How do you measure health? It's more than just how good you feel. When you go to the doctor for a check-up, you want to know if your heart rate, blood pressure, and other vital signs are healthy in comparison to other people, especially the strongest and healthiest specimens. Your marketing program deserves the same perspective.
Benchmarking Basics
Whether you're feeling good about your marketing performance or looking for ways to improve, benchmarking offers critical insight. You can't truly know how effective your processes and systems are until you gather a full spectrum of data and systematically compare it to industry best practices. Ideally you also want to benchmark against data from your competitors and top marketing performers overall.
EMM Group recommends benchmarking at least every two years, and definitely after any significant merger, acquisition, or downsizing event. With regular benchmarking, you always know exactly how well you're performing against others and where you need to improve. Benchmarking also supplements growth, innovation, brand value, and new products as an objective answer to the constant management question of "how are you improving?"
Choosing a Benchmarking Partner
Benchmarking is not something you can do in a vacuum. You need outside resources and specialized expertise, including:
Access to a database of marketing best practices
Data from a range of top companies
Ability to objectively assess your capabilities
Experience with gauging alignment and process integration
Defined model by which to benchmark performance against
Benchmarking process that is easy to do and unobtrusive
Consultative insight to prioritize clearly, value the impact, and communicate the opportunities
EMM Group is a leader in marketing program benchmarking and optimization. We've worked with leading B2B and B2C marketing organizations, and we offer a substantial benchmarking database. To learn more, please contact us.
