Kevin Kononenko on March 19, 2018 (last modified on January 18, 2022) • 7 minute read
“How do our marketing KPIs compare to others in our industry?”
You have probably heard this question repeatedly from a concerned boss or skeptical client. Fortunately, there is plenty of authoritative industry-specific data on digital marketing tactics like social media, AdWords, content marketing, email marketing and more. With this list, you don’t have to hunt around for it.
These 11 resources will help you determine if you are meeting, beating or behind your industry’s average. Every resource includes averages that are broken down, at the very least, into individual industries. They may also compare results based on size of company, region and others.
Words of Warning
Marketing KPIs can vary widely within particular industries. Using an average is not always appropriate for judging the success of your marketing initiative. This post intentionally includes only metrics that are better suited for direct comparison. For example, landing pages allow for straightforward comparison because there is usually one goal: clicking a button or filling out a form. Comparing blog performance would be more challenging because multiple factors determine whether a blog will be successful.
Editor’s note: Want to stream your performance on TV? You don’t need any fancy tools. With Databox, you can stream any dashboard to your TV in just 2 simple steps. It works on any smart TV!
Unbounce
Source: Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report
Type of Data: Visitor-Lead Conversion Rate
Amount of Data Sampled: 64,000 Lead Gen Pages, 74,500,000 visitors
Time Period: Q4 2016
Level of Granularity: Industry
How You Might Use It: See the exact percentile of your landing page’s conversion rate. Determine the tone of copy that your industry prefers.
If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics that will get you started:
And more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring visitor engagement on your website. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
WordStream
Source: Google AdWords Benchmarks for Your Industry
Type of Data: Clickthrough Rate, Cost Per Click, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Action
Amount of Data Sampled: 2,367 US-based WordStream client accounts
Year: 2017
How You Might Use It: Determine if you need to improve copy on your ads. Confirm that ad spend is normal for your industry.
MailChimp
Source: Average Email Campaign Stats of MailChimp Customers by Industry
Type of Data: Email Opens, Clicks, Bounce Rate
Amount of Data Sampled: Campaigns with over 1000 subscribers
Level of Granularity: Industry, Company Size
How You Might Use It: Determine if your industry or your client’s industry traditionally engages with brands over email. Set expectations for sales derived from email clicks.
ConstantContact
Source: ConstantContact Average Industry Rates Report
Type of Data: Email Opens, Clicks, Bounce Rate, Unsubscribe Rate
Amount of Data Sampled: 200 million customer emails
Salesforce
Source: Social.com 2015 Advertising Benchmark
Type of Data: Cost Per Click, Clickthrough Rate, Cost Per Thousand Impressions
Amount of Data Sampled: 1+ trillion ad impressions from Salesforce customers
Year: 2014-2015
Level of Granularity: Industry, Country
How You Might Use It: Review whether your ads performed during holiday season. See if social users react to ads in your industry.
Source: WordStream Facebook Ad Benchmarks by Industry
Type of Data: Cost Per Click, Clickthrough Rate, Conversion Rate, Cost per Action
Amount of Data Sampled: $550,000 in ad spend from November 2016- January 2017
Year: 2016-2017
How You Might Use It: Review ad performance during holiday season 2016.
TrackMaven
Source: 2017 Digital Marketing Analytics Performance Report
Type of Data: Interactions per 1000 followers, Blog Performance, Domain Authority
Amount of Data Sampled: 700 Leading Brands
Level of Granularity: Industry, Sub-Industry
How You Might Use It: Estimate how activity on social should translate to follower engagement. Decide if your brand should invest in social.
Google
Source: Google Display Ad Benchmarks
Type of Data: Clickthrough Rate, Average Display Time, Video Completion Rate, Interaction Rate
Amount of Data Sampled: The vast reach of the Google Display Ad Network
Year: 2010-2016
Level of Granularity: Country, Industry
How You Might Use It: Determine if you should create an ad in a particular industry. Decide if you should use a display ad or a Rich Media ad.
HubSpot
Source: HubSpot Demand Generation Benchmarks Report
Type of Data: Cost per Lead, Visitors per Month, Leads per Month, Opportunities per Month
Amount of Data Sampled: 900 marketers
Year: 2015
Level of Granularity: Industry, Company Size, Annual Revenue
How You Might Use It: Compare your funnel to companies that exceed revenue goals versus miss revenue goals. Calculate an appropriate cost per lead for your marketing and sales team.
Want to track this data in real-time? Now you can instantly compare your inbound marketing results to other companies with similar annual revenue. Here is an example for companies with less than $250k of annual revenue.
+ Try Out This Dashboard
AppsFunnel
Source: The State of Apps Engagement 2016
Type of Data: 1-7-30 day retention rates, Funnel Conversion Rate, Sessions per Daily Active User
Amount of Data Sampled: 3.5 billion installs, 5000 apps
Year: Q3 2016
Level of Granularity: Industry, Region
How You Might Use It: See where you should focus efforts on improving funnel. Determine if you should focus on user acquisition or retention.
Wolfgang Digital
Source: E-commerce KPI Benchmarks 2016
Type of Data: Visitor-Customer Conversion Rate, Average Order Value, Clicks to Purchase, Days to Purchase, Average Session Duration
Amount of Data Sampled: 87,000,000 sessions, $230,000,000 in e-Commerce sales
Year: 2015-2016
How You Might Use It: See if your e-Commerce funnel needs improvement. Decide if you need to boost advertising exposure for more conversion assists.
—
When you measure marketing results in fractions of a percentage, they can quickly feel unimpressive to a client. After all, any normal person will struggle to get excited about a 2% clickthrough rate versus a 3% clickthrough rate, even though 3% is 50% greater!
When you communicate with your boss or client, use industry benchmarks to set goals up front. Then, when you review your performance based on data from your marketing automation dashboard, you can (hopefully) tell a clear story about the ways that your results exceed the industry average.
Need an update on your marketing KPIs? Databox Scorecards send you updates on your key performance indicators through mobile push notifications, email or Slack every day, week, or month.
Have any other benchmarking resources that you think we should add? Let us know in the comments!
Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth
Marketing | Mar 16