When a Startup or a new business model tries to grow using marketing actions, mistakes are made that are often common. Some of the most common are the use of incorrect performance metrics, product and growth teams working in silos, slow speed of testing, and lack of a holistic view of the marketing funnel.
This does not mean that there are not unique problems for each startup, but these are found on a greater number of occasions
Low testing speed
Far is the day in the future when payments, product lifecycle, social media and content can be flipped on a switch and all run in concert and automatically. Until that day comes, the need to keep testing is key.
It is simple: if more tests are carried out, the results will be obtained sooner. While the concept is simple, a proper testing framework is needed, one that defines the number and type of weekly tests to be implemented. An example weekly test plan might look like this:
- Paid Acquisition: two creative concepts times three iterations of each copy = six creative assets.
- Lifecycle: two variations of a piece of copy x five emails = 10 email variations.
It is key to create a testing framework and, most importantly, to follow it. The results will be seen as a consequence of said framework.
Incorrect measurements
When measuring the success of a campaign, whether it's social media for paid customer acquisition or a series of lifecycle customer retention actions, it's vital to get the metrics right before you start getting metrics; this is the fundamental pillar of any set of growth marketing actions.
But what if the performance metrics are inaccurate? And if they are, why? The top three reasons for not having correct metrics are:
- Attribution source for conversion.
- Conversion loss of attribution.
- Not grouped (real cases) versus grouped.
According to the attribution source, is one of the most common reasons for their reliance on auto-attribution networks (ie Facebook and Google) to measure conversions. Often these platforms overattribute the number of conversions they drive, especially when running on multiple additional channels.
For example: Sam clicks on a Facebook ad today (day 1) and a Google ad two days later (day 3). Sam converts after clicking the Google ad on day 3. The conversion should go to Google, right? In this case, with the industry standard attribution window (7 click days / 1 visit day), both Facebook and Google would count the conversion, because it happened within that time frame. But you are counting twice. So if you trust the dashboard data from both ad platforms, the counts are likely to double.
La loss of attribution is the second most important reason when referring to getting wrong measurements. There are a number of reasons why there may be attribution loss:
- Difficulties with marketing technology.
- Privacy (iOS14, CCPA, etc.).
- Ads with few clicks.
Of these, technological problems can fortunately be debugged and refined. Without going into the details of marketing technology, in any case, this is an area where companies should invest sensibly in the early stages of growth.
Privacy is an ever-changing topic that cannot be ignored. This cannot be fully resolved, but requires putting solutions in place to model conversions that are not correctly attributed to conversion.
If you're running video ads or online impressions, keep in mind that user behavior can be drastically different for each placement. Most conversion volume will not be recorded outside of ad dashboards, and a large portion will be attributed to organic channels. This is because users don't click as much on YouTube or show ads as often. Instead, users search for the advertised product or service after seeing it in one of these locations.
Finally, to avoid confusion with metrics, ensure the process design and methodology remain consistent and accurate. It is common to view metrics in the form ungrouped (actual data) or grouped. When measured non-aggregated (each action separately), you're looking at all conversions that occur regardless of when the initial touchpoint occurred. On the other hand, with the pooled metrics, you're looking at how many conversions have occurred from the time of initial touch and investment. These methodologies are very different ways of measuring performance.
little increase
If you ask yourself this question: when you turn off a growth lever (action), how many conversions do you lose?
This is important because it gives a numerical value to growth efforts. Not so important when starting and running just one channel or medium (ie, for example, just Facebook). But as soon as channels or growth media are added to the mix, it's critical to see if Facebook, Google, or their affiliates are driving incremental conversions.
A common channel that drives low lift is Google brand search, because those users are already searching for the brand and likely would have clicked the organic link anyway.
Focus only on the top of the funnel
In many startups they focus only on the top of the funnel traffic without taking into account the rest of the funnel, which includes at least activation, retention and recommendation. For every ad spend to be worthwhile at the top of the funnel, your prospects need to be activated initially, stay with the company long-term, and get excited enough to recommend the experience to others.
It might seem overwhelming to set everything up, but there are plenty of quick and tricky ways to get this all up and running.
A good approach might be to broaden the strategy at first and not worry too much about customization until later stages. Use tools like Zapier (ITTT) to make it easy to use automation and connection tools. Automatic emails for new leads can also be set up. Leverage services like Apptentive (mobile) or Trustpilot (web) to increase your reviews and fix problems early on, so you retain as many users as possible.
Insufficient integration of output growth
Product and growth are becoming more and more intertwined because the roles overlap quite often. Whether it's iterating on landing page experiences, implementing new tools, or tweaking the user acquisition funnel, these features need to work together to scale successfully. There is no way to perform one action without the other.
You see even more product manager roles with procurement functions because teams have a need for such synergy. In a startup, this may be the CTO or engineer who also has the end product role and must interact closely with the customer base growth marketing manager. You can greatly increase the amount of testing and tuning by having these two roles work closely together.
