At tomorrow’s meeting, you need to show the board how marketing is impacting the company’s bottom line. Next week, you’re due to review the success of a recently launched campaign with the product team. How do you report on it all, and what KPIs do you share? It depends on your audience and how the data will be used.
Instead of trying to do it all with a one-size-fits-all report (after all, you don’t want to be the one wasting the board’s time with metrics they don’t care about), invest the upfront resources into developing individual dashboards that are purpose-built for each group of key stakeholders. Below illustrates the most relevant metrics that could be included in executive- and campaign-level dashboards, but metrics are just numbers until you leverage them in a meaningful way. Any data pulling should always be accompanied by thoughtful analysis ‒ reflecting on how the numbers compare to benchmark, identifying the next variable to A/B test, deciding what to turn up or down, etc.
This approach will produce business intelligence that can enable smart and responsive marketing adjustments to support goals. Dashboards should emulate goals, and the key metrics you report on should reveal insights into how a campaign or tactic can be further optimized ‒ making the intelligence actionable.
Executive-Level Dashboard
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- Audience: Board of Directors, C-Suite
- Objective: Relevant when evaluating overall marketing effectiveness
- Sample KPIs:
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- Leads
- # conversions
- Conversion rate (CVR)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Opportunities
- # marketing-generated opportunities
- Lead to opportunity conversion rate
- Cost per opportunity
- Closed-won
- # closed-won
- Lead to closed-won conversion rate
- Cost per acquisition/closed deal (CPA)
- Projected/realized revenue
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Leads
Campaign-Level Dashboard
- Audience: VPs, Directors
- Objective: Relevant when considering the success of a campaign (e.g. product launch)
- Sample KPIs:
- Leads Generated
- # conversions
- Conversion rate (CVR)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Leads Nurtured
- # SQLs generated
- # opportunities generated
- Projected/realized revenue
- Target Accounts
- # target account conversions
- Conversion or reply rate
- Opportunities
- # opportunities generated
- Lead to opportunity conversion rate
- Cost per opportunity
- Closed-won
- # closed-won
- Lead to closed-won conversion rate
- Cost per acquisition/closed deal (CPA)
- Projected/realized revenue
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Leads Generated