For high-growth businesses looking to master user acquisition, this slide deck runs through key metrics to track, channels to test, and other useful strategies.

1. The Complete Guide
to User Acquisition
The metrics, measurements, and channels
all high-growth businesses need to test today

2. First of all...
What is user acquisition?

3. We love this definition from General Assembly:
“User acquisition is the science
that complements the art of building
an audience and a brand. A
quantitative approach to marketing
with a specific goal of gaining
customers.”

4. Customer acquisition is all about data-driven, measurable experiments to find
out what makes people notice and engage with you.

5. So, what are the important metrics
to know when figuring out your
user acquisition strategy?

6. Let’s start with CAC
What is CAC?
Customer Acquisition Cost
How can you
calculate CAC? CAC = Total cost / Total
customers acquired

7. Here’s an easy example from KISSmetrics:
If a company spent
$100 on marketing
in a year and
acquired 100
customers in the
same year, their
CAC is $1.00.

8. We know what you’re thinking…
“what about long tail marketing
efforts, like SEO, which can
greatly contribute to
customer acquisition?”
It’s difficult to be cut & dry about it, but KISSmetrics (and
others) suggest calculating different CAC variations that factor
in this investment from a time & money perspective...

9. Which leads us to our next point...
How important is it to
calculate CAC by
marketing channel?
Pretty important.

10. You must learn (quickly) which
marketing channels are bringing in
quality customers.
For example, it might be cheaper to
bring in customers via PPC or paid
social vs. PR or SEM, but if they
aren’t your ideal user -
that cost becomes futile.
However...

11. Finally...
There will always be marketing
efforts & channels that drive word-
of-mouth interest & general
awareness but might be much harder
to attribute, and even harder to
attach to a CAC price tag.

12. So, how can you improve your CAC?
1. Lots of ongoing and correlating work needs to go
on in the background:
➢ Improve your user experience
➢ Focus on customer happiness
➢ Foster loyalty with users & encourage
referrals
➢ Generate goodwill & word of mouth
awareness

13. Then, know your audience,
test various channels,
and get really good at
measuring conversions.

14. What are your ideal users interested in and where are they
already reading, buying, asking for advice, etc.? You’ll use this
knowledge to target those users in organic and paid channels.
Larry Alton contributed a quick, systematic approach to
identifying your ideal audience & channels. Biggest takeaways:
break the process down by identifying persona indicators
(demographics like gender, geographic location, and more) and
follow five steps to engage those audiences.
Know your audience.

15. Test all the channels.
There are A LOT of viable channels depending on your audience
and your business. Don’t get discouraged by channel overload,
and don’t discredit new channels as they pop up. You never
know what might move the needle and it could surprise you.
You won’t know ‘til you test.
(We’ll dig into user acquisition channels a bit later…)

16. Convert, Convert, Convert.
Are you designed to turn site visitors into customers?
This is where landing pages and call-to-actions
(CTAs) come into play...
Keep CTAs simple, clear, and compelling.
No more than 5 words per CTA.
Use action-orientated words.
Make CTAs easy to understand &
quick to spot.
Reduce any friction to sign up.
Use photos & videos.
A/B tests will be your friend.
Test, test, test.

17. Once leads land on your site, are you talking to them?
Tools like live-chat on your site can help you welcome a
lead (by treating them like a real-life human) ultimately
and hopefully transforming them into an acquired user.
If they don’t become a user, you can learn why & better
understand challenges they face.

18. OK, back to user acquisition metrics.
What’s next?

19. Let’s dig into CLV
What is CLV?
Customer Lifetime Value
CLV measures profit from any given customer
Ideally: CLV > CAC

20. So, you can see how CLV --- and the more you learn
about your users --- directly impacts decisions
around product, sales, marketing, customer
support, etc.
This is important stuff.
So, how can you measure your own CLV?

21. Back your way into it:
The revenue you earn from a customer,
over a certain amount of time, subtracted
by the money spent on acquiring and
serving them.
RJ Metrics provides this free, nifty tool
which calculates your average order value,
average repeat purchase rate, and CAC.

22. Kissmetrics highlights the constants
to measure when calculating CLV:
1. Customer lifespan - the average amount of time one remains a customer
1. Customer retention rate (or churn rate) - percentage of customers who repurchase
over a certain amount of time, compared to another equal amount of time
1. Profit margin per customer - basically breaking down customer sales by margin rather
than by revenue
1. Rate of discount - interest rate used in discounted cash flow analysis to determine
present value of future cash flows
1. Average gross margin per customer lifespan - you can break this down even further by
looking at LTV of an “average” customer vs. a “good” high-performing customer

23. Measure, Measure, Measure
Leverage tools like:
… to monitor & report on all
results from experiments.

24. Once you start tracking and watching results, don’t be afraid to
make changes –- big or small. It’s up to you to see what works best,
and you can always improve. The more that you test and optimize,
the more intelligent you’ll become about the data that’s most
important and really moving the needle.

25. APPENDIX:
Acquisition Channels
We’re almost done!

26. Social Channels
There are a growing number of
social channels where your customers
and prospects likely spend a lot of their
time, just like the rest of the world.
Go back to your understanding of your
audience and then map those personas to
the demographics of each network, as well
as the opportunities those networks
present for you to share updates and
content, therefore generating traffic.

27. Content Marketing
Many companies are big believers in the inbound potential associated with
content marketing and are already creating the assets that have proven to attract
users: blogs, ebooks, webinars, videos, etc.
Make sure that all content is optimized and reaching its full potential from an
acquisition perspective.
So, now what?
➔ cross promote on social
➔ spin up landing pages for each campaign
➔ consider email captures for valuable content
➔ leverage buttons and CTAs to convert, etc.

28. Email Marketing
Email is a huge driver of user acquisition for
most companies. If your content and social
marketing uses email captures, or you have an
existing email list, those email addresses are
your golden ticket into the inbox of your users
and prospects.
Use email for customer & prospect happiness. If
you capture an email, you can reach out with
promotions, resources, and education in order
to convert leads to users. Emails to existing
users should be leveraged for reminders,
engagement, and retention.

29. Public Relations
Media coverage that focuses on your company
is direct, 3rd party validation of your product or
service, blasting that validation the publication’s
audience.
Make sure you leverage company and product
news effectively – execs can easily get lost in the
weeds and not realize when a product
development or significant momentum is
newsworthy. When you do get coverage,
leverage landing pages so you can specifically
target and convert the readers that click
through to learn more about your company.

30. Paid Search
Getting strong organic search results is always a
big accomplishment, but paid marketing is a
critical way to drive larger numbers to your
landing pages and content for conversion.
HubSpot does a great job of breaking down
how to use Google Adwords.
Create keywords, use Google’s tools like the
Keyword Creator and Traffic Estimator, don’t
forget to dig into Ad Extensions and Advanced
Settings to customize your campaign even
more.

31. Paid Social
Use paid social marketing tips to either
drive followers, drive traffic to your
content, or drive traffic to landing pages.
See what works best - driving traffic to
landing pages could trigger a faster
conversion, but ads on content might see a
higher engagement rate - it all depends.
You have to decide what your audience,
targeting, budget, goals & timeframe are
and go from there. As always, test, and test
again.

32. SEO
Your paid marketing, website, landing
pages, and content need to be optimized
for search with keywords, links, and
specific usability design tricks.
Don’t overlook SEO as part of your online
user acquisition efforts.
Check out Moz’s excellent Beginner’s
Guide to SEO.

33. congrats! you are now a user acquisition
expert.
Still feeling lost? We can help.
Get a FREE business consultation to be paired with the best user acquisition vendors
that will drive results.
(VentureApp connects high-growth businesses
with the best vendors that fit their needs.)
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