Digital Marketing Benchmarks by Industry

A channel-by-channel breakdown of paid search, email, paid social, SEO, and display benchmarks, plus cost-per-click and cost-per-lead ranges broken out by industry (ecommerce, B2B technology, financial services, healthcare, legal services, real estate). Paid search averages 2-3% CTR and $2-$5 CPC; email averages 20-25% open rate and 2-3% CTR; paid social averages $6-$12 CPM and 0.5-1.5% engagement rate.

• Paid search: 2-3% CTR and $2-$5 CPC is average; 5%+ CTR is strong performance
• Email: 20-25% open rate and 2-3% CTR is average; 30%+ open rate is strong
• Paid social: $6-$12 CPM and 0.5-1.5% engagement rate is average; 2%+ engagement is strong
• Cost per lead varies enormously by industry — B2B technology and legal services run $75-$400 per lead vs. $15-$45 for ecommerce
• A given conversion rate can be disappointing for ecommerce (e.g. 1.8%) while being strong for B2B SaaS — benchmarks only mean something in context

• • Sanity-checking whether a channel's CTR/CPC/CPM is in a normal range before flagging it as a problem
• • Setting realistic cost-per-lead targets by industry when planning paid acquisition budget