Perilous Benchmarking
We've seen in previous posts (1,2) that interest is increasingly growing in the blogosphere and its potential as a Weapon of Mass Distraction. As marketers and advertisers push into this relatively pristine environment, we can expect a new wave of interest in benchmarking to emerge.
Seth Godin offers some interesting points on the perils of benchmarks:
The problem with benchmarking is that nothing but continuous improvement (except maybe spectacular results) satisfies very much. Who wants to know that they will never again be able to beat their personal best rowing time? What entrepreneur wants to embrace the fact that the wait time at her new restaurant franchise is 20% behind the leader—and there’s no obvious way to improve it?
Our interconnected, 500-channel world lets us be picky. We can want a husband who is as tall as that guy, as rich as this guy and as loyal as my brother-in-law. We can ask for an apartment that is in just the right location, with just the right view and just the right rent—and then reject it because the carpeting in the hallway isn’t as nice as the one in the building next door. Monster lets us see 5,000 resumes for every job opening… and imagine that we can find someone with this guy’s education and that woman’s professional experience—who works as cheap as this person and is as local as that one.
Seth touches off on an interesting dilemma we face as we try to establish the blogosphere as a marketplace. Today we are seeing tremendous growth in the industry as a whole. All segments are reporting back surges of exponential proportions. Unfortunately, that growth is not even and, as a result, cannot be used as a baseline.
Our challenge, then, is to devise the benchmarks that not only display the potential of our new resource, but also work to preserve the essence of the thing. E-mail was pure when it started. Today 80% of it is useless. How do we avoid that trap?
Smart marketers are turning to the blogosphere now with hopes of being the first pioneers to inhabit this new consumer frontier; we need to make sure they are compelled to stay.