An Easy and Effective Way to Creating a Marketing Dashboard

We usually associate a “dashboard” with a vehicle—a visual device (screen) that provides the primary information about the vehicle – its speed, the fuel level, distance traveled, and indicators of faults in the vehicle.

Similarly, a marketing dashboard is a visual presentation of the most critical, high-level data and information required by a company’s management to track the essential marketing metrics and progress towards its marketing objectives. The data are presented in a concise and consolidated report that helps the marketing team perform a more detailed marketing analytics exercise.

Why Does a Company Need to Create A Marketing Dashboard?

The primary requirement of any marketing activity is “measurability,”—a means to quantify the effort, investment, and outcome dedicated to that activity. The growth of digital marketing has led to a considerable increase in data analyzed. However, not all information is good, and not all reports are required.

By creating a marketing dashboard, a company’s marketing team can segregate and present the most important and relevant information and track the critical data points for the company.

Marketing Dashboard Design – Overview

How do we create a marketing dashboard?

The best marketing dashboards are simple and present the most relevant data. The data to be presented could include information on sales revenue and customer growth if the marketing focus is to push sales. Visibility and engagement could be the metrics to be tracked if the marketing focus is on brand awareness.

A sample marketing performance dashboard looks like this:

A sample dashboard tracking sales leads could be as follows:

How to Create a Marketing Dashboard

Every company has its requirements and objectives, and the dashboard must be designed keeping those specific requirements in mind. 

However, it is essential to include the following elements while creating a marketing dashboard.

1. Define The Audience:
   1. A dashboard is a story, and the company has to decide who listens to the story.
   2. The metrics to be selected will depend on the audience – the users who will refer to the dashboard.
   3. There could be different dashboard formats for different audiences.
2. Define The Objectives Of All Stakeholders:
   1. Each marketing dashboard tells a different story and can have a diverse audience.
   2. Therefore, it is essential to define the objectives of each audience and present the relevant data to them.
   3. Define short and long objectives that tell “the story” at a specific time and over a historical period (month, quarter, etc.).
   4. Building a dashboard based on audience objectives also gives the viewer/receiver. clear action points
3. Define The Marketing KPIs:
   1. You can’t track and measure data if you don’t know what data to track and measure.
   2. Marketing KPIs provide the basis for choosing the data presented in the marketing dashboard.
   3. The KPIs will also provide a way to present the marketing team’s value to the management.
4. Define The Data Sources:
   1. There are many data sources that a company can track on its dashboard.
   2. Each source has a specific structure and output.
   3. The marketing dashboard should be designed to consolidate the relevant data from its primary source and present a unified view to management.
5. Define The Data Integration:
   1. This arises from the above point.
   2. The data from multiple data points can present a confusing picture if not assembled correctly.
   3. All the data should be linked to a single dashboard source that further connects to an “outcomes and ROI” output.
   4. There are several reporting tools available that can be used to integrate data for a useful dashboard structure.
6. Define The Data Visualization:
   1. Visuals convey the message you want them to convey.
   2. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that the visualization presents the selected data in the best format.
   3. All dashboard users should understand the data presented and draw relevant insights.

Main Types of Marketing Dashboards

As mentioned earlier, every company should define its marketing dashboard as per its specific business, objectives, and audience requirements. However, there are particular dashboards that most companies use.

We examine the four main dashboard types here.

1. Marketing Performance Dashboard:
   1. This dashboard presents the different stages of the marketing funnel.
   2. The funnel metrics can be tracked and measured through this dashboard.
   3. Example:

2. Digital Marketing Dashboard:
   1. This type is used for tracking and measuring online marketing efforts.
   2. The primary data tracked is lead generation.
   3. It shows progress towards goals on specific time frequencies.
   4. Example of this dashboard:

3. Content Marketing Dashboard:
   1. This dashboard helps users track and analyze customer trends, purchase patterns, and customer behavior.
   2. The dashboard highlights strong and weak engagement areas and can be used to draw insights on where to devote more effort and resources.
   3. Example of this dashboard:

4. Google Analytics Dashboard:
   1. The holy grail of analytics, Google Analytics helps the users track the outcomes of their online marketing campaigns.
   2. It also helps improve the website user experience.
   3. The Google Analytics dashboard looks like this:

Best Tools To Create A Marketing Dashboard

The vast volumes of data often drive companies to invest in and use widely different tools to create a marketing dashboard to aggregate, analyze and present these data. Unfortunately, this can lead to wrong outputs, incorrect analyses, or wrong decisions.

Several dashboard tools offer best-in-class solutions for creating a marketing dashboard that provides an effective solution for data aggregation, analysis, and presentation. The practical tools available for creating a marketing dashboard include:

1. Tableau
2. Sisense
3. GoodData
4. Lookr
5. Qlik
6. Grow

The Benefits of Creating a Marketing Dashboard

Here are some noteworthy benefits of creating a marketing dashboard.

1. Increased Efficiency:
   1. Creating a marketing dashboard saves time for marketing teams by presenting data from different sources in a single place.
2. Better Data Visibility:
   1. There is no need to check data and performance with individual team members.
   2. A dashboard consolidates and presents all necessary data to track a particular metric.
3. Improved KPI Measurement/Monitoring:
   1. A marketing dashboard keeps the focus on KPIs.
   2. It helps measure performance against the KPIs set for team members or campaigns.
   3. It also identifies problems that prevent achieving the KPIs.
4. Customer Data In Real-Time:
   1. Dashboards are constantly updated with raw data from various sources.
   2. This allows the marketing team to get a real-time picture of web traffic, customer behavior, purchase trends, and website performance.
5. Better Forecasting And Decisions:
   1. Marketing dashboards aggregate and present data from multiple sources in a unified report.
   2. This helps management make more informed forecasts and make better decisions.

Conclusion

Marketing teams should create marketing dashboards to view the most relevant data and metrics. Marketing dashboards save time and effort for marketers by consolidating data from various sources into one easily understood visualization.

Marketing dashboards focus on KPIs and help management make quick and informed decisions on adjusting marketing resources allocation.