Marketing leaders continue to face historic pressure to deliver more results with less: less budget, less headcount, and less resources. Does this sound familiar? If you’re a marketer in the 21st century, it should.
Marketing leaders are under increased pressure to make every dollar count. Even after a slight rise in average marketing budgets in 2022, budget growth has slowed in our post-pandemic world, with economic uncertainty on the horizon.
With so many competing priorities, what's the best way to measure your performance, allocate your budgets, and make better strategic decisions? The answer is digital marketing benchmarks.
Benchmarking your marketing performance is a powerful way to clear the fog of war and get clarity about how your brand stacks up to competitors, industry data, and best practices.
In this article, we will cover the basics of digital benchmarking and share some of the most important digital marketing KPIs to benchmark, audit, and track for your brand.
Digital marketing benchmarks are metrics you can use to compare your brand’s online performance to competitors and against best practices. Marketing benchmarking allows you to measure digital marketing performance and optimize your digital marketing strategy.
When comparing your online data to digital benchmarks, you need to look at the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) across critical marketing channels like your website, social media, and others.
Let’s take a look at the essential digital marketing KPIs to benchmark.
Below are the most important digital benchmarks to audit, track, and measure.
In today's competitive digital-first world, marketing leaders can use reliable benchmark data to help act as a guiding light for making better decisions, faster.
Your brand's website is the cornerstone of a successful digital marketing strategy. When your site meets or exceeds industry benchmarks, it acts as an authoritative place for brand storytelling and can help build customer loyalty.
There are thousands of metrics you could benchmark, but here are the KPIs that matter most for digital marketing.
Start by auditing your site's traffic and engagement performance with these benchmarks. Your audit results will tell you about your most engaging content and provide clues on how to optimize and create more of it.
Modern customers expect fast loading websites that look great on any screen size or device. Comparing your site with these mobile-friendly and site speed benchmarks helps ensure that your site meets customer expectations.
More traffic is coming from mobile devices, in fact, globally it’s more than half (58%). Additionally, 54% of users say their frustration levels increase as page load times slow down.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of enhancing your website's ability to generate more leads and customers. This process includes auditing key elements of your customer's user journey and looking for ways to remove friction.
To improve your sites conversion rate benchmark these site elements:
When it comes to user experience (UX) your site visitors want to find what they are looking for in three clicks or less. Benchmarking the below website elements against best practices will ensure the most enjoyable user experience possible.
If your brand sells products online via an ecommerce store, it’s important to expand your digital marketing audit to include online shopping benchmarks and best practices.
It’s no secret that online shopping has increased post-pandemic, and according to Google, 54% of shoppers say they visit multiple websites before settling on what to buy and who to buy it from. Comparing your site's performance to digital benchmarks will help you attract new customers and increase the bottom line.
Related Resources:
In order to properly benchmark SEO performance, it is important to understand exactly what search engine optimization (SEO) is. In simple terms, SEO helps your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) driving organic traffic to your website.
It's estimated that there are approximately 63,000 search queries every second on Google and 39% of purchasers are influenced by relevant searches. No wonder 69% of marketers believe investing in SEO is a top priority. Here are the SEO benchmarks that matter most.
Related Resources:
Whether you're a multi-location or single-location brand you need a national and local SEO strategy.
Google’s algorithm is very complex. It incorporates the user's search intent, quarry, and location to determine the best version of the SERP to show. Data shows that people who search with local intent are likely to buy - 28% of local searches lead to purchases.
Comparing your search performance to the local SEO benchmarks below will allow you to optimize your local search strategy and stand out in local SERPs.
If a user is searching for an item “near me” or they include a city, metro, or some other local parameter, Google will often display the Local Pack in the SERP, giving marketers yet another opportunity to capture the attention of potential customers.
Optimizing your Google Business Profile will help you outrank your competitors in the local pack and on Google Maps, here are the most important profile elements to benchmark.
Related Resources
Email marketing is one of the oldest and time-tested digital marketing channels. Email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent. That’s a 4,200% return on investment (ROI), making it one of the most effective strategies available to your marketing team.
Here are the email marketing benchmarks that matter most:
When benchmarking your social media strategy, make sure you focus on the platforms that are most meaningful to your brand.
In general, the three largest social media platforms with the most diverse audiences include Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Generally speaking, all three platforms will have similar engagement data that can be audited.
Below are the social media benchmarks that matter most.
Content marketing is the practice of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain customers. This is why benchmarking your content marketing compared to your competitors is so important. When reviewing your content marketing strategy look at these benchmarks.
When benchmarking your content mix, it’s important to compare what types of content you are creating versus your competition. Potential content types include:
Related Resources:
The jury is still out on the future of digital advertising with industry leaders like Apple setting privacy standards higher than ever before and firing a massive shot across the bow at advertising companies like Facebook and Google.
Even with uncertainty around technology and targeting capabilities, digital advertising is still a large piece of many marketing budgets. Here are the digital advertising benchmarks that matter most.
There are many digital advertising platforms. Here are some of the most popular.
Auditing online reputation benchmarks like Google ratings and reviews is table stakes in today's world where bad news travels fast! Customers look for and trust online reviews.
According to research from BrightLocal, 79% of consumers say they trust the reviews they read online as much as a personal recommendation. When benchmarking your brand's online reputation, you need to audit these three types of sites.
Here are the customer ratings and review benchmarks that matter most on sites like Google and Yelp.
Company review sites play a big part in a brand's online reputation. What your employees say about your company culture and your employer brand helps paint a picture of whether your brand's values match up with theirs.
Crafting the right internal communications strategy can go a long way in making sure your employees leave positive reviews and ratings on sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn.
When benchmarking these sites, a lot of the metrics above still apply, but you will want to put a special focus on these metrics.
When benchmarking your brand's online reputation, it’s not enough to audit your customer and company reviews and ratings. You need to go one layer deeper.
I call this category the online court of public opinion.
Your brand's online reputation can be made or broken by the articles that show up when you Google search your company, the press coverage you receive from the media or fan bloggers, and even what people are saying on social media. Make sure you benchmark these corners of the online universe.
One common thread that connects all the digital benchmarks mentioned above is Customer Experience (CX). Marketers and organizations alike are putting more emphasis on customer experience as a key differentiator in today's competitive landscape. Some of the best CX metrics to benchmark include.
CX Strategy continues to grow in importance as brands try to map and optimize every touchpoint, emotion, and experience across the customer journey.
One way to keep a close eye on your customer experience is to use a Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is a widely used metric that is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or service to a friend or colleague.
By establishing your NPS, monitoring it, and benchmarking it over time your brand can have its finger on the pulse of how your reputation is trending.
One way to superpower your digital benchmarks is to use industry-specific data. At Fratzke, we’ve curated thousands of data points across many industries, allowing us to customize our Digital Marketing Benchmark Audit, for digital channels such as website, SEO, email marketing, social media, and digital advertising. Some of these industries include.
In this article, we discuss what digital marketing KPIs and benchmarks are. Briefly, let’s discuss what you can do with digital benchmarks. One of the best ways to use the benchmark metrics discussed above is to conduct a full Digital Marketing Benchmark Audit or individual Digital Channel Health Audits, like an SEO Audit, Social Media Audit, Content Marketing Audit, or Website Audit.
Most digital marketing audits focus on tactics and bug fixes instead of comparing strategic benchmarks and best practices. Audits that include performance benchmarks provide reliable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help set the context for your team's efforts and identify gaps. With benchmarks, you can bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to go.
Benchmarking in business is the process of comparing your company's performance metrics against those of your competitors or industry best practices. This can help identify areas for improvement and set goals for future performance.
Benchmarking in marketing involves comparing a company's marketing performance or processes against those of its competitors or industry standards. In digital marketing, it involves comparing digital channel performance like websites, social media, email marketing and others to industry data and best practices. The aim of benchmarking is to measure, compare and improve marketing performance.
A benchmark refers to a standard or point of reference against which things can be compared or assessed. It can also refer to a test or evaluation used to measure the performance or quality of something.
Related Resources:
Tags:
If you have more questions about digital marketing benchmarks and how you can use them to better understand your brand’s marketing performance, the Fratzke team is standing by to help. We have curated hundreds of the most important benchmark metrics across dozens of industries into one easy-to-understand Digital Marketing Benchmark Audit.
Our Digital Marketing Benchmark Audit has all the benchmark data and expert analysis you need to Measure, Benchmark, Compare, and Accelerate your digital marketing strategy forward - Leading to transformative growth.
The results we drive for our clients are real and measurable, check out our marketing case studies for yourself!
Visit our Digital Marketing Benchmark Audit page to learn more, and submit a contact form. We look forward to connecting with you.
201 Harbor Blvd.
Suite 203
Fullerton, CA, 92832
Phone: (714) 614-2881
Hours: Monday - Friday 8AM-6PM
