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Whether you’re looking back at your numbers from 2023 or polishing your 2024 strategy and goals, you may need that missing piece of the puzzle to fully understand your performance and make an accurate forecast for the next quarters.
And what’s that missing piece? We say—benchmarks.
Knowing how companies similar to yours have performed helps you build a complete picture of your performance and potentially attribute some dips and increases to seasonality, industry trends, and more.
Databox compiled a selection of B2B marketing benchmarks to help you evaluate performance from 2023 and set attainable but challenging goals for 2024. And for an even deeper understanding, our Benchmark Groups offer additional metrics and insights, which you can access for free by simply joining a Benchmarks group.
Let’s dive into the data.
B2B has a lower position on average (30.61) compared to all industries (28.78), but it manages to attract a proportionate number of clicks (997.5) relative to the general average (1.41K for all industries).
B2B businesses also have a relatively good level of engagement despite a lower ranking. This could mean they’re targeting niche keywords that have lower search volumes, but attract high-quality leads, improving the probability of conversion.
Let’s take a closer look at specific metrics for the following sources:
Google Analytics 4
Google Search Console
The median value of the number of sessions across the B2B industry in November was 3.23K, which is slightly lower than the median value for all industries.
B2B businesses often target a more specialized audience. The slightly lower median could indicate that B2B industries are engaging with a more targeted audience, leading to slightly fewer overall sessions but potentially higher-quality interactions.
Expert recommendation: Tracking sessions and how their number relates to other important website metrics can be easy with this free Google Analytics 4 Website Engagement Overview dashboard template. Here, you can monitor Sessions. Events and even find out what devices users use the most to visit your website.
Our benchmark data shows that the median session conversion rate across B2B businesses was 2.3% in November 2023. In August, the median value of this metric was 2.01% across all industries, so we can see that B2B is experiencing an upward trend in session conversions.
Expert recommendation: Diversify your CTAs to make the most of them. In long-form content, several calls to action are a must, whether text-based, in form of a banner, button, pop-up, etc. Repeating CTAs as the user scrolls down the page improves your chances of converting them.
Based on the data we collected from B2B businesses in our benchmark group, the median value of user conversion rate for all companies in November this year was 2.5%.
Expert recommendation: Databox dashboards let you track conversions filtered by different traffic sources, so you can identify the best-converting ones and invest in them further. If you want to track conversion rates for different sources, such as social media or organic search, select metrics like Customer Conversion Rate by Source or Contact Conversion Rate by Source when building your dashboard.
The median value of impressions across B2B companies within our benchmark group was 73.29K in November.
Expert recommendation: Although businesses typically focus on conversions as they’re what brings in revenue, impressions can be equally important if you’re looking to assess your SEO efforts. Use Google Search Console to identify pages that have generated significantly more impressions compared to previous three months. This could reveal an exploding topic and keywords that are gaining search volume that you can try and leverage early.
The median number of clicks B2B businesses generated in November was 997.5 based on our benchmark group data, which is slightly lower than the median value across all industries we had in August.
Expert recommendation: There are many elements of a page that can contribute to a higher number of organic clicks, and one is often overlooked: URLs. The URL should be short, human-readable (meaning that it shouldn’t be a random string of numbers and letters), and contain the primary keyword.
The median CTR across B2B companies was 1.44% based on the data we collected from our benchmark groups in November 2023.
Expert recommendation: If you have various pages competing to rank for the same keyword, it could hurt your organic CTR. You can fix keyword cannibalization and improve your CTR by auditing your content and identifying content that’s optimized for the same keywords and search intent. Then, you can merge these pages, remove obsolete ones, or rewrite and optimize one of the pages for another keyword.
The median value of the average position in Google search results across B2B businesses from our benchmark groups was 30.61 in November, about the same as the median value for all industries in August this year.
Expert recommendation: About a year ago, Google updated its E-A-T framework by adding another E: for experience. This means your content should demonstrate that the author has at least some experience with the topic they’re writing about: they’re used the product, visited the place, etc. Boost your content by providing examples and opinions that demonstrate experience, showing Google (and human readers) that you know what you’re talking about—and you may significantly improve your ranking.
If you ever asked yourself:
Databox Benchmark Groups can finally help you answer these questions and discover how your company measures up against similar companies based on your KPIs.
When you join Benchmark Groups, you will:
The best part?
When it comes to showing you how your performance compares to others, here is what it might look like for the metric Average Session Duration:
And here is an example of an open group you could join:
And this is just a fraction of what you’ll get. With Databox Benchmarks, you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up — marketing, sales, customer service, product development, finance, and more.
Sounds like something you want to try out? Join a Databox Benchmark Group today!
Let’s see what the B2B marketing benchmarks are when it comes to paid advertising across the most popular platforms:
In terms of trends in paid advertising, Google Ads lead in engagement. They generate the highest CTR, indicating top engagement and proving this is a high-quality channel for B2B companies.
Here’s the breakdown of individual metrics:
The median amount of money spent on Google Ads in November was $1,763.78 across B2B businesses from our benchmark group.
Expert recommendation: Google Ads offers an unmatched audience size, a variety of ad formats, and remarketing capabilities. If you’re targeting a broad B2B audience and want to reach users who have already interacted with your brand, to achieve your bottom-funnel goals, Google is the way to go.
The median CPC for Google Ads across B2B businesses was $1.45 in November, more than for Facebook and Microsoft ads, but significantly lower than for LinkedIn advertising.
Expert recommendation: Leverage more specific, long-tail keywords as they’re less competitive and more focused, allowing you to demonstrate how you stand out from competitors. For instance, instead of “payroll software”, use “payroll software for global teams.” This way, you’re increasing the chances of attracting more qualified leads and decreasing your CPC.
The median CTR for B2B businesses was 4.37% in November, slightly lower than what we found as the median across all industries two months prior.Expert recommendation: If you’re looking to increase CTR for your Google Ads, make sure you’re using ad extensions to occupy as much space on Google (and in your audience’s minds) as possible. Ad extensions are additional information you put in your ad to give users more context around your product or services, which can boost your visibility and CTR.
Facebook and Microsoft Ads show lower CPCs ($0.54 and $0.88 respectively) with reasonable CTRs (1.54% and 2.1% respectively), indicating cost-efficient engagement opportunities across these platforms.
Take a closer look at all the metrics:
The median amount of money B2B companies spent on Facebook ads was $1,556.32 in November, according to our benchmark data.
Expert recommendation: Easily track overall engagement of your Facebook campaigns using this Facebook Ads Campaign Performance dashboard template. Connect your data and populate the dashboard in one click, and start monitoring clicks, impressions, amount spent, and other important metrics that answer all the questions about your campaign’s performance. The dashboard is customizable and available for free.
The median CPC for Facebook Ads across the B2B industry was $0.54 in November, notably lower than Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads.
Expert recommendation: Optimizing ad targeting is one of the safest ways to reduce your Facebook CPC. Instead of letting the platform select a random audience for you, always make sure you tailor it based on interests, geographic location, and other factors so that you can target people who will genuinely be interested in your product or service.
Based on our benchmark data, B2B companies recorded a median CTR of 1.54% in November 2023.
Expert recommendation: A/B testing is the only way you can tell for sure which ad element contributed to a higher CTR. But, we recommend testing one thing at a time: copy, visual, CTA, targeting, ad type, etc., so that you can really be sure what’s working and what’s not. Once you identify the best version of an element you’re testing, you can move on to the next one.
Let’s see how B2B companies performed when it comes to Microsoft Ads.
The median amount of monthly budget spent on Microsoft Ads by B2B companies was $1,334.64 in November 2023, according to our benchmark groups.
Expert recommendation: Although Google is dominant in most locations around the world, it stil makes sense for B2B companies to direct a portion of advertising budget to Microsoft ads—at least in the US, more than 25% of users will turn to Bing rather than Google. These ads could help you bring in new, qualified traffic to your website.
Based on the data from our benchmark groups, the median CPC across the B2B industry in November was $0.88, notably lower than for Google Ads.
Expert recommendation: If you’re running Microsoft ads for your business, here’s how to streamline tracking of your main performance metrics: download this free, customizable Microsoft Advertising dashboard template created by Databox. Here you can monitor how much you’ve spent and how much has returned to you, make sure your CPC doesn’t skyrocket, see how each ad group is performing, and much more.
The median CTR that B2B companies recorded for Microsoft Ads in November 2023 was 2.1%, which can be considered successful, especially in combination with fairly low CPC.
Our data shows that LinkedIn Ads lead in cost, with the lowest engagement compared to other platforms, plus a considerably higher CPC. This could mean B2B should consider optimizing LinkedIn ads.
See each metric below:
The median amount of budget spent on LinkedIn Ads by B2B companies in November 2023 was $1,557.52.
Expert recommendation: Since LinkedIn ads can end up being very expensive, focus on what you can do to optimize your spending, such as using retargeting options to maximize ad efficiency. The first step is to install the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website, and then follow the instructions you can find on LinkedIn.
The median CPC for LinkedIn Ads across B2B businesses was $3.96 in November, higher than for any other advertising platform.
Expert recommendation: Monitor the performance of your LinkedIn Ads campaigns with this streamlined, easy-to-understand overview of your active campaigns: LinkedIn Ads Overview dashboard template. Track metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, and CPC, and answer important questions about your performance, from which campaign generated the most clicks to how many engagements in total your ads had in a specific time frame.
The median CTR for LinkedIn ads across the B2B industry was 0.63% in November 2023. To make sure their spend on LinkedIn Ads has a decent ROI, B2B businesses should implement different tactics to optimize campaigns on this platform.
Expert recommendation: Are you running Dynamic Ads on LinkedIn? There’s a simple way to give your CTR an almost instant boost: add a background image to the ad instead of running it on a white background. The image will make the ad more eye-catching and help you stand out among your competitors—plus, it’s another ad element you can optimize to appeal to your audience.
Facebook and LinkedIn are the most commonly used social media platforms for B2B businesses. Here’s how companies performed in terms of organic reach and engagement across these two networks.
Facebook reach and engagement looked like this for B2B companies:
The median page reach reported by B2B companies in November 2023 was 4.06K, which was more than double of LinkedIn’s reach.
Expert recommendation: Discover what activities positively affect your reach by tracking the numbers in our Facebook (Page Insights) dashboard template. Monitor the reach of individual posts, page likes, page visits, clicks, reactions, and more, and pinpoint any increases to the exact content that caused them, so that you can reiterate.
The median number of Facebook page engagements across the B2B industry was 222 in November.
Expert recommendation: Each social media platform has its pros and cons, and your choice will depend on your goals. Facebook is the ideal network to grow your brand organically if: 1. You’re aiming for conversions, 2. You’re targeting local audiences, and 3. You’d like to invest in building a community, too.
Below you’ll see how companies performed on LinkedIn.
The median number of unique impressions B2B company pages generated on LinkedIn in November 2023 was 1.54K.
Expert recommendation: Track your company page performance on LinkedIn with this easy-to-understand, customizable LinkedIn Company Page Engagement dashboard template. Monitor all your most important metrics, from impressions to followers, to understand what you can do better or do again to make sure your audience remains engaged.
B2B companies recorded a median value of 85 reactions in November 2023, according to the data from our benchmark groups.
Have you ever wondered if your peers are seeing the same data fluctuations as you, but had no way to check it? Or have you ever wished you could prove a potential client that your metrics are performing better than most of your peers?
Databox came up with a way to enable you to do just that.
We built a benchmarking tool to help businesses make data-driven decisions around strategy, budgets, goals, and more by measuring how their performance stacks up against other companies of the same size or within the same industry.
This approach helps you discover unique insights and opportunities to improve, hop on trends as soon as they emerge, and leverage the data to build your case in front of new customers.
The best of all? Joining any of our benchmark groups is completely free and all data shared inside is anonymous.Interested in learning more? Join today: sign up for Benchmark Groups today.
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At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.
Marketing Research Analyst at Databox. Being an experienced Strategic and Creative Planner, with more than 15 years of practice, Nevena is passionately dedicated to untying the knots and entanglements of marketing, sales, and human behavior in order to deliver understandable, useful, and actionable insights for businesses.
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