Think about the experience of attending a professional sporting event where the scoreboard isn’t working or doesn’t exist. Unless you’re very attentive to everything happening on the field, it’s hard to know who’s winning. Or, as the opening paragraph of Chapter 1 describes, imagine driving a vehicle without the benefit of any information the dashboard provides. It’s possible to do so, but it leaves most drivers uneasy and full of questions. How much fuel is left? Am I going too fast or too slow? The dashboard not only provides vital performance information, it also provides reassurance or causes alarm—both important emotional states to keeping the vehicle running well in the long term.

A scoreboard and a dashboard, while different, have similar purposes: to provide a practical progress indicator and accountability mechanism for the marketing strategy as measured by the marketing analytics process. Analytics purists will recognize a difference between a scoreboard (or scorecard as they are often called) and a dashboard. Scorecards are frequently associated with the Harvard Business School business strategy of the balanced scorecard approach.¹ They are created via a top-down method that results in identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that track an organization’s success executing the business strategy. The process is effective when the KPIs of a scoreboard trickle down into the lower levels of the organization, where they are interpreted by departments and individuals in ways that influence their work. While the scoreboard or scorecard is an interface to performance information deemed strategic or critical, it isn’t necessarily a visual one.

Dashboards, on the other hand, provide a visual interface for performance data for any area or business application, not just marketing. They are ­frequently linked to real-time information sources and display performance data in ­summary fashion in the form or graphs or “gauges” that emulate an automobile dashboard. The intent is to share the dashboard, for it to have ­visibility within the marketing department and outside to other departments and ­executives, to facilitate accountability and decision making. Although there are differences between scoreboards and dashboards, the distinctions matter little when it comes to marketing analytics. What does matter is having a easily accessible, visual interface for marketing’s key performance data. For simplicity, this ­chapter will use the term dashboard to refer to this interface.

In the marketing realm, a marketing dashboard is a performance management tool and interface that provides an accessible, visual summary of ­marketing’s KPIs. Stephen Few, founder and principal of Perceptual Edge, offers this ­definition: “A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.”² These dashboards exist in a number of formats, from something as simple as a series of charts printed on paper and posted to a bulletin board to a digital display updated in real time.

Marketing dashboards are important because they render the large ­volume of data a marketing analytics process can produce into a meaningful, ­understandable and actionable summary. As this chapter will discuss, marketing dashboards (intentionally plural, as there are often more than one) evolve in terms of what they report, but at the same time they provide a consistent reference to users in and outside of the marketing organization. Figure 7-1 displays a screenshot of a sample marketing dashboard provided by the Lenskold Group.³

Within the marketing organization, a dashboard’s primary use is as a performance management tool. The very act of creating and managing a marketing dashboard requires a deep understanding of the source data. Creating dashboards that let marketers see the trends and directions of the big picture view provides otherwise difficult-to-access insights about marketing processes. The marketing team, therefore, uses dashboards to manage and improve its core processes. Sometimes, a review of the latest dashboard provides reassurance that all is well. Other times, the dashboard reveals a trend that, if addressed early, requires minor corrective actions now or major ones later if left unaddressed. Properly constructed and maintained dashboards help marketers spot problems in a timely way and then do something about them.

Outside of the marketing organization, a dashboard’s primary use is as a communications tool for informing stakeholders. A marketing dashboard is ideally a visually rich, easy-to-understand summary of marketing KPIs. It provides those outside of marketing with a window to see what marketing is doing and what kind of results it is achieving, which in turn provides accountability. In this capacity, marketing dashboards reassure the organization that marketing is performing and to what degree. For most in the organization outside of marketing, these dashboards are their primary interface to marketing.

The development and deployment of marketing dashboards should occur later in the marketing analytics process, after the planning, decisions, and implementation described in Chapters 5 and 6 occur. Only after the determination of metrics to support the marketing analytics process is complete can you begin planning what kind of dashboard will best inform stakeholders and constituents about the marketing’s performance.

Why You Need a Dashboard

A dashboard, or more probably a series of dashboards, are critical enablers of the marketing analytics process. In the same way an elevator pitch summarizes the key value proposition of a company or product to prospective customers, a dashboard distills the most important results of the marketing analytics process into an easily digested visual summary. If the output of the marketing analytics process tells a War and Peace–length story, a dashboard provides the Cliff’s Notes version. The marketing analytics dashboard is the executive summary of marketing’s performance report. It is the one thing you can count on that people will view.

Those who are implementing a marketing analytics process for the first time will discover just how much data the process is capable of producing. Those who are managing a mature marketing analytics process are already swimming, perhaps drowning, in an ocean of marketing metrics data. The only way to consistently make sense of it all is through an effective visual summary of that data, otherwise known as a dashboard. Not pairing a marketing analytics process with one or more dashboards is to rob the process of a powerful communications tool.

In the beginning, when the scope of the marketing analytics process is small, it is possible to use raw data to manage key marketing processes and, to a lesser extent, to inform. But dealing with raw data is tedious, and if the marketing analytics process expands to ultimately encompass all aspects of marketing (as it should), dealing with raw data isn’t a scalable process. It doesn’t take a lot of data for the management of it to become cumbersome and unwieldy without some tools. The use of one or more dashboards is a necessity to help organize and package this data so it can fulfill its intended purpose: create awareness about performance and enable decisions that improve marketing’s effectiveness.

The data from the marketing analytics process mushrooms. It doesn’t take long for a large collection of data to accumulate for just a single metric. As new metrics are added to the marketing analytics portfolio, each with its own data set, the total volume of data can easily grow exponentially. This is a normal occurrence as the analytics process evolves: it doesn’t take long for the volume of data that requires analysis, review, and attention to soar. To meet expectations, the analytics process needs data analysis and reporting tools, and the dashboard is the pinnacle of that reporting.

The process of data analysis, by its very nature, encourages the analyst to delve more deeply into the data. The onion metaphor applies here, with multiple data layers into which the analyst can go deeper and deeper searching for greater meaning. This “zooming in” approach to analyzing marketing analytics data is important and necessary, yielding many insights for those with the discipline to do it. Despite the necessity of taking such a close-up view of the data, the downside is a loss of the big picture. The marketing analytics process must use a microscope to look at the data very closely, but also a telescope to view the data from a distance and see it in its entirety. A dashboard is one of the best ways to provide this latter “big-picture” view. If the analysis of marketing metrics provides a close-up view of the trees, then the dashboard presents a view of the forest.

One reason seeing the big picture is so important is to spot trends that only reveal themselves when analytics data is viewed in aggregate, over time. When a marketer, while analyzing the data, makes a discovery of something that might require action, a good question to ask about the discovery is this: is it an incident or a trend? It’s important to distinguish between incidents and trends in data, as the former may require no action at all, whereas the latter might require significant process changes. The big picture view that a dashboard provides can help the marketing team quickly distinguish between incidents and trends.

Another reason the dashboard is so important is that it presents all the key metrics side by side for easy comparison. Viewing the results of just a single metric could lead to erroneous conclusions. If those results are very favorable or very troubling, attempting to interpret those results outside of the context of other, related metrics can lead to flawed interpretations and bad decisions. The dashboard essentially represents marketing’s vital signs, and a significant part of the value of it is the ability to obtain a complete view of all those vital signs. A particular metric that seems troubling when viewed in isolation is perhaps less alarming when viewed alongside related metrics. Conversely, a metric that seems fine in isolation may create necessary alarm when seen as part of the big picture. This holistic view of marketing analytics data is another reason the marketing analytics process needs one or more dashboards.

The view the rest of the organization often has of sales and marketing is ­summarized by this question: “what have you done for us lately?” This question represents a level of skepticism about performance and contribution that is frequently directed marketing’s way. Marketing’s use of dashboards helps keep this question from being merely rhetorical, and instead provides an accountability interface that clears away the fog around how marketing is helping the organization succeed. This benefit is perhaps the most important reason for marketing to adopt the use of dashboards with its analytics process, even if they are not needed for any other reason.

There are plenty of reasons to use a dashboard as part of the marketing ­analytics process—to see the big picture, spot trends, compare metrics side by side, and show accountability. Any one of these reasons is more than ­sufficient to justify developing dashboards to support the marketing analytics process. Together, these reasons compel the use of marketing dashboards.

Keys to Success with Dashboards

The marketing dashboard is a simple concept to grasp, and the term itself is very descriptive, leading most people to a solid understanding of what a marketing dashboard is. The challenges with marketing dashboards lie elsewhere, particularly in their implementation, use, and acceptance. Since dashboards effectively serve as the organization’s interface to marketing’s performance, it’s important to implement them properly. The stakes are high: if the dashboard(s) that marketing publishes become the primary influencer of the opinion of marketing, the marketing team cannot afford to get this wrong. A cavalier approach to the marketing dashboard may cost the marketing team in the areas of reputation, confidence, and political capital—even if they are executing the marketing analytics process well. This section describes the key considerations for implementing marketing dashboards well.

There are many aspects of marketing dashboards the marketer must ­consider, all of them important, but one of the most important considerations is ­alignment. As Chapter 5 discusses, the marketing analytics process and the metrics that support it are a reflection of higher level business goals. In fact, the goals for and metrics of the marketing analytics process are derived from business goals and objectives. A thread of continuity should run from the highest level of business goals to the most detailed marketing metric. In other words, complete alignment should exist, and that alignment must extend to the dashboards that marketing publishes.

This notion of aligning the dashboard to the objectives and the metrics ­associated with them seems intuitive. In actual practice, however, the ­metrics can easily be untethered from the objectives, and so can the dashboard. When this happens, it usually isn’t caused by a deliberate intent to deceive. Rather, it’s a reflection of inexperience or expediency. In the same way that Chapter 5 recommends making sure the analytics process and its underlying metrics align to the business strategy and goals, marketing must ensure that the ­dashboards report data that is also aligned with something that matters, and not just data that looks good on the dashboard.

What goes a long way toward ensuring that marketing’s dashboards are well aligned is the ideal selection of metrics. Chapter 5 discusses the need to select metrics for the marketing analytics process that are based on business objectives. If the recommendations from Chapter 5 are followed, then the input data for marketing’s dashboards should already align. Assuming compliance with those recommendations, the challenge becomes one of determining which metrics to include on the dashboard. What is the right level of detail?

The marketing dashboard isn’t meant to serve as a comprehensive catalog of every metric tracked by the analytics process. Instead, it summarizes key results for various audiences who have different informational requirements. In the early going of the marketing analytics process, the compendium of metrics is usually small, and it is therefore possible to summarize each one on a single dashboard. However, as Chapter 6 shares, the marketing analytics process expands in scope as it matures, including more metrics and collecting more data. It doesn’t take long for the list of things that a dashboard could report to exceed the things it should report.

The best way forward when it comes to the ideal selection of metrics for the marketing dashboard is to understand the audience for the dashboard. What do they need to know? Which metrics are critical to enable the audience to have an accurate understanding at the right level of marketing’s performance? When this approach is taken, it often leads to creating different versions of a marketing dashboard for specific audiences. For example, the “Executive Marketing Dashboard” is in regular use by many organizations, and it provides information and detail at a level desired by members of the C-suite. Marketing should not just publish dashboards but attempt to understand the audiences for its dashboards and provide them with the information that is most helpful to them.

When marketing creates, publishes, and curates dashboards as part of the analytics process, it often has to deal with the issue of accurate data. The success of the entire analytics process hinges on the availability of accurate data. What many marketers learn is that accurate data isn’t always easy to obtain, particularly in the early stages of the process. The collection of marketing analytics data often requires tuning, tweaking, and testing methods across several measurement cycles to get it right and gain confidence in the data.

Marketing dashboards are visual presentations of this data: consider them the “eye candy” of the marketing analytics process. As such, they are often impressive and dazzling in appearance, and it’s easy to create a stunning display of data on a dashboard that impresses but is also entirely inaccurate. However, the very fact that data is presented in a dashboard seems to give that data authority and credibility, even when it doesn’t deserve it.

Marketing needs to guard against letting inaccurate data creep into one of its dashboards. Until an analytics data source is accurate and reliable, it should never appear on a dashboard, because its very presence there implies ­accuracy and trustworthiness. This is a reputational and integrity issue for marketing, and it must always err on the side of presenting no data before its time, despite how good that data may look as a component of a dashboard.

As marketers sort through the metrics and select data for the dashboards they create, it is ideal to provide a real-time view of that data. It’s easy to think of dashboards as summaries of historical data and trends. It is useful to view a year’s worth of data for a key metric at a glance. However, having a real-time view of what is happening right now in the moment is also vital. The automotive dashboard, the metaphor for the marketing dashboard, does just that: provides real-time data for speed, fuel level, and other performance metrics. Marketing dashboards provide a lot of value when they are able to provide this up-to-the second information for certain metrics.

The reality is that marketing dashboards need to supply both historical and real-time information, because dealing in one of these types of information is of limited value. Ultimately, if they don’t provide a broad enough view of information, their perception as an information source suffers, dragging the perception of marketing down as well. However, there are challenges to displaying real-time data in a dashboard, and these challenges range from the availability of the information to capturing that data in a dashboard. The need or desire to provide real-time data in a dashboard is often foiled by these technical challenges surrounding the data.

One of the considerations that can facilitate reporting real-time data on a marketing dashboard is direct integration with data sources. Since there really is no “system of record” for marketing, the data that feeds the marketing analytics process can come from a number of different and even unrelated systems. To the extent that it is possible, marketing should link these data sources directly to the marketing dashboards through the use of any available integration paths, such as application programming interfaces (APIs). Figure 7-2 shares research data that shows various data sources and the frequency with which they are part of a marketing analytics process.⁵

When these integration paths exist, marketers should definitely use them to eliminate the tedious manual loading or copying of data into dashboards. Cutting and pasting or manually importing data will get the job done, but the process can quickly become unwieldy, and when it does, it becomes a barrier to producing quality dashboards. Even though some technical know-how is required to exploit these integrations, they are worth putting in place from the start so that an entire dashboard initiative doesn’t collapse under the weight of a manual data populating process.

Fortunately, the technical heavy lifting associated with integrating all the data sources necessary for curating a marketing analytics dashboard is ­becoming easier. The Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic⁶ referenced in Chapter 2 identifies at least 35 vendor solutions for creating dashboards and other data visualizations. One thing most of these solutions have in ­common is a set of data connectors and APIs that make integrating data from varied sources into a dashboard much easier, and in many cases, automatic. Though it’s certainly possible to create a dashboard using a spreadsheet or even printed charts and graphs, getting data into them is a manual process, and this often becomes the failure point of publishing dashboards.

This author recently visited a client who published a paper-based dashboard by printing charts and graphs and posting them to a conference room wall. The array and variety of information on display was impressive, as was its organization on two walls of the conference room. On close inspection, most of the graphs were several months out of date, illustrating the problem that results when dashboards don’t integrate to and automatically populate with the data on which they are based. The use of a dashboard solution that ­eliminates this problem is highly recommended and in fact is a key enabler of success for a dashboard.

The most important considerations for implementing marketing ­dashboards are sharing and collaboration. No matter how elaborate or how well constructed a dashboard is, it is just a piece of art if it doesn’t motivate the people who see it to take action. For the decision making to occur, sharing must first happen. What happens too often is that marketing thoughtfully ­creates and publishes one or more dashboards, but they never “escape” the marketing department and get seen by those who need to do something on the basis of the data they contain. The process of publishing a dashboard needs to include consideration of how to share the dashboard with those that need to see it. Each of the considerations discussed so far contribute to sharing of and collaboration around marketing dashboards.

It is the effective sharing of dashboards that enables collaboration, and this collaboration is what creates the value from the dashboarding effort. A dashboard is a communication and collaboration tool, and if the collaboration doesn’t occur, producing dashboards essentially amounts to busy work. Collaboration should occur across several levels. Intradepartmental collaboration among members of the marketing team is the first level, and is the ­easiest to facilitate because often these team members share physical ­proximity. Still, a CMO should never assume that collaboration is occurring as a natural by-product of the existence of a dashboard. CMOs need to model the collaboration and create the expectation of how it should take place and what should result from it. As Figure 7-3 illustrates, collaboration around marketing analytics data and the dashboards that display it isn’t always a certainty.⁷

What does this collaboration look like? The results on a dashboard are a catalyst for action, so when studying the data a dashboard displays, reviewers should concern themselves with the implications of what they’re seeing. The questions that dashboard results should prompt are simple, but the actions taken profound:

• What do the results the dashboard displays say about meeting the underlying objectives?
• What needs to happen or change because of the results the dashboard displays?

Use the first question to determine if the metrics summarized on the dashboard indicate progress toward or regression from goals. This initial determination essentially amounts to marketing getting its bearings and knowing where it is with respect to achieving goals. Before any actions are taken or course correction attempts are made, marketing simply needs to know where it is. If the dashboard indicates progress, often nothing needs to occur, as the dashboard indicates current marketing processes are delivering hoped-for results. Still, it’s as valuable to understand why marketing is achieving favorable results as it is to determine why it isn’t. Collaboration around this first question is usually quite simple: a review of the dashboard results by all interested parties to determine if there is agreement around what they mean.

Dashboard results that indicate progress is not being made toward objectives should trigger problem determination efforts. This is the point at which collaboration is most valuable, first to understand the root cause of the results and then determine what to do to change them. Marketers need to understand that the existence of the dashboard doesn’t ensure that this collaboration will occur. Marketing must lead the collaborative process, and the dashboard becomes a tool that facilitates that collaboration.

The tools marketing chooses for its analytics process and dashboard reporting do affect how well collaboration occurs. Certain analytics tool choices facilitate collaboration better than others, and research⁸ reveals that some tool choices actually predict better collaboration:

1. Data visualization tools
2. Statistical analysis software
3. Business intelligence tools
4. Presentation software or tools

Although the tool choices listed above help drive collaboration, this same research identified one tool choice whose use actually lowered collaboration: spreadsheets. This is a concern because spreadsheets are also one of the most frequently used marketing analytics tools. They have the advantage of ubiquity, and most marketers need no training on using spreadsheets. It’s relatively easy to build a spreadsheet using analytics data, crunch the numbers, and produce some dashboard graphs with a few clicks. The problems occur when it comes to sharing spreadsheet data and tracking various versions of them and then managing distribution. Spreadsheets weren’t designed as a collaboration tool. Marketers will likely always use spreadsheets as part of the marketing analytics process, but they should understand their limitations and seek to use tools that better promote collaboration and decision making around their analytics data.

Achieving Dashboard Nirvana

An earlier section of this chapter alluded to the fact that not just one but a series of dashboards are ideal companions for the marketing analytics process. As the marketing analytics process matures, it is highly probable that it will use a series of dashboards to present data across some very specific areas of focus. How many dashboards should be used? The answer is not the same for every marketing organization, but there is a simple model that works well: an executive-level dashboard that summarizes the most important metrics, and then supporting dashboards that provide detail in strategic areas. The goal is to make the information accessible and communicate it effectively, not to make dashboards dense with data. Build and organize marketing dashboards with this goal in mind.

Creating the right collection of dashboards is an evolutionary process. Marketers shouldn’t endeavor to put every dashboard it may ultimately need in place right out of the starting gate. Begin with the executive-level dashboard that provides just the broadest view of metrics tracked as part of the analytics process. Marketing should customize this executive-level dashboard to match the informational needs of the audience for it, and as the name implies, it is usually the C-suite. Here is a sample configuration of data elements for the executive-level marketing dashboard:

• Marketing program metrics: overall performance ­indicators such as revenue generated and current budget status.
• Customer program metrics: customer acquisition costs, customer retention rate, customer lifetime value, Net Promoter Score, and so on.
• Lead generation metrics: new leads by channel, cost per lead, conversion rates, opportunities created, and so on.
• Website metrics: traffic sources, top pages, unique visitors, bounce rate, time on site, and so on.

Perfecting the executive-level marketing dashboard is an iterative process. It will require some tinkering to structure the right mix of metrics to clearly and concisely communicate the state of marketing’s performance. Once a satisfactory configuration is achieved, expect future changes to accommodate a changing marketing landscape and strategy. It is best to understand that the executive-level marketing dashboard is fluid with respect to the results it needs to communicate.

With an executive-level marketing dashboard in place, a series of supporting dashboards are probably in order. The marketing team should create additional dashboards that reflect their priorities and the need to convey information about them. There is no prescribed number of dashboards to have, and more dashboards are not necessarily better than fewer dashboards. As previously stated, dashboards are management and communications tools, so have enough to do these jobs well. There are, however, specific dashboards that are commonly found in marketing organizations. Here is a partial list of themes for other, more specific marketing dashboards:

• Demand generation metrics: a dashboard for reporting on the performance of campaigns and metrics associated with the flow of leads from capture to qualification and conversion.
• Content marketing metrics: a dashboard for tracking the content creation, publication, and consumption process. The content marketing dashboard should include metrics for volume as well as engagement, such as sharing.
• Social media metrics: a dashboard for tracking the activity, engagement, and reach of social media marketing efforts across all social media networks in use.
• Public relations metrics: a dashboard for tracking media mentions by frequency, source, topic, type, tone, impressions, and impact (response).
• Events marketing metrics: a dashboard for tracking events by type, cost, participation, leads, and revenue generated.
• Digital marketing metrics: a dashboard for tracking the results of digital marketing efforts such as impressions, landing page views, conversion rates, leads captured, and revenue generated.
• Web marketing metrics: a dashboard for tracking website effectiveness through traffic sources, page views, unique visits, referrals, keywords, search rank, and other key metrics.

Just from scanning this partial list of marketing dashboards, it’s easy to see some redundancies in the data they track. It’s okay, and in fact necessary, for these dashboards to report data that also exists on other dashboards. Each dashboard should present a complete summary of the marketing initiative it was designed to track, and this will result in the same data appearing on multiple dashboards. The need to do this illustrates the challenge of manually populating dashboards with data: you have to keep track of all the places data needs to appear and make sure the data is consistent. The more dashboards marketing publishes, the more likely it will encounter this version control challenge of manually populating dashboards with data.

The marketing dashboard is an important component of the marketing ­analytics process. It is the way to give the process a voice and facilitate sharing and collaboration around the marketing results, which will help marketing get better at what it does. Once marketing has determined which metrics it needs to track and has begun to collect reliable data for the analytics process, it is time to start publishing that data in the form of a dashboard.

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¹“Scorecards and Dashboards,” Klipfolio, http://www.klipfolio.com/resources/articles/what-are-dashboards-scorecards.

²Stephen Few, “Common Pitfalls in Dashboard Design,” February 2006, p. 2, http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/Whitepapers/Common_Pitfalls.pdf.

³See http://www.lenskold.com/solutions/dashboards.html.

⁴“Seattle’s Leroy Hood receives National Medal of Science at White House,” Valerie Bauman, Puget Sound Business Journal, February 1, 2013; http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2013/02/seattles-lee-hood-receives-national.html?page=all.

⁵“Sales & Marketing Analytics: Gauging and Optimizing Performance, Demand Metric, December 2013, p. 13; http://www.demandmetric.com/content/sales-marketing-analytics-benchmark-report.

⁶Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, Scott Brinker, January 12, 2015; http://chiefmartec.com/2015/01/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2015/.

⁷“Sales & Marketing Analytics,” p. 25.

⁸“Sales & Marketing Analytics,” p. 27.