[Updated for 2023]
What if you could instantly view how your company is progressing toward its performance goals and the effectiveness of your marketing strategy? This is exactly what marketing scorecards and marketing campaign dashboards allow you to do. This is your guide to how both tools track campaign performance over time.
What is a Marketing Scorecard?
A marketing scorecard is a measurement tool that helps companies make sure that their business processes align with their business strategy. It allows a team to keep track of the progress of company goals so that they can make improvements to their marketing efforts when needed. Scorecards place an emphasis on certain time periods, whether it be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
RELATED POST: USING SMART GOALS IN YOUR MARKETING PLAN
The Value of a Marketing Scorecard
Utilizing a marketing scorecard offers several benefits to companies who are striving to meet their marketing goals. These benefits include:
- Ensuring everyone on your team is on the same page when it comes to the company’s marketing objectives.
- Scorecards are easily accessible and should be reviewed at least weekly.
- Allows for better strategic planning.
- Due to higher visibility, better communication is able to take place within your team.
- Team tasks and projects are better aligned with the company’s strategic goals.
- Supervisors will be able to make more informed management decisions.
- Easy-to-view performance reports.
What are the Elements of a Marketing Scorecard?
Your scorecard should be simple to maintain and easy to understand at a glance. Be careful not to clutter your scorecard with too many elements. This will decrease its usefulness and efficiency. These are the main elements of a marketing scorecard:
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — Quantifiable measurements that show the progress made towards achieving key business objectives.
- A goal for each KPI — The outcome your team is striving to achieve.
- Leading indicators — These give companies the ability to predict the effect of marketing strategies and make changes, if needed, before the strategy is implemented.
- Marketing campaign performance.
These are the basic elements of any scorecard. Companies can also choose to incorporate data such as the percentage achieved towards each goal, notes on strategies that were successful, and notes on strategies that need to be revised.
What is a Marketing Dashboard?
A marketing campaign dashboard is a tool that visually displays marketing analytics, KPIs, and metrics. Their purpose is to give teams the ability to monitor marketing performance in real-time.
The Value of a Marketing Dashboard
The use of a marketing dashboard offers plenty of benefits to companies and teams when it comes to effectively executing marketing strategies. Benefits of marketing dashboards include:
- The ability to customize the dashboard to fit your company’s needs by choosing which metrics are the most useful to your marketing strategy.
- Easily track the performance of your marketing plans in real-time.
- They are helpful in keeping your team on the same page and aligned with your company’s goals. They allow everyone with access to see strategies that are working and strategies that are not.
- Allows management to make more informed decisions when it comes to strategies and tactics in a pinch thanks to real-time data.
- Reduces the cost of your marketing strategies by allowing you to adjust your strategies in real-time and fix problems while they are happening, rather than afterward because of delayed reports.
For companies looking to track performance of their marketing efforts and keep an eye on key metrics, there are several dashboard platforms available including:
- Google Data Studio: A powerful, free tool for creating reports and dashboards, which you can use to analyze marketing results and make better decisions. Google Data Studio allows for seamless integration of other Google-generated data sources like Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console, YouTube Analytics, and Big Query.
- AgencyAnalytics: As a paid option, AgencyAnalytics allows businesses to pull in data from over 60 integrations. It also offers automation and agency management, which Google Data Studio does not.
The choice of marketing dashboard platforms is dependent on the needs and budget of your organization. However, the importance of having a built-out, up-to-date marketing dashboard is crucial.
Related post: why email drip campaigns are crucial to your success
The Difference in Marketing Scorecards and Marketing Dashboards
The main difference between scorecards and dashboards is that scorecards are geared toward tracking a company’s progress toward its goals. On the other hand, dashboards provide an aerial view of data and are ideal for making day-to-day operational decisions.
The good news is that you do not have to pick one or the other for your marketing operations. Your company can greatly benefit from using each at the appropriate time to obtain a crystal clear picture of both the health and progress of your business.
Let the Marketing Leaders Head Up Your Campaign
We get it! Marketing takes a lot of time and energy that would be better spent running other aspects of your company. Ironmark helps you leverage your marketing strategy to generate more leads and create more sales! Contact us today for more information!
