Digital Marketing: Data Benchmarking
This is a normal question regarding digital data. What is a good CTR rate? What is a good CPC? What is a good conversion rate? There is no set standard on stone. Yes, there may be articles floating out there on what a good benchmark would be but my recommendation is Internal Benchmarking.
Every business is different in the sense that internal goals, internal processes, internal manpower, internal resources, and internal decision makers are different. There’s also a non-disclosure agreement within companies so you really can’t compare with competitors. Even if you get a hold of their data, you may not be able to get the same results and goals.
Google Analytics has a Benchmarking tab within their Audience tab and it can be customized per country and per industry but it is based on website performance, not the overall digital marketing performance unless you’re an ecommerce website with end-to-end data tracking in Google Analytics.
This can be a reference but the marketing efforts per business is different so it cannot be a set-on-stone benchmark for you.
On to Internal Benchmarking, this is a progressive process wherein you launch your initial campaigns and then compare various tests of what may or may not seem to work for you. You try to improve the numbers you get by changing or tweaking your campaign (like changing design material or the ad copy, or even the targeting). For the website, the CTA button may be experimented on or the design layout or textual content. There are many things that can be tested but ensure one at a time to avoid guessing which factor helped in the improvement of performance.
When you have achieved the most effective numbers for you from multiple tests, that becomes your internal benchmark for forthcoming campaigns. Digital is fluid so try not to be too rigid or absolute. Don’t stress and hope for the best.