Industry benchmarking is systematically comparing your company's metrics against competitors and industry norms. You measure your growth, churn, customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and compare to peers. Benchmarking reveals whether you're above/below par and highlights specific improvements. For example: your SaaS product has 5% monthly churn; industry median is 3%. You have a churn problem. You dig deeper: churn is highest in <$5k/year segment (customers who don't fully adopt). Strategy: implement onboarding improvements or raise minimum ACV to shake off low-value customers.