Digital marketing - benchmarking your business
Marketing manager of Generate UK, Emma Lewis, provides tips
THE first step to establish ongoing digital marketing success is to identify your current position, with as much honesty as possible.
This is a warts and all review of what is good and bad about your current online position.
Questions to ask:
What’s our current position?
How do we compare to our competitors?
Are our unique selling points clear?
Where do we want to be?
How exactly do we get there?
What activities do we need to undertake?
What key performance indicators (KPIs) will we use to track progress?
This journey begins with being aware of current performance and your position in your market place.
Why benchmark?
They say knowledge is power; this is never truer than in the business world.
Having an insight into your commercial performance in relation to your competitors, through benchmarking, will allow you to develop your digital marketing strategy and provide you with a clearer picture of your strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your competitors.
Benchmarking will enable you to set relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to enhance your digital marketing performance.
Take your business to the next level with our top tips for benchmarking:
1. Strategic methodology
Where is your business when it comes to a strategic approach; are you at the beginning of your digital journey with no strategy or are you a market leader with an agile strategy, or somewhere in between?
It is important be aware of your strategic approach in order to make improvements.
2. Performance improvement procedure
When planning your integrated marketing strategy it is important to set KPIs to enable you to measure your marketing activities. This information can then be used to develop new initiatives to enrich your competitive position.
If you have KPIs in place, consider taking it to the next level by developing value-based KPIs and lifetime-value KPIs.
3. Executive buy-in
In order to have a successful digital marketing strategy it is critical to have executive level commitment to the process. When benchmarking it is advisable to assess the management buy-in level. Is it limited, or do you have active support and investment?
4. Resourcing and organisation
During your benchmarking exercise assess where your skill sets lie. Do you have a wide mix of marketing skills or are you limited in your knowledge and resources?
Typical skill sets required for digital are programming, design, data/analytics, strategy etc. It’s hard to find a single person who can deliver all of these skills.
5. Data and infrastructure
A healthy database is an essential tool in optimising your marketing strategy. Assess how good your customer data is and how you engage with your customers.
If your database is weak, then you should ensure that your activities are aligned to growing your database.
6. Integrated customer communications
When planning your benchmarking exercise it is important to evaluate the level of communications with your customers. What platforms are you using? Is your communication optimised for cross platforms to increase your ROI?
7. Integrated customer experience
Customers now expect a fully integrated approach when dealing with brands. Is your website optimised for the customer journey?
Do you appeal to your customers across multi-platforms such as mobile as well as desktop? Do you use remarketing to engage with your customers?
By evaluating your customer experience you will be able to work on your weaknesses and play to your strengths.
By benchmarking your business effectively you can create a more strategic approach to an integrated digital marketing plan of action.
If you would like more advice on how to transform your business digitally, contact (01635) 887711 or email info@generateuk.co.uk
