Have you ever heard about benchmarking? Today we are going to show you a little more about this method of competition monitoring and make you better understand what it is, how it works and how important it is to achieve the sales success in a company.
Nowadays, with the market becoming increasingly competitive, creating a business or starting a company is becoming increasingly difficult. Well, you have to go through many obstacles, and being a successful professional is the goal of many entrepreneurs and managers.
However, this is where we encounter one of the biggest difficulties for these professionals: how to make a business grow with so many competitors, who in most cases have been in the market for longer?
Based on the question, the benchmarking process becomes essential to help in a situation like this, and we can define it as a method of analyzing and studying the competition. But don't worry, we'll explain better how it works.
So, if you want to know more about this topic, continue reading and discover all the information you need!
What is benchmarking?
O benchmarking is a practice that is present in many successful businesses, and it aims monitor and analyze competition. This allows a company to compare its performance based on that of others.
Assuming that you are the owner of a grocery store, and business has been low in recent months, leading to financial problems and poor results. But, he ends up discovering that in a nearby location, a new grocery store has appeared, and it is busy and successful.
If you decide to study the processes and performances of this place, with the aim of understanding why it is achieving good results, technically, you are benchmarking.
In other words, evaluating and studying the competition are methods present in this technique. Therefore, always ask yourself questions about what you can be doing and what your results are like.
Getting feedback on what works is essential. Well, it helps when make decisions regarding your business. So, always monitor the market.
What are the advantages of benchmarking?
Adopting this technique in your company is essential to achieve good results. After all, it brings many advantages, which can help you stand out among your competitors.
We can list some of these advantages here:
- Discover market trends;
- Better understand how this sector of the market works;
- Learn from the experiences of other companies;
- Have references that can help with decision making;
- Develop more efficient planning;
- Encourage your team to reach goals.
More, Even so, you need to be careful, especially when applying a technique that another company used. Not everything that works for another business may work for yours.
Therefore, understanding and interpreting data will be fundamental here. It may happen that you want to “copy” a company’s tactics, but at the wrong time, and this ends up causing losses.
So, Don't focus too much on competitors. Trying too hard to look like them can make your company lose its individual characteristics.
What are the types of benchmarking?
There are several types of benchmarking on the market that can help your company.
- Generic: arises when the processes are similar, even without competition in the market;
- Functional: here there is a search for tactics that can be used, even though the projects are different.
- Competitivo: in this type, it is good to use official data, as it involves direct measurement of competitors competing in the market.
- Cooperative: here, two companies come into contact and form a partnership to exchange experiences.
But, how can it join digital marketing?
Using this tool will help your business to understand what works and what doesn’t. This way, it becomes possible to achieve good results. The internet can support you here, as with it you will have access to a lot of market data.
It allows you to know better what you are dealing with, based on information, so that your business is not held hostage by the competition. Marketing and Digital communication, open a path for your company to also learn from outside references. And this makes the process of mapping a path for your team to follow easier.
Remembering that studying the positioning of other companies on certain topics can help with your decisions!
5 tips for benchmarking
- Choose some competitors to analyze
Make a selection of companies, both in your sector and others, to obtain data from different sources. - Define analysis indicators
You can create a comparison table to check specific points of each competitor, such as presence on social networks, website authority, content, engagement, etc. - Find out how to get data
There are several tools that can help you in this process, use them to get data, as they are essential. O Google Analytics and the SEMrush, for example, are great for carrying out this task. - Make a comparison of the analyzes
Gather the data and keep an eye on the results. Your team should compare them and take note of what is and is not important for your business. This way, it is possible to put together strategies in the best way possible. - Make a report
When you get the conclusions, study the report to see the positives and negatives of your strategies. Use this moment to think about what can be improved in your business.
With these tips, it is possible to achieve your company's objectives through comparative analyzes with your competitors. But remember, having a team specialized in the subject helping you in this process is the best option.
The time has come to apply benchmarking in your company
In fact, it is very important study your own business, to know what needs to be improved. Asking your customers questions can help a lot at this stage. This will allow you to define what type of benchmarking your team should use.
So, identify companies that have experienced similar problems, and learn from their mistakes. But, in addition, you can also create relationships with other organizations, as a partnership, so that it becomes possible to bring benefits to both.
The objective here is to create reports from the data, and then analyze them to understand what the process of optimizing your business will be like!
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We hope that with this article you have understood a little more about benchmarking and how important it is to help you achieve success for your brand in the digital market.