Marketing dashboard: Which metrics does management need?

A marketing dashboard for management needs five to eight metrics that relate directly to revenue: spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry, new customers, cost per new customer, revenue from marketing, and the trend compared with the previous month and previous year. Clicks, impressions and bounce rates belong in the marketing team’s working reports, not on the first page.

The metrics for the first page

1. Total marketing spend: ad budget plus agency and tools.
2. Enquiries or leads: forms, calls, appointment bookings, without duplicates.
3. Cost per enquiry: overall and for the two or three most important channels.
4. Qualified enquiries: the share that sales rates as a good fit.
5. New customers and cost per new customer: the real efficiency metric.
6. Revenue from marketing: or the pipeline value if deals take longer to close.
7. Trend: every figure compared with the previous month and the same month last year.

What does not belong on the first page

Click-through rate, impressions, sessions, time on site and rankings are important steering metrics for the team. For a budget decision, they say little. A dashboard with 30 metrics does not get read.

Where the data comes from

• Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn: spend and clicks.
• Google Analytics 4: enquiries and where visitors come from.
• CRM: qualification, deals and revenue.
• Accounting: agency and tool costs.

Tools such as Looker Studio connect these sources. The real work happens before that, though: channels need consistent naming, enquiries need to be counted unambiguously, and CRM data needs to be transferred regularly. Otherwise the dashboard shows nice charts with the wrong numbers.

How to build it

1. Agree with management on the five questions the dashboard should answer.
2. Define exactly one metric and one data source for each question.
3. Check tracking and the CRM export before the first chart is built.
4. One page for management, further pages for the team.
5. A fixed date each month when the numbers are discussed.

Related reading: Customer acquisition cost: What does a new customer really cost us? and Marketing budget: What percentage of revenue makes sense?

FAQ

How often should a marketing dashboard be updated?

Ad and analytics data can be pulled automatically every day, which is enough for most purposes. For management, though, the completed month matters most, because individual days fluctuate a lot. What matters is that CRM data is updated at the same pace, otherwise enquiries and deals will not line up.

What is the difference between a marketing dashboard and a marketing report?

A dashboard shows continuously updated figures that you can open at any time. A report summarises a period and puts the figures into context: what happened, why, and what follows from it? For management, the two complement each other: the dashboard provides the numbers, the report the assessment.

How can enquiries in the CRM be attributed to the right marketing channel?

The most reliable way is to store the source when the form is submitted, for example via UTM parameters or the Google Ads click ID in hidden form fields. This information then lands in the CRM together with the enquiry. For phone enquiries, call tracking with separate numbers per channel or a short question during the call helps.

When to hand this over

• Every report shows different numbers.
• Management asks for the cost per new customer, and nobody can give it.
• The dashboard exists, but data is missing or out of date.

We build dashboards that connect ad data, analytics and CRM, and we maintain them every month. Learn more about strategy & analysis or book a free initial consultation.