How to Conduct Competitive Benchmarking?

You know you need to conduct Competitive Benchmarking but you can’t seem to figure out where to start. Refer to the steps and follow them to understand how you can start with your own Competitive Benchmarking process.

Look into your Internal Process

Take a look at how you run your own marketing and sales campaigns.

• How do you acquire your customers or convert leads?
• What incentives do you offer to the customers?
• What reviews do you get on your products/ services?
• How satisfied are your customers with your products/ services?

You need to understand the techniques or strategies you are using in your business. Start by observing the methodologies used to operate the business. This will lead to the next step, that is, choosing what metrics you want to measure.

Choosing the Metrics

Based on how your internal process is working and the business goals you want to achieve, you need to consider which metrics to measure.

You need to find which metrics you want to focus on based on what your company goals are. Ensure that your goals are realistic, measurable, and attainable.

Some Metrics you can follow are:

• Web traffic
• Social media reach
• Share of voice
• Brand awareness
• Growth rate
• Ranking

Identify your Competitors

The selection of competitors depends on what metrics you choose to measure. Here’s a list of different types of competitors you can perform a Competitive benchmark against.

Immediate Competitors: Compare your metrics to those businesses that are similar to your company in size or market positioning. You want to track those businesses that are also competing for the same niche with the same business size as yours. This will give you the opportunity to figure out how to gain an edge over them.

Key Industry Players: These are the competitors who are always outperforming you. They are the best-in-class when it comes to strategies and tactics. Comparing your performance with them can help you understand how they manage to consistently perform better than the rest.

• What do they do to make them the best in the industry?

Gaining insight into their winning strategies can help you understand how these successful businesses are always so competitive. You can learn and improve your own methods and tactics in order to achieve your business goals.

Industry Disruptors: Companies with innovative ideas and strategies that often challenge the standard rules to have the potential to grow faster than any other company. Observing and comparing their performance with yours can teach you how to stay ahead of everyone else.

Track the Metrics

You know which metrics you want to measure and who your competitors are. The only step left to do is measure and compare the metrics.

There are lots of different ways to measure the metrics.

To achieve the growth you may want to track your web traffic. You may find that increasing web traffic results in higher sales.

To increase social media reach you need to monitor your social engagement against your competitors.

Monitoring sales is easier in public companies. You can look at the quarterly financial reports.

Research

After comparing all the data now is the time to learn from the insight. From the insights you can understand their strategy and tactics to get a view of how your competitors maintain their success and competitiveness.

Separate the benchmarking reports according to each goal. Look into these reports every time you need ideas to plan your strategy. Evaluate these metrics from time to time if they are still relevant to help reach closer to your goals.

Competitive Benchmarking helps you understand what you lack and how you can improve. It gives a logical perspective and helps make sense of the competition in the industry. Comparing against other businesses helps identify blind spots in your business process and strategies. As a result, it gives you the motivation and ideas you need to achieve your goals.