Last month, we shared an article highlighting the top digital advertising benchmarks agencies should pay attention to, but since digital marketing isn’t a one-channel thing, we wanted to provide a deeper dive into another major data-driven area of the online marketing landscape: social media.
Currently, approximately 4.9 billion social media users worldwide are distributed across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.
For marketing professionals, especially for strategic decision-makers, this means two things:
- Social media will continue to be one of the most outstanding opportunities to engage with potential customers, build brand awareness, and increase website traffic.
- And on the other hand, it is one of the most competitive marketing channels out there.
So, with so many businesses vying for attention on social media, it’s more important than ever to have a solid strategy in place, and one of the best ways of doing so is to benchmark your performance.
This article is our way to help you adjust social media goals, strengthen your competitive advantage, and position as a reference point in the market.
We’ll also show you how to analyze your social media performance with AdClicks, compare it to benchmarks, and use those insights to stay ahead of the game.
But first, let’s review the essential concepts of social media benchmarking.
What Are Social Media Benchmarks?
Simply put, social media benchmarks are points of reference that can be used to measure and compare the performance of social media accounts in the same industry/niche or against competitors.
Why Are Social Media Benchmarks Important?
Social media benchmarking started gaining relevance with the rise of online social networks as a tool for marketing and communication.
As businesses started to invest more in their online presence, measuring the results of these investments became necessary, which gave rise to data-driven marketing. This approach relies on documentation to decide how to allocate resources and measure the success of campaigns.
Over the past decade, benchmarks have become an indispensable part of the marketing process as they provide major benefits such as:
Competitive Advantage
By benchmarking your social media performance against your competitors, you can identify areas where you are excelling and areas where you need to improve. This information can help you to develop a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Industry Trends
Benchmarks can also help you to stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends. For example, if you see that a particular type of content is performing well for your competitors, you may want to start creating similar content for your social media accounts.
ROI Tracking
Finally, benchmarking your campaigns can help you track your ROI more accurately. By comparing your performance to the external context, you can gain insights into which strategies provide the highest returns for your business. This information can help inform future decisions and ensure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to social media marketing.
The Metrics That’ll Help You Benchmark
To benchmark correctly, it’s only necessary to track the relevant metrics. Examples of some of the standard metrics include:
Engagement Metrics
Engagement rates measure how well your audience is interacting with your content. Examples of engagement metrics include likes, comments, shares, and clicks.
Follower Growth
As the name implies, this metric measures how quickly your audience grows, which is crucial for tracking your brand awareness and reach.
Conversion Rates
Generating content is a non-negotiable form of connecting with your audience, but remember that, in the end, the main goal of content is to convert that person into an action.
Conversion rates measure how many social media followers are taking a desired action, such as visiting your website or signing up for your email list. This metric is important for tracking the ROI of your social media marketing efforts.
One more tip:
Use content performance as a metric, too (even though this varies widely depending on the type of content), as it measures how well your individual pieces of content are performing. This metric can help you identify the content types your audience is most interested in.
Benchmarks for the Top Social Media Platforms
With the essentials of benchmarking covered, it’s time for the juicy part of this article – the social media benchmark metrics.
Below, you’ll find benchmarks for engagement and interaction rates across seven top social media platforms.
| Social Media Platform | Engagement Rate | Follower Growth-Rate | Conversion Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.060% – 0.82% | 1.32% – 3.39% | 2.15% – 12.82% | |
| 0.47% – 3.15% | 0.26% – 2% | 0.30% – 2.6% | |
| YouTube | 0.13% – 0.15% | 0.02 – 1% | 12% – 16% |
| 1.11% – 2.26% | 1.58% – 2.43% | 5% – 15% |
Extract from Various Sources
The Sky Is the Limit: Set Your Goals Based on Data
Once you understand your social media benchmarks, you can start to set realistic goals for your social media marketing efforts.
Here is a quick but effective step-by-step guide:
- Analyze your current state on each platform:
Start by looking at what you’ve been doing and where you currently stand on each social media platform. It’s important to understand how your performance measures against industry averages before setting any goals for the future.
- Set achievable short-term and long-term goals:
Goals can be anything from increasing followers to increasing engagement or website click-throughs. Set achievable goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timed (SMART).
- Monitor your progress:
Track your performance continuously to ensure you’re achieving your goals. This will help you determine if any changes are needed to reach your desired outcome.
- Adjust as needed:
Constantly measure and adjust your approach to reach your goals. This can involve changing your content type, testing different platforms, or altering how you engage with followers or customers.
Data Collection and Analysis: AdClicks Makes It Easy for You
Another inevitable step in this process is to track and measure your performance over time, considering benchmarks with the help of a tool that collects, stores and analyses your data from your preferred platforms.
Several tools out there require a certain level of technical knowledge, not to mention the countless hours it takes to collect that data manually. But, for this, the AdClicks reporting tool is the ideal solution as we take care of data collection, storage, and analysis while you can focus on your marketing day-to-day tasks.
Once you enter into the AdClicks experience, it is as simple as
- Connecting your platforms with our tool
- Selecting a template from our library
- Dragging your data around to build the perfect report.
Once you have access to all this data at your fingertips, you can easily put all the points from this article into practice.
Get in Touch With Our Team and Customize Your Data Needs
If you are interested in customizing your reporting experience adjusted to your needs, you must know that one of our biggest features is tailored to that, which makes us unique in the market.
Our team is here to help you in every step of the process, from setup to execution, so don’t hesitate to contact us! We are happy to answer any questions and provide guidance.
