Now more than ever, data matters. Sometimes though, especially with how many platforms, social media sites, and ad providers exist segmented from each other, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. That’s where a CMO dashboard comes in. Gone are the days of siloed information across several platforms. Now, a good CMO has access to all their collected marketing data and analytics at a moment’s notice.
To be an effective Chief Marketing Officer, you need to know your data inside and out. Having access to marketing performance and the actionable insights it provides is essential for growing a business for your client. Below, we’ll cover what a CMO dashboard should look like through the metrics you have to be tracking.
CMO Dashboard Definition
A CMO Dashboard is a comprehensive way of tracking and viewing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts through viewing important key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics. The dashboard collects information across multiple marketing channels and platforms and puts it in one easy-to-see and access place. It can be a very useful decision-making tool for CMOs, business owners, and for a Board of Directors to understand the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
A good CMO dashboard will most likely include key marketing metrics like:
- Acquisitions (i.e from search, social media)
- Conversions (emails, ads, organic)
- SEO (domain rankings, backlinks, keywords, content spend etc)
- Reputation (reviews, testimonials)
- Presence (social media page likes, follows)
- Your website (speed reports, 404 errors)
The importance of a CMO Marketing Dashboard
As a CMO, your job is to solve bigger problems for your clients, and that’s where a CMO dashboard streamlines the process and makes it easier for you to do so. An effective CMO dashboard should include metrics from any service or platform your client uses and should focus on the specifics of their business.
In addition, your own CMO dashboard should reflect the responsibilities of your team. Each team member should be responsible for various different KPIs, and you’ll be able to track their effectiveness to keep your marketing strategies on track.
Keeping track of all aspects of your marketing strategies is extremely important, not only for your client but for your decision-making process. A CMO dashboard should effectively allow you to see what’s working and what isn’t at a glance so that you can focus on that.
A good and effective dashboard should do five things well:
- Simplify all your collected data
- Tell a story from that data
- Provide comparisons to understand the data
- Convey priority & direct you toward areas that need your attention
- Keep you up to date on the performance of your team
As a CMO, you’ll need to communicate your efforts to either a CEO, Board of Directors, or business owner. A CMO dashboard simplifies the process in conveying the successes of your marketing strategy.
Benefits of CMO Dashboards
A well-designed CMO dashboard should save you time and money since it eliminates the need to collect and process the data yourself. The data on your dashboard gets pulled directly from your platforms, like Google Ads, Facebook, YouTube, and more, whenever you want it. It makes this data accessible for your strategic decision-making.
Most importantly, all this data is easy to see and is in one place and not siloed in several different business platforms.
13 Marketing Metrics & KPIs to include in your CMO Dashboard
1. Revenue by source
Revenue by Source is how a CMO tracks how much their campaigns, ads, and other marketing efforts perform depending on where they come from. In addition, this tells you the revenue you earn from the sale of your product or service from those outlets. This helps you understand where to direct your marketing efforts, depending on which outlet performs best.
2. Cost & revenue
This is a standard metric that’s valuable for displaying your marketing efforts from a broad perspective. This metric shows exactly how much your business spent across the board and how much revenue you earned.
3. Conversion rates
Conversion rate is by far one of the most important CMO dashboard metrics for you to follow. Simply, this metric gives you an idea of how well your marketing efforts are working and how often a customer converts. It gets tracked depending on the monitored events you set up. These “events” can be anything from filling out a form, signing up for emails, accessing your website, clicking on an ad, or calling your business, among many others. Ultimately, the conversions you track will be specific to your marketing goals, your business, and the campaigns you run.
4. Return on investments (ROI)
ROI is the single most effective way to measure your marketing costs. A successful and well-managed marketing department should have a positive ROI. That means that your marketing investments are less than the sales your marketing efforts bring in.
5. Google Analytics referral traffic
This metric ties directly into your google analytics account. Google tracks how people find your website, even if they don’t come from their search engine. This helps gauge how customers find your page, especially from referral links, how many people access your page this way, and what they do once they’re there.
6. Google Analytics visits
Similar to referral traffic, Google Analytics tracks how people get to your website. In this case, this metric tracks the total number of visits to your page and how they found the website.
7. Returning visitors
For businesses that put out content, offer frequently needed services, or in-demand goods, measuring your returning visitors helps you understand how much value your goods or services provide for your customer. This is a good way to gauge brand awareness.
8. Cost per click (CPC)
Cost per click tracks the cost for one person to click on your ads. Especially with ad platforms like Google Ads, your ad campaigns can be highly customizable and targeted to your audience. This metric helps you see your costs and see what’s working. From there, you can edit your ads or campaigns to adjust the results.
9. Google Ads conversions
This tracks all of your conversions from google ads. In Google Ads, you can set up events for tracking your conversions, which may include anything from clicking on an ad to adding something to an online shopping cart. Regardless of the event, this metric pulls in the total number of conversions Google tracks.
10. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
This is important for helping the marketing team understand how much it costs to get a new customer. In addition, you can compare this to the profitability of a customer over their lifetime in your business. Typically, this also measures where the customer comes from, which helps you determine where it’s cheapest or most expensive to acquire a new customer.
11. Organic search
Organic search helps you track your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts in addition to the keywords you use. This metric shows your natural search volume and how people access your page outside of your paid ads and campaigns. Typically, this comes from a relevant search query.
12. Return on advertising spend
This metric refers to the amount of revenue you earn for every dollar you spend on advertising. Return on ad spend either provides a “bird’s eye view,” encompassing all ad spend, or a smaller scope in relation to one campaign.
13. Share of voice
Share of voice refers to your share of advertising in an industry-specific conversation in relation to your competitors. This can be valuable for understanding your customer engagement and the all-around brand awareness your business has within your industry. In addition, this helps you understand how much you’re spending on your brand compared to your competitors.
Platforms you should include in your CMO Dashboard
Ideally, you’ll want to pool all of your online marketing activities into your CMO dashboard. You should include any platform your business regularly uses. These platforms may include:
- Google Data Studio, Google Ads, Analytics, Google My Business, Sheets
- Facebook Business Manager
- Social Media Outlets & Ads – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn
- Ahrefs
Using a dashboard to become an effective Fractional CMO
If you’re looking to become a fractional CMO or to learn more about our fractional CMO services, CMOx can help. We have an in-depth CMO scorecard available for download that’ll give you a ton of value as a fractional CMO and for putting together your own dashboard.
At CMOx, we provide marketing leadership that works at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO. Our Chief Marketing Officers come experienced in collecting the right data for your business and can direct your marketing campaigns toward what works.
To learn more about our CMO services or how we can help you get started as a fractional CMO, contact us for a free consultation at (219) 804-0797 or fill out a contact request form here.
