Track Your Acquisitions with Digital Metrics
How should I define acquisitions?
Which metrics should I use to measure acquisitions on different marketing channels?
How can I start thinking about ways to improve acquisitions?
“Is my digital marketing really working?” Maybe you’re one of the rare few who’s never asked that. But for the rest of us, it’s a pretty familiar question.
To find the answer, you should track how your digital marketing does at every stage of a customer’s journey: acquisition, behavior, and outcome. In this lesson, we’ll only look at the first step, acquisition.
You probably know acquisition is a fancy word for getting new customers. But there’s more to it than just that.
When it comes to gauging your digital marketing success, you have to look at acquisition in the right way.
To measure how well your digital marketing is doing, you should track acquisitions on both your owned and rented channels.
Your owned channels are ones you control completely, like your websites (including mobile sites).
Rented channels are ones you can customize and post content to that are part of a larger social media network, like YouTube or Twitter.
Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics can help you measure how much high quality traffic you’re getting on rented and owned properties.
But first you need to know which metrics matter for each channel.
For owned channels, you should look at these metrics: clicks and assists.
Clicks means how many people interact with your online ad and land on your website. This will tell you if your ads are working hard enough to get you site acquisitions.
An assist is when your digital marketing doesn’t make a sale happen the first time, but is strong enough to get the customer to make the purchase later.
For example, let’s say Customer Cathy sees your search ad and clicks through to your site, but leaves without buying anything.
A week later, your products are still on her mind, so she comes back and buys something. That means your original search ad assisted in making that sale.
Your ads and site have to be really compelling to get that type of delayed sale. That’s why the percentage of assists can measure your marketing’s acquisition power better than just a “click ad, land on site, buy immediately” metric.
TOOLS
You can track your assists percentage with tools like Google Analytics and KISSmetrics.
The assists stats are usually found under “Multi Channel Funnels” or just “Funnels.”
Now let’s look at rented channels. For them, you should track impressions, click-through rate, and shares.
Impressions tell you how many people have seen your content.
For example, Customer Cathy counts as an impression if she sees your post or ad on the rented channel she’s looking at.
Click-through rate goes a step further and shows you how many people were interested enough to click on that post or ad and/or interact with it.
Shares are when people have found your content interesting, entertaining and/or relevant enough to show their extended social network.
REMEMBER
As you track all those metrics, keep thinking of ways your website or social media can help you get more acquisitions.
DO THIS NOW
Think of an interest or activity your customers have or do that relates to your product. This can spark acquisition-friendly marketing ideas for your rented and owned channels.
If you’re participating in the course, go to the next section to access your self assessment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Acquisition is about your digital marketing speaking the right type of response and interaction from customers
To measure your digital marketing success on owned channels, track clicks and assists.
For rented channels, track impressions, click-through rate, and shares.