Why Using Benchmarks is Crucial for Your Business Strategy
As a marketer, you know by now that data is everything. But do you know where you stand in regard to the rest of the industry? Without benchmarks, marketing KPIs can only show you how you compare to yourself. It’s crucial to analyze and measure your performance against competitors to understand where to improve.
Here, you’ll discover why industry benchmarks matter, what makes them an important part of your digital strategy, and why you should use brand-new marketing benchmark tool of Major Tom to gain insights into your marketing data.
What Are Benchmarks, and Why Should You Care
Benchmarks matter because they provide context. Without them, your marketing metrics are nothing more than numbers.
With benchmarks, you get a clear picture of how well you’re doing in comparison to your peers. This context is invaluable in making strategic decisions about your digital marketing strategy.
When it comes to comparing your data, most marketers don’t bother manually doing the analysis with their annual industry benchmark report. It’s tedious and time-consuming; people read through the data, take a look at the tables, then put the report aside.
Major Tom’s marketing benchmark tool, for the first time ever, allows marketers to generate an immediate report showing how your KPIs stack up against your competitors and your industry as a whole. It’s user-friendly and provides insights that you can use to improve your marketing efforts. Plus, it’s free to use.
The marketing benchmark tool saves a ton of time and mental effort. And with that report in hand, marketers can make fully-informed decisions about which marketing tactics are underperforming and which are successful on an industry-wide basis.
Beat Your Competitors: Identify the Gaps in Your Marketing Strategy
If you don’t know where you stand compared to the rest of your industry, it’s impossible to set reasonable goals. This verification is why it’s essential to stay aware of your industry’s benchmarks’ average. You must first know how you compare to your competitors in order to know how to beat them.
Once you use Major Tom’s marketing benchmark tool to generate your industry benchmark report, you’ll gain clarity into where your company falls short of the competition. By examining the reported data, you can identify the areas where your company stacks up and where you have room for improvement.
The areas where you’re underperforming indicate gaps in your marketing strategy. Knowing these will enable you to create a more comprehensive and effective plan. Take the time to walk through your data in these areas and pay close attention to any trends or patterns where customers seem to drop off or disengage. Then, identify potential friction points in your sales funnel, and make a plan to fix them.
The Best Way to Use Benchmarking & Its Benefits
The best way to use benchmarking is by selecting KPIs that are relevant to your business goals and conducting a thorough analysis of the data. Benchmarking provides several benefits, including:
- Uncovering areas for improvement.
- Helping to set achievable goals.
- Providing insight into how competitors as a whole are performing.
- Helping to maintain focus on outcomes rather than just outputs.
- Facilitating continuous improvement.
- Helping to uncover better practices.
The best benchmarks to set or compare to are those that are independent, publicly available, measurable and specific, accurate, recent, and relevant. By factoring in both internal and external benchmarks, you can gather a complete view of your business’s marketing functionality.
External benchmarks refer to industry-specific data and the average competitor data, while internal benchmarks refer to your company’s previous marketing performance.
Use Major Tom’s marketing benchmark tool for an easily generated industry report. The tool is updated annually with the latest marketing data, so you can rest assured your numbers are accurate. Simply answer the prompts and add your KPIs to the tool to generate an automated industry report.
Currently, Major Tom’s marketing benchmark tool is configured for the following industries:
- Alcohol
- Automobile
- Beauty/Personal Care
- Construction
- CPG
- Education
- Finance
- Healthcare
- Professional Services
- Real Estate
- Retail
- Software/IT
- Travel/Hospitality
- General
Get Started With Major Tom’s Marketing Benchmark Tool Today
Using benchmarks to evaluate your marketing strategy is critical to success. Setting KPIs, analyzing gaps in your marketing, comparing your performance against your competitors, and incorporating both external and internal benchmarks are all crucial aspects of using data effectively.
Major Tom’s marketing benchmark tool provides a stress-free way to understand how your marketing data compares to your industry average, allowing you to focus on making informed business decisions. Remember, without benchmarks, marketing metrics are useless, so start setting them today.
Use Major Tom’s Marketing Benchmark Tool today.
About Major Tom
Major Tom is a full-service digital agency that’s been purpose-built to help organizations thrive in an increasingly complex landscape.