CHAPTER 11
Digital Dashboards
“The marketing dashboard’s purpose is to capture the most critical diagnostic and predictive metrics and visually, at-a-glance, represent performance patterns.”
—Marketing Profs, March 9, 2010
A dashboard enables marketers to consolidate an abundance of marketing data—pulled from a variety of different information systems—and make it conveniently accessible through visual displays on their computers and/or mobile devices. For example, a dashboard enables you to look at sales by product line and campaign performance compared against goals and across products, markets, and segments, while also allowing you to monitor customer interactions and responses. Importantly, a dashboard can also answer critical questions, such as, “What did I get for the money I spent on my last campaign?” “Which of my key performance metrics are improving?” and “What was the return on my $50,000 or $100,000,000 spends?” Some dashboards will even tell you, “What will I get for my next $50,000 spend?” In fact, it is these predictive capabilities that are really what separates a run-of-the-mill dashboard from an exceptional one.
In this chapter, we will:
1. Explain what a marketing dashboard is and the benefits it provides.
2. Show you how to build an excellent dashboard and what components to include.
3. Show you how to harness the power of a dashboard within your organization.
We all know that marketing in this digital world requires a greater degree of accountability than ...
