Chisholm and Harper | Creating businesses of the future

Clients and students frequently ask me for industry averages against which to measure their online campaigns and website performance. My typical response is "who cares what everyone else is achieving?"

What does it really mean if the industry average click through rate is 0.018%? Surely if your search engine marketing campaign outperforms your traditional DM campaign then that's a good result (except for your DM agency).

Everyone is always looking to compare their performance with others. Maybe the first place we should look is inside. The definition of a good result should be how well you achieve your goals in relation to the investment / effort you have put in. Start by comparing how each of your marketing channels compare against each other as a measure of performance. You could find some interesting results.