The world, it’s a-changin’.
It can be difficult in today’s economy to understand how your business is performing. You might be up when compared to last year’s sales, but when was the last time we actually had a “normal” period of sales growth? 2019?
If you experience poor sales periods, is it volatility? Is it you? Is the economy itself in the toilet?
Or – are you simply right where the rest of your peers are in your specific industry? What if there was a way to see how your brand stacks up with others in your field?
Enter Trends, Triple Whale’s latest and greatest industry benchmarking tool. A brand new way to see how your company’s metrics - like ROAS, CPA, and CPC - compare to those of your peers.
Using data from over 11,000 Triple Whale customers and presented in an easy-to-use dashboard, Trends allows you to uncover trends for the most common ad platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok, and a Blended view to understand the broad trends across all platforms.
Besides being able to see these values across all Triple Whale customers, you can also drill down based on Industry to take a closer look at how you compare specifically to the brands in your vertical. Because we compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges!
The Triple Whale ecosystem runs on data - and lots of it. It’s how our customers make better decisions, and the Trends Tool can show you the results of those decisions across our entire subscriber base, for the following metrics:
Cost-per-acquisition (CPA): cost to acquire one paying customer
Cost-per-click (CPC): amount spent for each click on an ad
Cost-per-mille (CPM): cost per thousand impressions (mille = Latin for thousands)
Return on ad spend (ROAS): amount of revenue earned for every dollar spent on a campaign
With views from Meta, TikTok, Google, and Blended metrics from Triple Whale (which include Meta, Google, TikTok, Bing, Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest, and Snap), you can see how your data stacks up against a large swath of the Shopify ecosystem.
You can break the data down by time period, with views for the last 7 days and last 30 days, so you’ll know if something is a longer-term trend or just having a moment.
Curious how you stack specifically against your peers? You can also break it down by industry, annual revenue, and average order value (AOV) to see data specifically relevant to your vertical.
Go to the Trends website here. Follow the instructions to sign in or create a new account.
Once you’ve got your account set up, you can then connect your Meta, Google Ads, and TikTok ads account to import your data into the Trends Tool. You can use the tool to create a graph comparing the benchmark data to your data. The bonus to signing up through Trends: if you decide to give Founders Dash a try, we’ll already have all of your data imported (for free, and a huge time saver).
In the graph below, we compared CPA and CPM data for a brand in the Clothing industry with AOV over $100 and annual revenue $1M-$10M for a one week period. It’s easy to visualize any differences between your brand’s data and the benchmark data, which leads us to how useful this is for brands.
It’s not just pretty to look at - it’s useful information!
By comparing the performance of other companies on Triple Whale, or just within your industry, you can determine if you’re above or below the mark you’d expect for success. For example, CPC across all industries at $1.15, but apparel is most competitive at $1.89. If you’re spending closer to $1.89 on CPC as an apparel brand, you’re right where the rest of your peers are. But if your average CPC is around $5, then there’s probably some adjustments you can make to get in line with what your peers are spending.
By analyzing the performance of your competitors, you can define your own goals.
Benchmarks allow you to identify the gaps in your own marketing efforts so you can either catch up or surpass your competitors. You can set this up by:
The first step to building your benchmarking strategy is to decide which KPIs to track and compare. We did this part for you by providing the metrics in the tool (CPM, CPA, CPC, and ROAS), so you’re ready to compare your own data to that of your peers.
As you’ll see when you begin to use the Trends Tool, comparing across the entire Triple Whale database might not be useful (although it is super cool to see!). By setting your comparison within your specific industry, you’ll have more useful data to make decisions.
Once all of your data is connected and compared to your peers, you’ll be able to see any huge gaps in your metrics to tackle first. If your CPA is way higher than your competitors, you at least know where you start!
Need to hit a better ROAS? Set a specific goal (ex. Increase by 0.5% by a certain date) and adjust your marketing copy, content, or offers to hit that goal. The good news is, by setting a goal based on numbers your peers are hitting, you know that it’s an achievable goal.
Goals are just dreams with deadlines, right? You need to evaluate and iterate on your advertising in order to ensure you’re meeting your goals, so be sure to set up a monthly or quarterly review period to track your progress. Set new goals if you need to!
Harnessing insights from data effectively is the key to achieving success in today's competitive digital marketing landscape. Triple Whale's Trends Tool offers insights that go beyond mere numbers, providing you with a comparative analysis of your performance against your industry peers. Whether you're looking to lower your CPA or CPM, reduce your CPC, or boost your ROAS, our tool can function as your guide. Remember, your marketing strategy shouldn't be about striving to outperform everyone, but rather about identifying gaps, setting realistic goals based on industry trends, and monitoring your progress regularly.
So, connect your account, set your KPIs and start making data-driven decisions today. Every bit of data counts in shaping your brand's success story.