Marketing Dashboard Best Practices

Introduction – What is a marketing dashboard?

A marketing dashboard is a visual presentation of the most important data and information that a company requires to track the key marketing metrics and progress towards its marketing objectives.

The data are presented in a consolidated report that helps the marketing team perform a more detailed marketing analytics exercise.

A typical marketing dashboard looks like this:

Why does a company need 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 an increase in the amount of data that can be analyzed. However, not all information is good, and not all reports are required.

A marketing dashboard helps present the most important and relevant information and track the data points that are important for the company.

Why dashboards are important

Marketing dashboards are a very important source of rich and actionable data for companies. These data allow marketers to get answers to the following questions:

1. Which online channels used by the company are generating leads of the highest quality?
2. What are the revenue and ROI attributed to these channels?
3. Did paid search investment yield ROI on the revenue attributed?
4. How is the marketing performance of the company compared to that of its competitors?

However, nearly 70% of all marketing dashboards fail to perform the correct analytics for which they are designed. There are several reasons for this:

1. Use of old data
   1. Dashboards get outdated by the time they reach the key users
   2. This hampers the analytics process and cannot generate actionable insights
2. Lack of trust in the data
   1. If the source of the data is not clear there will be lowered trust in the analysis of these data
3. Lack of design flexibility
   1. Many dashboards are pre-built and cannot be customized to specific company requirements.
4. Risk of obsolescence
   1. Analytics do not always keep pace with the speed of marketing initiatives and strategies.
   2. The dashboards can become obsolete and are of no use to the company.

Thus, it is clear that marketing dashboards best practices should be followed to avoid the above issues. The use of marketing dashboard best practices in the design and implementation of marketing dashboards are the best way to ensure that companies do not lose out in the competition for customers and business.

Marketing Dashboard Best Practices

The best marketing dashboard practices emphasize the specific requirements of the company – its marketing objectives, strategies and customer data. Most marketing dashboards combine statistical and reporting methods from multiple sources to present the data and findings in a visual manner which makes sense to its users.

Companies must therefore use marketing dashboard best practices to design and implement marketing dashboards to ensure that they are on top of current trends in their industry.

Some of the major marketing dashboard best practices include the following:

1. Use maximum automation
   1. Analytics and data management are at the core of any marketing dashboard
   2. But a lot of time and effort is spent on putting the data together and running the analytics
   3. There are many recurring and time-consuming queries which can be answered by automation
2. Define the key marketing KPIs
   1. KPIs should match business objectives
   2. A marketing dashboard should show how the marketing efforts and investment contribute to the larger business context by integrating marketing and sales data
3. Flexibility for better customization
   1. Users should be able to use the dashboard to review and analyze data relevant to them
   2. Dashboards should be easy to customize for such specific requirements
4. Mobile optimization
   1. Many people now work remotely and need access to real-time data and insights anytime and anywhere
   2. The dashboard should be optimized as an app or a responsive website interface for mobile viewing
5. Ensure the dashboard is scalable
   1. The best marketing dashboards should reflect and present evolving dynamics of the company’s marketing initiatives
   2. The dashboard should also be flexible enough to accommodate multiple data sources
6. Use authentic, real-time data
   1. A company can track multiple data sources on its dashboard
   2. Each source has specific structures and output
   3. The marketing dashboard should use reliable and real-time data to help the management take strategic decisions to drive the company forward
7. Integrate all data seamlessly
   1. Multiple data sources give a lot of information that can present a confusing picture if not assembled properly
   2. Data should be linked to a single dashboard source that is connected to an “outcomes and ROI” output
   3. There are several reporting tools available that can be used to integrate data for a useful dashboard structure
8. Simple data visualization
   1. Ensure that the visualization is designed to present the selected data in the best possible format
   2. All users of the dashboard should be able to understand the data presented and draw relevant insights
9. Define the objectives of all stakeholders
   1. Each marketing dashboard tells a different story and can have a different audience
   2. It is therefore important 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 point of time and over a historical period (month, quarter, etc.)
   4. Building a dashboard based on audience objectives also gives clear action points to the viewer/receiver
10. Define the audience
    1. A dashboard is a story, and the company has to decide who “listens to the story”!
    2. The metrics selected will depend on the audience – the users who will refer to the dashboard
    3. There could be different dashboard formats for different audiences

All the above points should come together in a clear, easy-to-understand and properly visualized dashboard such as the following example:

Why you should apply these best practices for your Marketing Dashboard?

1. Improved KPI measurement / monitoring
2. Increased efficiency in making decisions
3. Better data visibility at any time
4. Real-time customer data
5. Better forecasting and decisions

Conclusion

All companies using digital marketing and social media marketing – in fact any marketing – must design and implement a marketing dashboard using global marketing dashboard best practices.

Marketing dashboard best practices help marketing teams collect, analyze, and present the most relevant data and metrics. Marketing dashboards are also important because they save time and effort for marketers by consolidating data from various sources into one easily understood visualization.

Marketing dashboard best practices also help the company get an overview in real-time of campaign performance. Well-designed marketing dashboards are dynamic resources that provide responses to strategic, high-level queries about what is working and what isn’t working.