You wouldn’t walk into a room and not turn on the lights. If you did, you wouldn’t know where you are in relation to everything that surrounds you. Marketing without benchmarking is like venturing into a room with the lights off.
bench·mark [bench-mahrk] – noun: a standard of excellence, achievement, etc., against which similar things must be measured or judged
As marketers we have a plethora of buzzwords to measure our performance; words like Return on Investment (ROI) and metrics. But are you using these measures to evaluate success based on an arbitrary preset goal or are you using this information to become the standard of excellence?
Benchmarking is not just a metric. A metric is a comparative number, whereas a benchmark is a standard for the best. Benchmarking is a key to evaluating the performance of your efforts and processes. Ask yourself; are your efforts the benchmark? If your answer is NO; then whose are?
Don’t have a benchmarking procedure in place? Don’t know where to start? That’s our job. Stop back shortly for a best practices post.
