Contents:
Navigating Marketing Challenges Together: Our Data Box Collaboration
- What are benchmarks?
- How often do you need to benchmark your company?
- What are the criteria you need to consider when benchmarking?
- In the Spotlight: A Retail Small Business Google Ads Benchmark Example
- Join Our Survey: Why Participate?
Small businesses are the backbone of the global economy, representing a significant portion of all enterprises. However, they often face unique challenges, particularly when it comes to digital marketing. In this blog post, we’ll explore the intricacies and possibilities of digital marketing efficiency for businesses with under 50 employees.
Running a small business is no small feat. Limited budgets and time constraints can make it difficult to achieve optimal marketing outcomes. These constraints can manifest in several key metrics, including % New Sessions, Conversions, Total Ad Revenue, Total Revenue, Cost / Conversion, Conversion Value, and Cost.
Small business owners understand the value of every pound and minute spent on marketing. These challenges, stemming from budget limitations, a lack of access to expert knowledge, and time constraints, have a direct impact on crucial performance metrics. In this post, we’ll delve deeper into these hurdles and share insights into how small businesses can navigate them effectively.
Here’s the exciting part: you don’t have to face these challenges alone. We invite you to be part of our mission to uncover the solutions that can drive marketing success for small businesses. To achieve this, we’ve launched a comprehensive survey tailored specifically to small businesses with under 50 employees, in collaboration with Data Box, a trusted authority in data analytics and benchmarking. By participating in this survey, you’re not only contributing to a better understanding of the marketing landscape for businesses like yours but also gaining access to invaluable insights and strategies.
Before delving into the specifics, let’s start by laying down the fundamentals of benchmarking.
1. What is benchmarking?
Benchmarking is a strategic process that involves evaluating and comparing your business’s performance, processes, or practices against those of competitors or industry leaders within the same market. By engaging in benchmarking, you gain valuable insights into how your business stacks up in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and overall competitiveness. It’s a proactive approach that enables you to identify areas for improvement, set realistic goals, and drive continuous growth and innovation. Benchmarking acts as a compass, guiding your business towards its full potential by learning from the successes and best practices of others in your industry.
2. How often do you need to benchmark your company?
Benchmarking is a dynamic process that adapts to your specific objectives and industry standards. The frequency of benchmarking can vary, spanning weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual intervals, depending on your goals and industry dynamics.
To ensure your strategies stay on course, consistent metric tracking is essential. When you consistently meet the predefined benchmarks you’ve set, it serves as a clear signal that your plan is succeeding and should be sustained.
For effective benchmarking, we recommend conducting benchmark assessments at least once every three months across your industry as a whole. Additionally, we suggest monthly benchmarking intervals to keep your strategies aligned with the evolving landscape and trends in your sector. This approach ensures that your business remains agile and adaptable to changing conditions, driving continued success.
3. What are the criteria you need to consider when benchmarking?
- Relevance: The benchmark data should be relevant to your industry, sector, or specific goals. Ensure that you are comparing against organisations or practices that are directly comparable to your own.
- Data Accuracy: The data used for benchmarking should be accurate, up-to-date, and obtained from reliable sources. Inaccurate data can lead to misleading conclusions.
- Scope and Objectives: Clearly define the scope of your benchmarking project and the objectives you aim to achieve. Are you focusing on specific processes, departments, or the overall organisation? Having clear goals is essential.
- Data Consistency: Ensure that the data you’re comparing is consistent in terms of units of measurement, time periods, and other relevant factors. Inconsistencies can distort the analysis.
- Comparability: The organisations or practices you benchmark against should be comparable in terms of size, market, and complexity. An apples-to-apples comparison is more meaningful.
- Confidentiality: Respect confidentiality agreements and legal constraints when obtaining benchmarking data. Protect sensitive information and adhere to ethical practices.
- Benchmarking Methodology: Choose the right benchmarking methodology, whether it’s internal, competitive, or functional benchmarking, depending on your goals.
- Continuous Improvement: Benchmarking should not be a one-time effort. Consider it as part of an ongoing process of continuous improvement, where you revisit benchmarks regularly.
- Feedback and Adaptation: Be open to feedback from the benchmarking process and adapt your strategies accordingly. Flexibility and a willingness to change are crucial.
- Actionable Insights: The benchmarking process should provide actionable insights and recommendations for improvement. Ensure that the information you gather can be used to make meaningful changes.
4. In the Spotlight: A Small Retail Business Google Ads Benchmark Example
To showcase this in numbers, the survey can present some valuable insights like this: Here is one of our retail clients’ performance when compared to small businesses under 1K employees.
One of our clients stands out as a prime example of marketing efficiency. Their outstanding performance in conversion value is truly remarkable, achieving monthly conversion value higher than 60% of the rest of the group. This showcases the tangible benefits of implementing effective paid advertising strategies and underscores the potential for substantial growth within the small business sector. This also means that a small business budget is not an obstacle but an opportunity.
Moreover, when it comes to cost/conversion, our client’s performance is nothing short of impressive, outperforming a remarkable 79% of the companies in the group. This highlights their efficient utilisation of PPC (Pay Per Click) Skills, setting a benchmark for others to follow.
By benchmarking your business against others, you can gain a deeper understanding of what constitutes excellence within your industry. For instance, you might have initially considered a 2x Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as sufficient. However, through benchmarking, you can uncover the untapped potential of your industry, redefining your standards and aspirations
5. Join Our Survey: Test Your Benchmark
Participating in our survey can offer you a wealth of benefits:
Benchmarking: By participating, you’ll be able to benchmark your marketing performance against other businesses in a similar category. This benchmarking can provide you with valuable insights, helping you identify areas for improvement and set realistic goals.
Access to Insights: When the survey results are in, you’ll gain access to a rich trove of insights and strategies. These insights are based on real-world experiences and successes of businesses like yours, facing similar challenges.
Networking: Connect with a community of small business owners and managers who are dedicated to enhancing their marketing efforts. Share experiences, learn from others, and collaborate on solutions to common problems.
Empowering Change: Your participation can contribute to a broader understanding of the unique challenges small businesses face in marketing. This data can be a catalyst for change, potentially leading to better support and resources for businesses like yours.
How to Participate
Participation is straightforward and will only take a few minutes of your time. To ensure the survey results accurately represent the experiences of small businesses, please provide detailed and accurate information. Click here to join the survey and see how you rank against companies in your size.
