Presently, it’s not a problem to acquire enough data, and neither is analyzing it. The problem often arises when trying to make sense of the data instantly by visualizing it. That’s where a marketing data dashboard comes in. Many marketing managers and CMOs are now starting to realize the power of data visualization tools in overcoming various marketing challenges.
What is a Marketing Dashboard?
CEOs have been using data dashboards for years, but marketing managers are now exploring dashboards suited to their own data. A marketing dashboard is at its heart a platform specially designed to collect data regarding your critical metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and put them into an artful and intuitive display, which presents real-time information streams. In other words, a marketing dashboard is a graphical interface that shows an overview of the entire marketing strategy, in a unified view. If you aren’t familiar with this type of analytic software, you can see an example here: Marketing Dashboard – Autographic Insight. The simple interface lets you identify the key performance indicators in a single view, where you can essentially cut off the data you don’t need.
While APIs can only collect critical information from your own proprietary software, marketing data dashboards can essentially coalesce the data from over 100 cloud services. For this reason, they are a proper mobile headquarters for keeping you and your marketing department informed with all the relevant information as you make important marketing decisions for your business.
Why Should You Use a Marketing Dashboard?
It’s commonly agreed that the major problem with analytics is that inexperienced marketers can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer amount information, making them fail to take full advantage of the data. However, setting up your dashboard thoughtfully while keeping your own goals in mind can help you to avoid these pitfalls. Below are the 3 main reasons why you should consider having a marketing dashboard for your business.
1. Focusing on the Bigger Picture
It’s quite difficult to see the bigger picture when you divide your attention between the various marketing campaigns you have in place. Most people prefer to just keep shoveling and not sweat about it. Working hard will translate into more visitors and therefore more sales. However, you don’t necessarily need to work too hard. With a marketing dashboard, you will have to zoom out and holistically see your entire marketing strategy. This will prevent you from obsessing over unnecessary detail as most markets do.
2. Making your Strategy More Efficient
As you now focus on the bigger picture, various trends and indicators that were previously out of view will now become clear. This let’s allocate more resources to the more effective campaigns, making you marketing strategy more efficient. Keep in mind that trends are fundamentally easier to notice on a line graph compared to looking at numbers alone. Comparing different sets of data on a line graph helps you to identify the more important trends, and focus more on relationships and patterns that you would have otherwise missed.
3. Knowing More About your Target Market
In general, the more you know regarding the target market of your business, the better you are able to serve them. Serving them better easily translates into more sales through word of mouth, repeated sales, and recommendations. A marketing dashboard lets you know where your clients spend the most time on the internet, which social media platform they are more active on, and how well they respond to email marketing campaigns. Such information is crucial in tailoring your marketing strategies to serve your target market better in the long run.
In a nutshell, a marketing dashboard helps you to visualize everything you need to quickly and efficiently. While checking such information via analytics and other data sources is possible, having it in one place will save you much time.
