How do you measure and track the success of growth marketing efforts?
Let's start by setting clear and specific goals that align with the broader objectives of your business. Think about what you want to achieve, whether it's reaching a certain number of new customers or generating a specific amount of revenue. Once you have these goals in place, it's time to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you keep track of how each area is performing. For example, you can use the return on ad spend (ROAS) or LTV:CAC metrics to see how well your paid investments are paying off. It will show you the return you're getting in relation to the money you're spending on advertising. Website conversion rate is another metric to monitor which tells you the percentage of visitors who are actually taking action, like making a purchase or filling out a form. When it comes to your email campaigns, keeping an eye on the click-through rate (CTR) and click-to-open-rate (CTOR) will give you insights into how relevant your email contents are and how many people are clicking on the links you provide. And of course, don't forget about your social media presence. Tracking the growth of your followers and analyzing social listening across different platforms will help gauge brand awareness and may provide valuable insights to improve the product.
By setting these specific KPIs for each area, you'll be able to measure and evaluate how well your marketing initiatives are performing. This way, you can make informed decisions and fine-tune your growth strategy to achieve the best results for your business.
From my perspective, one of the main differences between tracking success in growth marketing versus traditional marketing is that it doesn't stop at the acquisition "handoff." Oftentimes, traditional marketing teams have goals such as MQLs, but this does not account for quality.
When tracking growth marketing efforts, you want to provide visibility not only into counts but also into quality. It also doesn't stop at acquisition; you want to understand activation, engagement, and retention.
This may involve additional tools such as product usage tools, but the fundamentals of how to track are similar. Experimentation is also a fundamental aspect of growth marketing, so you'll find yourself reporting on A/B testing more than in traditional marketing.
A few additional metrics to consider include:
Conversion
Retention
Average revenue per user (ARPU)
Payback period
Engagement
Referral