Creating a Marketing Dashboard: Here's How

1. What's a marketing dashboard?
2. What tasks and objectives does a marketing dashboard have?
3. For whom are marketing dashboards important?
4. What types of marketing dashboards are there?
5. What metrics and KPIs should a marketing dashboard capture?
6. With which tools can marketing dashboards be created?
7. Marketing Dashboard Templates and Examples
8. As much automation as possible:
9. A marketing dashboard is a must-have for all marketers and managers who want to make decisions based on a serious data base. Only through the visualization of metrics are often important connections revealed. In addition, a large number of decision-makers rely on marketing dashboards to make strategic and tactical decisions. The tools with which marketing dashboards can be created are becoming more and more sophisticated. But with the increasing possibilities, the complexity and the requirements for the users also increase. Therefore, it's important to choose the right tool and, if necessary, to get external help from professional marketing and data analysts.

• are unnecessarily complicated
• are not up to date
• or are based on the wrong KPIs

What's a marketing dashboard?

What tasks and objectives does a marketing dashboard have?

1. Budget management: by comparing the marketing key figures of different channels, the marketing dashboard helps to identify in which marketing channels more or perhaps less should be invested. This can increase the overall performance of the company.
2. Analysis: a marketing dashboard shows you changes at channel level as well as at holistic level. Let's assume, for example, that one of your marketing key figures is CPO. Now you see the CPO rising over the months. The marketing dashboard shows you this development. However, the marketing dashboard can only help to a limited extent in finding the cause, because then you need to delve deeper at the channel level and analyze. In the concrete case of the CPO increase, there are various possibilities such as seasonal circumstances, wear and tear of the target group, or simply higher media costs. A marketing dashboard therefore does not replace a detailed analysis, but quickly informs decision-makers about abnormalities that should be paid attention to.
3. Data visualization: the graphic visualization of metrics and KPIs makes these accessible to decision-makers and allows them to draw the right conclusions, even if they are decision-makers from other parts of an organization who are not regularly confronted with marketing key figures.
4. Finding the right marketing mix: a very important topic in marketing is finding the right mix between Brand and Performance Marketing. Companies should strive for a balanced mix of brand and performance marketing activities, as too one-sided marketing strategies can lead to inefficiencies. The correct attribution of the channels can help the marketing dashboard to avoid such inefficiencies.
5. Promote cross-channel thinking: especially in organizations with many marketing channels, it is important to present the mutual dependencies of channels in the form of a marketing dashboard in order to promote understanding within organizations. At first glance, good efficiency values of individual channels can be misleading if they are caused, for example, by inefficiency in other channels. A classic example of this is search engine marketing. High conversion rates and purchases via Google Ads can be caused by a decline in impressions and clicks in organic search. However, the Google Ads Manager may only see his Google Ads dashboard and therefore not the link between the weakness in organic search and the deceptively good performance of his campaigns. Central, cross-channel marketing dashboards are therefore all the more important in order to be able to better classify marketing key figures.

For whom are marketing dashboards important?

1. Head* of Marketing and Marketing team: primarily, marketing dashboards are intended for Heads* of Marketing and their teams. Since Heads* of Marketing always have to keep an overview of many channels, the marketing dashboard is an absolute must-have tool to keep track. At the same time, the marketing dashboard is an important tool for all members of the marketing team to understand how the individual channels contribute to the success of the entire marketing machinery.
2. CEO and C-Suite: Marketing dashboards play an important role as an instrument to support decision-makers in top management. Strategic decisions are often based on developments and insights that are captured using marketing dashboards. Especially with regard to budget allocation, the marketing dashboard is of great importance. If top management, for example, is faced with the question of which markets should receive how much budget, marketing key figures such as lifetime value or customer acquisition costs are usually used to make decisions.
3. Investor* and external stakeholders: Particularly for investor* and external stakeholders like banks, the development of a company's marketing efficiency is an important factor when it comes to investment decisions or also granting loans.

What types of marketing dashboards are there?

1. Holistic marketing dashboard: this is the type of dashboard I usually refer to when I speak of a marketing dashboard. The holistic marketing dashboard shows the most important KPIs and metrics for all marketing activities of a company. Usually, such holistic marketing dashboards also list the individual marketing channels, but there are also dashboards that completely abstain from this and really only present the high-level metrics and KPIs.
2. Channel Marketing Dashboard: these are dashboards that, in contrast to the holistic marketing dashboard, focus on individual channels. An example of this is a Google Ads Dashboard or a Criteo Dashboard. Such dashboards are often named after Digital Marketing Dashboards, SEO Marketing Dashboards, or Email Marketing Dashboards, depending on the type of marketing channels. These dashboards are often offered directly by the platforms and can be adapted to your own needs:

1. Organic and Paid Marketing Dashboard: here the channels are summarized, depending on whether the traffic came in the form of organic traffic, or as paid traffic.
2. Brand versus Performance-Marketing Dashboard: this is - at least in my dashboards - usually part of the holistic marketing dashboard. Here channels are categorized depending on whether the primary goal of the channels is brand or performance. So TV advertising, for example, falls into the category Brand, while Google Ads falls into the category Performance. Assigning the channels to Brand and Performance is difficult for some channels, for example, in influencer marketing. Here I attribute channels proportionally to the respective categories. Experience plays a major role here.
3. Funnel Dashboards: Funnel dashboards focus on the marketing funnel holistically or at the channel level.

What metrics and KPIs should a marketing dashboard capture?

• CPO (cost per order): the costs that the company incurs per acquired new customer. More about this can be found here. The CPO should be represented holistically, i.e. across all marketing activities, as well as at channel level.
• Spend (Marketing Activities): The marketing dashboard should include total marketing spendings, again across all channels (holistically), as well as broken down at the channel level.
• Total Sales & Revenue YoY (Year over Year) / MoM (Month over Month): This metric shows the growth rates for revenue and units sold across all channels compared to the comparison period.
• ROI (Return on Investment): the ROI measures a company's marketing efficiency holistically as well as at the channel level.
• Revenue per Order: This metric measures revenue per sold unit, such as per sold pair of shoes. I'm a fan of this metric, as it can also be used to observe the impact of sales promotions.
• Customer Lifetime Value: One of the core metrics is the Customer Lifetime Value, which represents the value of customers to a company over the duration of the customer relationship. The CLTV should at least be known across all marketing activities, even better, of course, if the CLTV is known at the channel level, because this way you can then very well compare the quality of the customers depending on the channel they were acquired from.

• Cost per Subscription: replaces the CPO in the subscription business and represents the cost per completed subscription.
• Churn and Retention Rate: As an important indicator of customer loyalty, Churn Rate and Retention Rate should be part of your subscription dashboard.
• ARPU (average revenue per user): represents the average revenue per subscription customer.
• Trial to Paid Conversion Rate: An important metric for companies that offer a free trial model. It measures the percentage of users who switch from a trial subscription to a paid subscription model.

With which tools can marketing dashboards be created?

• Google Tabellen: Maybe not super sexy, but most marketing dashboards are created using Google Sheets. With Google Analytics automations, you can quickly create fully functional live dashboards. A good option to create dashboards for free.
• Looker Studio: offers a number of connections to different data sources, although there can sometimes be complications. After a certain period of introduction, Google Data Studio is a very useful tool to represent all important visualizations, especially funnels.
• Adobe Analyticsa fundamentally very powerful tool with many supporting tutorials and videos, which is however rather suitable for experts.
• Tableau another tool with a variety of visualizations, but not necessarily easily accessible. Support by an experienced Tableau pro is recommended.

Marketing Dashboard Templates and Examples

As much automation as possible:

1. avoid as much manual input as possible in marketing dashboards and automate as much as possible. This way, you save time and resources.Uniform data basis:
2. make sure that all marketing channels are based on the same data basis. If you mix Facebook data with Google Analytics data for example, chaos quickly arises. Avoid unnecessary data:
3. not everything that can be measured has to be measured. Consider carefully which metrics are decision-relevant.Involve experts:
4. if you can't involve internal data analysts, turn to external consultations. There are numerous data analysis professionals who can help you find the right data setup.Conclusion

A marketing dashboard is a must-have for all marketers and managers who want to make decisions based on a serious data base. Only through the visualization of metrics are often important connections revealed. In addition, a large number of decision-makers rely on marketing dashboards to make strategic and tactical decisions. The tools with which marketing dashboards can be created are becoming more and more sophisticated. But with the increasing possibilities, the complexity and the requirements for the users also increase. Therefore, it's important to choose the right tool and, if necessary, to get external help from professional marketing and data analysts.