About 18 months ago I posted a few comments about marketing dashboards on my blog and it seems to have generated a lot of interest so I thought I would provide a bit of an update. If you recall, a marketing dashboard is nothing more than a well organized list of business metrics that measure and track the health of your business/brand. Without metrics you can’t manage a business.
Here’s a good example of a “brand” based dashboard that tracks the health by way of a few key metrics like i) awareness, ii) purchase behaviour, iii) loyalty and advertising awareness. These are just a few of the many attributes that can be tracked/measured by a marketing person. The key is to understand two things: a) What am I being measured on for my performance and b) what are the key drivers that move the business. Once you know the answer to those two questions then you can easily create a 1 page document that summarizes the health of your business/brand. Once thing to keep in mind is that these metrics aren’t usually found all in one place. They are usually pulled from many difference sources so a little work/time has to be put in to creating the summary report. You will therefore need to decide how much time is involved and whether the report can be assembled in a reasonable amount of time.
In large organizations, these documents are plentiful because there are lots of people that managers can tap in to the pull the reports together. For smaller shops it may require some extra time or effort to pull it together but it can make the difference between a growing business and one that is in decline. For more information about dashboards and how to assemble them, please feel free to contact me at info@rs4.ca
