Benchmarking is important to businesses of all shapes and sizes. It provides a reference point for you to measure your performance against others in the industry - whether it’s goals, competitor performance, or internal metrics like click-through-rates and conversions.
From a B2B marketing perspective, determining how your company’s performance stacks up against competitors is crucial, but getting your hands on the data can be tricky.
KLIQ has created this article to use as a handy guide to help you discover how your data and results align with the latest B2B reports and benchmarks.
B2B Marketing Benchmark Report: LinkedIn
LinkedIn have also launched their inaugural B2B Marketing Benchmark 2023 Report – the culmination of a partnership with research firm Ipsos to survey 1,577 senior-level B2B marketing leaders to examine how B2B marketers are faring in the current climate. They identified key areas of opportunity from their newly launched report, which shed light on the growth strategies adopted by B2B marketing leaders and offered guidance for thriving during challenging times.
This post explores the top five ways B2B leaders can turn these insights into action on LinkedIn and beyond, embracing the techniques and essential skills needed to succeed in today's ever-evolving business environment.
State of Marketing Report: Hubspot & Search Engine Journal
Using survey data from 1,460 B2B and B2C marketers across the globe, The State of Marketing 2024 Report takes a look at the top marketing trends of 2024, how AI will keep shifting our industry, and how you can win over audiences in a new era of marketing.
Here are some key findings from the latest report:
- AI is quickly becoming the ultimate marketing assistant, with 64% of marketers already using it, and 38% of those who don’t yet planning to start in 2024.
- Social media is indisputably the #1 marketing channel. Not only does it offer the highest ROI, but it's used by 43% of marketers.
- Video-first apps like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are growing fastest -- but don't ignore Facebook. Facebook's still the most popular platform used by markers (57%), followed by Instagram (55%), YouTube (52%), TikTok (44%), X (39%), and LinkedIn (37%).
- 26% of marketers plan to invest more in short-from video than any other format in 2024, the highest of any format by far. Additionally, 57% of marketers who leverage short-form video will increase their investment in 2024, the highest increase of any format. And to top it all off, 30% of marketers who don’t use short-form video will start in 2024.
- 76% of marketers say Google phasing out third-party cookies will make marketing more difficult. Companies are exploring alternatives to third-party cookies such as targeted social media ads, followed by collecting first-party data, Google Topics API, contextual advertising, and universal identifiers.
Australian & APAC B2B Marketing Outlook Report: Green Hat
The Australian B2B marketing gurus at Green Hat have published their annual Australian 2022 B2B Marketing Outlook Report, bringing some very insightful data to life.
For example, when surveying B2B marketers from across Australia, the report revealed that the number one challenge for B2B marketers is growing and measuring brand awareness. 53% of respondents have shared Ideal Customer Profile definition between sales and Marketing, up from 41% the previous year. 3X Best-in-class marketers are almost 3X more likely to develop personas and customer journey maps.
In a game-changing revelation for the APAC region, Green Hat’s latest findings show a dramatic shift in the B2B landscape. The APAC B2B Buyer Journey Research Report 2024 highlights a fundamental change: the power is now firmly in the hands of buyers. According to the report, buyers in this region engage vendors much later in the purchasing journey—only 73% of the way through the decision-making process. This means that marketers have even less opportunity to influence decision-making before the final stages. Discover the key stats that underpin buying party decisions.
B2B Google and Bing Ad Benchmarks: Wordstream
It’s vital to know whether your ads are performing well or not, to maintain a high level of search marketing campaign performance. How do you know if your CTR or conversion rate is where it should be?
Wordstream updated their Google Ads Industry Benchmark 2023 Report, an interactive format to ensure businesses can see how they measure up against the rest. The data is intended to help maximise your campaign budget with data pulled from over 18,000 client campaigns across 20 industries.
Analysis of the search advertising benchmarks in the report for the B2B Services industry found:
- Average cost per click (CPC): $3.33
- Average cost per action (CLA): $116.13
- Average click through rate (CTR): 2.41%
- Average conversion rate (CVR): 3.04%
To see the interactive year-on-year search advertising benchmarksdata from each industry, click here.
B2B Email Marketing Industry Benchmarks: Hubspot & Mailerlite
Understanding the success of your email campaigns is crucial in nurturing prospects. It's all about tracking open rates, click-throughs, and bounce rates - key to campaign triumphs. Benchmarks are your secret weapon, letting you see how your campaigns stack up against industry norms (and yes, each industry has its own set of benchmarks). This knowledge isn't just for show; it's a gateway to refining your email strategy for even more impressive results
Using the in-depth report from Mailerlite's Email marketing benchmarks for 2024, Hubspot also takes a look at email benchmarks for various industries and provide resources for how you can improve each rate.
Analysing your open rates is one of the most effective ways to gauge the performance of your email marketing efforts. Interestingly, the average email open rate across all industries was 38.49 %.
So what’s a good open rate for your industry? Below is the average email open rates by industry.
- Business and finance: 36.5%
- Software companies: 39.8%
- Internet and telecom: 39.1%
- Healthcare: 41.2%
- Finance: 41.4%
- Manufacturing: 41.1%
- Education: 35.4%
- Information Technology (IT): 33.5%
- Consulting: 36.9%
- Government: 46.9%
- Non-profit: 46.4%
This data signifies that when people are either interested in a topic, or feel obliged to be informed, they are more likely to consistently open emails. The key takeaway being that your email content should be useful, informative, relevant and exclusive.
Click-through rates (CTRs) are the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who opened your email. It useful for determining whether your audience finds the information useful enough to click through after reading it. The average CTR across industries is 8.29%.
Below is the average CTRs by industry.
- Education: 8.3%
- Information Technology (IT): 6.3%
- Legal: 6.2%
- Business and finance: 5.9%
- Insurance: 5.5%
- Finance: 4.9%
- Consulting: 7.4%
- Software: 2.9%
- Government: 3.9%
- Non-profit: 3.8%
There you have it: A frame of reference for how your emails should be performing based on your industry from Hubspot. What is the next thing on your to-do list? Check out the Mailerlite's steps on how to improve your email success metrics and outshine the competition.
B2B Social Media Benchmarks: WeAreSocial
Social media agency WeAreSocial released its Digital 2023 Australia report, which highlights the growing significance of digital in Australia, with internet usage and social media engagement reaching new heights.
According to the study, 25.31 million Australians, or 96% of the population are internet users, while the number of active social media users is 21.30 million, or 81% of the population.
The report notes also notes that almost one in three Australians now visit social networks to look for information about brands and products — up by 7.3% since this time last year. This trend underscores the growing importance of social media as a key tool for brand discovery, emphasizing the necessity for brands to maintain a robust social media presence within their overall marketing strategy.
Social media partly contributes to this, with many discovering new products and services via ads. The main channels for online brand research among 16-65 year olds include search engines (55.6%), product or brand sites (35.8%), consumer reviews (33.4%), and social networks (32.5%).
Of all the social platforms, TikTok saw the most significant rise in usage, with average monthly consumption increasing by 6hr and 12m (26.5% up on last year) to 29 hr and 36m – the highest in the world.
- Facebook: 73.6% (2022: 76.8%)
- Instagram: 55.5% (2022: 57.7%)
- TikTok: 41.5% (2022: 32.2%)
- Twitter: 30.7% (2022: 29.5%)
- LinkedIn: 26.2% (2022: Unchanged)
This tells us that while the traditional channels are still the most viable for B2B - and LinkedIn is still king in this domain - it does make sense to start looking to diversify depending upon the audience you are targeting.
LinkedIn B2B Ad Benchmarks
How are your LinkedIn ads performing - are they going better than your competitors? This is a common question we frequently hear. The most important thing to remember is that it is entirely dependent upon your ad objective and the ad formats you are using.
In terms of LinkedIn ad click through rates (CTRs), the global average is between 0.44%-0.65%. However, there are differences in CTRs according to ad type:
- Sponsored Content (Single Image): 0.56%
- Sponsored Content (Carousel): 0.40%
- Sponsored Content (Video): 0.44%
- Message Ads: 3% with open rates at 30%
- Dynamic Ads Standard: 0.06%
- Dynamic Ads Dynamic: 0.08%
- Text Ads: 0.02%
When it comes to B2B LinkedIn cost-per-click (CPC), the global benchmark is $5.58. However, the job function plays an important role in determining this accurately.
For example, benchmarks across each industry are:
- Accounting: $5.00
- Business Development: $6.30
- Education: $4.90
- Engineering: $5.10
- Finance: $6.90
- Human Resources: $6.00
- information Technology: $7.90
- Marketing: $6.80
- Media and Communications: $5.60
- Operations: $5.70
- Product Management: $7.30
- Sales: $5.40
While these are the most common job functions targeted by businesses on LinkedIn, you can get a more specific CPC for your audience and region by utilising LinkedIn’s forecasting tool in the campaign manager section.
Digital CX B2B Benchmarks: Contentsquare
Improving your company’s digital CX increases awareness and ensures your brand stands out from the rest. The 2023 B2B Digital Experience Benchmark Report from Contentsquare contains expert analysis and guidance on how to improve digital CX, and details what type of data you can use to make informed updates to your digital strategy.
The report analyses more than 100 metrics and billions of data points across 26 countries during a 12 month period. To see the report in full, you can download it here.
Are Your B2B Marketing Metrics Shaping Success or Just Tracking It?
At KLIQ, we specialise in empowering progressive Global and Australian businesses to maximise their marketing efforts by harnessing in-depth, measurable data and insights, offering a into a deeper understanding of customer dynamics.
KLIQmetrics™️, our cutting-edge marketing analytics dashboard is designed to bring a new level of clarity and precision to your marketing data. It transforms complex data sets into meaningful insights, enabling you to measure progress against key objectives and goals with ease.
KLIQmetrics™️ is not just about data collection; it's about turning that data into a strategic advantage over your competitors. Its continuous updating and data preservation features ensure you're always equipped with the latest insights. Delve deeper into understanding not just your customers, but also your potential market - their actions, inactions, and perceptions - with our intuitive tool.
See how this approach benefited Australia's tourism and non-profit icon, Sovereign Hill in our case study. Schedule a consultation with our digital marketing specialists, and we'll show you how to leverage these insights for sharpening your marketing strategies.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published before August 2022 and updated in January 2024 for comprehensiveness.
