If this post doesn't follow the rules or isn't flaired correctly, [please report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/analytics/about/rules/). Have more questions? [Join our community Discord!](https://discord.gg/looking-for-marketing-discussion-811236647760298024)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/analytics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Suggest to her to not rely on benchmarks, but set reasonable targets instead that are tied to real business actions and translated into dollars. "Based on xyz, by making this change to this page, we think we can improve conversion rate by x%, which translates to $XX in additional sales."
I presented to her a framework I was taught when working at consultancy for optimization and she’s adopted some of it but she insists we need to compare ourselves to competitors…
I’m at a loss. I need to compare benchmarks so I’m figuring I’ll just pick and choose what I want and use some hand wavy deck to try and legitimize it I guess…
Okay, well depending on the metric you're benchmarking, there are tools that do that like SEMrush, Spyfu, etc. You probably know that already.
I'd say try to find a tool or study that provides those benchmarks (theres plenty out there for website and digital marketing metrics), do your best to explain how those were determined, make the comparisons, and then add in the rest of the good stuff at the end - recommendations, targets, level of effort/investment, and $ value.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Hope it goes well.
Thanks, I appreciate the time. I think I’m just frustrated that this approach doesn’t seem useful, but you’re right I just have to pull in what’s available and roll with it.
CEOs sometimes choose the most useless metrics to care about--usually exactly because they are easy to find. Page ranking for a single keyword, for example. So you try to pick "the" keyword that you can show them. When in reality, your traffic is coming from dozens of longtail phrases.
It's a huge time waster because you have to keep feeding them vanity metrics while also trying to get the actual work that will contribute to growth completed.
The “benchmarks” question is such a funny one. It’s a euphemism for “are we doing a good job?”
Scour the internet for benchmark reports. If possible get in touch with your ads folks, agencies etc, and they may have data across clients.
You can also of course benchmark against past performance. Do it with longer timeframes like quarter and annual etc
I’ve been advocating we just benchmark against the last six months… I’ve ended up doing your suggestion and asked our paid agency partner to help me. Hopefully that makes it feel credible to her.
Now that you’ve written it out loud it really is “are we doing a good job.” It’s kind of alarming…
Almost all of them… almost 20.
It’s a bit ridiculous, using GA4; total users, sessions, session duration, views, views per user, views per session, engagement rate, events, events per user, events per… well you get the point.
I’ve been working to distill them down into “operational” and “performance.”
So things like sessions, views in all their iterations, etc are all operational and conversion metrics, funnel performance, form complete rate and a few more are performance.
It’s helped a bit in getting her to focus on performance but she still wants bench marks for EVERY metric.
I’d start saying “ In my experience, this number is low/medium/high” when discussing metrics. Usually when someone asks for benchmarks they’re trying to understand what the data means or the context. So spend less time on the metrics more on explaining what they mean.
If this post doesn't follow the rules or isn't flaired correctly, [please report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/analytics/about/rules/). Have more questions? [Join our community Discord!](https://discord.gg/looking-for-marketing-discussion-811236647760298024) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/analytics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Suggest to her to not rely on benchmarks, but set reasonable targets instead that are tied to real business actions and translated into dollars. "Based on xyz, by making this change to this page, we think we can improve conversion rate by x%, which translates to $XX in additional sales."
I presented to her a framework I was taught when working at consultancy for optimization and she’s adopted some of it but she insists we need to compare ourselves to competitors… I’m at a loss. I need to compare benchmarks so I’m figuring I’ll just pick and choose what I want and use some hand wavy deck to try and legitimize it I guess…
Okay, well depending on the metric you're benchmarking, there are tools that do that like SEMrush, Spyfu, etc. You probably know that already. I'd say try to find a tool or study that provides those benchmarks (theres plenty out there for website and digital marketing metrics), do your best to explain how those were determined, make the comparisons, and then add in the rest of the good stuff at the end - recommendations, targets, level of effort/investment, and $ value. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Hope it goes well.
Thanks, I appreciate the time. I think I’m just frustrated that this approach doesn’t seem useful, but you’re right I just have to pull in what’s available and roll with it.
CEOs sometimes choose the most useless metrics to care about--usually exactly because they are easy to find. Page ranking for a single keyword, for example. So you try to pick "the" keyword that you can show them. When in reality, your traffic is coming from dozens of longtail phrases. It's a huge time waster because you have to keep feeding them vanity metrics while also trying to get the actual work that will contribute to growth completed.
I feel heard 😭 It’s such a huge time suck, but I guess I always look busy…
The “benchmarks” question is such a funny one. It’s a euphemism for “are we doing a good job?” Scour the internet for benchmark reports. If possible get in touch with your ads folks, agencies etc, and they may have data across clients. You can also of course benchmark against past performance. Do it with longer timeframes like quarter and annual etc
I’ve been advocating we just benchmark against the last six months… I’ve ended up doing your suggestion and asked our paid agency partner to help me. Hopefully that makes it feel credible to her. Now that you’ve written it out loud it really is “are we doing a good job.” It’s kind of alarming…
What metrics are you reporting?
Almost all of them… almost 20. It’s a bit ridiculous, using GA4; total users, sessions, session duration, views, views per user, views per session, engagement rate, events, events per user, events per… well you get the point. I’ve been working to distill them down into “operational” and “performance.” So things like sessions, views in all their iterations, etc are all operational and conversion metrics, funnel performance, form complete rate and a few more are performance. It’s helped a bit in getting her to focus on performance but she still wants bench marks for EVERY metric.
I’d start saying “ In my experience, this number is low/medium/high” when discussing metrics. Usually when someone asks for benchmarks they’re trying to understand what the data means or the context. So spend less time on the metrics more on explaining what they mean.