“What’s a Good Conversion Rate?” 🤔 The Benchmark Myth

For as long as I can remember, marketers have asked me:

“What’s a good conversion rate for my campaign?”

And here’s the honest answer… it depends.

Conversion rate benchmarks are tricky because different brands have different goals. A KPI could be downloading a coupon, signing up for an email, opening a bank account, or even buying a car, all of which have vastly different intent levels and friction points.

The head of Marketing Analytics for one of the largest global OEMs once told me “it’s all relative to the dashboard you’re looking at. There’s a million different options and providers of data, so measuring across providers doesn’t have apples to apples comparisons. Focus on the report you trust and make everything relative to what’s within the given report.”

With that, when it comes to wanting benchmarks, try these:

✅ Instead of chasing an arbitrary benchmark, focus on relative performance.

✅ Compare Campaign A vs. Campaign B, not your brand vs. a generic industry average.

✅ If one tactic is driving a 20% higher Conversion rate, that’s an insight you can actually act on.

✅ Focus on Incrementality, if your spend is driving net new sales at a lower incremental cost per acquisition than your marketing cost, keep going

Think about it this way:

Would you rather hit an “industry average” conversion rate, or actually improve what’s working for your business?

Benchmarks can be a useful reference, but real optimization happens when you focus on your own data, your own customers, and your own goals.

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