Best Practices: What are the standard benchmarks for internet marketing tactics such as Online Display Advertising, Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Email Newsletter, and Social Media?

Different industries will have different benchmarks, you need to define for yourself what the purpose is for using each different medium. i.e: Brand awareness, customer service management, current customer retention, new customer acquisition, sales, etc. Benchmarks don't really matter if the different modes of online advertising you are using don't produce sales and income to offset the expenses. I think each company should set their own benchmarks based on their needs. Having a starting point with some industry examples is not a bad thing though.

In reference to your question please bear in mind there are drastically different benchmarks between internet marketing focused on branding vs. internet marketing focused on sales. There are also other categories as well.   Since your question did not really specify benchmarks in terms of branding or other categories I will focus my answer on benchmarks in terms of internet marketing for the sale of products and/or services.   First off, I can tell you I am a Certified Google Partner as well as a Bing Accredited Professional. Although advertising certifications don't exist for social media platforms I have also done a good deal of marketing at places like, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, VK, Foursquare, etc.   Being totally real... I can tell you I don't have all the answers nor am I the world's foremost and unquestionable expert. For whatever it's worth I have spent countless hours staring at an MCC dashboard, dealing with campaigns and of course handling clients.   After all that I've been through rest assured I am well aware of the "lingo" of the industry when it comes to terms like quality score, click through rate, cost per impression, cost per click, etc.   But frankly, all that lingo exists more amongst campaign managers than it does real world business clients and since the clients pay the bills there is a great deal of weight on what "they" typically consider to be the benchmarks that matter.   This cuts to the chase and weeds out all those piles of industry lingo words rather quickly and what you're left with is ROI. A business client will care about the Return On Investment (ROI) benchmark. The next point is that we could say there are sub-benchmarks that lead up to the Grand Daddy benchmark of ROI.   Consider it mathematically from the business owners perspective: X= How many sales did this marketing push generate? AND SUBSEQUENTLY....... Y= How much net profit did those sales generate? Z= How much did the marketing push cost? If  Y is > Z your client is happy and you probably get more work If  Y is < Z you're in trouble and can expect to lose this client   The more that Y is bigger than Z the better things will go The more that Y is smaller than Z the worse things will go   Benchmark this. If the advertising spend does not produce a return on the investment it's negative energy. If the advertising spend does produce a return on the investment it's positive energy. This will apply regardless of the campaign type as in pay per click, social media, email blast, etc. The marketing effort pays off or it doesn't... you know like a pass or fail grade so to speak.   Because of this dynamic I try to prequalify each client. If you have a client with a low net profit dollar amount per transaction things are more difficult to ROI. Case in point let's say you client sells a $12 t-shirt with $4.00 net profit. This gives you very few dollars for the ad spend before you will be spending more on the ads than what the net profit is.   On the other hand things get much easier with a high dollar amount net profit per transaction. Case in point let's say your client sells a $400,000 bulldozer with a $35,000 net profit. In this instance you can spend a lot on ads without gouging too deeply into the net profit number.   In situations I haven't clearly outlined above mostly the same rules still apply. An example might be a client doing an email blast to get people to sign up for a newsletter -or- maybe an email blast to get existing clients to extend contractual commitments. In cases like these everything above still applies with the difference being the client will have to provide a dollar value for each email signup -or- contract extension so campaign ROI can be properly calculated.   Best of luck to you in keeping your ad spend will below the marketing generated net profits! :-)

This was My Answer to a Similar Question, Do Read it, 1)First is Social Media Interaction which is the Most Important and the cheapest. I would Give you an Example, If you are Creating a Website where you Intend to sell Dresses, then Create a Facebook page and post Pictures of Dresses and Put the Link of your website down, Well it may sound easy, Its not. You have to post this Images at specific Time so that people Can see it more, If you post a Image at 1-2 pm in the Afternoon, it won't reach much people but if you post at or After 7.30 or 8 pm then it will get more attraction as it is the normal time for most Working people to Come home and Interact with Social media or a Normal Person also gets time approximately at that time. The Time Factor differs for every other Industry, If you are Intending to Sell Food online then Post Delicious Food Images before Lunch and Dinner time which may create Cravings in the Mind of People. 2)Advertising on Google or On TV If you have a Descent Budget then First Start Advertising through Google then Move to TV as it is more of a Budget Drainer. 3)Interaction with the Public Its the Most Important, If one person buys a Product For Example A Router, Personally(Means Officially) mail him and Ask "Are you satisfied with the Product we delivered" And also Mention that You are CEO of the Company, I bet it will create a Very good Impression in the Minds of the Buyer and He will surely say his Friends that , A CEO of a Company mailed me. 4)Giving Points or Some Bonus Things when a person Buys. If a person Buys anything for Example A router of Rs.1500 or US 25$ then Give him points which can be redeemed only at your site and when People get this Kind of freebies, they will surely tend to buy more. Or you can post Competitions at your Website, You can ask them to share your page or anything and Give them a Gift Voucher or So. If you want any more Tips, You can Definitely ask from me. And all the Ideas posted here are from My brain. Good Luck on your Company startup. :)

I agree with , that the tracking depends on your industry and specific purpose. Though, if your marketing efforts have a direct link to revenue generation (as opposed to brand awareness) and you have access to the data of revenue generated, it would be wise to link each revenue generation event with a particular marketing effort. Then you can calculate your effective return ratio for a marketing channel as: ERR = (Total Revenue Generated) / (Total Spend on that Medium) For example, suppose you are generating leads for an industry. You'll normally code each lead with an identifier which can tell you all the details of how the lead was generated. Then when this lead generates revenue, you can link the revenue information with various campaign parameters to calculate your ERR. Generally this metric can only be implemented where there is a strong integration of marketing and business technology systems. This is one of the most useful metrics when defining your ROIs and if implemented correctly, can help you optimize your campaigns at the most granular levels.

In display it can be these: Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) Engagement/Hover time or percentage Click Rate Cost Per Click Conversion Rate Cost Per Action In video, it's usually people who view quartiles of an ad (25% completion increments) in addition to this other stuff. If you want actual data, check out http://www.marketingsherpa.com http://www.econsultancy.com and http://www.emarketer.com for benchmark reports.

A great article containing links to a series of digital advertising benchmarking resources here: http://digitalinasia.com/2013/10/27/digital-benchmarks/