A well-crafted marketing plan is the compass that guides your journey toward success. Whether you’re looking to increase website traffic, generate leads, boost sales, or enhance brand awareness, setting clear benchmarks is crucial for measuring the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the essential steps to establish benchmarks that align with your objectives and help you achieve tangible results.
Define campaign objectives
Clearly outlining your goals will set the direction for your digital marketing efforts. Are you aiming to increase website traffic, generate leads, drive sales, or improve brand awareness? The clearer your desired outcome, the more likely you are to achieve your goals.
Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
Once your campaign objectives are set, it’s time to determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be the compass for your success.
Common KPIs include:
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Click-through rate (CTR)
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Conversion rate
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Cost per conversion
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Traffic sources
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Social media engagement
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Return on investment (ROI)
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Customer lifetime value (CLV)
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Impressions
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Bounce rate
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Email open rate and click-through rates
There are many different metrics you could track. Choose the metrics that align with the goal you are trying to reach. These metrics provide measurable insights into your campaign’s performance and help you identify where you did well and where you can improve.
Research industry benchmarks
Investigate industry benchmarks to understand typical performance metrics for campaigns similar to yours. Industry reports, studies, and benchmarking tools can offer valuable insights into what is considered standard in your field, helping you set realistic expectations.
You could research industry average benchmarks or specific competitors’ benchmarks. While not always directly comparable, understanding their successes and challenges can help set competitive benchmarks. Learn from their strategies and incorporate the best practices into your own campaigns.
Whichever source you choose, compare these with your business’s performance and identify gaps.
Learn from the past, consider historical performance
Review the performance of your previous campaigns, extracting insights to set benchmarks based on past achievements or identify areas for improvement. Observe your followers, subscribers and customers’ responses — or lack thereof. This historical data provides a valuable foundation for realistic goal-setting.
This analysis can give you ideas for content generation and new marketing campaigns, and inform iterations of your current marketing strategy.
Understand audience and platform norms
Every audience is unique, and so are the platforms you use to reach them. Consider the characteristics of your target audience and the platforms to which they gravitate. Ensure the platforms you’re leveraging are the ones your ideal customers use.
Different industries, demographics and platforms may have unique benchmarks, so understanding these norms is crucial for setting realistic expectations and crafting tailored strategies. A marketing message that works well with one demographic often falls short of another. Understand the nuances of each audience and adjust as needed.
Set realistic and achievable goals
Being ambitious can help your business excel and motivate you. However, unrealistic goals will leave you and your marketing team discouraged, frustrated and stressed.
Establish realistic and achievable goals based on your business, industry and past performance. Realistic goals provide motivation and serve as stepping stones to success. You may choose to base these goals on the average benchmarks in your industry.
Use the SMART criteria
The SMART criteria — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound — creates clear and actionable benchmarks, providing a roadmap to success and keeping your digital marketing efforts on track. This framework helps you clearly identify what you are trying to do and how you measure success, achievability, relevance to your business, and the timeframe you intend to achieve or iterate the goal by.
Evaluate ROI: calculating the value of your journey
At the end of the day, all this time and effort you are spending on your marketing strategy is for one purpose: ROI. How much money are you earning due to your time, energy and investments?
Determine how effectively your campaign is generating value relative to the resources invested. KPIs such as cost per conversion, customer lifetime value, and conversion rates can help identify your marketing ROI. This evaluation ensures that your efforts are not just a journey but a valuable expedition.
Monitor and iterate
Regularly monitor the performance of your campaign against the benchmarks you’ve set. Be prepared to adjust your benchmarks to navigate unforeseen challenges or leverage unexpected opportunities.
Ready to chart the course for your digital marketing success? Take the first step by scheduling your free marketing consultation with Dream Local Digital today.
