7 books for B2B writers, editors and readers
Doug Kessler | January 10th, 2023
When we work with clients, often we’re asked about benchmarks. People seem to love them – and we can see why. Answering the question, “How are we doing?” feels at least related to the question, “How are we doing compared with others?”.
At Velocity, we like a good benchmark too — but only in the absence of real, relevant data (and then only temporarily – until real, relevant data becomes available).
If you have absolutely no previous experiences on which to base your metrics, it makes sense to start somewhere, with published benchmarks like these:
If you have absolutely no other information to base your targets on, you’ll have to start with this kind of general stuff. But the goal is to aim way higher than that.
If you use them as a substitute for real data, you breed complacency, divert your attention, and obscure the solid ROI insights you really need.
The best KPIs start closer to home and focus on your own past performance.
Even if you could get benchmark data for your specific industry, they would ignore dozens of critical differentiators like company size, offer, target audience seniority, etc
And, unless you’re running a bespoke (expensive) benchmark project, you can forget about other key variables: list source, emails sent per month, or customer preferences.
Best practice is to base your valuable KPIs on your own marketing initiatives. Pulling insights from your past experiences will save you from shooting too high or too low. It’s about where you sit on your own marketing maturity curve that really matters.
If you want to know if you’re moving in the right direction, you need performance insight.
So what do we mean by performance insight?
Real insights come from your own tools and reporting to show how your audience is reacting to your marketing efforts (content, campaigns and offers).
Real performance insight means you can:
Let’s use two companies to illustrate the difference between benchmarks and insights. We’ll call them – unimaginatively but sensibly – Client A and Client B.
Both clients want KPIs. The first used SMART insights, the second relied on Benchmarks (without the benefit of a tidy acronym):
SMART Insights (Client A) | Industry Benchmarks (Client B) |
---|---|
Specific Focused on an exact measure |
General Focused on an aggregated number |
Measureable Linked to key organizational value |
Comparable Linked to external norms |
Achievable Based on precise targets |
Distant Based on broad ranges |
Relevant Meeting organizational strategy |
Related Meeting multiple outcomes |
Time Specific Aligned to defined dates |
Ongoing Aligned to evolving dates |
There’s a reason you’ve heard of SMART KPIs but haven’t heard of GCDRO KPIs. What does this mean for our two companies?
Client A works in three-month improvement cycles
Client B work is less iterative and managed in an ad hoc way
Client A runs efficient, focused projects
Client B suffers from shifts in scope and direction
Client A createss content that’s driven by strategy
Client B creates ’random acts of content’
Client A evolves content to better meet customer needs
Client B has a committee to judge what works
Client A presents regular data-driven successes
Client B frets about hitting a moving target
Client A knows when they’ve made a difference
Client B always feels they’re behind the curve
You can imagine which quarterly metrics meeting is the most productive and fun to attend.
Glad you asked:
The difference in outcomes between Client A and Client B is huge. When – and only when – you know your own performance, can you start to think in terms of KPIs that have authority and value.
There’s no shortcut. But the good news is you can start today. The answers are at your fingertips (hiding in your web analytics, marketing automation and CRM!).
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