How to Measure Lead Generation in Real-Time with Dashboards

Gone are the days of sifting through filing cabinets and keeping track of dozens of spreadsheets at once. With dashboards, teams are able to monitor quarterly progress and KPIs on a daily basis in one place without hassle. 

It’s data organization and tracking at its finest, you could say. 

Even still, businesses accumulate a lot of data across various channels every day (i.e., the company blog, social media, pricing page, etc.). This can make it daunting to set up a data dashboard for the first time or upgrade your current dashboard system. 

The last thing you want to do is lose old data or set up new data tracking incorrectly.

In this post, we’ll share how and why you should set up your dashboards to measure lead generation. And to help you put theory into practice, we’ll also point you in the direction of a resource that you can use to start gathering this data.

Why Dashboards?

A dashboard is a central data hub and an extremely important one at that. 

The great thing about dashboards is that they are fully customizable and adaptable to your business’s specific needs. This means that you can track internal and external operations and access the data that you need in a matter of seconds.  

Looking for a better way to track your team’s workload and progress with specific tasks? Or the number of new subscriptions, conversions, and churns this quarter compared to last quarter? 

A dashboard displays all of the data that you need in one place, and it can be as complex and in-depth or simple and straightforward as you want it to be. 

Instead of jumping from spreadsheet to spreadsheet, you get a comprehensive overview of your team’s progress at a glance. This makes it easy to keep your team on track and up-to-speed each quarter.  

Let’s take a look at three key reasons why dashboards contribute to a business’s success.

#1. A dashboard isn’t just a short-term solution. 

The new data you’re collecting now will be old data before you know it. By using a well-structured dashboard, you can look back on this data months from now and identify long-term successes and downfalls. 

This is a good way to make sure that your team is on the right track — not just quarter by quarter but year by year. 

Here’s what we mean. 

Maybe this quarter’s performance isn’t on track to match or surpass last quarter’s performance. While this is discouraging to see and important to fix as soon as possible, you have to also maintain a big-picture perspective. 

This quarter’s performance might actually be leaps and bounds better than it was this time last year. (All things considered, that’s worth a moment of acknowledgment and celebration with your team.)

When you use and update dashboards on a consistent basis, you start connecting these dots over the years and deducing whether a performance dip like this could be due to seasonality or something else. 

From there, you can make informed strategic changes to your team’s approach so that you get the results you’re looking for in the future.

#2. The upkeep for dashboards is minimal. 

Launching a dashboard takes a lot of time and work on the front end — whether you’re building it fully in-house or streamlining the process with an interactive dashboard tool.

In this early stage, you want to make sure that all of your bases are covered so that the dashboard is set up to track the right data.  

Once it’s up and running, however, there’s very little work that your team needs to do. 

As your team members update their progress, this progress is reflected in the dashboard’s results. And, oftentimes, you can arrange for certain data sets to automatically update. 

So long as new data is tracked and accounted for, anyone on your team will be able to review up-to-date insights at any time.      

#3. Dashboards are easily and instantly shareable

From upper management to individual team members, dashboards can be accessible to anyone who needs to view the data you’re collecting.  

This ease of shareability is one of the most compelling reasons why dashboards are useful in a business setting. 

In weekly team meetings, dashboards can be used as a conversational launching point. 

Because the entire team has access to the data, you can discuss the numbers and draw connections to your team’s day-to-day efforts.

Maybe you notice a record number of email signups one month after including a new lead magnet on your website’s home page. Maybe you optimized a landing page for search and it led to an increase in new traffic. 

Not only are the insights on lead generation, conversions, etc. important to your team, but this is also critical information for the company leaders who are planning, budgeting, and strategizing at the end of each year.

The more information you gather and share with your entire team, the better for your company. 

How To Use Dashboards As A Monitoring Tool For Lead Generation

For most companies (67%), lead generation is what ultimately determines whether the content was successful or unsuccessful, and it’s understandable why. 

Higher conversion rates, a better customer lifetime value (CLV), and a good ROI all start at the lead generation level. 

Having multiple channels for lead generation is crucial, but to ensure that your team’s efforts are actually successful long-term, you need an effective way of reporting and tracking these different channels. 

To measure lead generation in real-time with dashboards, there are two main things that you need to do: 

1. Find a dashboard tool that you can rely on
2. Know and optimize your main lead generation channels

Start off on The Right Foot with a Dashboard Tool You Trust

Marketers have options when it comes to setting up a lead generation dashboard. 

With the right resources and expertise, you could enlist your IT department to build up a dashboard from the ground up.

If you have the bandwidth to do this, that can be great, but starting from scratch isn’t a feasible and cost-effective option for everyone. 

Regardless of your business’s size and industry, it’s critical that you take time to research the different dashboard tools available to you. Dashboards are an investment, so weigh the pros and cons before making a final decision. 

With or without an IT department, ClicData is an end-to-end Data Analytics Platform that provides small and large businesses with an agile and dynamic way to create and manage dashboards. 

This tool allows you to sync your dashboard with over 300 sources of data such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and social media platforms, which can then be automatically shared via daily and weekly dashboards & reports. 

Damien Lafourcade with Marketing 1BY1 had this to say about ClicData’s dashboards: 

“We implemented ClicData ourselves and it went smoothly. We uploaded data quickly and built our first dashboards in less than an hour for us and our customers.”

Finding a dashboard tool that your team can rely on for accurate and streamlined reporting is a crucial first step to take. Once you make this decision, the next step is to set up your dashboard for lead generation tracking.  

Know Your Main Channels for Lead Generation

Digital marketers leverage various channels for lead generation and for good reason. 

Prospective customers come across your business’s content in different ways (i.e., social media, email, website, etc.). Whatever their first point of contact might be, it’s important to meet them where they are and offer a lead generation incentive. 

Once your team creates incentives in the form of downloadable assets, free trials, social media contests, etc., you can then set up your dashboard to display the results. 

How many site visitors opted in to receive an e-newsletter? How many prospects downloaded a free resource you offered? How successful was your social media campaign in boosting your social following and driving traffic to your website?

These are the types of questions you can answer when you’re intentional about generating and reporting new leads.

Here are a couple of strategies you could be implementing now across your social media, website, and email channels to improve and measure lead-gen success:

1. Form influencer and brand partnerships 

The great thing about partnerships with influencers and brands is that the engagement, leads, and conversions that they generate are highly trackable. 

If a partner is running a social media campaign for x amount of time across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, you can configure your dashboard to measure their results in real time. 

You’ll be able to determine whether the partnership had a positive effect on lead generation or not, and adapt your strategy if it’s the latter. 

2. SEO, SEO, SEO

Search engine optimization is critical for businesses. Optimizing your content so that it ranks highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) means that more people will see and therefore click through to your website. 

To do this, you need to know what your target audience searches for. That way, you can create lead-generation opportunities that actually interest them.  

Wrapping Up

A dashboard reveals a lot about your business’ day-to-day progress. It allows you to spot trends — good and bad — quickly so that your team can adapt your lead generation strategy sooner rather than later. 

Whether you’re setting up a dashboard for the first time or restructuring your current one to be more comprehensive, take time to find a dashboard tool that will help you measure and share the insights that you need easier. 

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About the author

Mackenzie is a copywriter at Soundstripe, a music licensing company that provides filmmakers, creators, and advertisers with resources on how to add music to a video and stock music, like documentary music.