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Channel Mix Benchmarker

See how your marketing channel mix stacks up against competitors and find where to reallocate budget.

Marketing strategyBudget optimizationChannel planningCompetitive benchmarking

The Challenge

You're spending your marketing budget across channels — SEO, paid ads, social, email — but you have no idea how your mix compares to competitors. Are they winning because they invest heavily in content while you over-index on paid? Or are they building brand awareness (direct traffic) while you chase short-term clicks? Without benchmarking, you're flying blind on budget allocation.

What This Prompt Does

Channel Breakdown

Compare Direct, Search, Social, Referral, Paid, and Email percentages

Category Benchmarks

Calculate the average channel mix across your competitive set

Gap Identification

Flag channels where you underperform versus category norms

Visual Charts

Side-by-side bar charts comparing channel distribution

The Prompt

The Prompt

Task

Use @SimilarWeb/Get Traffic DataName it "SimilarWeb/Get Traffic Data" and call it with @SimilarWeb/Get Traffic Data to pull the traffic source breakdown (Direct, Search, Social, Referrals, Paid, Mail) for your site and 3-5 competitors. Compare how each company distributes traffic across channels, identify where you're underinvesting relative to the category, and generate charts and a Google Sheets export with reallocation recommendations.

Example: Compare how HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive acquire traffic — is HubSpot winning because of content/search while others rely on paid?

Input

The user will provide:

  1. Their domain (or a domain to analyze)
  2. 2-5 competitor domains
  3. (Optional) Google Sheets spreadsheet ID for export

Example: "How does our channel mix at drift.com compare to intercom.com, zendesk.com, and freshdesk.com?"

Context

What to Analyze

Traffic source breakdown for each domain:

  • Direct: Brand strength indicator — users typing the URL
  • Search: Content/SEO investment — organic search traffic
  • Social: Social media marketing effectiveness
  • Referrals: PR, partnerships, and backlink strategy
  • Paid Referrals: Paid advertising spend level
  • Mail: Email marketing program maturity

Engagement correlation:

  • Which channel mix correlates with better engagement (lower bounce, more pages/visit)?
  • Are paid-heavy competitors seeing worse engagement metrics?

Search Strategy

  1. Pull SimilarWeb traffic data for all domains
  2. Extract the Sources object (Direct, Search, Social, Referrals, Paid Referrals, Mail percentages)
  3. Also extract engagement metrics (BounceRate, TimeOnSite, PagesPerVisit)
  4. Calculate the category average for each channel
  5. Identify where the user's domain deviates significantly from category norms
  6. Create bar charts comparing channel distribution across competitors
  7. Export the full analysis to Google Sheets

What Counts as a Valid Result

  • Use actual SimilarWeb percentages — they should sum to roughly 100%
  • A "significant gap" is 5+ percentage points below category average
  • Note if any competitor has unusually high paid traffic (could indicate aggressive growth phase)
  • Tie engagement metrics to channel mix when possible

Output

Channel Mix Comparison: | Channel | Your Site | Comp 1 | Comp 2 | Comp 3 | Category Avg | |---------|----------|--------|--------|--------|-------------| | Direct | X% | X% | X% | X% | X% | | Search | X% | X% | X% | X% | X% | | Social | X% | X% | X% | X% | X% | | Referrals | X% | X% | X% | X% | X% | | Paid | X% | X% | X% | X% | X% | | Email | X% | X% | X% | X% | X% |

Charts: Bar chart showing channel distribution for each competitor side by side.

Engagement by Channel Leader: | Metric | Search-Heavy Leader | Paid-Heavy Leader | Direct-Heavy Leader | |--------|-------------------|------------------|-------------------|

Key Gaps & Recommendations: For each channel where you're underperforming:

  • The gap (your % vs category average)
  • What the top performer in that channel is doing differently
  • Specific recommendation for reallocation

Budget Reallocation Summary: One paragraph on where to shift spend based on competitor patterns.

Example Usage

Try asking:

  • →"How does our channel mix compare to HubSpot and Salesforce?"
  • →"Are we spending too much on paid vs organic compared to competitors?"
  • →"Benchmark mailchimp.com channel mix against klaviyo.com and brevo.com"