Acquisition cost, lead gen, cost per lead, customer life-time value, ROI... Making sense of customer acquisition metrics

We live in a world of supply and demand, this applies to customer acquisition. Gaining a customer isn’t free, nor is it cheap. It’s a necessary expense when running a business, but it is possible to overspend. It’s important to find a good balance when it comes to customer acquisition, but that’s no easy feat. It’s difficult to keep costs down because of the competition that’s inherent in any industry. Marketing costs are necessary to beat out the competitors. With so many more demands for customer attention circulating in the modern world, your draw needs to stand out in order to succeed. Looking at the overall economics of the situation can help with this.

Supply and Demand

The idea of customer acquisition isn’t much different from the way the stock market runs. It’s driven by supply and demand.…

With Google's algorithms are changing all the time. What works and what doesn't?

Tim Soulo wrote a rather controversial article two weeks ago, the backlash of which has seen Ahrefs remove all the 'controversial' content. However, this shouldn't detract from the data they extrapolated from the study. The study was conducted to identify the correlations of different on-page SEO factors, with Google rankings across 2 Million random keyword searches. They were very keen to point out that although correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, the results are certainly interesting.

What am I referring to when I say On-Page SEO Factors?

Typically when discussing SEO ranking factors, you have three main areas. Off-the-page: Which are referring to factors publishers can't themselves impact. Violations: Typically underhand tactics, that search engines frown upon e.g. spammy link building On-the-page: These refer to the factors publish can actually control e.g. HTML, sitemaps, page speed. It these, that the chart is discussing today.…

Marketers can expect greater slice of the pie in 2016

The latest data from CMO.com's 2016 survey shows a healthy increase in the percentage of firms revenues going on marketing. This is good news for marketers, who will be able to use the additional funds to try new campaigns and hopefully deliver the all important ROI which will lead to CFO's being more willing to devote big chunks of company spending to innovative new digital campaigns that it can be hard to get buy-in for. It's worth considering what might be behind these changes, and the implications for marketers: Explanation 1: It's the economy stupid One explanation for the current trend may just be that economic recovery is giving firms more to spend, and much of this spending is headed towards marketing. The reason for this may be greater competition for attention…

Is there a growing disconnect between a brand and its digital marketing strategy?

Failing to adjust and implement a clearly defined digital strategy could be due to the disconnect between a brand, its purpose and the digital tactics used to meet company objectives.

With the brand’s purpose not clearly understood and integrated within the journey through the digital transformation, brands may be finding themselves lost. This leaves their digital operations and tactics isolated, being operated and managed in a silo.

This growing disconnect between the brand and its digital marketing strategy was highlighted in a recent survey by Smart Insights who asked the question:

“Does your organisation have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy?”

 

For organisations to…

 Addressable media is the future of advertising

North America leads the world in many things; obesity rates, moon landings, car ownership. But what about targeted ad spend? A new study of 350 senior marketings in North America shows how people based marketing is growing and the results speak to its effectiveness.

What is people-based advertising?

People-based advertising, also known as addressable media, is a bit of a buzzwordy term that essential means showing adverts to the exact people you want to see them, rather than just audience segments determined by demographics. Technology has now advanced to the point where ads can be delivered on an individual  basis. Advertisers can now buy audiences instead of programs. There is no need to forecast who will be watching. There is no need to experience the wasted reach associated with spot buying. The system determines audience composition in real time and then chooses the most appropriate ads. Each individual advertiser…

Internet Explorer has finally been dethroned from atop the Web Browser perch

Microsoft's clunky and outdated web browser has been on a gradual decline since 2008 and has eventually been overtaken by Google Chrome as the most world's most widely used Web Browser. The data from NetMarketShare, powered by TrueStats also points to a slight fall in market share for Firefox. Since the introduction of Google Chrome in 2008, there has been a steady shift in the status quo, where Internet Explorer had ruled for so many years unchallenged. With the introduction of Microsoft's newest web browser - Edge, coupled with Google Chromes superior performance, Internet Explorer's time looks to be coming to a slow end. Chrome now accounts for 41.66% of the market share, 0.31% more than IE, however, the rate of the decline suggests the gap will widen very quickly. Chrome's…

The campaign to be the most powerful person in the world has generated some cutting edge marketing tactics

I don't need to tell you the current round of US primaries to decide on the two parties presidential candidates have the commentariat in a bit of a tizz. Trump has stolen the show by saying things candidates to lead the world's foremost superpower really shouldn't be saying. We've had arguments over the size of hands (and what that represents), un-becoming spats involving the candidates wives and announcements of policies so ludicrous you'd think a ten-year-old could do a better job of running a campaign: Exhibit 1: Trump's plan to ban all Muslims until quote 'we can figure out what is going on'. We're not here to get involved in the actual politics of the US election, but if you look at some of the big trends emerging from US politics you can draw out some genuinely…

The potential to completely transform your digital marketing using any combination of these five emerging technologies is not to be underestimated

Technology and marketing go hand in hand, and more so than you might think. If it were not for the technological advances in the 1980s and the emergence of databases then relationship marketing would not be possible. Of course, not only marketing technology but the entire world as we now know it would be a vastly different place had search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Ask not arrived in the 1990s, which manifested the beginning of search marketing. Then we saw the age of mobile take hold with the emergence of 3G mobile networks and the arrival of the smartphone in 2007 with Apple’s first iteration of the iPhone, now a truly ubiquitous technological advancement that has changed the lives of millions of people. Now here we are in 2016. In the…

Adwords bidding landscape has changed as Google confirm the right sidebar on desktop SERP is to be removed.

Importance: [rating=5] (For PPC Managers & SEO managers) Recommended source: Search Engine Land Google have ended their six-year experiment with the Sidebar ads, instead opting for three above-the-fold text ads for queries on the desktop SERP and a further 3 ads at the bottom. “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.” A fourth ad will be shown for only the highly commercial queries such as "Car Insurance", "Hotels in New York" and "Cheapest Smartphones", so the types of search where people express a deep intention to buy. Although we were a…

Use these highly actionable tips to give your customer acquisition a huge boost this year

Today, consumers expect brands to have personalities — just like people. They demand that companies break the fourth wall and find ways to authentically connect, whether through personalization or engaging with them in real time at the right moment across channels. The desire for authentic, personal brand interaction isn’t going anywhere. As you enter the new year, it’s wise to keep in mind the effects this consumer mindset has on your customer acquisition strategy. Here are the five digital marketing trends I see as the most imperative for customer acquisition and growth in 2016.

1. Online video consumption is king.

The 18-to-24 age group is becoming harder and harder to reach through traditional channels such as television. Between the second quarters of 2011 and 2015, television viewing by this age group dropped by nearly eight hours per week.…