

II. The Middle Ring

The second step is running cheap traction tests in the channels that seem most promising. You need to review the channels in the outer ring and move the best channels to the middle ring. Make sure you have more than one traction channel in your middle ring.

For each traction channel in the middle ring, design a cheap traction test to determine how good or bad the idea is. These tests should answer the following questions:

• How much will it cost to acquire customers through this channel?
• How many customers are available through this channel?
• Are the customers you’re getting through the channel the customers you want right now?

An important thing to remember while running traction tests is that you’re not trying to get a lot of traction with a channel just yet. Your main consideration at this point is speed — to get data and to prove your assumptions.

Make sure the traction tests you’re running here are cheap and short. For example, don’t start with ten Google ad campaigns. Start with just one or two.

III. The Inner Ring

The final step is to focus solely on one channel that will move the needle for your startup. This is where you finally hit the bullseye!

Once you’ve completed your middle ring tests, you need to pick one traction channel that produced the most promising results.

When you’ve finally completed the three steps in Bullseye, you’ll have identified one channel where you can direct all your traction efforts and resources. This will be your core traction channel.

This is the Bullseye framework in a nutshell. We’ll explore the nuances of traction tests shortly.

3. Defining Your Traction Goal

“Startup growth happens in spurts. Initially, growth is usually slow. Then it spikes as a useful traction channel strategy is unlocked.”

From the perspective of getting traction, you need to think about working on your product in three phases:

Phase 1 — making something people want (product focused)
Phase 2 — marketing something people want (marketing focused)
Phase 3 — scaling your business (business focused)

The authors use the leaky bucket metaphor to describe phase 1. This is the stage when your bucket (product) has the most leaks. At this point, there’s no point in scaling up your efforts, but it’s important to acquire a few customers to see where the holes are and determine the best ways to fix them.

In phase 2, you have product-market fit and customers are sticking around. Now is the time to scale to scale up your traction efforts and fine-tune your positioning and marketing messages.

In phase 3, you have an established business model and significant position in the market, and are focused on scaling both to further dominate the market and to profit.

Moving the needle means different things in each phase. In phase 1, it’s getting those first customers so you know product can get traction. In phase 2, it’s getting enough customers to know you’re on the path to sustainability. In phase 3, you’ll focus on revenue growth, scaling your marketing channels, and creating a sustainable business.

To show readers how traction thinking works, Weinberg provides the example of his own search engine company DuckDuckGo.

• In phase 1, DuckDuckGo’s traction goal was to get in front of users searching for “new search engine.”
• In phase 2, DuckDuckGo had a traction goal of 100 million searches a month.
• In phase 3 (its current phase), DuckDuckGo’s traction goal is to get 1 percent of the general search market.

4. Defining Your Critical Path

“Assess every activity you do against your Critical Path and consistently reassess it.”

Once you’ve defined your traction goal, the next step is to define your Critical Path. The path to reaching your traction goal with the fewest number of steps is your Critical Path. These steps are basically milestones that are absolutely necessary to reach your traction goal.

Taking DuckDuckGo’s traction goal of 100 million searches as an example, the DuckDuckGo team believed the milestones they needed to hit included a faster website, a more compelling mobile offering, and more broadcast TV coverage.

Your milestones will be highly dependent on your business. You need to be critical and strategic in deciding what you need to include in your milestones. Which is why it’s called the Critical Path.

But more importantly, your Critical Path should also help you decide what not to do. All the things you do to reach your traction goal should be assessed against your Critical Path. If adding a specific feature or engaging in a particular marketing activity derails you off your Critical Path, you shouldn’t do it.

Weinberg and Mares believe this is where most entrepreneurs mess up: by focusing their limited resources on things off Critical Path. In all likelihood, you may be competing with companies with significantly more resources than you. As such, you can’t afford to waste what little resources you have.

Bottom line: Determine your traction goal and define your Critical Path against that goal. Then work backward and list down the necessary milestones you need to achieve to reach your traction goal.

5. Running the Traction Tests

“Continuous testing is the key to getting traction with Bullseye.”

As mentioned earlier, the goal of middle ring tests is to find a promising channel strategy that you can focus on to grow your business.

A channel strategy is a way to acquire customers within a traction channel. For instance, if social media ads is a traction channel, then Facebook ads, Twitter ads, and Pinterest ads are all channel strategies within social media ads.

When you’re just starting out testing a traction channel, Weinberg and Mares recommend that you focus on one channel strategy. It’s important to keep the tests cheap and short at this stage. In other words, don’t get deep into tactics; stick to the strategy level.

In particular, your traction tests should be designed to answer three questions:

• How much does it cost to acquire each customer through this channel strategy?
• How many channels are available through this channel strategy?
• Are the customers you are getting through this channel the ones you want right now?

In phase 1 of your middle ring tests, you shouldn’t be spending more than $1000 and a month’s time on a middle ring test. In the next two phases, your channel tests may be longer and bigger in order to meet your traction goal.

The middle ring tests provide you with the data you need to compare channel strategies. If all goes well, you can move on to inner ring testing.

Inner ring tests have a dual role: the first is to optimize your chosen channel strategy. The second role is to uncover better channel strategies within your chosen traction channel.

When it comes to optimization, each channel strategy has a set of things that you can tweak. For example, if search engine marketing (SEM) is your chosen channel strategy, then you can tweak your target keywords, ad copy, demographics, and landing pages.

You should continuously test your chosen channel strategy to increase its effectiveness. The most common approach is to use some form of A/B testing.

By making A/B testing a habit, you’ll improve your efficiency in a traction channel by two or three times.

6. SEO for Startups

“SEO allows you to amplify all of the good things you’re already doing in other traction channels (publicity, unconventional PR, content marketing) and use them to bring in more customers from search engines.”

SEO keyword research involves two high-level strategies: fat-head strategy and long-tail strategy.

Fat-head keywords are one and two-word popular searches that get the highest search volume. Examples of fat-head keywords include phrases like “Amazon”, “Twitter”, and “Reddit.”

Fat-head keywords make up about 30% of all searches. The remaining 70% are long-tail keywords that don’t have a high search volume, but in the aggregate add up to the majority of the searches made.

As you may have guessed, long-tail keywords are easier to rank for than fat-head keywords, provided you create top-notch content.

A fat-head keyword strategy involves trying to rank for keywords that directly describe your company. For example, if you run an online furniture store, then you’d want to rank for fat-head keywords like “fabric sofa” or “leather sofa.”

On the other hand, a long-head keyword strategy involves ranking for keywords like “what is the best fabric for a sofa” or “how to clean fabric sofa at home.” These long-tail keywords may have lower search volumes, but in the aggregate make up to be the majority of all searches.

Which SEO keyword strategy you’ll go for will ultimately depend on your business goals.

To determine whether fat-head strategy is right for your business, you need to first research the keywords people use to find products in your industry, and then see if the search volumes are large enough to move the needle.

Because it’s difficult to rank for competitive fat-head keywords, a long-tail keyword strategy is ideal for early-stage startups to reach a meaningful number of customers.

The authors recommend Google’s Keyword Planner for researching keywords. But my personal recommendation would be to invest in premium SEO tools like Semrush or GrowthBar. You can learn more about these tools by checking out their in-depth reviews below:

• Semrush Review
• GrowthBar Review

Whichever keyword strategy you use, SEO eventually comes down to two things: content and links. While link building is the more challenging of the two, creating amazing content goes a long way in building natural backlinks.

Related: 15 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

7. Blogging is the Most Effective Content Marketing Tactic

“The most common hurdle in content marketing is writer’s block. To overcome it, simply write about the problems facing your target customers.”

Blogging is the cornerstone of content marketing. Your business blog can either become a leading source of customer acquisition or it can be an obscure entity that ends up doing more harm than good.

If it does indeed become a lead generation machine, then that means you’ve just unlocked the secrets of a marketing channel that can continue to give you returns in the long run.

To illustrate the power of content marketing, the authors showcase case studies from two vastly different companies: Unbounce (a leading landing page software) and OkCupid (an online dating service).

Both these companies used their blogs to acquire new customers, but did so using completely different approaches. Unbounce started blogging a year before they launched their landing page solution while OkCupid started blogging almost five years after the launch of their dating site.

For both these companies, their blog became their primary source of customer acquisition.

Unbounce founder Rick Perreault started sketching out his product features on his blog. This early adopter approach to blogging allowed Unbounce to build an email list over five thousand strong before product launch.

Here are some key takeaways from Unbounce’s content marketing strategy:

• Unbounce followed a blog-from-the-beginning approach. They also began sketching their product features on the blog. Rick’s first hire was a full-time blogger.
• The Unbounce team relied heavily on social media to drive readers to their blog. After each post, they’d reach out to influencers on Twitter asking for feedback. They also engaged with their target customers on Quora.
• Unbounce captilized on its blog traffic by offering free eBooks and infographics to gain more subscribers.

By the time Unbounce launched their landing page software, their site was getting 20,000 unique visitors a month.

On the other hand, OkCupid’s approach was totally different. They started using blogging as a traction channel five years after their launch.

Here’s how OkCupid’s content marketing worked:

• Unlike Unbounce, the OkCubid team wrote longer posts with less frequency. Each of their blog posts took a month to write and drew on the data they had from studying the usage patters of their members. They also wrote controversial posts to generate traffic and conversation.
• OkCupid never invested in paid advertising. Instead, they focused on traction channels without per-user acquisition costs (content marketing, SEO, viral marketing) to drive its growth.
• OkCupid posts received organic publicity. CNN, Rachael Ray, The New York Times, and many other media outlets were interested in the blog topics they covered.
• Their blog started generating SEO traction by ranking for highly competitive keywords like “online dating” almost a year after their post was published.

One of the many benefits of using content marketing as your core traction channel is how it positions you as an authority in your space. Both Unbounce and OkCupid are great examples of how your blog can make your company a recognized industry leader in a highly competitive space.

Recognition as an industry leader leads to opportunities to speak at major conferences, give press quotes to journalists, and influence industry direction. It also means your content is shared many more times than it would be otherwise.

In the case of Unbounce, being an industry leader brought them comarketing opportunities. When they reached out to companies for integration before their blog gained traction, their business development pitches were ineffective. But once their blog started getting readership, they were able to get numerous integrations (including Salesforce, Mailchimp, and AWeber).

Having a strong company blog can also positively impact at least eight other traction channels — SEO, publicity, email marketing, targeting blogs, community building, offline events, existing platforms, and business development.

Final Thoughts on Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

The Bullseye framework is a proven method to decide which traction channel is ideal for growing your business. In their book, Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares make a compelling case for each of the nineteen traction channels to help you implement the Bullseye framework in the best way possible.

Have you read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares? What marketing or business lessons were you able to pick from this book? Which of the traction channels resonated the most with you and what results were you able to achieve through them? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you.

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The post 7 Marketing Lessons I Learned from “Traction” by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares appeared first on 99signals.

“All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars.”

Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars is a must-read for all entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and business leaders. The book explores the concept of storytelling and why it’s so important for marketers to tell authentic stories that resonate with consumers.

Businesses, both large and small, are sometimes so engrossed in describing the various features and benefits of their products or services that they fail to tell a convincing story to their consumers. As a result, their offerings get little attention or are totally ignored.

In the book, Godin suggests that if businesses truly believe in their products or services, they should take the time to tell a story that resonates with consumers.

Godin tries to differentiate the lies that marketers tell — one lie is told to make a product or service better. It is authentic and fits the consumer’s worldview. The other lie is a deceitful one, told by marketers for selfish gain. It’s only by focusing on the former — lies that fit consumers’ worldview and makes the product/service better can marketers truly thrive.

I’d be doing injustice to Seth Godin’s book if I were to sum it up in 7 lessons. So these are just the highlights. I’d urge you to read All Marketers Are Liars to get a deeper understanding of Godin’s marketing philosophy.

In the meantime, here are the 7 most important marketing lessons I learned from Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars.

7 Marketing Lessons from All Marketers Are Liars

1. Tell stories or be irrelevant

“Marketers didn’t invent storytelling. They just perfected it.”

All successful marketers tell stories. When they are marketing a product or service, they don’t focus on its facts, features, or benefits. They focus on stories. This is because only stories have the potential to spread from person to person.

To elaborate on this point, Godin provides the example of Riedel Wine Glasses.

Riedel tells a story of how any wine, whether it is a $200 bottle of wine or cheap wine, tastes better when served in proper Riedel glasses.

While there’s absolutely no scientific reason why it should taste better, it does because people believe it should. Millions of wine drinkers around the world, experts and amateurs alike, believe the story told by Riedel and have no trouble discerning just how much the wine tastes better in Riedel wine glasses. The story told by Riedel is not true because it’s factual, but true because it’s consistent and authentic.

It’s just marketing that’s making the wine taste better, not the glasses.

2. Focus on satisfying wants, not needs

“Marketers profit because consumers buy what they want, not what they need.”

There was a time when marketers could profit by satisfying needs. And they used to do this by selling people a commodity. Making a product or service cheaper or better was top priority and a sure-shot path to profitability. Times have changed. Plenty of businesses can make something marginally better than you can and offer it at a cheaper price. Satisfying needs is no longer a sustainable strategy for marketers.

As a result, marketers should focus on satisfying wants, not needs. Needs are practical and objective, whereas wants are irrational and subjective. It doesn’t matter what you sell as long as you are satisfying wants, and not needs.

Godin believes that the best marketers are artists, not scientists. They realize that whatever is being sold (a product, a service, a religion, or a political candidate) is being purchased because it creates an emotional want, not because it fills a simple need.

3. Telling a great story

“Truly great stories succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of large or important audiences.”

All great stories have the following things in common:

• A great story is true.
• Great stories make a promise.
• Great stories are trusted.
• Great stories are subtle.
• Great stories happen fast.
• Great stories don’t appeal to logic, but they often appeal to our senses.
• Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone.
• Great stories don’t contradict themselves.
• Great stories agree with our worldview.

Godin believes all great stories agree with what the audience already believes. The stories make them feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.

Godin provides an example of how special a consumer feels when she buys a new pair of Puma sneakers for $125. It’s not the product that makes her feel special, but the story told by Puma — a story about hipness, belonging, and fashion.

4. Leverage a worldview a consumer already has

“Don’t try to change someone’s worldview is the strategy smart marketers follow.”

Worldview refers to the rules, values, beliefs, and biases that an individual holds. Marketers should never try to change their consumers’ worldview. Instead, they should try to frame their story in a way that leverages a consumer’s existing worldview.

Godin illustrates this by showing us the worldview of the audience for new technology devices through this curve below:

The Innovation Diffusion Curve (Worldview of the Audience for New Technology Devices)

Marketers usually focus at the center of every curve they encounter which is always crowded and devoid of unfilled wants. As a result, they are always disappointed. Successful marketers always focus on the edges as this is where you’ll find people with an unfulfilled worldview.

Godin suggests that marketers should work towards identifying a population with a certain worldview, and frame their stories in terms of that worldview.

5. First impressions are far more important than we give them credit for

“Humans are able to make extremely sophisticated judgments in a fraction of a second. And once they’ve drawn that conclusion, they resist changing it.”

First impressions play a vital role in all the important buying decisions consumers make. Snap judgements are usually made to avoid the onslaught of choices and once the decision is made, consumers will bend over backward to defend these choices later.

The concept of snap judgments is also at the heart of Malcolm Gladwell’s groundbreaking book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

The problem for marketers is that we have no idea at all when the first impression is made. This is why marketers must always be authentic in their storytelling.

Godin believes the reason why authenticity matters is because the timing of consumers’ first impressions is too hard to predict. Therefore, if marketers are authentic and consistent in their storytelling, they will cover all the possible impressions, and allow the consumer to convert them into a convincing story.

6. The difference between fibs and frauds

“Just because people might people your story doesn’t give you a right to tell it!”

A fib is a story that makes something better. It’s an honest lie — it’s authentic, like the Riedel Wine Glasses. Another example would be the claim by Mercedes that they are fifteen times better than Toyota. Is this claim true? Hard to tell. But Mercedes buyers tend to believe the story. It’s a story of solidity, workmanship, safety, and performance. Mercedes is telling an authentic lie by telling a story about a car that’s worth talking about.

A fraud, on the other hand, is a story primarily told for personal gain. It’s a deceitful lie told by the marketer for his selfish benefit. The most recent example I can think of is the Fyre Festival. Watch the Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud to learn more about this gigantic fiasco.

Godin suggests that we make use of fibs in our marketing. Fibs allow marketers to take responsibility for the stories they’re telling. It enables them to be authentic and live the lie fully and completely.

7. Authentic marketing thrives

“Once fooled, a person will never repeat your story to someone else.”

The cost of deception is high. Storytelling has to be authentic. If your story is inauthentic, you’ll get the benefit of just one sale as opposed to a hundred when your story is authentic. It works incredibly well for marketers in the long run. Because authentic stories have the power to spread from person to person.

Godin suggests that we craft a story that we enjoy telling ourselves. Before we tell the stories to our consumers, we need to tell the story to ourselves and be convinced of its authenticity.

Final Thoughts

Seth Godin is a marketing guru who has earned the title through his rigorous work in the field of marketing. He believes All Marketers Are Liars is one of the most important books he’s ever written.

And once you’re done reading the book, you’re able to fully appreciate Godin’s passion for storytelling and why it’s so important for marketers to enhance their offerings by telling compelling stories to consumers.

As the cover of the book claims, authenticity is indeed the best marketing of all, and authentic marketers succeed and thrive.

Click here to order All Marketers Are Liars on Amazon

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Also check out my review of Seth Godin’s book Linchpin

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The post 7 Marketing Lessons I Learned from “All Marketers Are Liars” by Seth Godin appeared first on 99signals.

While all the books I read during this time were immensely insightful, nothing triggered that eureka moment in me where I said: “Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for!” A business book that served as an impetus for doing what I was about to do. That was until I grabbed a copy of Rework.

I first heard of Rework from a talk given by Rameet Chawla, co-founder of Fueled Collective, an app design agency. I wish I could link to the video on YouTube, but for some reason I’m just not able to find it. Anyway, it was one of his must-read books for entrepreneurs — a book by the founders of Basecamp (formerly called 37signals), Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Without wasting any time, I bought a Kindle version of the book and skimmed through the first few chapters in a daze. I realized this is the book I was waiting for all along. The book that would give me the much-needed confidence boost to venture out on my own.

The numerous pieces of business advice in the book were scary, yet reassuring at the same time. After finishing it, I read it one more time within the week, picked up a paperback version of the book, and since then I revisit this book every six months to get my dose of startup wisdom and inspiration. Also, on a side note, the book contains illustrations by Mike Rohde which are simply brilliant.

(Above) A couple of illustrations by Mike Rohde from Rework

Rework is a quick read with bite-sized chapters. The book contains valuable business lessons for entrepreneurs from all walks of life — entrepreneurs who are currently dealing with self-doubt for taking perhaps the most important decision in their lives.

If this person is you, then I’d urge you pick up a copy of Rework immediately.

In the meantime, here are 7 of the most important business lessons I learned from Rework.

7 Business Lessons from Rework

1. Planning is guessing

Long-term planning is a waste of time because there are too many factors that are completely out of your control. Factors such as market conditions, the economy, competition, etc. As a result, plans let the past define your future and give an illusion that you’re in control of things when you really aren’t.

Fried and Hansson suggest that you start treating plans as they really are: guesses. This will enable you to stop stressing about them too much and focus on the next most important thing to do.

2. Stay lean, agile, and flexible

There’s nothing wrong with staying small. Expansion is not always the right goal. Staying small and lean is a great goal in itself. Having a sustainable business is all that matters.

Fried and Hansson believe that businesses should avoid huge growth spurts and grow at a pace that feels right. Growth should not come at the cost of profitability and sustainability.

3. Execution is everything

It doesn’t matter how brilliant or revolutionary your idea is. If you’re not able to execute it well, it amounts to nothing.

Fried and Hansson illustrate this point by offering an example of the iconic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick whose advice to aspiring filmmakers was this: “Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”

Kubrick knew the importance of starting and creating, and entrepreneurs need to do the same to be successful in their endeavors.

4. Don’t delay the launch

When it comes to launching your product, you need to stick to strict deadlines. Even if you have a list of things you need to do before your product is fully ready, the best approach would be to launch now, and do iterations and improvements to your product later.

Fried and Hansson suggest that it’s always better to launch a minimum viable product (MVP) first and then make iterations as you gain feedback from your audience. Take care of the necessities first and worry about the luxuries later.

This approach is also supported by Eric Ries who pioneered the MVP concept in his book The Lean Startup, and by Seth Godin’s ‘shipping approach’, a concept explained in detail in his book Linchpin.

5. Interruption kills productivity

You’re most productive when you are all alone. When there’s no one interrupting your flow of work. When you’re not constantly being bombarded by phone calls, meetings, and Skype messages. So it’s important that you value alone time that’ll enable you to get things done.

Fried and Hansson suggest that we set aside long stretches of alone time with no interruptions from instant messages, phone calls, emails, and meetings. Allow passive communication tools like email that don’t require an instant reply.

6. Make smaller to-do lists

The longer your to-do list, the worse you feel when you have unfinished items on your list. On the other hand, smaller to-do lists can have an amazing impact on your productivity and motivation.

Fried and Hansson suggest that we break our long list of to-do items into a bunch of smaller lists. When you look at the small picture and find progress, that’s a lot better than staring at the huge picture and being terrified and demotivated.

7. Choose niche media over mainstream media

When you’re just starting out, it’s virtually impossible to get attention from mainstream media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Forbes. Instead, you should focus on getting your story published in niche media outlets and blogs which are always on the lookout for interesting new stories.

Fried and Hansson have had stories about Basecamp published on numerous mainstream publications like Wired and Time, but they’ve noticed more traction by publishing on sites like Lifehacker and Daring Fireball.

Final Thoughts

Rework is a book I revisit every six months and each time, I’m able to gain fresh perspective and find new lessons which I then incorporate firmly into my business philosophy.

I was also able to grab the latest book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson — “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work“, but sadly, I was a bit underwhelmed. Perhaps my expectations were too high after reading Rework.

Just the same, I couldn’t recommend this book more highly. If you found the business lessons listed above intriguing, then I’d urge to buy a copy of Rework right away. You won’t be disappointed.

Click here to order Rework on Amazon

Have you read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson? What business lessons were you able to learn from this book? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you.

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The post 7 Business Lessons I Learned from “Rework” by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson appeared first on 99signals.