Many companies are attempting or are building marketing dashboard in order to communicate marketing’s value. The explosion of dashboard tools and technologies has sometimes made designing an effective dashboard even more challenging. Metrics and KPIs are the building blocks for your dashboard. The dashboard is the visualization of the data these represent. It is a visual collection of the data that provide the means to quickly get an overview of how your organization is performing and the reasons behind its performance. Therefore those metrics and KPIs that are the most effective at communicating your contribution to the business, alerting you to performance issues, and enabling you to make fact-based strategic decisions are the ones you should include on your executive and operational level dashboards. The goal of the dashboard is to provide actionable information based on past data which predicts future performance, allowing for effective decision-making. Before you develop your dashboard decide who is the target user. A dashboard aimed at the C-Suite and one that is intended to be used by the managers of the various marketing functions are going to be very different. They will need to be related and one may actually be a subset of the other. We recommend you start by thinking about the C-Suite at your user and then peeling the onion so to speak as you move further down the organization structure.
To create a dashboard you will need to understand, clarify and define the role of marketing, so that what you report represents what marketing is and/or is expected to do. Once this is completed these four steps will help you get started: (this sentence was written twice on the item you sent me, please check the original and fix)
1. Identify Business Outcomes. Start by identifying the things that your company must achieve in order to be successful. These are the needles your organization must move.
2. Map the Role of Marketing: Identify the linkages between these outcomes and marketing performance.
3. Select the Metrics and KPIs: Determine what metrics best demonstrate how marketing is impacting the outcomes. Use the metrics and KPIs that illustrate how marketing is making a contribution and the return on this contribution for your dashboard.
4. Establish the context. Context defines the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs. Context help you know what data is “good” vs. what is “bad” data and will ensure you dashboard avoids end users from drawing false conclusions. It is important to consider how the design and placement of controls within a dashboard. The layout of the data should be in a logical and fluent order.
The dashboard should also conform to the 3 and 10 second rules; within 3 seconds the user should have an idea as to the overall performance of the subject, and within 10 seconds the user should have a general idea as to why this performance is being achieved. Before starting on a dashboard consider the platform you are going to use because this will impact your functionality. Also consider the format of your data and how the data is going to be stored. (there was a typo here I fixed, please check the original)
By developing the metrics and communicating these in a dashboard, the learning organization will have the data they need to make fact-based decisions. It will also elevate the confidence of the CEO, CFO (this was CDO and should be CFO, please fix on the original) and other members of the leadership team in the marketing organization.
VisionEdge Marketing, Inc, is a leading data-driven metrics-based strategic and product marketing firm located in Austin, Texas. The company specializes in consulting and learning services that help organizations use data to make fact based decisions to address market, customer, and product opportunities and to improve and measure marketing performance. For more information, go to www.visionedgemarketing.com.
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