IMPLEMENTING

EFFECTIVE MARKETING
DASHBOARDS

BEST PRACTICES GUIDE

 IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE Best Practices Guide
MARKETING DASHBOARDS

Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3

Introduction 4

What are Marketing Dashboards? 5

Benefits of Marketing Dashboards 6

Implementation Best Practices 7

Analyst Bottom Line 13

About Demand Metric 14

Action Plan 16
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 3

Executive Summary
Measuring marketing performance has become a top priority for almost
every organization, yet most do not have a comprehensive system in place.

Marketing Dashboards provide a high-level snapshot of the most critical

metrics that relate to business performance.

Benefits of implementing a Marketing Dashboard include:

Ability to Measure Marketing Effectiveness/ROI

Improved Visibility for Senior Management
Better Allocation of Resources

This report will define Marketing Dashboards, highlight their benefits,

and provide high-level Best Practices for establishing an integrated
performance measurement system.
INTRODUCTION IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 4

Introduction
Over the past 10 years there has been a distinctive shift in Marketing A simple approach to measuring performance is implementing a
activities; budgets are only being allocated to investments that can Marketing Dashboard. This report will define Marketing Dashboards,
produce measurable returns, such as sales support and lead generation. highlight their benefits, and provide high-level Best Practices for imple-
menting an integrated performance measurement system.
In a time of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, repeatable controls, processes,
and policy & procedures have been implemented to ensure accountability. Before implementing any MPM solution, be sure to read our summary,
Get Ready to Measure Marketing Performance and complete the
This cultural shift is spreading into Marketing as senior executives
Dashboard Readiness Assessment.
have witnessed increased efficiency & effectiveness by standardizing,
measuring, and benchmarking key metrics in functions like Finance, IT, If you are already measuring your marketing performance, use our
Sales, and Operations. Marketing Measurement Maturity Assessment to benchmark your
strengths & weaknesses and identify areas for improvement.
Structured processes and analytics are new for most Marketing depart-
ments, so it is no wonder that in a recent CMO Council Survey, Marketing
Performance Measurement was highlighted as a significant priority by
over 90% of the companies.

Strikingly, less than 14% of these companies reported having any type
of comprehensive system to measure Marketing. Those who did have
systems in place significantly outperformed their competitors in revenue
growth, market share, and profitability.

Clearly, it is essential that Marketing professionals learn the Marketing

Performance Measurement (MPM) discipline if they are to survive. No
longer is it acceptable to provide gut-feel estimates of the impact of
marketing programs. Results must be measured.
WHAT ARE MARKETING DASHBOARDS? IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 5

What are Marketing Dashboards?

Marketing Dashboards are comprised of the most vital diagnostic and
predictive marketing metrics, structured so that executives can quickly
identify trends in performance.

Typically, Marketing Dashboards have three to five key metrics in each

of the following categories:
Customer
Product
Brand
Channels
Efficiency
Organizational Development
Environment (macro-economic)

Once the key metrics have been established to highlight performance

for that aspect of marketing, data can be sorted by geography, busi-
ness unit, markets, or any other relevant perspective.
BENEFITS OF MARKETING DASHBOARDS IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 6

Benefits of Marketing Dashboards

There are numerous reasons why you should consider improving your
performance measurement system for Marketing.

Some of the key benefits are:

Development of a Performance-Driven Culture

Increased Visibility for Senior Executives & Board
Ability to Demonstrate Effectiveness & ROI
Justification of Marketing Budget & Spending
Improved Sales & Demand Generation
Better Allocation of Department Resources
Financial Risk Mitigation of Future Investments

Use Key Marketing Metrics Dashboard to define, track, and VIEW RESOURCE
report on your key marketing metrics.
IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES
Implementation Best Practices
Following are the 7 key stages of implementing a Marketing Dashboard:
1 Discuss Project with Steering Committee
1 Discuss Project with Steering Committee
2 Assemble a Project Team & Complete Project Plan
3 Review Data Sources & Identify Gaps
4 Select Critical Performance Metrics
5 Build a Framework for Measuring Results
6 Develop a Brand Scorecard
7 Select a Marketing Dashboard Solution
Next, we will examine these stages and provide practical advice to help
you with each step of the implementation.
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 7
Marketing Dashboards are not for every organization. If your
senior leadership does not buy in to the concept, your project
will never get off the ground. Achieving cross-functional align-
ment for marketing in your organization is a key success factor
for a successful implementation of a performance measurement
system. Use our Dashboard Readiness Assessment to determine
how prepared your organization is for a Marketing Performance
Measurement or Dashboarding initiative.
Influence the key stakeholders in your organization by communi-
cating the benefits of your business case from their perspective.
If it is a VP Sales, speak in terms of increased Sales Support, Lead
Generation, and better Customer Relationship Management. For
a CFO, focus on the ability to track financial returns from Marketing
investments, and better allocation of resources & budgets. Use
Demand Metric’s Stakeholder Analysis Matrix to identify key
stakeholders and evaluate their interest, power, support level, and
buy-in.
Once you have achieved approval to implement a Marketing
Performance Measurement program, and obtained a solid commit-
ment from your peers to help you with the process, you are ready
to assemble your project team.
IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES
2 Assemble a Project Team
& Complete Project Plan
First, determine the goals & objectives of your project plan.
Ensure you have alignment with the general business strategy,
and create high-level goals that will resonate with your spon-
sors at the executive level.
As measuring performance and developing a Marketing Dash-
board is an integrated exercise, build a cross-functional team
including leaders from the Sales, Information Technology,
Finance, and Customer Service departments.
You will require insights from each of these areas if you are
serious about keeping a pulse on your department and its effec-
tiveness. Distribute a project plan, that includes the following:
goal & objectives, scope of work, deliverables, costs & sched-
uling, and acceptance criteria.
Having a detailed roadmap of your project will ensure that you
stay on track, gain momentum as you achieve milestones, and
manage expectations accordingly.
Many performance measurement initiatives have failed as
a result of improper planning up-front. To minimize risk, be
sure you invest the time to document what you are trying to
accomplish.
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 8
3 Review Data Sources & Identify Gaps
Every organization contains huge volumes of information that
can be converted into insightful, decision-making data if prop-
erly extracted.
Information can come in many forms: staff industry knowledge,
operational transaction data, and stored information on shared
drives or filing cabinets.
Following are a few areas to check first:
Historical Transaction Data - every company should have
a record of past results. Examine the impact your previous
Marketing efforts had on the business. Get a grip on the future
by analyzing the results of your past.
Marketing Research - perhaps you have some raw survey
results from customers that can provide insight into the
dynamics of your markets.
Intuition & Experience - if you have access to executives who
have been in the industry long enough to know that if you do
this, that will happen, leverage their experience to provide at
least a base level of understanding.
While you are mapping your knowledge base and gaps, you
will develop hypotheses about the relationships between key
data and predictive insights. For example, you may draw paral-
lels between client satisfaction and customer retention rates,
which influences profitability. The whole goal of a Marketing
Dashboard is to help you understand the casual links between
marketing performance and business results.
IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES
4 Select Critical Performance Metrics
Reconsider the agreed-upon role for marketing in your orga-
nization to determine what information you need to be able to
effectively measure your performance. Determining the ques-
tions that you will inevitably need to answer is a precursor when
establishing an effective dashboard.
Work backwards from the business objectives to identify what
marketing needs to do to support these goals. If market share is
the key performance indicator, attempt to find that kind of infor-
mation so you can put a stake in the ground. Alternatively, if you
are in a mature market, your key benchmarks might be focused
on client retention or superb customer service.
After you have documented what you need to know, assess the
value & cost to obtain that information. Pluck the low-hanging
fruit that is high value & low cost; disregard completely what is
low value, high cost; ignore the low value, low cost; and work
slowly towards the information that is high value, high cost.
Following is an example of a matrix that you can use to map
your knowledge needs.
High
Do now Do Over Time
Value
Low Ignore Never Do
Value
Low Cost High Cost
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 9
This mapping exercise leads to the identification of your opportunities
(what you know), risks (what you don’t know), and key success factors,
which in turn limits the scope of what could be measured to what needs
to be measured. Your goal is to eliminate any potential metrics that don’t
correlate to business results in a straightforward manner.
In the initial stages of your dashboard, you may have an alarming number
of key performance indicators that have been highlighted. A typical
company will have anywhere from 25-40 of these measures, based on
the 7 key categories of metrics.
Over time, you will test & refine your hypotheses regarding the causal
chains, eliminate redundant measures, sort, prioritize, and learn which
are truly the most effective indicators of performance.
Keep structure in mind, as it will be easier to glean insight and identify
patterns if your metrics are organized in a sensible way. In the end, you
will likely focus on 10-20 key metrics that help you operate more effi-
ciently & effectively.
Most companies are able to effectively measure direct mail, telemar-
keting, and internet marketing, as many software tools have these
capabilities. While these areas are certainly important, don’t forget
that branding, channel marketing, sales & marketing collateral, adver-
tising, and market research represent a significant portion of marketing
budgets, and therefore need to be analyzed and measured.
Build momentum with the easier areas to measure, but don’t omit the
other aspects.
IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES
5 Build a Framework for Measuring Results
The cultural shift to approve corporate initiatives that have imme-
diate quantifiable impact is a dangerous dynamic for marketing
professionals. On the one hand, it is critical that a business
invests in areas that have short-term benefits and returns, but on
the other hand, it can leave out key areas such as Brand Equity.
Overcoming this near-sightedness depends on your ability to
develop a measurement framework that incorporates both short-
term and long-term financial results.
Instead of focusing on return on investment for each marketing
program individually, establish a Customer-Base Value (CBV)
benchmark that you can monitor to track results. Work with
Finance & Accounting to agree on the calculation for Custom-
er-Base Value.
Take the total number of customers and multiply that by the net
present value of these customers (gross profit contribution) over
their average lifetime.
Be conservative with your estimates and only take into account
the products that your customers are currently purchasing or
expected to continue purchasing. It may take a few passes to
have everyone agree on the formula, but once you have this
benchmark you can start measuring performance over various
periods of time.
IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 10
Using a standard benchmark like Customer-Base Value will make it
easier to present business cases for investments and track results. For
short-term investments like tradeshows, you can demonstrate the impact
over a few months.
When measuring long-term programs like Branding, you can take a
snap shot of your CBV before and 12-24 months after. Having a common
denominator like CBV is also good for measuring the effectiveness and
efficiency of your marketing spend.
Your metric for effectiveness can now be the actual change in CBV
for each period compared to the expected change in CBV. If a partic-
ular initiative, like CRM, is expected to increase CBV by a certain
amount, you can now measure the effect of that program based on a
real increase in CBV. Similarly, marketing efficiency can be defined as
change in CBV/dollar spent.
Both efficiency and effectiveness measures are best analyzed from
a historical perspective and compared to targeted goals. Setting and
refining goals and expectations will help your organization continuously
improve and advocate performance measurement.
Once you have developed your CBV benchmark, you are in a position
to analyze the return on short & long-term marketing investments from a
financial perspective.
IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 11

6 Develop a Brand Scorecard

One of the most difficult elements to measure is the impact of Diverging from the marketing Dashboard, which evaluates marketing
your brand on future economic value. investments from a corporate perspective, the Brand Scorecard asks
“what do our customers, prospects, and employees, believe about our
Marketers tend to convince their peers that a solid brand is the
brand?” and “how do these perceptions translate into opportunities for
foundation for retaining customers, attracting new customers,
economic development, or risks that need to be mitigated?”
and maintaining prices in a competitive environment.
Use a Brand Scorecard in conjunction with your Marketing Dashboard
In reality, measuring the long-term value of marketing invest-
to track the accumulating goodwill that has yet to transform into revenue
ments that create “preference” and “loyalty” for your brand is
for your business. Avoid the common mistake of thinking that achieving
critical.
“brand awareness” is an end in itself.
In many industries, over half of the annual marketing budget
We all know many brands that we don’t buy from on a regular basis.
is spent on programs that do not clearly relate to incre-
Instead, focus on how your brand creates value for your business by
mental profits, but do improve the vitality of the brand in the
leveraging its equity to generate profits.
marketplace.
Following is a simple brand value chain that outlines how marketing
Since this type of investment doesn’t provide a means of
activities convert unaware prospects into loyal customers:
generating increased revenue in the short-term, it needs to be
treated as a separate asset.

Given that strong brands produce returns over a longer period

of time, you need to develop a method of calculating brand Marketing Brand Brand Economic
equity and tracking its improvement. Activity Image Equity Value
Sales Awareness Associations Customer Valuation
This is where a Brand Scorecard can help you; it measures
Advertising Attributes Preferences Price Power
your brand strength in the perceptions of your customers and Training Divergence Attitudes
prospects.
IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 12

6 The successful link between your Activities and Brand Image 7 Select a Marketing Performance
depends on how clear, differentiated, and consistent your Measurement Solution
messages are.
There are many software tools in the market that can assist you
Gaining a positive Brand Equity relies on having competitive with collecting & organizing data, building reports, and estab-
advantages that are relevant to your market, and ensuring that lishing your Marketing Dashboard. Some companies will find it
you are correctly positioned in the mind of your customers & suitable to build an internal Marketing Dashboard solution with
prospects. help from the IT department; most will find it easier to implement
a standardized, proven solution in the form of an on-premise or
Understanding why customers buy from you, or from your
on-demand platform.
competitors, will help you adjust your activities to maximize
economic value. Click here to request more information on how to select the
right MPM solution for your business.
Your Brand Scorecard should track how effective your activities
are at developing brand imagery; how your imagery creates the If you don’t want to invest in a software solution, try using
right attitudes and beliefs; and how these equities are creating our Sales and Marketing Performance Dashboard to collect,
tangible returns in the form of Customer-Base Value (CBV). analyze, and communicate key performance indicators and
metrics for sales & marketing.
It is essential that you define, test, and demonstrate clear links
between each of these stages if you are to continue to obtain Key areas in our dashboard include:
funding for long-term Branding programs. Customers
Branding
Use customer satisfaction surveys, customer relationship
management tools, and internal/external branding exercises Advertising & Public Relations
to gather the metrics & knowledge you need to add a Brand Events & Tradeshows
Scorecard to your Marketing Dashboard. Direct Marketing
Website & Online Marketing
Sales
Marketing Collateral
Channel Sales
Pricing & Discounts
ANALYST BOTTOM LINE IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 13

Analyst Bottom Line

The requirements for marketing departments in mid-sized enter- Invest some time to learn if a Marketing Dashboard is right for
prises are changing. It is more essential than ever to be able to your organization. Among other things, it can help you drive
measure results and demonstrate your effectiveness. measurable increases to the top-line, and justify your existence.

Fortunately, there are many skilled experts who have helped If you decide that monitoring the performance of your depart-
companies transform under-performing marketing departments ment is not a top priority, at least you will be aware of how
into strategic, aligned, and accountable profit centers. many other market-leading companies are operating.

Now that you know what Marketing Dashboards are, what

benefits they bring, and have an understanding of the high-
level implementation Best Practices, discuss this initiative
with Senior Management.

By being up-front and honest about your inability to measure the

performance of your department, you will build credibility, trust,
and buy in, to implement a solution.

It will be absolutely critical that your Senior Management team is

committed to this initiative.
ABOUT DEMAND METRIC IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE MARKETING DASHBOARDS BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 14

About Demand Metric

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