You’re running a 10K. You’ve been paying attention to your sleep, your diet, and carefully building your strength and endurance; you feel ready. At the starting line, you have the extra little boost of adrenaline that you know you have to account for so you don’t start too fast. The starting gun goes off, and the person next to you takes off at a dead sprint, and the self-doubt hits. That person seems like they know what they’re doing… maybe they know something I don’t? And now you have a choice: do I stick to my plan, or take a risk chasing after my competitor?
Hopefully, you choose the former, because there are many possible explanations for their performance:
They’re running the 5K that starts at the same spot… they should be starting faster
They’re actually a professional runner, and to try and keep pace with them at your stage of training could mean you burn out and don’t finish your race at all
They have no idea what they’re doing, and you’re going to pass them around the 3 mile mark when their initial adrenaline rush is well behind them
These are all decidedly more likely than: that other runner is a perfect model for who I should try to be, even though I know absolutely nothing about them, their goals, their preparations, or even what race they’re running.
How This Relates to Digital Marketing
We occasionally get questions from clients (especially prospective clients) about industry benchmarks. They’re either testing our understanding of their market or genuinely think the benchmarks matter. So I’d like to go on the record: you could be dead-last in any or all industry benchmarks you can think of, and still be winning your race.
Below is an entirely fake, yet incredibly feasible example of 3 companies in the same market, and some common “benchmarkable” metrics.
In this scenario, Company C is in dead-last in all 3 categories. Their content is getting the least exposure (impressions), they’re getting the lowest engagement on their content (click-through rate) and their onsite engagement (conversion rate) looks dismal compared to the others.
What this doesn’t show: Company C is winning their race. Due to hiring constraints, their sales capacity is limited. As such, the marketing team has been tasked with building a pipeline of only the most qualified leads. Using granular segmentation combined with audience-specific messaging and landing pages, the marketing team has been able to provide the sales team with conversions worth more than double the average conversion of their competitors, allowing for maximum profits within their current constraints.
Company C could decide to chase after a higher click-through rate (CTR), because they see that others in their industry have higher rates, but that wouldn’t align with the rest of their strategy. By all means, learn from your competitors—stay curious and iterative, but also stay discerning.
If you can keep laser-focus on financial success, you can make the most of your unique challenges and opportunities and avoid getting tripped up running someone else’s race.