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When it comes to “measuring marketing” a growing number of legal marketing professionals are turning to marketing dashboards to bridge the gap between effort and return. The allure is clear- a user can spend a moderate amount of time and brainpower building a colorful and impressive-looking dashboard that displays all kinds of digital metrics. But then what? Does it provide insights and information to drive decisions? Probably not. Understanding the business context of your targeted metrics is what will turn a pretty graphic into a true business-aligned marketing dashboard.

As our marketing operations consultant Gordon Braun-Woodbury explains:

“In my personal definition, a marketing dashboard is a display of relevant marketing metrics in real time (or as close to real time as the data allows).  It provides feedback to the marketing team (and its stakeholders) on the business impact their activities are happening. The power of the Dashboard comes from its ability to place multiple related metrics in the same display, so the team can immediately see correlations and gain insights.”

He goes on to note “We need to understand that the marketing dashboard is only a means, not an end in itself.  It’s just a tool to get us to the real objective:  data-driven business decisions that align marketing activity with the objectives of the businesses we serve.

The objective: data-driven business decisions that align marketing activity with the objectives of the businesses we serve.”

For a list of questions to consider before building your dashboard, read the complete post on Gordon’s blog here.