What is the Bullseye Framework and why should you use it?
The framework is a 4-step process and its name is inspired by a bullseye:
1. Brainstorm ideas for each marketing channel and put them in the outer ring.
2. Move potential traction channels to the middle ring, considering your experience or knowledge.
3. Test the channels in the middle ring to find out which could move the needle.
4. Move the best performing channel to the inner ring and focus on this channel.
If you do not know which marketing channels work for your company, you will waste time and money. The Bullseye Framework will enable you to find your best marketing channels with the lowest customer acquisition cost (CAC) and the highest return.
What are traction channels?
Gabriel Weinberg has identified 19 traction channels, all of which we will discuss individually – including the necessary metrics, key questions and viable ideas for rapid testing. Each of these growth channels has already worked before, but not all of them are a good fit for different companies. However, there will be at least one channel that brings traction to your business. For this reason, it is necessary that you find the channel that will work for your company.
Every traction channel undergoes the same life-cycle:
1. Channel slowly but steadily grows.
2. Channel spikes.
3. Channel flattens once saturated.
In the beginning channels slowly but steadily grow. One prominent example being Facebook Ads, which were introduced in 2007. Back in the day, social ads were not a thing, but they grew in popularity over the years. Now that almost every company uses social ads, it is more difficult to reach your target audience. Once a traction channel is saturated, it is time to find a new one. Gabriel also recommends trying out channels that your competitors do not use. That way you will stand out from the crowd.
What is the best marketing channel for your SaaS company or Startup?
To get a holistic view, answer these questions for each channel:
• How much is the customer acquisition cost per channel?
• How many customers can we reach through this channel?
• Are we targeting the right customers in this channel?

The key is to choose marketing channels based on your campaign goals. So, if you are a B2B SaaS company and if your campaign goal is to increase the number of trials in a given period - look at which channel will give you the most conversion at the lowest cost. But don't stop there, run a few experiments to understand the quality of those conversions also. Then make the choice.
Social and Display Ads
In contrast to other traction channels, social media advertising has an immediate impact and brings results fast. With only a small budget, you can quickly test which social platform could move the needle, and which messaging works well. Keep in mind to always track your campaigns. If you do not track them, you will not know if you are moving closer to your goal or further away. In order to monitor your advertising effectively, use a tracking link which is just an extension to your normal link, but can be evaluated later on in your analytics tool (Google Analytics/Adobe Analytics etc.).
Even though more and more brands are using this traction channel, most campaigns fail. The number one reason for that is that the majority of ads is boring, similar and generic. People who scroll their newsfeed on Facebook do not intend to buy. At least not in that moment. Always ask yourself: “Why should people even care, why should they click on the ad?”
To increase the success rate of your campaign, try this:
“Enter the conversation your customers are having in their mind. Preferably something they go to bed worrying about and wake up thinking about.” - Allan Dib, author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan.
In order to enter the conversation your customers are having in their mind, it is important to know your target audience. If you want to create a long-lasting relationship with your customers and have a real impact on their life, never sell directly from your ad. Instead, create valuable content regularly and build trust. With value comes trust, with trust comes relationship.
Questions for Social and Display Ads:
• How can we stand out from the crowd?
• What content is most valuable for our customers?
• What platform are potential customers using?
Metrics for Social and Display Ads:
• Conversion rate
• Cost per click
• Shares, likes, impressions
Offline Ads
1. Figure out what offline channels your customers are using.
Instead of providing a service for "everyone", start focusing on specific buyer personas. That will help you save money and communicate effectively.
2. Use a clear call to action (CTA), no matter the channel.
Every ad you publish needs to have a clear CTA which leads your customers to the next step. In addition, track your CTA-button to know how well your ads perform.
Questions for Offline Ads:
• How can we track the effectiveness of the channel?
Metrics for Offline Ads:
• Reach
• Conversion rate
• Quality of leads

What I've found quite effective when you start a strategy on any particular channel is to find where your audience/user or customer would usually be. Rather than selecting a particular channel that you think would work, it's better to find what channel your intended customer base would usually be at. 'Find' where your customers are rather than pushing channels to meet customers.
Sales
Situation questions:
These are basic questions that will help you understand your leads’ company & situation (“How is your company structured? What problem prompted your company to look for a solution?”).
Problem questions:
Problem questions identify your buyers’ challenges and pain points. The goal is to understand if and how your solution can solve the problem.
Implication questions:
Implication questions aim to make the lead aware of the long-term impact the defined problems entail (“How does this problem impact your growth? What happens if we do nothing?”).
Need-payoff questions:
The last step in the SPIN Selling framework leads to your solution and shows the benefits your product brings (“How would this solution help you address your problem? Why is this the best solution for you?”).
It is important to keep in mind to never sell something that has no value to your leads. Selling is about figuring out if there is a fit and providing value, not about convincing somebody.
• Probable closing time (closing in 3 month, 3-12 month, unlikely to close within 12 month)
• Business size
• Location
• Engagement on website (For example: dwell time on website)
Once you assign a value to each parameter, you can rank your leads. This will help you use your marketing budget more efficiently and tell you where to invest in lead nurturing campaigns.
In enterprise sales, sales cycles can be long. Try to shorten these processes by eliminating inefficiencies, building trust with your leads and creating repeatable systems. Always test and try to improve your sales funnel.
Questions for Direct Sales:
• How can we shorten the sales cycle?
• What are the objections leads have before buying from us?
• How can we simplify the buying process for our leads?
Metrics for Direct Sales:
• Conversion rate
• How many leads became paying customers?
• Expected lifetime value of different leads
• Quality of leads
E-Mail Marketing
To create powerful email campaigns, which people do not delete, complete these 4 steps:
Email marketing is a powerful method to reach your customers. To keep your service in your customers head, weekly or daily emails may seem tempting. However, if you start to spam, that is where your emails are going to land. Thus, be relevant to your customers and help them reach their goals.
Questions for Email Marketing:
• What is the best time to reach customers via email?
• How can we differentiate from all the other email campaigns?
Metrics for Email Marketing:
• Open rate
• Click-through-rate
• Click to open rate
• Dwell time & bounce rate on website (to see if your e-mail met the expectations)
• Conversion rate
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Creating search engine ads is a 5-step process:
1. You need to have a good understanding of your customers.
2. Find keywords that your target audience is using for their Google search.
3. Create ad groups.
4. Test your design and copy for each ad.
5. Remove underperforming ads and focus on winners.
Search engine marketing is an excellent way to get the word out and to reach many people. However, for high-traffic keywords, competition can be tough. Often it makes more sense to focus on long-tail keywords (niche keywords with less competition), instead of going for the short head (high-volume keywords with high competition). Just like social ads, if you want to increase the conversion rate of your ad, you need to “enter the conversation your customers are having in their mind” Allan Dib, author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan. Always ask yourself why people should click on your ad and what their benefit is.
When using SEM, there are 4 important metrics to bear in mind:
1. CTR (click-through-rate): Shows, how many people who saw your ad also clicked. For example, if 100 people saw your ad and 5 people clicked it, your CTR is 5%.
2. Cost per click: How much it costs to buy a click on your advertisement.
3. CPM (Cost per thousand impressions). A CPM of €5 means you pay €5 for 1000 impressions.
4. Cost per acquisition: How much it costs to acquire a customer, not just a click.
The most common pricing models in search engine marketing are CPC (Cost per click) and CPM (Cost per mille = cost per thousand impressions). When deciding which pricing model to use, think about what you are trying to achieve with your ad. If you want to get the word out and gain brand awareness, go for CPM, because you will definitely get 1000 impressions. The downside to this is that impressions only mean that people (in the best case) see your ad. This does not mean they click on it. Instead, it might be more advisable to use the CPC model to drive your conversions. That way you only pay for the ad if people click on it. No matter which pricing model you choose, always track your campaigns to see, which design and messaging works best. You can do this by using an URL builder. Test, remove the losers and focus on the winners.
Questions for SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• What conversation are our customers having in their mind?
• What is the overall goal of the campaign (brand awareness, website traffic, etc.)?
• How much are we willing to invest to get a customer?
• Why should people care, why should they click the ad?
Metrics for SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• Cost per click
• Cost per mille
• Cost per acquisition
• Conversion rate
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
When you ask people where they would hide a dead body, they will tell you “on Googles page 2“. The key to rank on Googles first page is to write quality content that is relevant and provides value to your audience. Sites with short texts and little content cannot provide the value your customers need to engage. To rank on the first page, you need to know what key phrases and words your target audience is typing into Google’s search. Your goal is to align the words you are using on your website with the keywords people are searching for.
The best keywords combine 3 things:
1. High search volume: People are searching for it.
2. Low competition: If you go for the most popular keywords, websites with higher authority will outrank you.
3. Relevant to your business: Only use terms that make sense for your business.
To find promising keywords, these 5 tools come in handy:
1. Google Adwords – Find out search volume and competition for specific keywords.
2. Google Trends – Learn if the keyword is trending and compare it to different phrases.
3. Google Search –Understand what people are searching for and find new phrases and keywords.
4. Link Explorer – Discover your own page and domain authority.
5. MozBar – Figure out others page and domain authority.
Fat-head vs long-tail strategy:
Long tail keywords are more descriptive and more specific, for example“Marketing for SaaS companies”. Since they are more specific, it is easier to rank and people who click on the link are more likely to engage with your content.
SEO is a marketing channel that will help you increase visibility, organic traffic, boost your Google rankings and create lasting customer relationships. The goal is to provide valuable content for your customers regularly. To rank on Google, find keywords with low competition, high search volume and compete with domains and pages on the same or a lower authority level.
Questions for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• What keyword can we rank for that is relevant to potential customers?
• How many customers can we reach with this specific keyword?
• What is our customers’ search intent on Google?
Metrics for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Click-through-rate
• Dwell time on website
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate

If you want a long healthy life, invest in SEO. If you want a short joyful life, invest in SEM. If you want a long healthy and joyful life, then invest in both!
Targeting Blogs
Once you got your high potential blogs, it is time to contact the blogger. Before asking to guest post, try to make a connection and start a conversation by reading their blog, commenting or connecting via email. Your goal is to find out, if a cooperation is fruitful for you, the blogger and the community. Try to create a win-win situation.
Besides guest blogging, consider other options to utilize a blog as well - for example through sponsoring. A sponsored blog would put your advertisement on their site for a fixed price. This would lead people who read the blog to your product/service. Do not forget to track the traffic that comes through the blog to find out which blogs are most effective.
Targeting blogs is a great way to get customers early on. However, keep in mind that there is only a limited number of high-traffic blogs for your market. Therefore, later on it is more difficult to scale.
Questions for Targeting Blogs
• What content would be most valuable to our audience?
• How many customers can we reach with this marketing channel?
Metrics for Targeting Blogs
• Click-through-rate
• Conversion rate
• Traffic driven to the website
• Dwell time on website
Viral Marketing
Viral loops comprise 3 steps:
1. A customer discovers and uses your service.
2. The customer tells his friend about the service.
3. The friend becomes a customer.
Not all companies can use the same technique for viral marketing. Communication and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Skype already have built-in viral loops, as it makes little sense if you are the only one to use them.
Before using viral marketing, make sure your service has market fit and people think it is a must-have. If your service is not providing value, no viral strategy is going to help you get traction.
The number one mistake companies make when using viral marketing is to build viral features that feel unnatural to the core product. Instead, the process of inviting more people should be a natural result of using the product. Before adding a generic Facebook share button, understand how your customers use the product and at which point of their journey they would most probably invite friends. Be sure to avoid any useless badges or rewards with no actual value. Keep in mind that incentives should be meaningful to your product.
To measure the effectiveness of your referral phase, use the viral coefficient. The viral coefficient represents the number of additional customers you get for each customer. This is how you calculate the viral coefficient:
Viral coefficient = number of invites sent per customer * conversion percentage
For example, if your customers send out 5 invites and 3 people convert, the math is done like this: Viral coefficient = 5 * (3/5) = 3
A viral coefficient above 1 indicates exponential growth. Best practices for immense growth are social media share buttons or the famous Dropbox incentive, which rewards you for every friend you invite. Besides the viral coefficient, viral loops also have a second important component, the viral cycle time. The viral cycle time tells you how long it takes a customer to invite another customer. The shorter your viral cycle time, the better.
Questions for Viral Marketing
• What incentives do customers need to invite friends?
• At which point of their journey would customers most probably invite friends?
Metrics for Viral Marketing
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) of referred customers
• Sent invitations & successful invitations
• Viral coefficient & viral cycle time
• Net Promoter Score
Engineering as Marketing
Engineering as marketing takes time. If you are looking for an instant impact, this is not the channel to choose. Rather, see it as an asset you build once that will benefit you forever – via consistent traffic to your website or via new touch points with potential leads.
To maximize the impact of your tools, use a landing page for every widget/tool you create. It will be much easier for people to find it via Google and it will be simpler to share.
Questions for Engineering as Marketing
• How many customers can we reach with this marketing channel?
• What steps would an ideal customer take?
Metrics for Engineering as Marketing
• Click-through-rate
• Conversion rate
• Dwell time on website
• Quality of leads
Trade Shows
1. Set your goals – Are you trying to get media coverage, investors or customers?
2. Research all the events in your industry.
3. Validate each trade show in relation to your goals. For example, if you want to get visibility, book a well-trafficked place.
4. Calculate the ROI – Calculate the Return on Investment by considering how many people attend the event and how many closings you expect. For example, if 5000 people attend the event and 10% of the attendees fit your customer profile, you have 500 potential customers. If the event costs €500 to enter and your product costs €500, you only need one customer to break even.
Once you found a promising event, make a list of people you want to meet. This way it is easier to concentrate on the event and not feel the need to look for valuable connections. Schedule meetings upfront and take the time to get to know your potential business partners. A few valuable contacts are better than having a bag of business cards.
Trade shows are busy and the booths are huddled together closely. Design an appealing stand and make your product’s value evident right away to get people to your booth. Following these guidelines will help you attract customers that are actually interested in your service. Your booth and marketing material (business cards, giveaways) should have a strong call to action – for example, signing up for the newsletter. Track every individual call to action to find out which approach drives conversions best.
Questions for Trade Shows
• Where would potential customers expect us?
• How can we stand out from the crowd?
• How many customers can we reach at the event?
Metrics for Trade Shows
• Customer acquisition cost
• ROI of the event
• Click-through-rate (Marketing material)
• Conversion rate
• How many visitors became customers?
Offline Events
Hosting offline events is challenging at first since unproven events usually do not sell many tickets. Think about what incentives and guarantees you can bring to show your event’s value. Skilled speakers, an expert panel, or a Q&A session are excellent ways to address your customers' problems. People attend events to extend their network. Therefore, keep your attendee quality as high as possible by sending free tickets to valuable participants. To get the most of offline events, use these 6 steps:
Questions for Offline Events
• How can we make the natural leap to our product/service?
• What speakers can provide the most value to our audience?
• Who do we want to meet at the event?
• How many potential customers can we reach at the event?
Metrics for Offline Events
• Quality of leads
• Customer acquisition cost
• Click-through-rate (Marketing material)
• Conversion rate
• How many visitors became customers?
Speaking Engagements
When creating the presentation, keep in mind that it is not about you. The important thing is to offer value to the audience. Ask yourself the following questions: To whom am I talking? How much information does my audience already have? What are their expectations and needs? What do I want them to learn? With this, you can define the core message and develop a clear and comprehensible story.
To measure your talk’s success, define success criteria beforehand. For example, if you are talking about ways for scaling a company, you could express your goal for the event like this: I want my audience to know three different ways to scale a company. Having a certain purpose, you do not see yourself as the most relevant part anymore. Instead, you will give more emphasis on the content and the message.
Speaking engagements also help you meet new people and grow your network. Therefore, think about the people who you would like to meet at the event upfront. Let them know when you will be speaking, and suggest meeting and connecting afterwards. During your presentation, create some buzz via social media. You can do this by implementing hashtags in your slides and incentivizing people to share.
Your last slide should never be just a thank you page. Instead, use a call to action to make people connect with you, download your lead magnet or register for your newsletter. Track those links to know which call to action works best.
To leverage your talk, record it and use snippets, quotes and pictures for your content marketing strategy afterwards.
Questions for Speaking Engagements
• What are the success criteria for our presentation?
• What do we want people to learn?
• What action do we want people to take?
Metrics for Speaking Engagements
• Quality of leads
• Click-through-rate (Marketing material)
• Conversion rate
Community Building
Apple does an outstanding job at building a community. People are willing to wait for hours in queue lines to get the newest iPhone. These evangelists spread the word, which reduces Apple's customer acquisition cost.
Besides Apple, more and more companies see the power of communities and start growing their own. Keep in mind not to misuse your community to promote your service. Consider it a chance to provide value, talk to group members and to learn about the challenges they are facing. It is about value, not advertisement. To build your own community, consider these 3 steps:
Questions for Community Building
• What benefit should people find in our community?
• How can a community complement our overall customer experience?
• How does success look like to us?
Metrics for Community Building
• New members this month
• Active vs Inactive members
• Engagements on posts (Likes, shares, comments)
• Member-posts
• Conversion rate
Affiliate Programs
There are two different ways to apply affiliate marketing. You either use an existing affiliate network or you create your own program. To do so, you need to find potential partners from your customer base or connect to influencers with access to your target audience. Many affiliate programs are based on a flat fee. In the early phases of your company – when cash is low – think about creative ways to pay affiliates - for example, via product features, beta-access or other exclusive content.
Keep in mind that affiliate programs only help you bring traffic to your website or promote your product. It is then up to you to convert those visitors into customers.
When you use affiliate programs, determine how much you are willing to pay affiliates to acquire a customer. Some basic strategies for affiliate programs are flat fees per conversion (5€ for a customer that makes a purchase) or a percentage of the conversion (5% of the price paid by the customer). So with affiliate programs, you only pay for concrete results. Compared to PPC advertising, where you pay regardless of whether a click converts to purchase, this is a plus.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to grow without the risk of spending a lot of money on marketing. Once set up, you can focus on other traction channels in the meantime.
Questions for Affiliate Programs
• Which influencer/affiliate has the right audience for our service?
• How can we pay affiliates besides with money?
• What conversion are we trying to achieve? (traffic to website / potential leads / new customers)
• How much are we willing to pay affiliates to acquire a customer?
Metrics for Affiliate Programs
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Customer acquisition cost
• Quality of leads
Business Development
The most basic partnership contains two companies that work together to improve one or both their services. Other possibilities are joint ventures, where a new product gets created, licensing a product or distribution deals, where one party provides the service and in return gains access to the customer base of the second party.
No matter the exact deal, it is indispensable to have a sound strategy at hand before investing resources in business development. Think about what critical milestone and metrics you are trying to hit, which partner is meaningful to you and what kind of partnership can help you meet your aim. Start seeing alliances as a possibility to help you hit your metrics and not something you build just because the occasion arises. Business Development is about creating a win-win situation and building beneficial long-term relationships. Ask yourself what motivates your potential partner to work with you and what value you can bring to the table. Understanding your business partner’s objectives and what goals they are trying to meet is crucial for this process. Once you identify the milestones and goals, you can craft a valuable deal for you and your partner.
Questions for Business Development
• What partner can help us hit our milestone?
• What kind of partnership can help us hit our milestone?
Metrics for Business Development
• Quality of leads
• Lead Conversion rate
Unconventional PR
Questions for Unconventional PR
• How can we turn customers into evangelists?
Metrics for Unconventional PR
• How many customers can we reach with this stunt?
• How many people will fit our customer profile?
• Conversion rate
Content Marketing
Your service is not for everyone, neither should your content be. Therefore, the best content gets created with a clear vision of your target audience in mind. Before creating your first piece of content, think about what is most valuable to your audience and what design and what kind of copy resonates best with them. The better you know your audience, the more compelling your content will be.
In the beginning, it is impossible to know which kind of content works best for your audience. Therefore, monitor your posts and the most important metrics like shares, likes, impressions and bounce rate on your website. Once you found a winning post, focus on the same kind of content to improve reach and traffic.
Questions for Content Marketing
• What content is most valuable to our audience?
• How can we stand out from the crowd?
• How can we make the natural leap to our products/services?
Metrics for Content Marketing:
• Conversion rate
• Dwell time & bounce rate on website
Existing Platforms
Questions for Existing Platforms:
• What app/extension is most valuable to our audience?
• Why should people download the app/install the extension?
• How can we stand out from the crowd?
• How can we make the natural leap to our products/services?
Metrics for Existing Platforms:
• Engagement (Reviews and comments)
• Conversion rate
Public Relations (PR)
Questions for Public Relations (PR)
• What kind of magazine/newspaper do potential customers use?
• What success metrics are important to us?
Metrics for Public Relations (PR)
• How many customers can we reach through this media outlet?
• How many people will fit our customer profile? (Potential customers)
• Conversion rate
How to effectively run experiments
The overall idea is not to have long-lasting experiments but to test at a high tempo and generate insights and learnings quickly. Effective testing comprises a hypothesis, action steps and a fixed deadline.
Once you have experiments for potential channels ready to run, pick the ones with the best ROI and the biggest impact. Use an impact/practicability chart or – to make it even more meaningful – rank experiments based on the following criteria:
• Cost: How much do you have to spend to run the experiment?
• Targeting: How easy is it to reach the desired target group?
• Control: How much control do you have over the experiment? (Can you adjust if it is not going well?)
• Input time: How much time will it take to launch the experiment?
• Output time: How long does it take to get your experiment's results once it is live?
• Scale: How large an audience can you reach with the experiment?
Note that it is not about knowing the different criteria-values exactly, but to use them as a reference point. For example, it is difficult to find the exact cost of a Facebook ad, since there are more factors involved than just the costs of the ad itself (time to research best practices, time to build the ad etc.). Use the values as a reference point to compare them to the other experiments instead. Once you found your top three ideas to test, define how you can measure success and what metrics are most important to you. For example, if you want people to download your newsletter via the website and you try social ads, click-through-rate, bounce rate, dwell-time and conversion rate are meaningful. Experiment-frameworks are a potent tool to help you find out, if a marketing channel can bring you the traction you hope for. Keep in mind to use a test-mindset and be open to make mistakes. Especially in the beginning you cannot tell which channel works. Test at a high tempo, fail fast and iterate.
Summary
This Video Course is for you!