Definition | Benefits of use | Criteria of a good marketing dashboard | Best marketing dashboard types
If you want to be successful with your marketing, you need to know if what you are doing is effective. That’s where the marketing dashboard comes in. As a way of showing you how well your marketing efforts are performing, the dashboard is all but essential for any business looking to monitor the progress of its marketing. It’s a way of seeing whether the money and resources you’ve invested into marketing are being returned or not.
What is a marketing dashboard?
A marketing dashboard is a useful web tool or app which will provide you with data and insights according to different metrics at a glance. It’s a visual representation of some of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in marketing, which as you might imagine paints a clear picture of how your marketing efforts are performing.
The information presented either comes from a single source or various sources, and will give you an up-to-date impression of how your marketing is going. You’ll also usually have the option to add extra features such as news, and you can sync your email up to some marketing dashboards to make it a go-to hub for work-related information.
Perhaps best of all, you have full control over how your marketing dashboard will look, so you can create one that’s customized for your business.
Why use a marketing dashboard? What are the benefits?
A marketing dashboard may be a new concept to you, but it’s something that can help your business grow from strength to strength. Here are some of the ways you could benefit from having one:
1. You can see what is really happening
It’s relatively straightforward to come up with and execute a marketing strategy. But what use is that if you don’t know if it ends up converting interest into sales?
You need to know if your marketing is effective if you want to reliably boost brand reputation and sales and promote brand awareness. A marketing dashboard is an incredibly useful tool in that regard as it lets you track key data in real-time which will tell you if your marketing efforts have been fruitful.
2. You can have better insights about the effectiveness of different marketing activities
As a business owner, you might want to try out different marketing activities to see what works best. With a dashboard, you can experiment with various marketing strategies, and receive real-time feedback which you can use to make any necessary adjustments or course corrections.
3. It can prove the ROI of different marketing activities
Every business wants to make money, so it doesn’t make sense to throw money at marketing without knowing if you’re getting a good ROI.
The marketing dashboard can reveal just how much or how little money you bring in from your marketing, so you can make changes if you feel like it isn’t yielding the financial results you hoped for.
4. You can make data driven decisions
Making decisions as a business owner is always tough.
One way of making those decisions easier is to back them up with data. If you find that your YouTube channel which you’ve poured a lot of money into over the years isn’t getting as many monthly views as you’d like, then it becomes a simple decision to shut it down or change up the type of content you put out.
5. It can improve the whole organization
If you’re in a tough spot and you feel like your marketing efforts aren’t hitting the target audience like they should, then it can affect the whole organization.
As such, you need to find out what’s going wrong so you can fix the problem and course correct. If you have the data that a dashboard provides, then you can make informed decisions as to the direction of the business. You might find for example that you need a new content strategy going forward, or that you’re spending too much money on social media.
What does a good marketing dashboard look like, what does it contain?
The best kind of marketing dashboard for you will be the one that shows the most useful KPIs for your business.
If you’re trying hard to build an online presence, then your marketing dashboard has to show KPIs such as social media interaction and total website visits. If your approach is more about funneling customers to your online store, then you’ll want to see real-time data about spending habits on your eCommerce store. If it’s building visibility locally that you’re concerned with, then an SEO analytics dashboard which focuses on key SEO KPIs will probably be your best option.
Another consideration for any marketing dashboard is that it should be easy to understand at a glance, and have a friendly user interface. If your employees can’t make heads or tails with the information the marketing dashboard displays, then what purpose does it serve?
You want the information and data to be clear, concise, and relevant to your business objectives.
What are the best marketing dashboard types?
As mentioned above, there are a variety of marketing dashboards, each of which will suit a different business or goal. Here are the best marketing dashboards for you to try out:
1. Digital Marketing Dashboard
The digital marketing dashboard tracks digital marketing efforts, allowing you to track your online campaigns. You can monitor metrics including advertising, email marketing, and even social media, so you can keep tabs on the performance of your digital marketing activities. If, for example, you want to know how many leads you’ve generated through your email marketing campaign, this is the dashboard to use.
2. Social Media Dashboard
As you can imagine, the social media dashboard is for tracking how your business is doing on any social media platforms you’re active on. Given how huge social media is for marketing in this day and age, this is one dashboard that you should definitely try to use for your business. Whether you have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, or another social media platform, you should make the most of this dashboard as it could inform what kind of content you post on each site. If you see for example that people respond more to a certain type of post on one platform, then you can use that insight to optimize your approach going forward.
3. Content Marketing Dashboard
The content marketing dashboard tracks several KPIs for content you put out including metrics such as conversion rate, virality, and sales. You can also monitor in real-time how much referral traffic and inbound links you receive, so you know if your content is reaching a wider audience.
4. eCommerce Marketing Dashboard
The eCommerce marketing dashboard is all about tracking sales and other KPIs related to your online store. For example, if you want to see what your subscriber retention rate is like or how many trials turn into paid subscriptions you can do so with this dashboard. You can also monitor other useful metrics such as web traffic and sales.
5. Email Marketing Dashboard
Even though social media may be the most popular online marketing strategy these days, email campaigns still carry a lot of weight. The email marketing dashboard can help you nail your email campaign by giving you useful data on ROI and how your emails are performing in terms of recipient engagement.
6. Web Analytics Dashboard
The web analytics dashboard can be your hub for everything related to your company website. If you want to know statistics such as weekly, monthly, or annual visits then it can show you at a glance. It can also tell you how many visitors are unique and how many are returning, as well as other metrics such as conversion rates.
7. SEO Analytics Dashboard
The SEO analytics dashboard is for tracking how your company is doing in local SEO rankings. SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization, will tell you how visible your company is and whether or not you show up on the first few pages of Google when someone searches for a business in your industry. The SEO analytics dashboard can also be useful for understanding how your website is performing, as well as the various pages on it. If you see that one page isn’t doing so well, then you can take measures such as hiring an SEO expert in order to boost its visibility and/or conversion rate.
8. Lead Generation Dashboard
Leads are essentially individuals who have been identified as potential customers, so a lead generation dashboard is useful for tracking how well your lead generation efforts are performing. You can track metrics such as the ROI from various leads, your click-through rate, and overall conversion rate.
9. Social Listening Dashboard
Social listening is all about monitoring trends and conversation topics that relate to your company or brand. The social listening dashboard as such will keep you abreast of what customers are saying about your business, which can help inform your future marketing efforts.
10. Amazon Marketing Dashboard
The Amazon marketing dashboard is for you if you sell your products on the huge online retailer. If you do sell through Amazon, this dashboard can give you key data on sales figures and conversion rates which can help you refine your sales approach and marketing strategy.
11. YouTube Ads Dashboard
The YouTube Ads dashboard is all about keeping tabs on how your YouTube Ads are performing. If you are relying on a platform such as YouTube to garner interest in your products or services or to help you guarantee sales, then you’ll want to know if your approach is effective or not. If you see that the click-through rate is low, then you can react to that by changing up the content. Alternatively, if you see that viewers often tune out after a certain amount of time, then maybe shortening the ad could be effective.
12. Google Ads Dashboard
Google Ads or AdWords is a useful marketing tool for any business willing to invest some money in order to secure more customers. With this marketing dashboard, you’ll be able to track your Google AD campaigns’ ROI, along with a variety of other KPIs that can help you make decisions going forward. Are you spending too much money on advertising through AdWords, for example, or not enough? Are you getting enough clicks on your ad or does the data suggest that barely anyone is clicking it?
13. CMO Marketing Dashboard
The CMO marketing dashboard is like a universal marketing hub where you can see data that pertains to all of your marketing efforts. If you want a snapshot of how you’re doing with your marketing strategy at a glance, then this is the marketing dashboard you need to start using. It can tell you how much each lead costs you, how many leads you have, and other KPIs relevant to social media and email marketing campaigns.
14. Agency Command Center Dashboard
The agency command center dashboard, apart from sounding like a big deal, will tell you everything you need to know about your agency. If you run, or work with, a marketing agency then it’s a great tool for tracking important metrics and KPIs that can streamline the process and help you to generate more leads.
15. Enterprise Marketing Dashboard
The enterprise marketing dashboard is for enterprises, showing managers and executives exactly how the business is performing at any given moment. It can display everything from website traffic to social media engagement, so it’s essentially a hub for important data that can help improve the enterprise.
