At the recent NASSCOM event in Mumbai, I had some great conversations with CMOs from many B2B organisations. In those discussions, a few topics bubbled up to the top more often than others.

The unpredictability of the business landscape and changing buyer behaviours challenge every organisation; it does not matter what growth goals they’re pursuing. For example, in my conversations at NASSCOM, some organisations were exploring avenues to venture into new markets or developing new products, while others were focusing on brand positioning, retaining talent, building a stronger growth engine, and so on. The diversity of these goals mandates adopting entirely different thinking, strategies, and approaches. This in turn requires a different set of skills, competencies, and KPIs for CMOs and their organisations.

Furthermore, as B2B organisations weather the economic storm of 2023, CMOs have to don multiple hats, sometimes as a custodian of the brand or as a driver of growth. At times, they also must act as a “compass” in the sea of changes and uncertainties that surround their business.

Thirty-seven percent of marketing leaders plan to address changing buying behaviours via an integrated campaign strategy, as per Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2023. Not surprisingly, marketing leaders find themselves constantly under pressure to deliver results on numerous marketing initiatives, demonstrate ROI, and communicate business value.

Marketing leaders use dashboards in different forms to showcase marketing’s value across all of these areas, but building an effective dashboard that captures metrics related to diverse marketing programs, initiatives, and channels is easier said than done. Often, the first version of such dashboards simply lists all items that marketing has worked on; these dashboards may not tell what lies ahead and what is a work in progress. Having everything listed would make it too much information but would not provide much of any insights.

Pitfalls In Your CMO Dashboard?

Having reviewed hundreds of CMO dashboards over the last few years, we find that, unfortunately, many CMO dashboards fail to effectively communicate marketing’s contributions due to several common pitfalls. The Four Most Common Pitfalls In CMO Dashboards report talks about these pitfalls at length and ways to overcome them. These include dashboards being out of balance, favoring one initiative over the other; focusing inward on organisational value metrics but lacking the customer view; presenting misaligned metrics that suit few sections in the audience; and, finally, being cluttered with low-value KPIs that confuse the reader and complicate the narrative.

To address these challenges, it is crucial to construct an effective CMO dashboard that uses a repeatable process and delivers best-practice results.

A best-in-class CMO dashboard is not merely a scorecard of marketing’s performance. It provides an accurate depiction of marketing’s accomplishments, performance, usage, and strengths. It also highlights weaknesses and risks, enabling you to identify areas that need cross-functional collaboration and support from the rest of the executive team. B2B marketers must restore a balance, align metrics with business objectives, and focus on high-impact metrics. By doing so, they can construct an effective CMO dashboard that provides critical insights, strengthens alignment, and drives impact to the business.

Read the full report, The Four Most Common Pitfalls In CMO Dashboards. Connect with me through an inquiry to discuss your dashboard and how you can use it as your primary communication vehicle to articulate the business value of marketing.