Yes and maybe.
What is Benchmarking in Digital Marketing?
In big words it’s ‘evaluating your business performance by comparing certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)’.
Once you know where your business is, say the number of unique visitors to your website, then you can set targets.
No. That’s wrong.
Number of visitors is a vanity metric and is interesting but it is not where you put your focus. You start (with an ecom’ website) by looking at your Conversion Rate, how many visitors are buying?
Traffic Sources
Now you’re looking at the Conversion Rate, which traffic source has the highest?
Spoiler…
All the sources convert at different rates. Why’s that, Jim? Because the same purchaser will come to your website from more than one source. They click on an Ad (PPC), they come back from a Google Search (Organic Traffic) and perhaps they remember the domain URL so type it in the address bar (Direct Traffic). Other traffic sources are available.
Benchmark for Conversion
An overall Conversion Rate is one to have in your dashboard. Finding the right traffic for your business is another to be aware of (Is our content and optimisation bringing visitors that buy)?
You can also use conversion rate for other parts of your marketing mix. For example, if we post on X (or another social platform) Y number of times, how many followers are we gaining?
Now, you can look at factors like Return on Investment and Cost per Acquisition, plus Lifetime Value.
Benchmark for Website Health
These are minor factors but worth checking on every month. Links to the website, brand term searches, domain score.
The Dashboard for Benchmarking
I use a spreadsheet. There are fancy tools and they may work for you. I use the spreadsheet because it is adaptable for each client, it shows progress and most important by manually assembling the data I get to think, to see patterns, find gaps and question things that seem to be working but have changed (think algorithms, that change with the sun going up and going down).
Make your own dashboard. Add what’s important to your business. Track the interesting things as you never know when this may pay off.
Actions Are Everything
Once assembled (I track weekly and monthly depending on the business and how well they are established) you can prioritise the actions with a simple question.
If I take this action, is it likely to a) make more money b) increase brand recognition and word-of-mouth marketing?
Benchmarking My Creative Life
My creative life is one of writing with a little performing. I write a surreal comedy podcast. (and do some of the voices) Jelly Trumpet and I am also writing my first long book (100,000 words).
All of this is done after my client work and takes up much of my weekend (yes, I am single with a grown up daughter). I do aim for a word count of 2,000 words per weekend.
But I don’t benchmark the plot, the characters, the humour. These I leave to instinct and stubbornness.
Amen,
About Conversion Detectives
Conversion Detectives is a full-service digital marketing agency in Hertfordshire.
We find the best quality traffic for your website and convert more of that traffic into sales or sales leads.
Services
Digital Marketing Strategy | Creative Content Marketing | Email Marketing |
Lead Generation | Content Strategy | Social Media Marketing |
Video Marketing | SEO (Basics) | SEM | Shopify Marketing |
Podcast scripting
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