In most aspects of life, one size does not fit all. When setting goals for your digital marketing efforts, relying on all the annual benchmark metrics can be tempting. Unfortunately, too many businesses waste time and money valuing data that has no actual impact on their organic and paid campaigns, all in the name of average benchmarks that claim their findings are only the way to measure successful progress.
Find Marketing Insights Specific to You
Valuable metrics in digital marketing vary within different industries. Therefore, using a set average is not always your best bet for optimal results. This can even be said about businesses within the same industry.
For example:
Take a look at the following search volumes in Google Trends when we compare “primary care physicians” vs. “dentist” vs. “chiropractor” search queries. 
These businesses technically fall under the “Health & Fitness” benchmarks, which show an average 9.21% conversion rate in 2022. Still, you can see they’re vastly different by performance, and this doesn’t even touch on specific regions.
So, it would be a mistake for these businesses to expect the same outcome based on this benchmark alone.
Another example I love to use is the different cuisines within the restaurant industry nationwide.
Here, we are comparing Japanese, Indian and Italian cuisine queries.
Now, look what happens when we dive into the Texas region and add “BBQ near me”!
General benchmarks and industry metrics are a good starting place, but they’re not built with you in mind.
Valuable Tools for Digital Marketing
So, the question becomes, “Where do I begin?”. Start with the free tools you have available, and as you get farther along, you will find the paid tools continue to keep you at the forefront of shifts in your market. Use these tools to empower your strategic decisions with your data.
What are my free tools?
Dive deep and ask questions
If you have analytics implemented, you can refer to your data to help you figure out what drives users on your site to convert. Look for cause-and-effect situations and deep dive into data that will be truly useful for your objectives.
For example:
If you have a CRM set up, you can get deeper into the demographic information of your sales funnel!
What are my takeaways here?
The beauty of all this is that you can be as high-level or in-depth as you are comfortable with. And, if you need help, there are literal data nerds, aka digital marketing professionals, who would love to help you discover these insights about your business and the market you’re going after.
Hi! My name is Emily, and I’m already obsessed with you and all the golden nuggets of data you have ready to be mined! Lucky for you, so is the Forthea analytics department, and every other marketing professional here. So, if you’re really interested in tapping into the pulse of your current market to produce measurable results for your business, then we’re your Huckleberry! Contact us to learn more about what we can do to help you achieve your business’s digital marketing goals.
And, now… I leave you with this…
I know it can all seem overwhelming, however, there’s one piece of advice that you can always rely on (from an excellent source)… Take a deep breath, and no matter what… “Just keep swimming.” – Dory, 2003
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