For many businesses, User Acquisition is the main traffic source and a significant portion of the marketing budget. Having said that, many businesses are not managing it correctly and have a lot of room for improvement. Here are 7 common mistakes and their solutions:
1. A too small budget
If your budget is too small, the platforms’ algorithms can’t learn enough in order to optimize your ads effectively. In order to succeed in User Acquisition, you must deliver enough data to the system, meaning has the right amount of budget to get enough data events per campaign.
2. Focusing on quantity instead of quality
In today’s highly competitive and expensive market, you can’t allow yourself to test million of ads by throwing every design into your campaign and see what hits. In order to truly manage to find the right ads, you need to focus on quality, give a real chance to each ad, and understand the marketing logic behind the ad and why it should work.
3. Complicated account structure
Account structure will be different between businesses, and it should be, yet many campaign managers fail to build it properly and overcomplicate the account by building too many campaigns and by that creating multiple problems such as audience overlaps, audience mixes, budget spreads, a lot of time-consuming manual work and much more. The best is to simplify your account structure for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
4. Neglecting Retention
User acquisition is a great tool to bring new users to your business, but it is also a great way to preserve and bring back your Retention audience, and usually, this audience performs amazingly. While keeping new users your main objective, focus also on Retention.
5. Not optimizing the ad creative for each placement
There are numerous placements for advertisement including GDN, LinkedIn, Facebook, IG, IG feed, Story, Youtube, and many more. Each placement or/and device require different creative assets based on its best practices. Things to consider might be dimension, length, authenticity, rhythm, sales or value, and many more factors. Make sure you optimize your ad creative differently for each placement to maximize its performance.
6. A poor synergy between ads and the landing pages
While ads are the first step of the funnel, your landing page is the second. In order to convince people to convert, you must match your ads with your landing pages in design, messaging, brand and feel. A poor synergy will lead to a lack of trust and a poor conversion rate.
7. Not considering the multi-channel funnel
Especially today after IOS 14, we can’t longer just analyze each platform only by its conversion data, but also understand that there is a multi-channel funnel where users start their journey in one medium and finish it in another. We must analyze campaigns not only by their conversions data but also by their behavior data such as session duration, page per session, and more in order to assess their post-click attribution.
Summary
User acquisition is an ever-changing field, where knowledge is king. Avoiding these mistakes can save a lot of resources including both time and money. There are no shortcuts, no magic tricks, you need to do it professionally or it will cost you dearly.
About us Picanti provides advanced User Acquisition Solutions (including PPC) based on technology, data insights, creatives, and tailored strategies for each business. If you are looking to scale your business or learn more about performance marketing, feel free to reach out :)