Imagine trying to win a race without knowing how fast your competitors are running. Are they ahead? Falling behind? Without that insight, it’s impossible to know if you’re pacing yourself correctly — or if you’re even on the right track.
For businesses, competitor benchmarking is how you get a clear picture of where you stand compared to your rivals. It’s all about taking a good look at your competition and using that knowledge to set realistic goals, refine your strategies, and ultimately outperform them.
Whether you’re looking to boost your social media engagement, enhance your customer experience, or streamline operations, competitive benchmarking is your roadmap to getting ahead. Let’s break down what competitor benchmarking is, how it can fuel your success, and the steps to making this process work for you.
What Is Competitor Benchmarking?
In simple terms, competitor benchmarking is the process of comparing your business’s performance against key competitors within your industry. Unlike general market research or a simple SWOT analysis, though, competitor benchmarking zeroes in on specific, measurable data points.
Competitor benchmarking might involve comparing things like:
- Social media engagement: How do your competitors’ likes, shares, and comments stack up against yours? Find out what is a good engagement rate on social media and see how you compare
- Website performance: How does your search engine ranking compare? What’s the average bounce rate for your industry, and how does your site measure up?
- Customer satisfaction: How does your NPS score compare to your competitors’?
Ultimately, this kind of analysis enables you to evaluate your business against industry best practices and set realistic performance goals grounded in real-world data.
The Advantages of Competitor Benchmarking
Analyzing and comparing the numbers is a core part of competitor benchmarking — but the benefits of this practice run deeper. Here are a few advantages of benchmarking:
Set Smarter Goals
It’s natural to set ambitious goals, but without context, how do you know if they’re achievable? Benchmarking gives you the data to set goals that make sense. For instance, if you know the industry average email open rate is 20% and you’re currently at 15%, you can aim to hit or exceed that benchmark within a specific timeframe. Without this knowledge, you might be setting goals that are too high — or too low.
Spot Strengths and Weaknesses
By comparing your performance metrics to your competitors, you can identify areas where you shine and where you’re falling behind.
Say you find out a competitor’s social media posts are performing better than yours through benchmarking. From there, you can then dig into their social media engagement strategies. What are they doing differently? Are they posting more frequently? Are they posting mostly video content? Benchmarking leads you towards these details, so you can fine-tune your strategy and stay competitive.
Social media competitive analysis tools like Rival IQ make this process easy. We offer competitive context to all your metrics, letting you see how you stack up with data visualizations and straightforward explanations. As an example, check out how Alaska Airlines is doing on Instagram below.
Let’s focus on engagement rate by follower. The company’s doing better than average but, at 6th place, there’s definitely room for improvement. With a few clicks in Rival IQ, Alaska Airlines can quickly determine that Hawaiian Airlines is one of the top airlines on social media right now and study the brand’s strategy to see what they’re doing that stands out.
From exciting sweepstakes to engaging prompts, Hawaiian Airlines’ feed is full of lessons. And who better to learn from than the best?
Make Informed Decisions
Another big advantage of competitor benchmarking is that it empowers you to make data-driven decisions. Instead of relying on gut feeling or vague assumptions, you have concrete data to back up your strategies.
Maybe you’re thinking about launching a new brand’s first social media influencer campaign. Using influencer analytics tools and analyzing how other companies in the industry approach influencer marketing can validate your idea and refine your execution.
What’s the average engagement rate of their influencer posts, and how does that compare to the overall industry standard? If influencer campaigns garner less engagement, is there something you can do differently to get better results? Or does it seem like your audience simply doesn’t respond well to influencers? Asking and answering these questions can help you make better decisions about your influencer marketing strategy.
Quick tip: Optimize the research process by using Rival IQ’s Discover Tool to streamline the process of finding and evaluating new influencers and brand advocates.
Mitigate Risks
Competitor benchmarking also acts as a safeguard against costly mistakes. You can imagine how failing to benchmark can put you at risk of overspending on ineffective strategies. After all, if you pour money into a channel without proper research, there’s a chance you’ll waste valuable resources.
For example, what if your target audience consistently shows lower engagement with influencer campaigns across your industry, as evidenced by competitor numbers? That’s a potential red flag, signaling that this approach may not align with their preferences. On the other hand, if one or two competitors dominate with high-performing influencer campaigns, jumping in without further research and a unique angle could leave you overshadowed.
Benchmarking helps you make smarter decisions about where to allocate your budget and efforts. Whether it’s doubling down on proven tactics or steering clear of ineffective ones, you reduce the risk of wasting resources while positioning yourself for better results.
Avoid Stagnation
Without benchmarking, it’s easy to fall into a “good enough” mindset. But with clear data on what others are achieving, you’ll be motivated to keep pushing boundaries. Staying ahead of the curve requires constant improvement, and benchmarking ensures that you’re measuring yourself not just against your past successes but also against the best in your industry.
In short, competitor benchmarking doesn’t just reveal where you stand — it gives you the tools to chart a path forward. Whether it’s identifying opportunities for success or patching up weak spots in your strategy, this process can make all the difference.
Competitor Benchmarking: A Five-Step Guide
Now that we’ve covered why competitor benchmarking is so essential, let’s get into how to get started.
1. Identify Competitors
Start by pinpointing your direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors target the same audience with similar products or services, while indirect competitors satisfy the same needs but with a different solution. So, the athletic brands Nike and Adidas would be direct competitors while Nike and Crocs could arguably be indirect competitors.
While you probably already know who your competitors are, consider leveraging social listening to identify the companies that come up during relevant online conversations. Take the topic “ice cream.” A quick search with our social listening tool and you can see that Haagen-Dazs, Chicken Republic, McDonald’s, Ben & Jerry’s, and Dairyland are some of the brands most discussed with that keyword in the last 30 days.
2. Choose Metrics
Once you’ve identified your competitors, the next step is selecting what metrics to benchmark. Your metrics should align with your business goals and lead to actionable insights.
Try to be as specific as you can. If your goal is to improve engagement on social media, determine exactly how that will be measured. After all, engagement metrics slightly differ based on the platform. For instance, “engagement rate by view” is an important TikTok metric but it’s not an Instagram metric because of differences in how each channel operates and reports data.
3. Gather and Analyze Data
Once your competitors and metrics are selected, it’s time to collect and analyze data. You can do this manually or use tools to make the process more efficient and accurate. Here are some categories of tools that can help, depending on the type of data you’re analyzing:
- Social Media Benchmarking: This, of course, is our bread and butter! Rival IQ was designed for competitive benchmarking, letting you see exactly how you stack up against competitors with easy-to-understand visualizations and helpful comments. You can build multiple landscapes of brands and compare all kinds of metrics across different social channels.
- SEO and Website Performance: Platforms like Semrush and SE Ranking can provide insights into your and your competitors’ website traffic (organic vs. paid), keyword rankings, domain authority, and more.
- Content: How does your content — your articles, videos, listicles — compare? Tools like BuzzSumo can show you what’s working for the competition, including average shares, content format, and length.
- Email: See industry email trends and comparative benchmarks with platforms like Mailcharts and Owletter. Getting analytics on things like how often they send emails to their average promotion rate can help you optimize your own strategy.
All in all, tools like these are invaluable, saving you time, money, and effort by streamlining data collection and simplifying competitor comparisons.
4. Uncover Gaps and Opportunities
After collecting the data, the next step is to analyze it for gaps and opportunities. Look for areas where your competitors outperform you, and identify opportunities where you can outpace them.
For instance, if a competitor’s website has significantly more traffic, see what content is driving that traffic. Look for opportunities to capitalize on weaknesses, such as an underserved audience segment or a topic they aren’t covering in their blog posts.
5. Implement Changes and Benchmark Regularly
Put your findings into action! Update strategies, adjust campaigns, or refine your product based on insights. After implementation, continue to track your progress regularly. Set up monthly or quarterly benchmarking reviews to assess whether the changes have had the desired impact and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Wrapping It Up
Competitor benchmarking is more than just keeping tabs on your rivals — it’s about uncovering the details that drive smarter decisions and stronger results. By tracking the right metrics and using tools like Rival IQ, you can find opportunities to outpace the competition. Ready to take the lead? Start benchmarking today and see the difference it makes for your business.
