How Do You Build an Effective Dashboard for Digital Marketing?

October 1, 2013

Ask The Expert with Susan Solomon

Eleven years ago, Kay Franks, marketing manager for St. Louis Children’s Hospital, got wind that budget reductions were on the horizon and it looked like her website budget was on the chopping block. That was all she needed to get cracking on building a comprehensive dashboard to demonstrate the heavy lifting performed by her digital team. Ultimately, the metrics she compiled weren’t just impressive, they were the ticket to saving her budget and gaining new respect for the digital effort.

“In all these years, I haven’t had a budget cut,” says Franks. “And, as a matter of fact, my budget has increased ever since.”

Telling the story

Whatever the impetus for starting a dashboard, all marketers know it’s a good idea. Dashboards tell a story of how marketing efforts are faring, as well as point to new opportunities. Yet, for many, the most puzzling question is how to construct a dashboard that best communicates the story. In an age when most marketers have mastered metrics for traditional marketing efforts (i.e., number of calls to a call center, number of people attending a health fair) and even customer relationship management for assigning revenue to those results, tracking digital marketing seems to be much more of a head-scratcher. With so many metrics readily available for digital efforts, the search for an effective and eloquent tool is an ongoing quest.

“I see too many teams mired in the traffic metrics or detailed consumer behavior statistics when they should be paying attention to what they get those visitors to do on the site – the number of patients that their digital marketing efforts have brought in, sign-ups for screenings, participation in health promotion programs, or transaction dollars flowing through the site,” says Ben Dillon, vice president and e-health evangelist for Geonetric in Cedar Rapids, IA.