One of the most common questions we're asked by customers, is what results they should expect to see when measuring their business using benchmark tools? What Inbound Marketing analytics should you use to measure these responses, what is a good response rate for a blog, what metrics are they set against, etc?
"If you don't track it, how will you know if it worked? Visibility equals accountability" - Andy Crestodina, Orbit Media, and author of Content Chemistry
What should you measure?
Visitors, or RVR – A visit ratio is an obvious metric to want to explore. Naturally you'd want to see how many people are visiting your site. A more important metric may be RVR, Return Visitor Rate.
Your RVR is more of a true reflection of the impact your posts are making on your viewers as they illicit a response or a return visit. RVR is measured by dividing the number of return visitors by the number of total unique visitors over a certain period of time. A healthy RVR measurement ranges from 30% - 50%.
Bounce Rate – This is the measurement of visits that have left your landing page.
The average measurement here is a 40% - 60% range, with 26% - 40% being acceptable. Averages of 56% - 70% are not great, with anything over 70% definitely cause for alarm.
Engagement – This metric proves the level of engagement on a piece of content, and shows how much people have interacted with the it. Influencing factors are comments, likes or shares.
Engagement rate metrics may differ depending on different variables (such as the size of the page), but are measured evenly amongst different companies as their rate depends on followers' reactions rather than size increase. This rate often stands out as the almighty metric, as it proves the success or failure of your hardworking social campaigns. Your engagement rate metrics may be positively or negatively affected by your posting frequency, as well as content (funny memes or gif's, although entertaining, may not be appropriate for your tech audiences).
Conversions – Your conversion rate is defined as a measurement of the amount of users who perform a desired action.
From an inbound perspective this could be earmarked as the number of visitors who become leads, or leads who then become customers after they have completed an action (download an eBook, download a Whitepaper, fill out a form, or buy a product, etc.). Traditionally a highly successful benchmark conversion rate ranges from 5% - 10%.
How do you decide what works?
Fast experiments – These experiments may range from simple tweaks (changing of the CTA button or position), to rather in-depth changes – progressive profiling on landing pages, or subscriber forms at the end of blog posts.
A/B Testing – Used predominantly for mailers, these tests could be adapted to test content titles as well, with HubSpot reporting a 776% increase in leads. Simply,
* Choose the 10 best titles for every new piece of content,
* Brainstorm with your team which two of these titles are your strongest,
* A/B test your two titles on a sample of people and choose the most successful title for your post or promotion.
Are Benchmarks really necessary for my company?
With a better understanding of what benchmarks are and what you should measure, take a look at your current approach to inbound marketing and see how it stacks up to the following benchmarking components.Tech company benchmarks for all inbound marketing activities:
Landing Pages
An increased number of landing pages may dramatically increase the odds of a search engine finding you and is an opportunity for higher Google rankings.
Increase Visits: HubSpot claims that the creation of 51 – 100 landing pages likely sees 48% more traffic to a company's sites as compared to creating just 1 – 50 landing pages, proving that your site really does benefit from these all-important pages.
Increase Leads: Benchmarks for lead increase range between - companies who pump out 101 to 200 landing pages often generating 2.5 times more leads, versus those with just 50 landing pages or less. Be sure that your volume is met with high quality and interest value (by offering useful rewards) to truly get the best out of your landing page campaigns.
Emails
There are a myriad of elements to consider when looking at email statistics and how your A/B Testing affects each one. The most important email benchmarking stats (by industry) that you may compare your tech company with are:
| Open Rate | CTR | Soft Bounce | Hard Bounce | Abuse | Unsubscribe | |
| Computers and Electronics | 21.27% | 2.32% | 1.08% | 0.75% | 0.03% | 0.30% |
| Software and Web Apps | 21.56% | 2.40% | 1.11% | 0.88% | 0.03% | 0.39% |
| Telecommunications | 21.41% | 2.49% | 1.20% | 0.94% | 0.03% | 0.28% |
Content
Content benchmarking revolves around two key indexes, namely i) the impact your published blog content makes on inbound traffic, and more importantly ii) the impact of blog posts on inbound leads by the size of the company.
i) When referring to a B2B, the impact of published blog posts on inbound traffic is rather staggering -
| Number of Posts | Traffic Index |
| 10 or Less | 50 - 100 visits |
| 11 - 20 | 50 - 100 visits |
| 21 - 50 | 100 - 200 visits |
| 51 - 100 | 200 visits |
| 101 - 200 | 250 - 300 visits |
| Over 200 | 450 - 500 visits |
ii) When looking at the effect of blog posts on inbound traffic by company size we notice -
| 1 - 10 Employees | 11 - 50 Employees | 51 or more Employees | |
| 10 or less posts | 100 visits | 100 visits | 100 visits |
| 11 - 20 posts | 200 visits | 180 visits | 80 visits |
| 21 - 50 posts | 220 visits | 180 visits | 140 visits |
| 51 - 100 posts | 280 visits | 250 visits | 190 visits |
| 101 - 200 posts | 580 visits | 300 visits | 200 visits |
| Over 200 posts | 860 visits | 500 visits | 300 visits |
According to these HubSpot statistics long-term blogging (pushing great volumes of content over a period of time) really pays off and is a direct contributor to continued lead growth.
Social Media
"The software/tech industry boasts even more companies in the 25 thousand to 100 thousand-follower range than the marketing services industry, with 33.1%." - Erik Devaney, HubSpot
HubSpot's most recent social media benchmark report indicates that posting more does not equate to more engagement. The report indicates that there is no direct correlation between the frequency of posts and the rate of successful engagement, as is apparent with content benchmarks. It is thus important when considering the content and quality of posts and the reason or desired outcome of each of your posts across your various platforms.
Average social media benchmarks to shoot for concerning your industry would be:
| Industry | Posts per week |
| Marketing Services | 14.17 |
| Software / Tech | 9.94 |
| Hardware | 8.71 |
| Consumer Goods / Retail / eCommerce | 6.02 |
Earned Media
According to Mashable:
“Earned media is more important than it ever was. It’s not just a PR strategy anymore. Now it’s a marketing strategy that informs the way ads and other forms of a brand’s communication are structured.” - Todd Wasserman, Mashable
- Key findings from Burst Media's last report proved that Earned Media has 'earned' its place in marketing benchmarks and metrics strategies. Industries such as consumer packaged goods (CPG) earning an outstanding $11.33 for every $1.00 spent and therefore achieving a 3.9% increase in social engagement rate in 2015, has seen Earned Media activity gaining more and more attention in various industries.
- RythmOne reports that their advertisers received $9.60 in Earned Media Value (EMV) during the first half of 2015 which represents an increase of 1.4x over the company's full-year in 2014.
- Further findings report that from last year to this year, Instagram has been the best performing social media influencer for Earned Media delivering on a social amplification rate of 1.75%.
What these stats and benchmarks mean to a tech owner is that Earned Media Value is a serious and relevant asset to be measured and applied when considering a full three-dimensional approach to your marketing strategy.
Remember benchmarks don't have to be a permanent change and may be re-evaluated and updated as regularly as needed. This is an ongoing learning process and serves to work alongside your marketing metrics in increasing your lead generation and nurturing efforts. Our approach to Inbound Marketing relies heavily on benchmarking to ensure a clear measurement of improvement and efficiency.
References:
SmartInsights - http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/statistics-sources-for-email-marketing/
Content Marketing Institute - http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2016_UK_Research_FINAL.pdf
Hubspot - http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33742/12-
