We frequently say that many decisions at startups should be viewed as experiments. This is especially true for startup marketing. You have ideas about what might work. You implement those ideas and you make more plans. The end of the year is a good time to step back and assess what worked and what didn’t. Here are 3 ways to look at your marketing before making next year’s plans.
Graphic Source: https://genealogybargains.com
#1 Email Open Rates – Are your email open and click-thru rates above industry averages? Mailchimp suggests that the average open rate across all industries was 21.33% and the click-thru rate was 2.62% in 2019. Hopefully, your averages are above these. If not, you have to work on improving both numbers. That means you need to develop more interesting content and work on better subject lines.
In addition to looking at your averages, you also want to look across emails to see which ones got higher than average rates. What were the subjects about? Did you offer deals? What days of the week were they? What themes seem to interest people more? For one startup we know, all of their highest open rates had sports themes. Their service had nothing to do with sports. But their subscriber base was mostly middle-aged men. So they knew they needed to sprinkle sports themes through their emails in the next year. Who knows if the same will be true later? But for now, every third email is getting a sports theme.
#2 Google Analytics – Which pages and content on the website got the most visitors? You want to figure out what information your visitors are seeking. No surprise on the website for The Titanic Effect – most people hit the book overview page, followed by the blog, the author bios, and workshops & speaking. That is what we would expect.
Then, look at what types of devices visitors are using. Depending on the data source, mobile devices account for as little as 52% of website visitors and as much as 75% of email readers. Mobile use for Facebook may be as high as 96%. You want to know what type of device visitors are using for two reasons. First, you need to make sure your website works on the type of device that people are using. With so many people visiting websites mobilely, your website should be mobile-responsive at a minimum. Mobile-responsive means they can actually read it on their mobile devices – all of the content is visible on mobile devices. If your website is not mobile-responsive, that is the first thing you need to change in 2020. Second, it should also be mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly means that the content is easy to consume on a device. For example, how do pictures, call-to-action buttons, and icons translate from the website to a mobile device? Can people do everything on their mobile devices that they could do from their laptops/desktops? Rather than pick on any websites, you can see some examples of bad mobile design at RankingBySEO. If you want to make sure you avoid the worst mistakes in website design, check out Blue Corona’s list. The key is to make sure your content is usable in the way that your visitors want to consume it.
#3 Content – What content is working/not working with your followers? This means looking across sources of content – social media, YouTube, your blog, etc. Which topics are the most read? What types of content – quotes, pictures, videos, links, white papers, etc. - get the most click-thrus and engagement (i.e. likes and shares)? In contrast, what content does no one seem to care about? Use those insights to guide new content development. For example, our top three most read blogposts are:
What Really Sank the Titanic? We are not at all surprised that this topic has the most reads. Every presentation we did in 2019, people were enthralled with the stories about the Titanic. Such a big and bold idea came to such a catastrophic outcome. It boggles the mind. So we probably ought to include more Titanic stories in our blogposts.
Why Getting to Product-Market Fit Can Sink a Startup. This was one of our favorite blogposts to write. And, it is one of the most frequent questions we get: How long does it take to get to product-market fit? This is the key to scaling a startup. You cannot scale until you have product-market fit. And, it’s not easy to figure out. You usually can tell when you don’t have it rather than when you do. It takes longer than most startups expect. So, we might want to share more examples of product-market fit in the future.
The Price is Right? Month after month, this blogpost has continued to be a top read. And it is closely followed by other practical blogposts. Building a startup is hard. Our readers want clear and practical recommendations about what to do and what not to do. So expect more practical insights.
There are lots of other metrics that you could also review – cost of customer acquisition should be going down over time, subscriber/follower base should be going up over time, etc. But the three analyses listed above are the most important. They have the biggest impact on next year’s plans and are the easiest to figure out. So audit 2019’s marketing to make 2020’s even stronger!