Using Strategic Benchmarking to Gain Access and Capture Mindshare
In the increasingly noisy world of marketing, it’s often difficult to capture your audience’s attention. Without a tangible “What’s in it for me?” benefit, your audience has little incentive to interact with your team in a meaningful way.
Strategies for communicating with potential clients often rely on being the “noisiest” rather than focusing on providing value to an audience before they become clients. Outbound marketing tactics like paid advertisements are becoming less effective as companies try to make more noise than their competitors.
Inbound strategies, like content marketing, capture mindshare and convert readers into clients by offering something valuable but require a long-term game plan fueled by ongoing research, development, and promotion efforts.
While content marketing is enormously valuable when your audience is broad, diverse, and not easily identified, what if you already know your audience, the number of prospects is relatively small, and you can engage them periodically? In this situation, strategic benchmarking can deliver quicker, more cost-effective wins than other strategies.
What is Strategic Benchmarking?
Traditional benchmarking techniques measure a company against competitors or industry standards. This type of benchmarking can be used to improve upon specific functions within the company or to identify gaps and gain a competitive edge.
What I’m calling “strategic benchmarking” is a more specific approach that positions you as the facilitator of the benchmarking study rather than (a) an outside observer viewing already-compiled data or (b) a study participant contributing to the end result.
Facilitating a strategic benchmarking study means that you determine what types of information to pursue and who you want to participate. Instead of relying on outside research or your team’s judgment, strategic benchmarking allows you to cultivate the observations and background you need while increasing your company’s visibility and offering value to your audience.
What are the Benefits of Strategic Benchmarking?
1. Gain Access
While a significant output of this strategy is specific, actionable data on the key market areas you’re interested in, the primary benefit of strategic benchmarking is access. When you facilitate a benchmarking study and share insights with participants, you gain access to companies who might not otherwise interact with your business.
As traditional marketing tactics become less successful in the age of social media, companies need fresh ways to attract prospective clients. Inbound methods that focus on educating and providing value to prospective clients are often more effective than outbound methods that rely on “push” tactics to get customers.
Strategic benchmarking works as an inbound marketing technique because you gain access to prospective clients by (1) involving them in the process of collecting data and (2) giving them a platform for sharing their perspective. When prospective clients have a stake in the outcome, they are more likely to participate.
By facilitating a strategic benchmarking project, you also create several touchpoints between you and prospective clients. The first is when you reach out to ask for their participation. A second touchpoint occurs when you interview them to collect data for the benchmark. The third, and most in-depth, is when you present the insights from the benchmarking project and collect feedback.
Successful strategic benchmarking efforts can become yearly projects that garner industry respect and serve as a go-to source for information. Your company may even develop the standard for the type of information you cultivate.
Take, for instance, HubSpot’s yearly State of Inbound report. The information contained within this report shapes the content marketing strategies of many agencies and offers valuable insights to anyone interested in developing or improving upon their inbound marketing approach.
State of Inbound also positions HubSpot as the industry expert on inbound marketing, increases the visibility of their software products, and gives them the insider information needed to develop winning solutions and stay ahead of the curve.
The type of access strategic benchmarking provides is more cost-effective than traditional marketing. Instead of paying for expensive advertising campaigns that may or may not reach the intended audience, strategic benchmarking provides tangible results. Because you know who is participating, you will know when your target audience has been reached.
Benchmarking projects are also faster than ad campaigns. You can finish a strategic benchmarking project in the same time it takes to run an ad through a typical cycle (or sooner). Since you generate more touchpoints through strategic benchmarking than through traditional advertising, you’re also more likely to see results quicker.
2. Identify Customer Trends
Another benefit of strategic benchmarking is the information it reveals about customer trends. By asking the right questions, you can confirm what’s important to prospective clients and where they are focusing their energy.
This forward-facing look into the market can be invaluable not just for reaching prospective clients but also for planning your own company’s business development strategies. By knowing where the industry is headed, you can make decisions that are more informed.
Strategic benchmarking offers a usually unattainable level of information to your prospective clients and their needs. Because prospective clients will benefit from the insights in the benchmarking project report, they are more willing to provide an honest, “insider look” at their own company.
Driving a benchmarking project allows you to focus on gathering information valuable to you. Rather than relying on general data, costly market research tactics, or limited information provided by other studies, conducting your own benchmarking project allows you to gather specific information from specific companies.
3. Determine Common Challenges
When you present the results of the benchmarking project, prospective clients will get a glimpse into areas where their company excels and areas that need improvement. Having a conversation about the challenges these companies are facing becomes an opportunity to present your solution.
The information gathered from the benchmarking project can also inform your product development either for specific clients or for a larger segment of the market. If multiple companies experience the same challenges, you may have identified a significant gap in the market and can plan accordingly.
The right information lets you anticipate market needs, develop appropriate solutions, and gain a significant competitive advantage. And, since you have already engaged your target audience, you’ll have the inside track for sharing your solution with them.
4. Establish Authority
A strategic benchmarking project can establish you as an expert across the industry within your niche. As the driver of the project, you become a natural source of information on topics you discuss. During the collection phase of the benchmarking project, the questions you ask will illustrate your experience and understanding of the market.
When sharing insights and solutions at the project’s conclusion, you have a unique opportunity to articulate (1) your thoughts on the industry and its trends, (2) what the needs of prospective clients are, and (3) how your company can meet those needs.
You can also use the results of the project to build content that attracts a wider audience. By publishing a report on the benchmarking project, you can share your insights and create the foundation for a repeatable process.
What goes into a Strategic Benchmarking Project?
Strategic benchmarking entails (1) obtaining your audience’s feedback as part of a larger research project on a specific B2B topic or area, (2) analyzing the results to create insights, and (3) sharing insights with participants. This strategy works because it invites your audience to become part of the development process and gives them a stake in project outcomes. They will care about the final results because they had a hand in producing them.