In order to get the best out of your growth hacking efforts as a company, you need to understand what metrics you should be looking at. Metrics can be very confusing for your startup if you don’t have an idea what will boost growth.
In this list, we look at 6 critical growth hacking metrics that all startups should keep an eye on if they want to drive more leads and conversions. Most of these can be varied in terms of tactics. A sure way to know what works and what doesn’t is to track market data through the use of marketing surveys, A/B testing and customer feedback.
1) Your goals on digital platforms
Startups use various digital platforms to get and retain customers. From social media and blogging to webinars and email marketing, these media have immense potential for growth hacking. A startup should set out its goals for each of these digital platforms, and track how well their efforts are paying off month by month. There will obviously be a winner in this digital scene as well.
For instance, you may find out that social media isn’t really bringing in as many customers as email marketing is. This is okay. It only means you should put more effort into your email marketing. This also reduces unnecessary spending on digital platforms that don’t really benefit you.
For example, Pinterest and LinkedIn are two very different social media platforms. If your startup is an online clothing store, you will realize that Pinterest converts more effectively than LinkedIn does. Since Pinterest is an image-focused platform, it works well for online retail stores. Henceforth, more effort should be put into expanding Pinterest’s reach for better growth.
2) The best performing themes on CTAs
How many CTAs (Call-to-Actions) do you have across your marketing and growth campaigns? Which one performs best? In your emails, PPC advertisements, tweets, Facebook Ads, blog posts, and other landing pages, people are more likely to click on CTAs that interest them. A good growth hacker should find out what these interests are. It is equally important to understand the reasons why people prefer certain CTAs. Only then will a brand know how to optimize future CTAs to get higher click-through rates.
Your blog might be getting better click-through rates than the PPC ads and even leading to higher conversion rates. It could be that the blog’s more detailed topics perform better than a brief CTA on the PPC ads. Investigating this and evaluating the data, metrics and implications will be very important in ramping up more efforts to increase leads from the blog, as well as testing better topics on the PPC ads.
3) The source of most successful leads
A startup cannot implement a proper marketing and PR strategy if they have no idea where most of their current leads came from. In order to implement a proper growth hacking strategy, every business should strive to understand how they got most of their leads. If you check keenly, you will see that every successful company has this data.
To find this information, you will need to investigate what your average close rate is from every source. The highest percentage will indicate where most of your customers are coming from. When a startup is just coming up, employee and early-adopter referrals are usually the largest sources of most leads. Nevertheless, that’s not always the case.
For example, Airbnb’s biggest source of referrals was eBay listings. Once they understood this, Airbnb was able to double up efforts extensively to reach homeowners on eBay. The importance of this metric cannot be understated. It is what enables you to know where to focus your growth hacking efforts.
4) Customer satisfaction rate
If you cannot take care of your existing customers and make sure they are satisfied, then there is no point of you being in business. While it is impossible to please all your customers all the time, a customer satisfaction rate will give you a good idea how well you’re doing and help you track the effects of certain changes which you make. By conducting surveys and doing some social listening, you can get a customer satisfaction rate. A higher rate of approximately 70% indicates that a huge number of your customers are satisfied. A lower rate indicates that you have a huge problem which you must solve right away and ensure that rate is consequently raised.
At a time when consumer behaviour is changing to more value-based purchasing, You need to do your best to keep current customers happy. With the pandemic putting a strain on household income and people changing brands at an alarming rate, unhappy customers will have an easy time leaving your brand. And when they do so, you can be sure they’ll go for a competitor who offers what they need.
Why does customer satisfaction matter in growth hacking? The reality is that word of mouth can make or break your business. When a customer is happy, they are likely to tell a few people. When they are unhappy, you can bet they’ll be telling many more people about your shabby product or poor service. For this reason, you need to generate more positive word-of-mouth advertising to spread the word about your business so that you can get more business. Satisfied customers will be sure to convince their families and friends that you are the best option for a particular good or service. This is PR 101. Always check what customers are saying about you. They’re always saying something, but it’s up to you to gauge whether it’s largely positive or negative.
5) Customer Retention
You could easily get about 100 new signups every week, and yet retain only 10 of them after the first month. If this is the case for you, then you need to conduct a study to find out why your customer retention rate is very low. When you provide a service under a subscription model, for instance, it is fair to expect retention rates to be reasonably high. After all, we’re assuming your customers will need this product on a month-to-month basis.
It’s also possible that your customer retention rate is affected by seasonality, market or cultural shifts, among other things. However, you won’t be able to formulate a plan B for these cases unless you are watching this retention metric keenly. Moreover, a sudden increase in unsubscription rates could be the result of a new update you made, a new feature that is destabilizing the product or poor customer service. You need to understand your customer retention rate in order to know how to proceed in solving any churn issues.
6) Customer Value
When the cost of acquiring a customer is higher than the value they bring in revenue long-term, you have a problem. If it costs more to retain a customer than the value they bring in, you cannot grow. Understanding the value a customer brings in revenue in relation to your costs will guide your growth in pursuing new customers. The cost of acquiring a new customer should be a bit lower than what your customer brings in revenue. That way, you are able to create a good margin and generate a profit.
Growing a newly-launched startup is a challenge that will keep your hands full for months on end. Even so, by keeping track of these metrics, you should have a good idea of what areas to focus on.
Have I left anything out? What are some of the things you look for in your growth hacking metrics? Let us know by leaving a comment or tweeting us @pressfarmpr.
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