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Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Dashboard

Posted: 28 Mar 2020 08:00 PM PDT

The success of your marketing campaigns depends on your ability to measure performance and make changes. When you know how well your campaigns are running, you can leverage what works and discard what doesn't.

Having a way to track your KPIs in a way that's fast and effective will power your marketing efforts. You need to set up a marketing dashboard to help you get a clear picture of the state of your marketing efforts. A marketing dashboard is a tool that gives you a visual representation of key metrics and performance in a single place. 

Using a marketing dashboard offers several clear benefits to your business, it's especially useful for a marketing team to get pertinent information. 

Customization: You can create a marketing dashboard to track virtually anything: email marketing, SEO, e-commerce campaigns and more. You can customize it to track any KPI that's important and using appropriate charts.

Knowledge sharing: A dashboard will allow your team or teams to get timely information that will affect their performance. Tracking key metrics will keep teams on the same page and support knowledge sharing. 

Informed decision making: Being able to get data easily and processing it fast will make a difference in how you make decisions. A visual dashboard makes it easier to make sense of data which then enables better decision-making. 

Instant Visibility: You can set up marketing dashboards that present real-time data on marketing campaigns. This creates instant visibility that can help you make timely decisions.

Time-Saving: A marketing dashboard is a visual tool that uses graphical representations to showcase data. It's especially useful for executives and other decision-makers to get relevant information at a glance and save time. 

Motivational Tool: An added benefit of using a marketing dashboard is that it can help motivate employees. Visual representations of progress can make people feel more satisfied and compel them to keep going. 

Being able to measure and track campaigns will help you become more productive. You'll also get powerful insights that can boost your business success. 

A marketing dashboard offers an appealing visual format that makes decision making faster - which is why every brand should use one. Let's look at how you can build a marketing dashboard that gives you the right insights. 

Setting up a marketing dashboard requires careful planning. Building one without a purpose will not serve your business and can even detract from your campaigns. Here are some of the most important steps to take when building your marketing dashboard. 

Choose the right platform

There are several online tools available that will help you create an effective dashboard. You can use a free tool like Google Marketing Platform. The advantage of using it is that it already integrates with many of Google's products.

For businesses that use Google Analytics and Ads, using its marketing platform makes sense. There are many other platforms that also offer free use of their software. A significant advantage is that you can use pre-made templates that make it easy to set up a dashboard quickly. 

Understand your audience

You can set up your marketing dashboard to monitor and track any activity. When setting one up, you need to consider who the audience is. A decision-maker may want a dashboard that measures the performance of key campaigns. Whereas a social media marketer will need analytics that tracks social activities.

One of the first steps you need to take is to understand who your primary audience is for a marketing dashboard. Whether it's the sales team, the customer support staff, or an executive, the dashboard needs to reflect what matters. If you're heading a cross-functional team, then sit down with your team members and prioritize the KPIs that are important. In short, let the audience and their preferences act as guidelines to set up a marketing dashboard.

Determine your goals

When you know who your audience is, you'll have clarity on the goals that matter. If your team or department has several goals, then you may need to prioritize the most important ones.

Trying to manage KPIs for several divergent goals can make your dashboard cluttered. Instead, decide which goals are your priority. You can also set up multiple dashboards for different goals. 

Having your goals clearly charted out will help you with the next step: choosing the KPIs to visualize on your dashboard. 

Choose the right metrics

When you've determined who your audience is and what your goals are, choosing the KPIs to become easier. 

The KPIs that you select can reflect the particular marketing strategy you're following. For example, if you're tracking your SEO performance, some metrics you can track are bounce rates, traffic, backlinks, and other. 

For email marketers, open rates, and clicks will be important metrics. Research shows that 60% of marketers use conversion rates as a way to measure the progress of their email marketing campaigns. 

When choosing your KPIs, you also need to take the time frame and data sources into consideration. You may want to gather real-time data or get a visual representation of changes taking place over months. 

The type of campaign and your goals will help you decide what time frames to use. You also need the best source of your data when setting up your dashboard. 

Pick your data source

The main benefit of a marketing dashboard is that it's a single unified place to track data from different sources. Businesses often have to work with different platforms that offer their own business intelligence tools. 

Social media platforms, email marketing service providers, and others have their own marketing analytics platforms. You need a marketing dashboard that brings all these data sources together.

When building your marketing dashboard, compile the key sources of data that you want to include. A dashboard can be especially helpful when you want to track the performance and returns from paid sources.

Design

Marketing dashboards offer you the freedom to create charts and use designs that appeal to you. You'll have color and style options that will allow you to create the best visual board for your needs. 

However, businesses often make the mistake of adding too much information and using too many widgets. When setting up your marketing dashboard, remember to focus on simple and effective designs.

A marketing dashboard should provide information that you can understand at a glance. Consider using premade templates that are available on many dashboard tools. There are several ways to display your data.

  • Comparisons: Depending on your needs, you can compare the performance of different strategies and products. You can also compare changes over time. 

  • Relationships: A marketing dashboard can help you see the relationship between different data points.

  • Distribution: Use charts to showcase ranges or groupings within specific data

  • Composition: Understanding the finer data compositions within a larger data group will help you get insights at a granular level

Your final design matters when it comes to conveying relevant information. For example, by comparing different content types, you'll figure out the best content format for your audience. You'll learn that articles with images get 94% more views than one without any visuals. You may notice that videos do better on social media than any other type of content.  

Designing your dashboard is essential because it needs to be easy to understand. It should also convey relevant information. A complex and cluttered dashboard will only lead to misinformation and confusion. 

Monitor and scale

Once you've set up your marketing dashboard, it's important to make changes whenever needed. Over time, you'll be able to understand whether your set-up serves your business or whether you need to add or subtract information. 

You may need to redesign your marketing dashboard to reflect more realistic goals. Making changes to time frames, data sources, and design will also help. Building your marketing dashboard is not a one-time activity. You need to keep monitoring whether it's useful and make changes so that it provides you with timely and accurate information. 

Information is power, and this is true in marketing as in any other area. Using a marketing dashboard can simplify your ability to gather and monitor pertinent data. 

You'll save time and get clarity from a visual format that conveys substantial information at a glance. We've looked at the reasons why a marketing dashboard is important, and how building one will help you. Use the information provided and create your own visual data dashboard to power your business. 

How to Make Your Business Eco-Friendly

Posted: 28 Mar 2020 07:00 PM PDT

If you are planning to start an entrepreneurial venture, standing out in the crowd of thousands is of paramount importance. While envisioning something elusive is a good way to differentiate yourself, going green or rather involving eco-friendly operational techniques is also a highly responsive technique to stay in the limelight. There are many who would be surprised to know that green business strategies can positively impact the bottom line of a brand. 

Moreover, with global warming shaping up as a monumental threat, it is necessary that smaller and even bigger corporations take the responsibility upon themselves to operate in a more responsible and eco-friendly manner. 

In the next few sections, we shall enlist some of the best and simplest strategies that businesses can start following immediately to perpetuate a sense of green operation besides adhering to the eco-friendly standards:

1. Start conserving water

Charity begins at home and for a business, the eco-friendly approach starts right at the office. Saving water is, therefore, an elementary approach that would concern business owners and employees to fix the faucets and taps to avoid wastage of water. A good way to go about the same is to recruit a plumber for the job, precisely to understand the loopholes which might be hindering water conservation. Whilst this might seem like a small step, it is expected to be extremely productive in the long run, provided thousands of businesses start following this approach.

A good way to go about the same is to audit the water taps while even going as far as envisioning waterless urinals for the concerned workplace. In addition to that, some of the other low-flow options, urinals, gray toilers, rainwater harvesting, and xeriscaping are also in fashion.

2. Concentrate on PCW

Post-consumer waste is an integral part of the business operations and companies must be vigilant regarding the disposal and recycling of the same. Products that are PCW labeled are known to be eco-friendly and completely recyclable. Therefore, a good way for businesses to operate in a more eco-friendly manner is to opt for better packaging, paper-specific essentials, and products — precisely by opting for the PCW paper. However, the PCW label might vary depending on the quality and recyclability of the same.

3. Opt for biodegradable cleaners

If you are planning to clean the workplace, going green would always be an advisable option. This would mean that you need to let of the regular laundry detergent, shampoo, and soap extracts whole concentrating more on the environmentally sustainable options. The first strategy, however, is to include organic and non-toxic cleaning essentials into the mix.

4. Encourage carpooling

As a business owner, you can tweak the conveyance and related options for the employees. If you are actually looking to go green with the operations, it is necessary that carpooling is introduced. The main aim of carpooling is to minimize fuel utilization and therefore the overall population. As multiple individuals will be boarding the same car, it would be easier to lower the associated emissions.

5. Make way for green batteries

Every business needs to work with some form of electronics, which are usually run by batteries. It is important to note that most of the existing batteries are made of unethically sourced and extracted metals, which is detrimental to the environment. The likes of green batteries like Samsung 25r, ones using sodium and salt-based chemistries, liquid-centric technologies, and paper-empowered concepts need to be prioritized as a step towards a green operation.

6. Conduct energy audits

In simpler words, a business must measure and periodically determine the energy leaks and other discrepancies in the existing work model of the organization, in the form of audits. In the end, it all comes down to how energy reserves, specifically electricity is used. 

Moreover, it is a known fact the businesses incur massive losses if the energy usage goes unchecked as based on surveys, almost 20% of the overhead costs are due to the energy-centric loopholes. There are certain organizational bodies that even conduct free energy audits while fixing the issues sans additional costs.

7. Add energy-efficient gadgets

There are certain office-centric appliances that have star-ratings against them, precisely to ascertain the energy consumption pertaining to each. A more eco-friendly approach would be to replace the old appliances with the new ones having 5-star ratings, specifically to minimize energy consumption. While some demographics have star ratings to show the quality of internal wiring and lower electrical consumption, there are certain regions where yellow tags are present to denote the possibility of better environmental and economic savings.

8. Opt for an alternative energy source

If you are a business owner, then you have the choice to opt for a green energy source by replacing the same with the existing electric supply. Certain countries offer the flexibility and option to the business owners for selecting the source of their power supply. Green Power, therefore, can be selected by businesses that are looking to make a difference to the existing environmental landscape. It needs to be understood that green energy comes at a higher cost as they are derived from wind, solar power, hydropower, plant matter, and geothermal sources. As extracting and converting the energy into a more usable form is difficult, the costs are usually on the higher side.

However, the final choice to incorporate green energy sources is with the business owners and they can either opt for the same or skip, depending on the financial positioning of the firm.

9. Make way for green web hosting

As we all know that online visibility is of paramount importance in regard to amplifying reach, businesses that are willing to make a difference must only work with green-web hosting firms for getting the job done. This concerns connecting with hosting firms that are already associated with purchasing carbon offsets and using green energy. Moreover, if you are getting associated with green web hosting firms, even organizational credibility gets a major boost.

While these are some of the best strategies that can be followed by businesses for including eco-friendliness within the operations, there are certain bottlenecks that are still hindering the global adoption of these techniques.

Firstly, most firms are still ignorant, either about the looming environmental threats or about the techniques that can help minimize the same. Secondly, financial positioning is also an issue that is stopping most small businesses to incorporate the likes of carpooling and green electricity into the mix. However, both of these loopholes can be fixed if businesses start with the elementary processes for green operations, at the beginning. Be it fixing the water splurging or replacing old and outdated appliances with the new ones, the basics of green operations are sustainable and way easier to follow as compared to the more celebrated techniques.

Implementing these nine strategies can easily save businesses a lot of money. Apart from that, these are the foundation of green business and if companies start abiding by the mentioned guidelines, it becomes easier for them to get the recognition they deserve. Green operations, or rather eco-friendly functioning, is one aspect that has long been ignored by entrepreneurs. However, with the world fast shifting towards an environmental crisis, restraint is imminent and it is obvious that businesses abide by the mentioned strategies and add value to the existing ecological domain.
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