Marketers and business leaders are highly familiar with deploying targeted content and performance marketing campaigns, so why are so many metrics reporting dashboards cookie-cutter?

Over time typical dashboards have been generated using classic metrics like traffic, pageviews, bounce rate and average session duration. Those things are valuable, but dashboards can be even more helpful if tailored to the person using them and their business goals.

That's why we want to discuss how you can get more out of your marketing dashboards with strategic thinking and continual evolution.

Creating key performance indicators (KPIs)

Doing a KPI framework exercise is a smart way to start any project. It's an in-depth process, but the results will set you up to measure better.

Some of the clients we work with are very clear on their short and long-term goals, while others look to a collaborative partner like Imarc for advice on where to start.

Whether you're tracking paid, organic, or social, or community efforts, here's a list of default metrics you can consider looking at and building from:

• Traffic
• Impressions
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Conversion rate (by content piece, landing page, form, CTA, campaign, etc.)
• Cost per acquisition (CPA)
• Customer acquisition costs
• Source/attribution
• Total leads
• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Customer retention
• Inventory turnover rate
• Gross profit/net profit margins
• Task success rate
• Time on task
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Use of navigation versus search

While all the KPIs listed above matter, the ones we hear most frequently from our clients are built around their various ROI goals.

To start building ROI-forward KPIs, you need to better understand your current performance and goals for the future. For example, how much does a lead mean to you? And what other actions and their associated dollar values are valuable? These clarifying questions will help you establish individualized benchmarks to ensure you make notable progress in the right direction.

As far as setting other KPIs, you'll want to align your metrics with leadership goals, persona-based values, and relevant industry benchmarks.

"By identifying and refining key metrics, organizations are able to streamline operations, enhance decision-making processes, and drive measurable improvements across the board." –Carly Acosta, Principal Digital Strategist

Going beyond traditional KPIs

As a part of your KPI exercise, take the time to evaluate the quality of the traffic before it leads to an official conversion. You may be surprised at which touchpoints matter to your process and which simply... don't!

You're likely still going to track typical metrics like the ones we noted in the beginning of this piece, but you can level up by adding engagement-forward KPIs:

Scroll metrics–A lot of attention is placed on bounce rates, but scroll metrics matter as well. It's part of the educational process. Some prospects won't be ready to convert at the top of the page, or even on their first few visits, but the scroll depth can tell you whether you've piqued their interest.

Event completions–Of course, the ultimate goal is usually event completions. However, there are likely several different types on your website for different funnel stages, so make sure each is being tracked!

Multi-click marketing–While the number of marketing touches it takes to earn a conversion is somewhat different depending on company sales processes, the consensus seems to be an eight-touch average. To have full-funnel visibility, you'll need to map your full process, track each step, and try to beat your own number.

Target page bounce rates–Bounce rates are only as relevant as the pages themselves. Certain pages on your website won't be frequently visited but are still needed. Focus instead on the pages that contribute to your conversions and create mark benchmarks based on the funnel stage. Educational pages will take longer to digest, while landing pages focused only on the final conversion will be much shorter, thus goal metrics will not be 1:1.

Geography–Narrowing down your geographic traffic to your ideal persona's locale is valuable. For example, if you aren't an international company, a large volume of traffic from other countries isn't contributing to your bottom line and is likely spam. Your geographic readout speaks volumes about the relevancy of your offerings...

"Access to a range of metrics can provide teams data to evaluate and refine page-level decisions like messaging, CTAs, imagery, and layout to ensure the page resonates with the intended audience and their goals. If you establish these KPIs and measure them in the long-term, they can also help you gradually improve the user experience for your visitors." –Mike Flannery, Associate Creative Director, UX Design

Building flexible, scalable reports for different stakeholders

Not all stakeholders need the same things. That's why we recommend creating different ones for various levels of leaders and individual contributors. For the sake of this article, we'll focus on company leaders and contributors.

Leaders

Leaders regularly need to make higher-level decisions in collaboration with other leaders who may or may not understand day-to-day marketing metrics. That's why they find conversion and lead-generation metrics most valuable. They have to hyper-focus on dollars and results as opposed to how they were earned.

To provide them with the most value, get away from vanity metrics and instead try to tie anything you put on their dashboards directly to business goals so they can keep justifying their marketing spends.

Leaders are also responsible for maintaining their position against industry and competitor benchmarks. Creating dashboards with supporting metrics will make their buy-in bid even stronger. These sorts of benchmarks can be crafted using the company's actual competitors, desired competitors (maybe you aren't competing with them directly yet), and finally general industry ones. If that seems overwhelming, just reach out to us. We're happy to collaborate.

Contributors

Though leaders are in rooms with other key decision-makers, contributors are every bit as important as they manage the day-to-day tides.

If you are building a dashboard for a contributor, place your focus on the full marketing cycle, showcasing all touchpoints. These individuals will be looking for day-to-day changes like CPC increases because they will give them enough information to analyze and pivot toward success.

More actionably, their dashboards should clearly outline all KPIs based on tactics, channels, search engine optimization (SEO) metrics, and search queries. And remember, if you need assistance, Imarc can help you determine the right metrics. We can also adjust your dashboards when goals shift. 

While adopting a no-one-size-fits-all, custom attitude toward building marketing dashboards is a great first step, remember, reporting never ends. Even if you build a template, you may want to add to it or tweak it based on your findings.

"We're constantly in a state of planning and execution, which means we must have access to reliable data at any given time to inform decisions, gut-check work, and strengthen arguments for or against projects. Time is precious, and data tells a compelling story. The dashboards the Imarc team built for us make it abundantly easy to see how content performs and where gaps may be. In many ways, these reports keep us on track month-to-month. Without them, it'd be a lot more guesswork and tougher to make a solid case for our efforts." –Alec Olson, Editorial Lead,  Skillsoft

Whether you're just starting to create an actionable reporting tool or you want to want to optimize one you already have, we can help. When you're ready, say hello.