We’re excited to announce the release of the Customer Acquisition Study with our partners SimilarWeb, which measures the effectiveness of different marketing channels around the world. We were able to obtain an enormous amount of information using SimilarWeb’s data sources: over 100 million monitored devices, local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) around the globe, web crawlers and hundreds of thousands of connected sites and apps. The data revealed some interesting similarities and glaring differences between countries and industries. We focused on 5 countries – UK, US, France, Germany and Italy – and 3 industries in particular – fashion, apps and news & entertainment.
Direct Traffic Rules
Our study showed that direct traffic was by far the most popular way to attract visitors. For brands, this means that brand awareness is a crucial element in their marketing strategy. Direct traffic was closely followed search and referral traffic, showing the important role of SEO and backlinks.
Major Differences between Countries
The most significant country differences in consumer behavior were seen in the app and fashion industries. For apps, search traffic was much more popular in France (39%), compared to the UK (33%) and the US (27%). Inversely, referral traffic was much more important in this industry in the UK (30%) compared to the US (16%) and France (13%).
For online fashion retailers, social media was more important in the US (6%) compared to all other countries. On the other hand, display advertising is more effective in Italy (11%) and Germany (6%) compared to other countries.
What is the Most Popular Social Network?
With social media playing such a large role in attracting traffic, we took a look at the most popular social networks for different industries. Surprise, surprise (not really), Facebook came out on top across the board. However, the social networks vying for 2nd and 3rd place varied greatly, from Twitter to Pinterest to Reddit.
What Does this Mean for Businesses?
Businesses today need to juggle both SEO, quality content and media outreach in order to get visitors through the top acquisition channels. With more and more social networks putting a stronger focus on visual elements, businesses need to consider integrating graphic aspects into their communications. Finally, the effectiveness of paid content should not be ignored. The key is to understand the idiosyncrasies of each industry and country in order proportionally allocate the right amount of resources to each channel.
