Correct Metric for Startups: Measuring what matters
Find a correct metric for startups is one of the most complicated task in the beginning. The first thing that comes to mind for many people when we talk about startups digital marketing is paid ads on social networks. And although ads are part of a digital marketing strategy, it is almost impossible to reduce it to just that.
The digital strategies are a whole ecosystem that works from cycles. And they contemplate from digital assets, such as websites, articles, mailing, advertisements, to online sellers, who are in charge of strengthening and generating the relationship with prospects.
Before we dive into how to pick the correct metric for your startup, let’s discuss the various metric.
Acquisition by source Metric for Startup
The number of customers/users (depending on the business model) that you have attracted segmented by source; that is, what it tells you is the volume of interested parties that you can potentially transform into customers depending on where each interested party comes from.
The key to any startup is to have an efficient machine to transform stakeholders into customers. Therefore it is key to model the life cycle of users … and this always begins with the acquisition. Also, if you can know the number of interested parties attracted by sources, you will be able to have an idea of how each source works.
Calculation:
It depends a lot on how our business model is, but usually, it is enough to “count” the interested parties by source. Google Analytics helps us a lot to differentiate referral traffic, search traffic with keywords, affiliation, campaigns, etc. In other more “tangible” business models it is usually necessary to ask customers how they found us.
Conversion Metric for Startups
Conversion is one of the best-known metrics. It measures the percentage of potentially interested parties (ACQUISITION) who have finally ended up buying (MONETIZATION). It is an indicator that tells you what percentage of customers you have managed to sell the total traffic/target audience you have managed to interest.
Calculation:
To calculate the conversion percentage, you must divide the number of customers you have monetized by the total number of “acquired” customers. And if you can do this analysis by sources much better (something complicated, since sometimes it is difficult to have traceability of where a customer who has ended up buying has come from).
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
It is a metric that indicates how much money it has cost you to attract a NEW customer on average (be careful, this is important) during the period we are analyzing. It is a comparative metric; that is, it only has value compared to other periods.
It allows us to know how much money it costs to attract a new client, it gives us an idea about the evolution of the investment we are making in attracting. It is key when it is put in opposition to the next, the value of the customer’s life cycle.
Calculation:
You must add the cost of all the efforts invested in attracting new customers and divide the figure obtained by the new customers obtained during the period. They must be new customers that you have not yet monetized.
Since we’ve cleared this up, we return to the initial question:
What is the Correct Metric for your Startups?
You should know that each business can have different approaches and objectives. A good digital marketing strategy must align with that.
The needs of a company that has a physical establishment as its strong point are very different from a company that makes sales through online advice.
So we can say that, under that logic, the appropriate metric for your startup marketing strategy depends on your business model and your main commercial objectives.
Do you want your prospects to land on your website because that’s where your company’s magic is best perceived? We will then have to generate ads and calls to action or links so that users reach your platform and make sure that your website has elements such as articles, forms, advice, etc. so that users perceive that value.
But the most useful metrics can be very different for a company that wants to take prospects to their social networks or an online seller via GB WhatsApp.
You must take into account that all metrics are important to measure your progress as a company at the end of the story because, as we already said, digital transformation strategies involve a cycle.
It is important to consider all the variables to detect your business model’s weak points. Start working on it, and metrics is a very important tool in this process.
