The Impact of a Marketing Dashboard
Currently, I serve as a Brand Manager at a company that develops and manages luxury apartment buildings in most major markets. In addition to my branding-related duties, it is also my responsibility to ensure that the apartment communities are getting leads that the onsite teams can then convert into prospects. We use a myriad of advertising strategies and channels to drive qualified traffic to the property. However, up until last year, it was nearly impossible to determine if a community was performing poorly due to not getting enough leads or because of something operational such as staffing, low closing percentages, or pricing. It was common for the onsite teams to claim that they needed traffic, as a way to deflect the pressure and focus on marketing. Needless to say, it was a challenging position to be in.
But everything changed when we launched a CRM featuring a marketing dashboard that integrates data from multiple critical sources. Kotler states that a marketing dashboard is, “a concise set of interconnected performance drivers to be viewed in common throughout the organization.” Our dashboard has completely transformed the way we manage marketing and track property performance. The dashboard created transparency with what is or isn’t happening onsite. We can track and evaluate the entire customer journey and measure conversions at every touchpoint. It also allows us to assess the effectiveness of the advertising sources being used and identify the most effective marketing channels for each property.
Every employee has access to this dashboard and can view the most important metrics on the homepage. The information is displayed using color-coded pie charts. Within 5 minutes of viewing the dashboard, we can determine what that property needs to focus on in order to reach their goals. Introducing a CRM with a marketing dashboard at our company has put our sales teams in a position where they can work smarter (instead of working harder) and for our marketing team to accurately assess a property's real needs and crafting strategies around them. By incorporating this technology, our company can monitor the success and identify areas for improvement across its entire portfolio efficiently.
