This results in wasted effort, strained client relationships, and ultimately, missed opportunities. In this article, I’ll share a proven framework for defining, setting, and maintaining realistic marketing goals that drive client success. 

Why Is Goal Setting Important?

Setting clear, achievable goals isn’t just a box to check on your marketing to-do list; it’s the bedrock of any successful marketing strategy. It provides the framework for effective planning, execution, and measurement. Without well-defined goals, marketing efforts lack direction, making it difficult to demonstrate value or achieve meaningful results.

Goal setting is important because:

• Goals provide direction and focus: Goals act as a compass, guiding your marketing activities and ensuring everyone on the team is working towards a common objective. This helps to prioritize tasks, allocate resources effectively, and avoid distractions that can derail your efforts.
• Goals enable measurement of ROI: By setting measurable goals, you create a benchmark against which you can evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns. This allows you to track progress, identify what’s working and what’s not, and measure and demonstrate the return on investment to your clients.
• Goals foster accountability and transparency: When goals are clearly defined, everyone involved – both the agency/consultant and the client – is accountable for their respective roles in achieving those goals. This fosters transparency, builds trust, and ensures that expectations are aligned.
• Goals align marketing efforts with business objectives: Marketing goals should never exist in a vacuum. They should be directly tied to the client’s overall business objectives. This alignment ensures that marketing efforts are contributing to the client’s bottom line and delivering tangible business value.

Defining Client Goals

When it comes to client goals, you’ll often encounter two distinct situations: clients who arrive with pre-defined objectives, and those who come to you with a blank slate. Both scenarios require a strategic approach to ensure marketing efforts are aligned with true business success. Understanding how to navigate these differing situations is the foundation of a strong client relationship.

What to Do If Your Client Already Has Set Goals?

It might seem like a relief when a client comes to you with pre-defined goals. After all, it saves you from having to start from scratch, right? Not necessarily. While it’s a good starting point, it’s crucial to thoroughly assess and validate those existing goals to ensure they’re sound and aligned with a path to success.

Here’s how you should approach this:

Analyze Existing Goals for Alignment with Business Objectives and Feasibility

Don’t just accept the client’s goals at face value. Dig deeper to understand how those goals connect to their overall business objectives. Are they truly supporting the client’s vision and long-term strategy? 

Additionally, assess the feasibility of the goals. Are they realistic, given the client’s resources, budget, and current market conditions?

After all, the 2023 State of Business Reporting shows that more than half of the companies surveyed are not sure they are tracking the right KPIs in the first place.

Identify Potential Gaps or Inconsistencies

Even if the goals seem aligned, there might be gaps or inconsistencies. For example, a client might have a goal of increasing website traffic but hasn’t allocated any budget for content creation or SEO. Or, a client might want to increase sales by 50% but doesn’t have the inventory or customer service capacity to handle that growth. Identify these disconnects early on.

Discuss How to Refine and Optimize Existing Goals

If you identify any issues, don’t hesitate to have an open and honest conversation with the client. Explain your concerns and provide data-driven recommendations for refining and optimizing their goals. 

This might involve adjusting the targets, adding more specific metrics, or revising the timeline. It’s better to set realistic expectations upfront than to overpromise and underdeliver.

What to Do If Your Client Doesn’t Have Any Goals?

It’s not uncommon to encounter clients who haven’t established clear marketing goals. They might be new to marketing, unsure of what’s achievable, or simply overwhelmed. This presents an opportunity for you to take the lead and guide them through the goal-setting process.

Most importantly, by taking the lead, you can shift from being perceived as an “order taker” — a problem many agencies face — to a strategic partner who proactively guides them toward success.

Here’s how to approach this situation:

Initiate a Goal-Setting Conversation

Start by emphasizing the importance of goal setting and its impact on marketing success. Explain that having clear goals will help them track progress, measure ROI, and make informed decisions. 

It’s common practice for agencies and consultants to determine KPIs collaboratively with their clients. This collaborative approach ensures that the KPIs are relevant to the client’s business objectives and that both parties are aligned on how success will be measured.

To guide this conversation and align with your client’s business objectives, ask targeted questions such as:

• Do you have a system in place to track, monitor, and manage your goals? Goals are effective only if they are measurable. If your client lacks a system to track progress, setting goals becomes a futile exercise. This question helps you understand their current tracking capabilities and identify potential gaps.
• What areas of business operation need the most improvement? Reviewing current data and identifying bottlenecks or obstacles in their current operations is crucial. This question helps you pinpoint areas where marketing efforts can have the most significant impact and address their most pressing needs.
• What are your current priorities? Understanding your client’s definition of success is essential for aligning marketing goals with their overall vision. The key question to ask here is as simple as: What does success look like to you? This question helps you understand not only their priorities but also the KPIs and metrics you need to track and report on to demonstrate success.

Have Your Client Record Their Responses

Once you’ve had this initial conversation, it’s imperative that your client documents their responses. This creates a tangible record of their aspirations, challenges, and priorities. Having this documented allows you to refer back to it during the campaign and ensure that your marketing strategy remains aligned with their vision. 

Also, reviewing this document together provides an opportunity for them to provide feedback, clarify any points, and ensure nothing was missed. It also allows you to double-check that you are aligned and on the same page.

A Proven Framework for Setting Meaningful Client Goals

Whether you’re refining existing goals or starting from scratch, a systematic approach is essential for success. This framework will guide you through the process, ensuring clarity, alignment, and ultimately, delivering results that meet (or hopefully exceed) client expectations.

Get on the Same Page

Before any marketing goals are set, your agency needs to become deeply aligned with your client’s ambitions and priorities. 

Agencies and consultants that operate in isolation risk setting short-sighted goals that fail to consider long-term growth. As mentioned before, it’s not enough to simply take a client’s stated goals at face value. 

For instance, a client might request organic traffic growth or strengthened domain authority, but their true objective is likely higher rankings for high-intent keywords that could drive better leads or new customers. 

To truly understand their needs, you must build trust through transparent communication.

Like all of us, clients want to feel heard and understood. Agencies and consultants that prioritize their own interests will struggle to address client pain points, inevitably leading to poor client retention.

During this initial phase, practice active listening and try to learn as much as possible about your client’s business. Ask targeted questions such as:

• What is your unique selling proposition?
• What are your key differentiators in the market?
• What are the primary challenges your customers face, and how does your product/service solve them?
• How would you describe your ideal customer experience?
• Where do you envision your business in the next 5 to 10 years, and what are your growth expectations?

By engaging in these conversations and building a foundation of trust, you can ensure that your marketing goals are truly aligned with your client’s aspirations and set the stage for a successful partnership.

Related reading: 9 Ways Agency Reporting Can Help Create Transparency with Clients and Boost Client Retention

Leverage the SMART Framework

The SMART framework still remains a proven and highly effective method for setting marketing goals. Let’s remind ourselves of each element.

Specific

A specific goal leaves no room for ambiguity. It clearly defines what needs to be accomplished, who is involved, where it will take place, and why it’s important. 

To ensure specificity, ask the following questions: 

• What exactly do we want to achieve? 
• Who is the target audience? 
• How will we reach them? 
• What is the desired outcome? 

Being specific ensures that everyone involved understands the goal and can focus their efforts accordingly.

Measurable

Measurable goals allow you to track progress and determine success. They answer the question: How will we know when we’ve reached our goal? 

To make a goal measurable, identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be tracked and quantified. This could include website traffic, conversion rates, social media engagement, or sales figures. 

Regular monitoring and reporting of these metrics are essential for staying on track and making data-driven decisions.

Achievable

An achievable goal is one that is realistic and attainable within the given resources and timeframes. It should be challenging, but not impossible. 

To determine if a goal is achievable, consider factors such as budget, team capabilities, and potential obstacles. It’s important to set goals that stretch your team, but also set them up for success.

Relevant

Relevant goals align with the overall business objectives and contribute to the client’s long-term vision. Ensure that the goals are meaningful and contribute to the client’s growth and success. This involves understanding the client’s values, priorities, and target market.

Keep in mind that most agencies revisit client strategy at least once in a quarter.

Time-bound

A time-bound goal has a defined deadline, creating a sense of urgency and accountability. Setting clear deadlines helps to prioritize tasks and ensure that progress is made within a specific timeframe. It also allows for regular reviews and adjustments as needed.

Our research shows that the usual timeframe to hit the new goal set is one quarter.

Use the MASTER Framework for More Complex Goals

While SMART is fundamental, the MASTER framework (Measurable, Achievable, Specific, Transforming, Evolving, Relevant) adds elements of transformation and evolution for organizations with more complex, long-term goals and evolving markets.

The MASTER framework stands for:

• Measurable: Similar to SMART, this emphasizes the importance of data-driven tracking and quantifiable results.
• Achievable: Again, goals must be realistic and attainable, balancing ambition with practicality.
• Specific: Clarity remains crucial, ensuring that everyone involved understands the goal’s details.
• Transforming: This is where MASTER diverges significantly. It focuses on adding an emotional or inspirational element to goals. The goal should not only be achieved but also create a positive and significant impact, motivating both the client and the team. It asks: How will this goal transform the business or brand?
• Evolving: This element emphasizes the need for flexibility, allowing goals to evolve as market conditions, client needs, or business priorities change.
• Relevant: Just like in SMART, goals must align with the client’s overall vision and contribute to their long-term success.

Overall, the MASTER framework encourages a more holistic and forward-thinking approach to goal setting, going beyond mere achievement to focus on transformation and adaptability.

Create an Effective Goal Review Process

Setting goals is just the beginning. To ensure ongoing progress and accountability, establish a structured goal review process. You can implement a tiered approach to reviews:

• Weekly check-ins: These are for monitoring short-term metrics and addressing immediate concerns. Keep these meetings brief and focused on tactical adjustments. For example, if a social media campaign is showing low engagement, discuss immediate content adjustments.
• Monthly reviews: This is for in-depth analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs). Assess progress against the SMART framework and make necessary strategic adjustments. For example, review website traffic, conversion rates, and lead generation metrics. Discuss any trends and potential optimizations.
• Quarterly reviews: These are more comprehensive, examining market trends, competitor activity, and overall campaign performance. This is also a good time to reassess the long-term relevance of the goals. Discuss changes in the market or client priorities that may affect the goals.
• Annual reviews: Evaluate the overall success of the campaign and plan for the year ahead. This involves analyzing past performance, identifying areas for improvement, and setting new goals for the future. Review the entire marketing strategy and discuss long-term client growth.

Our research shows that, typically, agencies meet with a client to review their report/performance results on a monthly basis and prepare reports for them also on a monthly basis.

By implementing a consistent review process, you can ensure that your marketing strategies remain aligned with the client’s evolving needs and market conditions. This tiered approach allows for both agile adjustments and strategic long-term planning, ensuring the client’s goals remain achievable and relevant.

Use Marketing Analytics for Accountability and to Track Progress

Without analytics, it’s difficult to demonstrate the value of your work, track progress toward goals, or make informed decisions about your strategies. Effective use of marketing analytics is what separates successful campaigns from those that fall short.

Here are some key tips:

• Create visual dashboards and reports: Develop customized dashboards and reports that visualize progress towards your goals. This makes it easy for both you and your client to quickly understand performance, identify trends, and spot potential issues.
• Maintain regular reporting and communication: Regularly review the data together, discussing progress, challenges, and potential adjustments. This open communication fosters transparency, builds trust, and ensures that everyone remains aligned on the goals and strategies.
• Leverage data for optimization: Use the insights gained from your analytics (and client meetings) to optimize your marketing efforts. Identify what’s working and what’s not, and make data-driven adjustments to your campaigns. This iterative process ensures that you’re continually improving your results and maximizing ROI.

Maintaining Realistic Goals and Managing Expectations

Setting realistic goals is only half the battle; maintaining them and managing client expectations throughout the campaign is equally crucial. Marketing’s always moving, so you’re bound to run into surprises or changes in what’s important. It’s your responsibility to ensure goals remain achievable and that your clients are kept informed and aligned.

We’ve touched on several of these best practices when discussing defining and setting goals, but they’re equally important for keeping those goals realistic and making sure your clients know what to expect. 

Let’s take another look at some of them, but now from a different perspective: 

Regularly Review and Adjust Goals

• Schedule periodic reviews: Don’t wait until the end of the campaign to assess goal progress. Implement regular check-ins to review performance against targets.
• Be data-driven: Use analytics to identify trends, potential roadblocks, or opportunities for optimization. If data suggests a goal is unattainable, be prepared to have an honest conversation with your client.
• Flexibility is key: Be willing to adjust goals as needed. Market conditions, client priorities, or unexpected events can necessitate changes. Openly discuss these adjustments with your client and ensure they understand the rationale.

It’s ok to sometimes reset goals because they’ve proved too difficult to reach. In fact, according to our research, about 60% of agencies reset goals because of this. Only 34% stated that this rarely happens.

Proactive Communication and Expectation Management

• Set expectations upfront: Clearly communicate the potential challenges and limitations of any marketing campaign. Avoid overpromising and underdelivering.
• Provide regular updates: Keep your clients informed about progress, challenges, and any adjustments to the plan. Consistent communication builds trust and prevents surprises.
• Educate your clients: Help them understand the complexities of marketing and the factors that can influence results. This is crucial for them to make informed decisions and have realistic expectations.
• Address concerns promptly: If a client expresses concerns about goal progress, address them immediately. Don’t let issues fester.
• Highlight incremental wins: Share small victories along the way. This reinforces progress and keeps clients motivated, even if the overall goal is still a work in progress.

Document and Track Changes

• Maintain a record of goal adjustments: Document any changes to goals, including the reasons for the adjustments and the agreed-upon new targets.
• Use reporting tools: Utilize tools that allow you to visualize and monitor goal progress against set KPIs, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Related reading: How to Develop an Effective Reporting Process with Databox 

How Databox Can Help You Set More Accurate Goals and Ensure You Hit Them

Setting goals is one thing, but consistently hitting them is another. That’s where Databox comes in. It’s a powerful platform designed to simplify goal tracking, enhance performance reporting, and keep you and your clients aligned every step of the way.

Here’s how Databox helps you set more accurate goals and ensure you hit them:

Set a Goal for Any Metric or KPI

With Databox, you’re not limited to pre-defined metrics. You can set goals for virtually any metric or KPI that’s important to your client’s business. This flexibility allows you to track the specific outcomes that matter most and tailor your reporting to their unique needs.

See How You’re Progressing, in Real-Time

Databox provides real-time visibility into your goal progress. Interactive dashboards display your key metrics in a clear and concise format, allowing you to quickly see how you’re tracking against your targets. This at-a-glance view empowers you to make timely adjustments and stay on course.

Get Notified When Goals Are Off Track

Databox proactively alerts you when goals are in danger of not being met. You can set up custom alerts that notify you via Slack, email, or the Databox mobile app. This allows you to identify potential issues early on and take corrective action before it’s too late.

Quickly Set and Adjust Targets

Databox makes it easy to set and adjust targets. Set target values once, and they’ll automatically adjust for all periods. Or, update any period individually and instantly recalculate the rest with a single click. This flexibility allows you to adapt to changing circumstances and optimize your goals.

Achieving consistent results requires more than just setting goals. It demands real-time visibility, proactive alerts, and the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions. Databox provides the tools you need to elevate your goal-setting strategy and drive meaningful results for your clients.

Get started with Databox free. See how it helps you set better goals, track progress instantly, and hit your targets faster.

The post How to Set and Maintain Realistic Marketing Goals for Your Clients (and Ensure Success) appeared first on Databox.

Here, we outline five key goals to set for your LinkedIn Company Page, which metrics to tie to those goals, and benchmarks to compare your performance to.

Goal 1: Maximize Reach on LinkedIn

The most important goal is to get your Company Page’s content in front of the maximum number of people. Since this goal is all about reach, the primary metric to look at is Impressions. 

Impressions are counted every time a post shows up in someone’s feed. 

Spikes in Impressions typically happen during months where you might have a big product launch or trade show. Aside from the occasional spike or dip, look for a steady amount of Impressions month over month, hopefully with a slight trend upwards.

Here’s a screenshot from our Databox Databoard showing Impressions throughout the last 11 months.

Goal 2: Increase Impressions Through Engagement

If Impressions are your primary goal, how do you go about driving Impressions? Impressions are primarily driven by engagement.

Engagement is simply when people engage with your content by liking, commenting, sharing, clicking, reposting, etc., on your post.

Here’s a screenshot from our Databox Databoard showing Engagement Rate throughout the last 11 months.

If you have a lot of followers, it’s more likely that you’ll get more engagement. But, even with a very small amount of followers, you can still see significant reach and a high number of Impressions with an engagement strategy.

Goal 3: Drive Traffic & Conversions To Your Website

Use LinkedIn as a tool to drive traffic to your own website and into your marketing funnel. You won’t get as much reach on posts when an external link is included, but this is a necessary part of a successful content strategy regardless. I recommend limiting external links in your posts to fewer than 20% of your posts.

Website traffic and conversions can be tracked in Google Analytics, so be sure you’re tracking key events in GA4. Essentially, you’ll want to see how many people come to your website as a result of your LinkedIn marketing efforts. 

This is very easy to see in GA4 by searching for “linkedin” when viewing the Traffic acquisition: Session default channel grouping report. In this view, you can see how many users, sessions, and key events took place from traffic from LinkedIn. 

You can also get a quick view of traffic and conversions from LinkedIn in a Databox Databoard. Add the Datablocks “Sessions by Session Source/Medium” and “Key Events by Session Source/Medium” to your Databoard.

Here’s a screenshot of our Sessions by Session Source/Medium Datablock. You can see that LinkedIn is the 8th largest driver of traffic to our website in the last 11 months.

Here’s a screenshot of our Key Events by Session Source/Medium Datablock. You can see that LinkedIn is the 5th largest driver of conversions on our website in the last 11 months.

Goal 4: Get More Followers on LinkedIn

Oftentimes on social media, Page owners are most interested in high follower counts. In reality, follower count is mostly a vanity metric when it comes to LinkedIn Company Pages.

Focus on building a real, engaged following to achieve the primary goals outlined above.

Aim to slowly but surely grow the followers on your LinkedIn Company Page. If you’re posting high-quality, relevant content, along with implementing technical strategies (posting at certain days, times of day, tagging/not tagging other people and Pages), the followers will come!

Add the “Followers” Datablock in your Databox Databoard to track follower growth.

Example of Follower growth over the last 3 months.

Goal 5: Track Benchmarks

See how your performance compares to others’ with LinkedIn’s Competitor Analytics and Databox’s Benchmarks Groups.

Competitor Analytics in LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s Competitor Analytics includes the ability to track 9 competitors and compare your total followers and new followers to their Pages, as well as your total engagements and total posts compared to your competitors. The main thing to evaluate is your engagement rate compared to your competitors. Since you may have massively different follower amounts, the other metrics won’t give you an apples-to-apples look the way that engagement rate will.

In LinkedIn under Analytics, Competitors, you’ll find this view of Competitor Highlights. 

Databox’s Benchmarks Groups

As a Certified Databox Benchmarks Partner, we host a free Benchmark Group that calculates the median, top quartile, and bottom quartile B2B LinkedIn Company Page performance. 

Members can join anonymously and see how their performance compares to the group. 

The group is made up of around 1,100 other companies whose LinkedIn Company Pages’ median number of followers is 3,000.

Here are a few examples from the group, showing how different LinkedIn Company Pages perform compared to others:

This LinkedIn Company Page outperforms 95% of other companies in the Benchmark Group for Comments.

This LinkedIn Company Page outperforms 71% of other companies in the Benchmark Group for Engagements (Reactions).

Join the benchmark group to see how your LinkedIn Company Page compares.

Conclusion

All you need to get started in measuring your performance on LinkedIn is the Analytics dashboard that is accessible through your LinkedIn Company Page management interface. You can also add in Google Analytics if website traffic from LinkedIn is a goal of yours.

To gain even deeper insights, use Databox’s LinkedIn Page Engagement Dashboard to track key metrics like Impressions, Engagement, and Follower Growth in one place:

You can also use Databox’s Benchmarks Groups to compare your performance against similar companies.

I recommend creating a monthly or quarterly report with the above metrics and charts to track your progress!

The post How To Set Goals & Measure Your LinkedIn Company Page’s Performance appeared first on Databox.

Kevin Lord Barry shares how to track leading indicators in your paid ads to more accurately know what results you’ll see when the deals finally close months later.

Links

• Follow Kevin
• Hire Kevin (or learn more)

The post Using Leading Indicators to Forecast Ad ROI (Kevin Lord Barry, Right Percent) appeared first on Databox.

With so many things angling to take priority, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. What’s a sales manager to do?

When in doubt, set a goal. 

Setting goals for your sales team and yourself can give everyone a target at which to aim, which can prove far more motivating than trying to hit a seemingly arbitrary number. But what types of goals work best for cultivating your sales force to be the best it can, while keeping in mind that KPIs and business objectives still need to be met? 

We asked over 35 experts for their opinion on the best sales goals every Sales Manager should employ within teams and departments. They shared excellent advice covering a range of different challenges and perspectives within the industry.

This valuable information can be broken down into 5 types of goals that every sales manager should have: 

1. Team (and Cross-Team) Cultivation Goals
2. Personal Development Goals
3. “Big Picture” and Vision-Based Goals
4. Process and Metrics Improvements
5. Customer Satisfaction Goals 

PRO TIP: How to Keep Track of Your Sales Team’s Performance

Sales happen every day, and if you have an active sales team, they’re busy setting up appointments, making calls, creating and nurturing deals, and closing them to generate new revenue. It’s your job to monitor their performance and work with your team to improve it. To do that, you need up-to-the-minute information at your fingertips, including:

1. What’s our average deal size?
2. How many open, closed, and lost deals have we seen this month? 
3. How much revenue can we expect to close from new deals created? 
4. What’s our current progress towards our sales goals?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our sales experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing all the most important KPIs for your sales team’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up this Sales Manager KPIs Dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

While every topic above can provide tips for improvement, if you’re interested in a particular section, click the link to head there. Otherwise, scroll on to get all the best advice our respondents had to offer.

1. Team (and Cross-Team) Cultivation

Getting your team to be a well-oiled machine that integrates well with other critical departments like Marketing shot to the top of the priorities list for our experts. 

Taking care of your VIPs should be the first priority, according to Sam Schooley of Vendition. “The biggest mistake sales managers make is not spending enough time with their top performers. Every sales manager should make it their goal to spend time each week coaching their top performer. 

Why, asks Schooley? “If we take a hypothetical sales organization of three: Sales Rep A achieves at 60% annually, Sales Rep B achieves at 90% annually, Sales Rep C achieves at 102% annually. And we know that with our hard work throughout the year, we can raise all reps by 5%, and one specific rep by 20%. If you spend all of your training/coaching and effort on Sales Rep A, they will at most achieve 85% (still a B player).

Alternatively, if we spend our coaching and training on Sales Rep B, they will now achieve 115%, which is fantastic! But, if we spend our time with Sales Rep C, and they now achieve at 127% annually, we now have a new standard for the sales organization. 

The time invested can be used to tweak the org chart, according to Schooley, “We can now spend time finding replacements for Sales Rep A, who will come in and achieve at a higher rate. You don’t want your bottom performers to behave like middle performers. You want your middle reps to behave like top reps, and your best reps to be even better.” 

Editor’s note: One of the ways to track how your sales reps are performing is to measure Close Rate by Sales Rep using HubSpot CRM and Databox. Learn more about it here:

Browse through these free sales team activity dashboard examples.

This also works for James Lloyd-Townshend of Frank Recruitment Group, who takes a more granular approach to optimize team performance. The way to do that: “Break your team’s goals into smaller objectives that are more realistic and achievable. For example, if you want to improve your sales throughout the year, first break that down into month-by-month, then quarter-by-quarter, making sure your team knows what is expected of them to hit these targets.”

“It’s easy to become daunted by the overall strategy,” says Lloyd-Townshend. “But setting smaller benchmarks that have more short-term targets, which can be regularly rewarded, can help your employees to feel more motivated at work. This will ultimately improve productivity and allow you to successfully hit your long-term goals as a sales manager.”

And it’s not just about developing talent, but fostering connection, according to Belina Perando of Skyes, who says, “Let’s assume all the standard goals are in place that feeds the sales pipeline. In today’s remote working world, it’s easy for sales to become disconnected. The relationship between a sales manager and their team has to be solid so that when the pressure is on they have the confidence in each other to dig deep and make it happen. Going that extra mile requires more than the proverbial carrot and stick. It takes loyalty, ownership, and dedication that comes from feeling connected to a leader, being heard and acknowledge daily. What you do matters and time commitment from a sales leader reinforces that bond.”

Alexandra Zamolo of Beekeeper also sees the value in this connection, especially in keeping your team members engaged. “An employee who isn’t engaged will not be nearly as motivated to work toward goals and to function successfully within a team environment. Think about utilizing incentives, and always have an open-door policy.”

This should start with treating your team “with the utmost gratitude and empathy,” according to Jitendra Vaswani of www.BloggersIdeas.com. “If your team sees that our manager really cares for their job, then they would put their 100% efforts into their sales target; meanwhile the manager should be realistic with their goals so that team can align and be able to achieve the desired results. Being unrealistic always destroys the team bond.”

Zhaneta Gechev of One Stop Life Insurance recommends “creating a win-win environment. It is a concept from the ‘7 Habits of highly effective people’ by Steven Covey. It is the managers’ responsibility to create an environment where the employees are treated fairly and all are striving to achieve the same goal. Different teams and departments need to have the same goal and work together in achieving it. This is the first win. Competition between teams is not only ineffective, but it could be detrimental to the company’s success. The second win is watching the company’s results double. It is no secret that happy and motivated employees are a tremendous asset to every company and often times they are the difference between success and failure on a business level. Therefore, creating a culture of a common goal is the main objective managers should have.”

One way to do that? Get personal, according to Ramon Khan of National Air Warehouse. “Get to know what drives each and every individual on your team. Everyone is different and assuming they all have the same goals and motivations is a huge mistake. You can’t assume that everyone wants to make more money or even be the top salesperson. Even at the top, each individual is driven by different motives and getting to know your team for their very specific motivators can pay off in more ways than one.”

Explains Khan, “How you recognize, reward and motivate a top-performing 25-year-old male that has no kids could be very different than how you would motivate, recognize and reward, say, a single mother of three. Getting to know each one as an individual— their struggles, goals outside of work, hobbies, and dreams— will allow you to not only get to know them better but also reward them in more personalized ways that make them want to work harder for the company because of their appreciation for you.”

Michael Snowden of Training Industry agrees that sales managers should set a goal to better connect with their teams. “To increase performance in a sales organization, managers need to understand what truly motivates the people on their teams. While financial compensation is important, many reps desire feedback, learning opportunities, increased autonomy or responsibilities, or perhaps even physical awards. Take time to meet with reps 1:1, understand their motivations, work together to build plans that address the needs of the employee and the company. Everyone performs better when they are happy.” 

How do you get to know your team better? Shayne Sherman of TechLoris says “Every sales manager should strive to spend time with each salesperson below them. Perhaps taking calls together or making pitches as a team. The purpose of the sales manager, from the perspective of the business, is to coach and educate the sales staff in an effort to get the best sales number possible from each member of the sales team. From the perspective of the sales team, it is to ensure they have the tools and skills necessary to effectively make sales. By spending time with each sales member, the manager is able to dial in on what each one needs in terms of tools and coaching. This will ensure you (and the business) get the best results possible.” This might also open opportunities to know your team better individually. 

To do this, Andrew Dorcas of ARHT Media recommends that managers “touch base with each sales rep consistently, whatever frequency is best for the organization. Creating and maintaining healthy relationships is critical, both internally and externally. Just as a sales rep is expected to maintain strong relationships with external prospects and clients, the sales manager should strive to maintain healthy relationships with his/her sales team.”

Beyond this, Andrew Hatfield of Portworx, encourages managers to “Enable team members’ individual success.” Says Hatfield, “Based on my many years of experience and overachievement in sales, marketing, and leadership, my view on the one goal EVERY sales manager should have is to enable and raise up each of their team members to enable individual success. This is important because a manager’s role is to lead by being a servant to their team, helping equip them with the tools and experience necessary to be successful. Teams that collaborate and respect each other have a proven record of over-achieving their goals.”

Two specific skills that when properly developed can boost stats faster than anything? Learning and Listening, according to Markus Horner, who says “First and foremost, as a sales manager you need to make sure that your people know your product or line as well as possible. How can you sell something if you know very little about it? Even more important is that you can transmit this knowledge to a prospective client. What you are trying to do is to give them enough information so that they can make an intelligent and informed decision as to what is best for them. You don’t have the right to try to decide for them. Your job as a salesman is to help them to understand what pros and cons they are facing. Doing this not only creates a feeling of comfort within the prospective client. It makes you look like the authority on the product that your client is considering.”

As for the power of listening, Horner says, “The best salesman is NOT the one who talks the most. It is the person who LISTENS the most. If you truly listen, people will tell you how to sell them. You might ask questions like ‘What is it that you are trying to accomplish?’ or ‘What is your end goal?’ or even ‘What is your purpose?’ Then you sit back and listen. If you are listening they will tell you exactly what you need to know to sell them.”

Sales cannot become an island, according to Maciej Fita of Brandignity. Fita recommends for every sales manager to ”become very active with your marketing department. Says Fita, “This is something I see all the time: not enough communication with the marketing department. Often times sales teams have great insight and ammo a marketing department can use for advertising, content marketing, and SEO. Marketing and sales departments should act as an ecosystem for both to flourish.”

2. Personal Development

It’s not just the team that needs to sharpen the ax; managers need to keep their skills fresh as well. 

Ryan Stewman of PhoneSites.com tells our readers to “The one goal any manager or leader should have is to be a better leader. Everything rises and falls on leadership. Being a better leader keeps things rising more than falling.”

You can achieve this by tending to the soft skills, says Usama Hashmi of Ozel Tailor. “The one and the most important goal every sales manager keep in mind that he/she should be achieved organization goals by effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Every person or every organization has some planning to achieve its target, mission, and vision without a goal it is impossible to achieve anything.”

How to do that? Get in on the goal-setting for yourself as well as your team, and some very specific types of goals at that. Says Sally Foley-Lewis, managers need “a professional development goal for themselves and their team members completely unrelated to sales! For example, interpersonal communication skills, leadership and management skills, feedback skills, delegating skills, or productivity/time management.

This isn’t just a matter of improving your own work, but laying the groundwork for those sales managers to come. “When sales staff, any operational staff, become managers and leaders they are often promoted for their success in what they are paid to do, in this case, it’s sales. They have consistently exceeded their KPIs or targets and senior leadership sees that as a measure they need to reward so they can incentivize the salesperson to stay with their company. Senior leaders often struggle to think beyond the mainstays of reward: pay and promotion.”

However, warns Foley-Lewis, “When a salesperson becomes a sales manager for the first time they are often not equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to make a successful transition from operational to managerial. Very few companies have readiness programs where operational high potentials are equipped with managerial and leadership skills either just before and just as they step into a managerial role.”

Michael Nemeroff of RushOrderTees agrees. “Sales managers should train their representatives to be ready for a manager position. Ensuring your representatives have a good idea of what a manager position demands gives them a goal to strive towards, and is great for employee turnover. Sales representatives don’t plan on staying in that position forever, so giving them the tools they need to succeed at the next level of their careers is important for every party involved. Having qualified people who are ready to step up to the next level makes a company run more efficiently, and makes the hiring process easier.”

When you’ve gotten to know your team and have been successful in identifying and supporting their needs and skills, you can move on to improving their overall performance by individual improvement. Says Cameron Scholey of Camsholey, you should maximize contribution margin. Explains Scholey, “Contribution margin is revenue less all direct costs involved in product or service sales. To maximize this number is to maximize overall profits. The common focus on top-line revenue maximization is often detrimental to overall profits; oftentimes salespeople drop price is such that it damages and could even cut into corporate profits. Contribution margin focus helps alleviate this.”

Hope Ashley of UpFlip also looks to contribution as a metric. “Every sales manager should be ensuring that each salesperson is pulling his/her weight. It’s nice that, overall, your goals are being reached. However, think of the goals you could meet if each team member was on board 100%. Too often, some team members may slack a bit, knowing that others will pick up this slack so that the team as a whole will meet their goals.”

3. “Big Picture” Goal-Setting

Knowing what you’re after is one of the fastest ways to get it, according to several respondents’ advice. 

What does that look like? Sean Si of SEO Hacker shares a story that shows its often the less concrete goals that can have a big impact. 

“Since I was the only sales guy in our team for the longest time, I had trouble motivating my sales team members when I created our sales team. They understood that they had KPIs to hit and leads to close, but that knowledge only goes so far since they’re not motivated for the long-run.”

“What I did was to constantly remind them that the purpose of closing clients, aside from revenue for our company, is to foster growth and improvement INSIDE our company. They’re the ones pumping blood in our company and without them, the company will slowly die out. For most salespeople I’ve encountered, it isn’t enough to give them a quota to hit since that only motivates them for a short time and fosters mediocrity. Goals, purpose, meaning, and vision – these are the things that make GREAT salespeople because this becomes their source of motivation to hit above and beyond their quota. So, sales managers should always set these things and constantly remind their team about the importance of what they’re doing.”

This rings true for Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers, who says “As a sales manager, you don’t just want to focus on sales. You want to see the bigger picture and understand your company’s values, brand, vision, and strategy. What you want is to align your sales with your company’s overall goals.”

Aufray explains, “It’s important to understand what your company wants to achieve and the image you want to give. Don’t play the short-term race, play the long-term one.”

One soft-skills goal to set? Karlee Tate of Superior Honda says it’s,  “Continuously improving how we communicate value… If our clients do not understand what we are offering, then they are not going to recognize a need for our products. Achieving this goal requires collaboration with the marketing department because they will facilitate the sales team in portraying an accurate message to clients.”

Damien Martin of Shufti Pro advises us to keep the data in the process. “Setting data-driven sales goals is extremely vital to any sales manager’s strategy. Not only does this help make data-driven decisions, but the sales manager can also keep tabs on brand growth using data analytics.”

Explains Martin, “Leveraging data helps in effective planning and managing future performance. Since a sales manager is mostly concerned with delivering results, staying in the ‘data loop’ helps them provide the right direction and training for sales plans and teams.

And don’t let those goals stagnate, says Andrea Loubier of Mailbird. “Every sales manager should have goals that include a steady increase in sales. In today’s business environment, it simply isn’t enough to stay consistent. You must constantly think of new, innovative ways to raise your sales. If you keep the same sales goals, then your sales team may not work avidly toward increasing their sales, especially if they have repeat customers that will keep your averages intact.”

Use this sales performance dashboard to monitor your most important sales metrics, goals, and activities at a glance.

4. Process and Metrics Improvements

Besides fine-tuning your human capital, perfecting the mechanics to run smoother is a sure-fire way to improve the overall performance of things, according to several experts. 

Adeel Shabir of Centriq suggests starting with the programs that drive the process. “In 2020, the number one goal for sales managers to keep in mind when working on sales figures and sales itself is to consider using technology in their daily business transactions and business dealings. Technology has been updating humans’ capacity to work on multiple aspects of life, sales are one of them. This is crucial because it’s necessary to make your tasks easy for yourself. This means that introducing technology to your business makes your sales much easier to handle and you can be productive with other operational activities.”

That tech can have a downside, however, according to Terril Fields of Blerd. Fields recommends increasing conversion ratio, but for this interesting, tech-focused reason: Automation has made prospecting both easier and harder than ever. Prospects are tuning out to boring messaging and it is harder than ever to capture their attention. This is why it is critical to convert as many leads as possible to increase revenue.” When focusing on tech, be sure that the low barrier to entry (into a prospect’s mailbox or general awareness) isn’t also lowering your ROI.

Once the tech is in place, Kristie Jones of Sales Acceleration Group believes the next step is to create a “Formal, repeatable, successful, and scalable sales process.” Explains Jones, “The last thing you want is every sales rep on the team doing whatever they want when it comes to the sales process. This means that each rep. will have a different strategy for prospecting, definition of what each stage in the sales cycle means, and the team’s overall pipeline will be inaccurate at best; pure fantasy at worst.” According to Jones, the sales manager should have a formal and repeatable process for 

• Lead generation and pipeline (inbound and outbound process, tradeshows, followup, etc.) 
• Running deals through the sales cycle. There needs to be a checklist of what needs to happen at each stage in the sales cycle to qualify it to move to the next stage. What about stalled deals. This can be tracked with a business development dashboard.
• How are those handled? For instance, with closed/lost deals—is there a formal nurture strategy? What’s the ‘walk-away’ point?”

Use this sales pipeline dashboard to monitor and manage your sales prospects as they move through the different stages of the buyer’s cycle.

The benefits of having a structured and formal sales process are many, according to Jones. It makes it “Easy to onboard new sales reps, easy to layout expectations and hold sales reps accountable,” and allows the manager to “more accurately predict how much revenue will come in monthly/quarterly.” As an added bonus, “It’s one less thing for the sales reps to have to figure out themselves. They work the process and have confidence it will work.”

Part of that process? Improving your prospecting at its root, says Andrew Stanten of Altitude Marketing. “Traditional sales management metrics are mostly just about dollars. And for good reason. But it is equally important to look at the quality of the prospects they are working to ensure your sales team is being as efficient as possible. I’m not talking about traditional BANT (budget, authority, need, and timing). This goes a step further. While no two companies, products, services or sales teams are the same, the quality of prospects matter.” 

Asks Stanten, “How well does this prospect they fit our ideal customer profile? How aligned is this prospect with our company values? Do they have the potential to be a long-term client – not just transactional? I like to come up with 5 qualitative factors like the above and have each prospect rated on a scale of 1-5 for a total possible quality score of 25. Sales managers should have an aggregate quality score of 18 or higher – or they are spending their time chasing the wrong leads.”

Gary Cubeta of InsuranceforFinalExpense.com looks to improve prospect engagement and activity within teams first. “Whether it be on the phones or appointments, the folks under you must be kept busy, or self-doubt sets in. My very first experience managing came when I was only 19 years old as I was named Sales Manager of Harte Chevrolet in Wallingford, Ct. The first thing I did was institute a rule where our goal was to take every single person that walked in the doors on a demo ride in a car they might like. The idea was simple … activity … activity … activity. Get the potential client to see you are willing to do more than the next person they might run into.”

As for other metrics-based goals and targets that our experts see as top-priority for improvement and track in their sales dashboards, there were several: 

Roman Takáč of Teron Solutions keeps it simple: Revenue. “The sales department needs to generate volume.” You can keep an eye on your sales volume using this sales dashboard software.

David Silverman of Solution Loans agrees, advising us to “increase the overall profit of the company. There is no point increasing sales if the cost of getting those extra sales is more than the total value (unless there is a long term goal of more sales in the future – in which case a loss leader may be appropriate).”

Jamie-Lee Kay of The Other Straw says “Cross-sell to current customers and up-sell to new customers by weekly tracking with a CRM dashboard. As Kay explains, “Cross-selling and up-selling can generate more sales, increase revenue whilst maximizing profitability.”

Jenny Kelley of Kiwi Creative recommends a “modest, realistic conversion rate: around 25%.” Kelly explains, “Your sales process conversion rate can show a lot about your company’s pricing. A super high conversion rate, for example, could be an indicator that your prices are too low, or vice-versa. To aid in calculating & tracking your conversion rate, look at the relationship between your proposals and booked revenue.”

Chris Mason of HealthMarkets chooses to focus on improving the average sales rep’s income. “Not only does this contribute to a culture of success, but it can help cut through other issues. If your sales reps/agents are finding more success, more frequently, it leads to greater engagement and fine-tuning of process, which can be transferred to others.”

Eloah Manzoli of Shophysio instructs us to increase the number of appointments made by each sales team member by X% YoY. “Whilst it’s not always possible to control the total number of appointments made it’s a good idea to give a SMART goal to each member of the sales team, tailored to them, based on previous performance. It ensures that the goal isn’t too vague and general, gives a clear performance to aim for, with a specified period. We may also look at making other supplementary goals based on this one, such as aiming for making a certain number of appointments each month.”

5. Customer Satisfaction

It’s not really about you or your team, if it’s not first about the customer, according to the advice of several experts, like Daisy Jing of Banish. “We can always meet new sales using different metrics, but to maintain a loyal customer or add a new one makes a big difference.”

As Shagun Chauhan of iFour Technolab Private Limited puts it best, “Salespeople are the point of contact for every client. They represent the complete organization to the client which is said that they are the face of the company. The objective of customer service is typically to interact with the customers in order to answer questions, resolve support issues, improve credibility, and nurture relationships. Companies understand the need for providing customer service and most only have the specific goal of increasing the company’s sales by boosting its reputation and maintaining customer loyalty.”

“If the customer is happy or satisfied with the end-product or services, then that client will stay engaged through your business career. He shall be coming up with more work and opportunities where we can work together and grow mutually.”

Aristide Basque of SH1FT agrees, saying “Close the sale by making sure we can deliver for the client. That goal is the reason why we hire sales reps.”

The way to do this is to keep the pulse of what they need. Curiosity may kill the cat, but lacking it kills the pipeline, says Kate Galecki of Clique Studios, who says managers would do well to foster curiosity in their teams in order to help the customer (even when it’s not revenue-generating). 

Says Wenzl, “Salespeople are brought in to solve very specific problems for clients. If there wasn’t a problem, they wouldn’t be talking to you. At that point, you become an investigative reporter. A therapist. A human. Take the time to ask deep, thoughtful questions and be genuinely interested in understanding the problem that needs to be solved. Forget what you’re selling and just get really curious about what’s making your client’s job difficult. And be curious about where they’ve found success in the past. Once you truly understand the problem, it’s simple to create a custom solution that will make their job – and lives – easier.”

If you choose to employ one or all of these tips and goals into your team development practices, we’re sure they’ll help you cultivate strengths for you and your team, focus and understand key metrics, and serve your customer and audience with their highest and best interest at heart. All of these areas can create a positive impact in the long term.

The post 5 Types of Sales Goals Every Sales Manager Should Have in 2023 appeared first on Databox.

Just because one of your keywords tops your list now doesn’t mean that it’ll be outshined by another in the future. This principle works the other way around, too — future power-keywords could fly under your radar because they aren’t doing well today.

Due to PPC keywords’ dynamic nature, you should add regular Google Ads forecasting to your ad management routine. In this blog post, you’ll learn what this practice is, what tools you should use for it and what you can do to optimize it.

• What Is Google Ads Forecasting?
• What Are the Best Tools for Google Ads Forecasting?
• 6 Tips for Improving Your Google Ads Forecasting Accuracy

Keep reading to get insights from advertising experts across the world.

What Is Google Ads Forecasting?

Google Ads forecasting is the practice of predicting future keyword performance based on previous data. It’s also known as PPC keyword forecasting.

Some folks use this term only to refer to PPC keyword forecasting performed through the Google Ads Keyword Planner. But, for the purpose of this blog post, we’re talking about forecasting keywords for your Google Ads campaign using your preferred tool.

Whatever term you use, Google Ads forecasting is as much of an art as it is a science. It uses numbers and data, but you need to choose the keywords and data you want to examine.

What Are the Best Tools for Google Ads Forecasting?

We consulted professional PPC advertisers for their opinions on the best tools for PPC keyword forecasting. They named more than 11 options:

As you can see, the most popular tools come straight from Google itself — Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, and Google Trends. That’s great news to hear if you don’t have room in your budget for paid technology.

The advertisers we polled had extra comments to share about these forecasting tools:

• Google Ads Keyword Planner
• Google Analytics
• Third-Party/Manual Forecasting

PRO TIP: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard for Monitoring Your Google Ads Campaigns in One Place

To monitor and improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox.

You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:

1. Campaign overview. Which ads generate the most engagement? Get complete insight into your active Google Ads campaigns and easily track their performance.
2. Impressions. View the total number of times your ad was shown/seen on Google or the Google Network daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or within the specified date range.
3. Clicks. Visually monitor the number of clicks your ad receives daily. It helps track this data as it is a good indicator that your ad is compelling and valuable to the people who come across it.
4. Cost. How much do I pay for each click on my ads? See the amount you pay on average for each click your ad receives.
5. Conversions. How many users completed the desired action after clicking on my ads? Learn whether your ad clicks are resulting in users taking some desired action.
6. Cost per Conversion (CPC). How much on average does conversion on my ads cost? See how much you get charged for each desired action taken by a user after coming across your ad.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Ads experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for conversion and ROI. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in PPC reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Ads account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Google Ads Keyword Planner

Let’s let Brian Stewart from ProsperoWeb, LLC introduce Keyword Planner’s forecasting tool: “The Google Ads forecast tool can assist you in determining how well your keywords will perform in optimal conditions. You can adjust your maximum cost per click (CPC) based on your budget, check a graph of your expected performance, and see estimates for individual keywords with this tool. You can vary the time period of your forecast to see how it affects your forecast by changing the date range.”

Best of all, every feature is free. You only need to pay for the ad bidding you already perform in Google Ads.

“Google claims to update its estimates daily, using data collected from the past 10 days. The forecast tool is a complex feature of Google Ads, demonstrating how helpful the advertising medium as a whole is,” Condo BlackBook’s Sep Niakan says of the forecasting tool’s potential.

Niakan also explains how to use Keyword Planner’s forecasting features. “You’ll click on “Get search volume and forecasts” within the Google Ads Keyword Planner,” Niakan tells us first. That option should look something like the below screenshot.

“After that, input your keywords and click on Get Started,” Niakan instructs us next. This is what the input box will look like:

Here’s what Niakan wants you to know after you’ve input your keywords:

“There will be other tabs available, but you must stay on the predicting tab. As per the keywords you entered, Google Ads will automatically show you the following:

• Clicks per day
• Impressions
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Average cost spend per day for a specific keyword
• Average CPC (cost per click)

Moreover, the tool will show you a data chart that forecasts the upcoming trends. This assists you in determining the best course of action for future efforts, as well as determining whether or not existing efforts should be adjusted depending on customer searches and behavior.”

In other words, the “Get search volume and forecasts” feature tells you how a keyword is performing now and predicts what its metrics will look like in the future.

“The tool will give you forecast data for each keyword such as impressions, the click-through-rate, the clicks per day, the average projected daily spend amount, and the average amount you might pay for an ad click. Adding your own conversion metrics can customize the forecasts to your brand,” adds Tori Bell of Clever Touch Marketing.

Putting it all together, you can plug multiple keywords into Keyword Planner’s forecasting tools to get present data and future predictions. Then, you can adjust the finer details as needed and add your own metrics for more accurate forecasts.

Google Analytics

At Creatopy, Diana-Alina Aldea supplements Google Keyword Planner’s forecasting capabilities for paid keywords with Google Analytics’ organic keyword metrics.

“Here I check affinity categories, in-market segments, locations and queries, but from all sources, not only paid traffic, to see which opportunities I’m missing in my PPC efforts. To make most of the data I’m seeing, I try to go more in the past, if possible (three or six months),” Aldea says.

If you don’t already, you should factor organic search data into your campaigns’ keyword structure. In fact, we’ve recommended that tactic before for PPC keyword research. Since customers are already searching for high-ranking organic keywords, make sure to see if any will impact your campaign.

Third-Party/Manual Forecasting

A few respondents pointed out that they use more niche forecasting tools or generate their own PPC reports.

“So, I use a couple of tools to forecast and manage my Google PPC accounts,” says Newaz Chowdhury of Powerphrase. “Jepto is one tool that I use to manage and forecast my ad spend for my client accounts. It shows what I’m spending and what results I can get if I keep with the current ad spend. It gives me the insights of our PPC budget and KPI management.”

The Powerphrase team also uses Morphio, a tool with similar features to Jepto. “It also shows us the traffic and conversion rate too. User-friendly interface to read and understand the data that’s being shown.”

Wikijob’s Edward Mallet is a fierce advocate for affordable third-party tools and manual reporting. “For an easier and faster forecast report, you might use a third-party PPC campaign reporting platform. Alternatively, you can create your forecast and projection reports by hand,” Mallet suggests.

“You can develop data tables to forecast short-and long-term projection consequences if you want to pull the data manually. Although it is impossible to predict the future with 100% accuracy, you can identify elements that may have a favorable or negative impact on ROI by combining CPC analysis and historical trend data,” Mallet says of manual reporting.

So, if you want to try manual reporting, you’ll still need to reference your campaign performance data and Keyword Planner metrics. This method can offer more control and access to version histories, though. You’ll just need to get used to drawing your own predictions from the data you have.

Mallet offers the following advice for updating your reports: “Some data will require more frequent updates than others. CPC data, for example, can vary more quickly than industry trends and should be updated every week or month in your prediction report, depending on how frequently you execute campaigns. For longer-term predictions, assess the best days and times of years for specific keywords using year-long trend data (or longer) to get the best results over time.”

If you manage ads on a large scale or have in-house reporting software, the Google Ads API will help you make your own forecasting tools. The API documentation has more information on generating forecast metrics in your custom solution.

6 Tips for Improving Your Google Ads Forecasting Accuracy

The advertising professionals we polled shared six tidbits of Google Ads forecasting advice. 

Don’t fret if you have a small biz ad budget when reading these tips. The respondents come from a wide range of advertising budgets, skewing toward $5,000 a month or less. In fact, 27.4% work with less than $3,000.

Dig into the tips below:

1. Start With Organizational and Market Data Trends
2. Adjust for Your Bidding Behavior
3. Think of It as a Projection Instead of a Forecast
4. Mix Up Your Forecasting Tools
5. Account for Future Growth
6. Start With a Budget or Reverse-Engineer It

1. Start With Organizational and Market Data Trends

As with most practices in marketing and advertising, good Google Ads forecasting begins with thorough research. You should know your organization and competition inside-out before choosing any keywords.

“Gathering relevant and accurate data is the first step,” Miranda Yan from VinPit affirms. “I track data like CPC, monthly spend, conversion rate, etc., and analyze [my] competitors. Keeping industrial trends in mind and creating performance reports, I strategize the ad campaign for future success.”

PeopleFinderFree’s Eden Cheng adds a human element to this initial research process. “My recent process of forecasting Google PPC potential includes checking with team members to perceive any obscure troughs and peaks. I have chosen to be conservative with the developed figures, like UPOD [under-promising and over-delivering],” Cheng explains.

Cheng continues, “Also, I have used similar uplifts, which can be seen in previous years unless I became confident. At the same time, I have cross-checked the final forecast against the previous year’s figures to make sure [there are] no high plunges in performance and built up the strategy of forecasting, actualizing, and re-forecasting, if required.”

In other words, Cheng checks performance metrics from previous years to make sure the forecast looks realistic. Then, Cheng creates a forecasting strategy alongside the research plan.

Additionally, Code Signing Store’s Rameez Usmani recommends establishing “a foundation for future calculations.” Usmani says, “This foundation should correspond to the advertising campaign’s objectives for the potential advertiser.”

Usmani suggests aligning your forecasting strategy with the number of clients you need to get your intended income, your sales team’s closure rate, your website conversion rate and cost per click.

2. Adjust for Your Bidding Behavior

No PPC forecast is one-size-fits-all — you need to adjust different variables to account for your bidding style.

“We use the Google Ads forecast tool, among others, for a variety of purposes, the main one being to help us determine how our keywords will perform in optimal settings,” TurboFinance’s Josh Stomel tells us.

Stomel explores multiple variables when forecasting keywords. “For example, viewing charts of our estimated overall performance, delving into projections for individual keywords, and then seeing how these estimates change when we adjust our maximum cost per click are all part of our current process for optimizing our advertising potential,” Stomel says. “Depending on the time of year, we also leverage the forecast date range to see how specific time frames might affect our Google PPC potential.”

Consider what conditions you prefer to bid under, and adjust your forecasts accordingly. You want your projected situation to match your real bidding situation as much as possible.

According to Google Ads Help, you can change the default bid for your Keyword Planner forecast at the top of the “Plan overview” page. Try different numbers to see how your typical bids compare.

3. Think of It as a Projection Instead of a Forecast

The term “forecasting” can be a little misleading in terms of PPC predictions. Every forecast is a best guess, meaning that many factors can change the results.

“We like to call it projections, rather than forecasts,” says growth360’s Sasha Matviienko. “This term highlights that at the end of the day, we are making a data-driven guess with lots of factors outside of our control (the 2020 lesson).”

So, what can you do to make the best guess possible? “When projecting for a year/quarter we primarily look at factors like cost per click and quality scores. This way, we are able to tell a better story and consider multiple scenarios – with cost per click of X and quality score of Y we should be getting a result Z,” Matviienko explains.

Matviienko has one final piece of advice if you use in-house algorithms to forecast your keywords: “Models that you use are important as well. The ARIMA model tends to give us the closest results as it accounts for past performance as a time progression.”

Never consider your forecast set in stone, and remember that multiple scenarios can happen to your keywords.

4. Mix Up Your Forecasting Tools

Many respondents mentioned using a mix of tools in their forecasting workflow. Considering that different platforms have unique features, data and algorithms, it’s a great idea to get more than one perspective.

At Futurety, Lulia Poe changes tools depending on the forecasting stage, starting with Google’s platforms: “Forecasting PPC campaign performance for Google usually starts with a few Google Trends dives, in order to better understand the evolution of search interest over time. Once we understand the trends, we build out predictions using volume data from Keyword Planner.”

Once the campaign starts running, Poe keeps switching up tools. “Performance Planner is a great tool to optimize budgets and bids after the campaigns have been running for a while, especially those in highly competitive & volatile markets. We account for competition using the Impression Share metric suite, coupled with Auction Insights and Semrush, which come together to form a comprehensive view of who we’re up against.”

StableWP’s Djordje Milicevic also uses Keyword Planner in early forecasting stages. “We typically start by plugging in a website (our clients’ website as well as competitors’ sites) and coming up with target keywords. Once we identify keywords with high potential, we use the built-in forecasting tool to get a better estimate of the average CPC and how much traffic (and conversions) we can expect based on various budget levels.”

Milicevic then exports Keyword Planner’s data to adjust for better accuracy. “Based on our experience, Keyword Planner sometimes underestimates the traffic as well as search volume, especially when there’s little to no campaign history. That’s why the next step is to export the keyword data into a spreadsheet and, using our proprietary forecast modeling tools, get a final estimation of the traffic we can expect, as well as the conversions and the CPA (and ROAS). Finally, we connect the sheets to a Google Data Studio report to visualize the performance and share it with stakeholders,” Milicevic concludes.

CocoSign’s Caroline Lee runs historical data through multiple Google tools. “Firstly, we use historical data to measure previous performance. Then we use trends to identify the talents trends and hot keywords. Google Keyword Planner also provides aid in the process,” Lee begins.

“Then we use Google Auction Insights to check our competitors and their performance. This helps us determine the Budget for each keyword and overall ads for the month,” concludes Lee. Since all of Google’s keyword tools are free, Lee’s method doesn’t cost any extra money.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to go about your keyword forecasting. Running your forecasts through multiple tools can help you account for multiple scenarios and get more accurate predictions. Try different combinations until you find a workflow that delivers more accurate forecasts.

Editor’s tip: See how multiple Google keyword tools can work together with the Google Ads Campaign Engagement Dashboard Template for Databox. It pulls engagement data from Google Ads and Analytics to help you discover which keywords give you the best results.

5. Account for Future Growth

As you adjust your Google Ads forecasting plans according to market growth, don’t forget that your campaign will evolve over time. Your keyword forecasts should align with your campaign’s future growth.

Jordan Brannon from Coalition Technologies considers a client campaign’s future growth whether it starts with historical data or a fresh setup.

When running an account with historical data, Brannon factors optimization and future growth into every calculation. “We may add a percentage of improvement to important lead generation or ecommerce metrics based on our optimization scope (e.g., reducing irrelevant cost, increasing sales/leads/revenue, etc.)… Then, we set a percentage growth assumption for month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter projections,” Brannon says.

“For new accounts, we consider the average cost per click (CPC) of the top 10 keywords, take the industry average conversion rate, and derive a cost per acquisition (CPA). For ecommerce clients, we use average order values for revenue projections,” Brannon continues. “…Similar to what we do for accounts with historical data, we set a percentage growth assumption for month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter projections.”

When you’re creating your initial projections for your campaign, you need to play the long game. You can adjust your forecasts and bids in the future, but a strong forecast that accounts for future changes will save you work in the long run.

6. Start With a Budget or Reverse-Engineer It

As you forecast your Google Ads keywords, you might wonder how to adjust your budget alongside your predictions.

At VisualFizz, Marissa Ryan starts with a budget or builds a budget from goals and forecasts. “There are two ways that we forecast at VisualFizz, and we approach them with two starting questions,” says Ryan.

“First, if you have a budget in place, we ask ourselves ‘What can we get for this budget’? We take a look at the Costs-per-Click (CPCs) for the keywords we want to target and forecast how much traffic we can ‘afford’ with our budget. We usually forecast an expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) (use industry average if you don’t have one),” Ryan begins.

Continuing on the topic of that first question, Ryan continues, “We can then forecast the number of expected conversions by applying an expected Conversion Rate to the incoming traffic. You can see how this gives us a forecast of the number of visitors and number of conversions we might be able to ‘afford’.”

So, what’s the second question? “The other question to ask is relevant when you have Performance Metrics/Goals to hit but aren’t sure how much budget it will take to meet those goals. Here, the question is ‘How much does it cost to ‘buy’ the results I want?’ To answer this question, we take a similar forecasting approach. We analyze the CPCs for the keywords we want to target, and we determine how many clicks we can reasonably expect from our budget at these CPCs. From there, we forecast the expected conversion rate of those clicks, and we are left with similar forecasted metrics: the number of expected clicks, CTRs, CPCs, and CR for the incoming traffic,” Ryan explains.

Related: 10 Tips for Executing a Cost-Effective Google Ads Bidding Strategy

For Ryan, a campaign’s budget is virtually inseparable from its forecasts. “When forecasting PPC traffic, budget is a critical component. If you know your budget, you can forecast expected traffic/conversions at that spend amount, if you don’t know your budget, you can forecast the expected spend it will take to achieve your goals,” Ryan concludes.

The post Google Ads Forecasting: How to Improve Your ROAS With Accurate Projections appeared first on Databox.

“We did this in July, and in August, our numbers are looking much better. The CTR is higher than the industry average, and we have a more engaged audience than our main competitor.”

This information will help you paint an overall picture of your performance in the past month, but your client might ask:

“Are we closer to reaching the goal we’ve set?”

Oops! You may not have thought about that while writing your report. You’ve focused on your market benchmarks and being better than your competition. And what about the objectives your client wanted to accomplish?

Enter goal-based reporting.

Keeping your client’s objectives in mind when reporting on your efforts is critical for maintaining a good relationship with them. Goal-based reporting can be an excellent supplemental report that helps you stay on the right track with your strategy and proves the value of your work to the client.

If you’re wondering what goal-based reporting includes and how it improves the collaboration between you and your clients, this article will help you clear all your doubts and learn how to create effective goal-based reports.

Let’s dive right in.

• What Is Goal-Based Reporting?
• Why Is Goal-Based Reporting Important?
• When Should Agencies Use Goal-Based Reporting?
• How to Use Goal-Based Reporting to Improve Client Relationships?

What Is Goal-Based Reporting?

Goal-based reporting refers to writing reports in which you highlight only the most relevant data (KPIs, metrics, suggestions, etc.) closely related to your client’s goals.

Although you typically state the report’s goal in each one you write for your clients, goal-based reports are a tad different. You’re focused on your client’s goals and developing a story around them, which affects the report’s overall structure and contents.

That’s why a goal-based report can also look different from a conventional business report or marketing report. Traditional reporting typically focuses on how you’re performing compared to the industry benchmarks, your competitors, or your past month’s performance.

In goal-based reporting, you’re paying more attention to how you’re progressing towards your goals and how many goals you’ve managed to reach – you’re more future-oriented.

Goal-based reporting resembles creating campaigns on social media or setting up marketing reporting software to track your performance: in many of them, you can set different goals and then measure goal completions as one of the most important metrics that indicate how successful you are.

This type of report gives you a pretty straightforward illustration of how much progress towards the client’s goals you’ve made, which strategies worked, and which didn’t as you’re simply answering one question – did I reach the goal?

Why Is Goal-Based Reporting Important?

There are several reasons why goal-based reporting can be effective and important for maintaining good relationships with your clients.

It Provides Clarity

Agency reports sometimes contain data that the client doesn’t understand or consider important. On the other hand, goal-based reports give the client a clear picture of what’s been done during the previous week, month, or year, depending on how often you present your reports.

In client reporting, one of the most important goals an agency may have is to create streamlined, understandable reports. When you align your report data with the client’s goals and use the right benchmarks, your client will be able to follow the report and understand the results you’ve achieved.

It Enhances Trust

Showing your client that you understand exactly what their goals are will enhance the trust they have in you. Creating understandable reports will help them have confidence in your work because they will be able to see what you’re doing and how it pays off.

Also, when a client trusts you’ll make the most out of the budget they’ve set aside for marketing, sales, or another type of activity, they won’t feel the need to micromanage you. This way, your overall relationship will function better.

It Prevents Misunderstandings

Sometimes, your client won’t understand well the metrics you include in the report. And if you include too many, the wrong ones may grab their attention. Say your social media likes are low – your client may not understand that this metric is irrelevant to their goal.

However, if you exclude any metrics that don’t relate directly to your clients’ goals, they’ll only be able to focus on the metrics and KPIs that matter. You’ll avoid misunderstandings and additional explanations that waste your time.

When Should Agencies Use Goal-Based Reporting?

Reporting is just as important as anything else you do for your clients. It’s an opportunity to showcase your results and keep the client in the loop of what’s going on.

However, your clients usually belong to another industry and they’re already overwhelmed by the core activities of their own business, so it’s critical to keep your reports effective and to the point.

Goal-based reporting is meaningful – according to experts, it mimics a natural conversation between you and your client, which includes:

• Exploring objectives
• Risk tolerances
• Possible resources

With this in mind, long-term relationships could benefit from goal-based reporting, since it includes productive conversations about what strategies are working and generating the desired goals, and what should be adjusted or removed due to poor performance.

If you’re looking to nurture lasting cooperation with a client who wants to be involved in strategy implementation, goal-based reports are undoubtedly the way to go. By relying on these reports, you will be able to stand out among agencies where reporting is considered a necessary evil.

It’s essential to emphasize, as well, that goal-based reports are not meant to replace traditional reports completely. They’re still important because your client will want to know how they’re performing against their competitors and how much progress they’ve made since last month or quarter. Goal-based reports should be used to supplement traditional reporting and provide the client with a better performance understanding.

Finances are one of the fields where goal-based reporting seems to work more efficiently than in any other. If your client has specific financial goals and aspirations (for example, revenue-wise), goal-based reporting can help you set the right expectations on what you’ll showcase during a meeting.

As people from other industries may not always understand financial jargon, creating streamlined, well-organized goal-based reports will help you present your data in a simple way that will not overwhelm the client. At the same time, they’ll know exactly where they are regarding their goals and how much progress they’ve made.

How to Use Goal-Based Reporting to Improve Client Relationships

Every additional effort you make in working with your clients can contribute to them having more trust in your competence and authority. Goal-based reporting can be considered as extra energy you invest into making sure your clients achieve their goals while providing them with an ally on that path.

We’re giving you five ways you can use goal-based reporting to enhance your client relationships.

• Build a Unique Reporting System
• Make the Client Feel Involved
• Nurture Transparent and Frequent Communication
• Leverage Short-Term Goals for Motivation
• Appreciate Their Time

Build a Unique Reporting System

Goal-based reporting can have multiple benefits for your business relationships. Not only will your agency’s work stand out as client-centric, but you’ll also manage to strengthen these relationships and build authority, trust, and loyalty.

Traditional reporting is what most agencies do, but if you offer these additional reports that highlight the most important results, track the most relevant KPIs, and keep the client up-to-date with your performance, your reporting system will become even more effective.

You’ll be able to visualize the whole picture of your client’s success against the industry benchmarks, but also stay on track when it comes to their unique business goals. This pretty much covers everything any client would like to know and they’ll appreciate this additional effort you’ve put into the work you do for them.

Make the Client Feel Involved

There will be clients who outsource all their marketing or sales activities to you and you rarely hear from them unless it’s necessary. However, most people will check in from time to time: they’ll want to know what your strategy is, what you’re doing at the moment, and how well you’re performing.

If you include goal-based reports in your reporting meetings, you will make your client feel involved because this type of reporting usually requires a discussion with them. This chat can be fruitful because you’ll go over the results and goals together.

At the same time, you’ll get an update on your client’s wishes and ensure the goals are still the same and keep the client informed about your activities.

Nurture Transparent and Frequent Communication

Open communication is a must when it comes to maintaining long-term business relationships. The same goes for frequent communication, and goal-based reporting can help you with that.

For example, if you create the traditional marketing or strategic report once a month, that may not be enough for the client to feel involved. Or you may not be able to act on the data quickly enough to fix potential errors or update your client’s goals if they change.

However, weekly check-ins may work much better — a 15-minute meeting is enough for you to briefly update your client about your progress towards the preset goals.

Leverage Short-Term Goals for Motivation

High-level business goals can be broken down into smaller, short-term goals that your clients can achieve more quickly. With goal-based reporting, you can accomplish two incredible things:

1. You can prove the value of your work to your client by updating them about reaching the short-term goals – a set of small successes will confirm that you’re on the right track with your strategy.
2. You can motivate your client to trust the process. Sometimes, clients feel impatient about seeing the results of your work as soon as possible. Informing them about achieving these short-term goals will keep them satisfied while you’re working on reaching the high-level ones.

Appreciate Their Time

Good reports are to-the-point, clear, and concise. The same goes for goal-based reporting. If you ensure that your goal-based reports are effective and provide the client with useful insights rather than meaningless numbers, you will show them that you appreciate the time they set aside to be involved in this process.

Wasting hours on way-too-long meetings every week is no good for either of you. To avoid that, you can use automation tools to speed up the process of creating custom reports for your clients, and ensure they’re well-organized and clear so your reporting meetings can be brief and effective.

Accomplish Your Goals with Databox Goal-Tracking Feature

Keep your eyes on the prize, right?

In the world of reporting, it’s “keep your eyes on the goal.” And it makes perfect sense – as long as you know what you want to achieve, you will be able to create strategies that contribute to that goal and help you get one step closer to it every day.

And that’s exactly what your clients are going to ask: “Are we getting close to our goal?”

It can be anything: increased sales, more website traffic, higher ranking on Google or ROAS for Google Ads, reduced expenses… Whatever the goal is, it’s important to write reports that clearly display your progress towards them to your client.

Now, if you have many clients, it can turn into a nightmare where you’ll spend more time on writing reports than doing the work. But that’s where Databox steps in.

We don’t want you to waste your time on tasks you can easily automate. We want you to have enough time and focus to do your best work. Our goal-tracking software allows you to do just that by helping you visualize your progress and make your performance more predictable.

This software enables you to set goals for any metric you consider relevant and track them in context rather than in a separate spreadsheet. You can track your goals in real-time without having to log into every analytics tool you use and create scorecards to keep everyone on the team up-to-date.

Want to get notified when you’re close to hitting a goal so you can prepare a glass of champagne to celebrate? We got you. Or, in less fortunate cases, you may receive a notification that your goal is off track, so you can react promptly and fix the hiccup before it becomes an issue. Just as useful!

And the best thing about this software? You can track it all on one screen.

So, if YOUR goal is to stop wasting your time and take your reports to the next level, look no further than Databox. Sign up now and improve your client relationships with goal-based reporting today.

The post Goals Based Reporting: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Databox.

These are your Key Performance Indicators, and they’re more than just metrics and numbers on a spreadsheet; they’re the lifeblood of your online business.

But with so many KPIs to choose from, how do you know which ones are truly vital for your eCommerce success?

That’s where we come in: with the right data and expert-backed tips.

We’ve surveyed 58 eCommerce professionals to bring you the ultimate list of eCommerce KPIs — the ones that the pros track, the ones that really move the needle.

Let’s dig in!

• What are KPIs for eCommerce?
• How to Choose the Best eCommerce KPIs for Your Business
• Most Important eCommerce KPIs for Tracking Sales Performance
• Most Important eCommerce KPIs for Tracking Marketing Performance
• Most Important eCommerce KPIs for Tracking Customer Service Performance
• The Best Tools for Tracking eCommerce Analytics
• Empower Your eCommerce Success with Databox

What are KPIs for eCommerce?

Ecommerce KPIs are the critical indicators that reveal the performance of your online business against your set goals and objectives. They provide you with insights that drive your strategic decisions.

By tracking the right eCommerce KPIs, you empower yourself to make informed decisions that can significantly enhance conversions, revenue, marketing effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and overall operational efficiency.

Editor’s note: Having a hard time tracking your eCommerce KPIs? With Databox, you can automate performance alerts and make adjustments when they matter most.

How to Choose the Best eCommerce KPIs for Your Business

With data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA limiting third-party data collection, eCommerce businesses should prioritize KPIs derived from first-party data. Metrics such as customer lifetime value (CLV), repeat purchase rates, and email engagement are now even more critical. Investing in tools that integrate directly with your CRM or use anonymous customer profiling can help maintain robust analytics without breaching privacy standards There are tons of KPIs available to monitor, but they’re not all important to the success of your eCommerce business. So when it comes to choosing eCommerce KPIs, your focus should be on the ones that provide the most valuable insights.

Here’s how to choose the best eCommerce KPIs for your business:

• Align Them with Your Business Goals: Your KPIs should directly impact your bottom line and support your business strategy. They should reflect your overall performance and help you track progress toward your specific goals.
• Ensure Measurability: The best KPIs are quantifiable and provide unique insights into your business’s progress and results. They should be easily measurable and understandable by your team.
• Consider Your Growth Stage: The importance of certain KPIs can change depending on the current growth phase of your eCommerce business. Whether you’re in the start-up, growth, maturity, or renewal/decline phase, choose KPIs that are most relevant to your stage.
• Reflect Your Reality: KPIs can vary significantly from one eCommerce business to another. Don’t just follow industry trends or mimic another business’s metrics. Choose KPIs that are most relevant to your specific business context.
• Keep It Short and Effective: Remember, less is more. There’s no point in tracking a multitude of irrelevant KPIs that will only overwhelm you. The best KPIs for your business are those that provide meaningful and actionable insights.

Tracking Sustainability KPIs to Align with Consumer Demand

By carefully selecting your eCommerce KPIs, you can ensure that you’re focusing on the metrics that truly drive your business forward. 

As consumer demand for sustainable practices grows, eCommerce businesses should start tracking sustainability KPIs, such as:

• Carbon footprint per order: Measure the environmental impact of deliveries and packaging.
• Percentage of sustainable products sold: Track how eco-friendly product lines perform compared to other categories.

Return rate of recyclable packaging: If applicable, measure how many customers reuse or return sustainable packaging. Incorporating these metrics can attract environmentally conscious consumers and set your brand apart in a competitive market.

Most Important ECommerce KPIs for Tracking Sales Performance

Sales performance KPIs are pivotal indicators of your business’s financial health and the effectiveness of your sales strategies. They help set sales manager goals and offer valuable insights into revenue generation, customer buying behavior, and overall sales efficiency. Mobile commerce (m-commerce) continues to dominate, with mobile shopping accounting for over 70% of global eCommerce traffic. Alongside traditional KPIs, track mobile-specific metrics like mobile cart abandonment rates, mobile conversion rates, and load times for mobile users. Optimizing your mobile experience can lead to significant gains in customer retention and revenue

• Annual Repurchase Rate
• Net Profit
• Sales
• Average Order Size
• Gross Profit
• Average Order Value (AOV)
• Conversion Rate
• Cart Abandonment Rate
• Checkout Abandonment Rate
• Add-to-Cart Rate
• Orders Per Active Customers
• Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV)
• New Customer Orders vs. Returning Orders
• Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS)
• Product Affinity
• Inventory Levels
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Revenue Per Visitor (RPV)
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• Average Profit Per Customer

Annual Repurchase Rate

The annual repurchase rate is a key indicator of customer loyalty. As Lars Lofgren of Quick Sprout puts it, “If the bulk of your customers come back every year, you can focus on product quality and loyalty. If you have to rebuild your customer file every year, you have an acquisition-driven business.”

Net Profit

Dennis Moons of Store Growers emphasizes the importance of net profit, stating, “If you’re turning a profit, it means your foundation is good. It gives you breathing room and allows you to invest in sustainable growth.”

Sales

Sales are the lifeblood of any eCommerce business. Your total sales are the total amount of goods or services sold over a specific period.

You can use this Online Sales dashboard if you want to keep an eye out for sales but also track other eCommerce metrics like total users, sessions, bounce rate, and views.

Average Order Size

The average order size is a measure of how many items customers typically purchase in a single transaction.

Gross Profit

Gross profit is a measure of profitability before operating expenses and taxes. You can calculate it by subtracting the total expenses from the total sales.

Average Order Value (AOV)

Average order value is the average amount of money a customer spends per transaction. Andrea Rijna’ of Sana Commerce emphasizes the importance of monitoring your AOV: “It’s a key KPI because it helps measure how well you capitalize on cross-selling and upselling opportunities.”

“Increasing your average order value is one of the most efficient ways to increase your eCommerce revenue,” Rijna says.With the eCommerce Overview dashboard, you can stay on top of your average order value as well as other metrics that are relevant for your business like transactions, total revenue, purchases, and RPU.

Conversion Rate

Our respondents identified conversion rate as by far the most important eCommerce KPI that needs to be tracked. It’s the rate at which users on your eCommerce site are buying your products or services.

Jaykishan Panchal of E2M Solutions highlights the importance of conversion rate, stating, “Your conversion rate is indicative of how successful all of your business strategies are in getting people to engage with your ecommerce website. Ultimately, it impacts just about every other KPI involved in ecommerce.”

At Superior Honda, Julien Malet says that “comparing month-to-month and year-over-year conversion rates allows us to pinpoint the source of our increased revenue. And setting quarterly KPIs for our goal conversion rate helps us stay on track to achieve our desired percent increase in annual revenue.”

What’s a Good Conversion Rate for an eCommerce Business?

As you start tracking your conversion rate, you may find yourself asking if your conversion rate is good or not. To provide you with some benchmarks, we asked our respondents what they think is a good conversion rate for an eCommerce business.

According to our benchmark data, the median conversion rate based on 687 contributors is 1.15%, with the top quartile showing values of 2.32% and above.

A couple of respondents also offered suggestions for how to improve your conversion rate.

Alistair Dodds of Ever Increasing Circles recommends “improving your conversion rate through onsite optimization split-testing, threshold-free shipping pricing, product bundles, and FOMO. 

With the same amount of traffic, you can effectively double or triple your revenue through effective conversion optimization testing.”

Kevin Williams of SurgeStream offers a few more recommendations:

1. “If your website structure is confusing, reorganizing it so that users can find your products more easily can have a big impact on conversions.”
2. “Website speed: the slower your website, the lower your overall conversion rate.”
3. “Adding trust factors such as third-party site seals, logos, and customer reviews can also increase your conversion rate.”

Cart Abandonment Rate

The cart abandonment rate is a measure of the number of potential customers who start the checkout process but do not complete their purchase.

ROCKETSHP’s Mark Hayes suggests looking for things like a complicated checkout process or too-high shipping costs when trying to fix a high abandonment rate. “Then I work with clients on fixing those. In one client’s case, fixing an overly complicated checkout process lead to $100,000 in additional revenue,” Hayes says.

Eric Melillo of COFORGE echoes this approach. “Think of cart abandonment as a source of resistance. If there’s too much product info, the page may seem heavy. If there are too few features or weak photography, the product feels less valuable. If pages load slowly or there are too many checkout steps, users get impatient. Inflexible or problematic checkout processes cause the user to get frustrated and bail.”

“Monitoring each friction point can help ease the checkout process. Typically, they are easy fixes that create quick wins, produce less abandonment, and generate more completed sales,” Melillo says.

Here’s a dashboard template you can use to monitor cart abandonment rate and analyze eCommerce metrics and KPIs like monthly sales, average order value, new and returning customer sales, and more.

Checkout Abandonment Rate

Checkout abandonment is when a shopper goes through their journey by adding one or more items to their cart, entering their personal and credit card information in the checkout step, and then deciding not to complete the purchase for whatever reason.

Add-to-Cart Rate

While add-to-cart rate isn’t a popular metric, Dennis Edward of Core dna recommends tracking it as it “tells you what percentage of your visitors actually added a product to their carts.”

“This is important because it tells you if you’re attracting the right audience if your visitors come to your site with a specific purpose in mind (or if they’re ‘just looking around’) and if your products and/or prices meet your target consumers’ expectations.”

Orders Per Active Customer

This KPI measures the average number of orders placed by each active customer. Generally, the more orders per active customer you have, the better your customer retention.

Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV)

GMV is the total value of merchandise sold over a certain period. A high GMV indicates a high level of sales activity.

Samuel Gibson of Enjovia calls it the most important eCommerce KPI: “Many other metrics are critical to improving conversions and sales, but GMV allows us to see the overall success of our eCommerce platform in one figure. Ultimately, if the overall volume is increasing, we are growing, and customers are using the system.”

New Customer Orders vs. Returning Orders

This KPI compares the number of orders from new customers to those from returning customers. A balance between new and returning customer orders is ideal for sustainable growth.

Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS)

The cost of goods sold is the total cost of all the goods a company sells during a certain period. COGS is an important consideration in calculating profitability.

Product Affinity

Product affinity measures the relationship between different products. Understanding this metric can help you make more effective product recommendations.

Inventory Levels

Keeping track of inventory levels is crucial for avoiding stockouts and overstock situations. Accurate inventory tracking can help you maintain the right balance and avoid lost sales.

PRO TIP: Get Useful, Actionable Data on Your Ecommerce Store’s Performance

To improve the performance of your online store, it’s vital to have access to useful and actionable data. But, with so many metrics available to track, it may be hard to determine which ones will actually help you move the needle.

That’s why we have created a concise dashboard template that only tracks the most important metrics for analyzing the core elements of your ecommerce businesses, such as:

1. Transactions and orders. How many transactions does your online store process in a day, a week, or a month? How many orders, and how many were placed on the same day of the previous month? 
2. Sales volume and trends. See how much money has been generated from sales in the current month. Analyze daily trends to compare with your sales goals and take action to reach them. 
3. Website traffic trends. Track the number of new and returning visitors to your website and the number of individual sessions initiated by these users. 
4. Conversion to customers. See what percentage of your website visitors convert to customers. 
5. Revenue per customer. See how much revenue you get from each unique visitor that interacts with your store during a given time period.
6. Amount per transaction. Track the average dollar amount each customer spends on a sale.
7. Best-selling products. See your most popular products in terms of volume and revenue in a given period.

And more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring your online store’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in ecommerce reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. 

According to Kurt Estler of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast: “No metric captures the overall health of an eCommerce business quite like customer lifetime value. Conversion rate, average order value, and return customer rate are all reflected in CLTV.”

“Knowing how much revenue a customer generates over his/her lifetime can help you invest in the right channels sooner, even if your competitors shy away because the direct revenue from that channel appears to be unprofitable,” adds Troy Fawkes of Delta Growth.

And in addition to tracking your CLTV, Andrew McLoughlin of Colibri Digital Marketing also recommends tracking it “relative to the intake point to make sure that the business is growing steadily. Lifetime value should increase so that a new customer this year has a higher value than a new customer a year ago.”

Revenue Per Visitor (RPV)

RPV is a measure of the amount of money generated each time a customer visits your site. A high RPV indicates a high level of customer engagement.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is the cost associated with convincing a potential customer to buy a product or service. A low CAC is ideal for profitability.

“Knowing and understanding CAC is critical. An eCommerce business selling high-ticket items for $1,000+ is okay with paying $100 to buy a customer, but if you’re selling items with a $50 price tag, you can’t afford that cost. For this reason, it’s essential to keep your CAC in check at all times,” says Djordje Milicevic of StableWP.

“Think of it like this: you could make more sales by throwing more money into marketing. But if your CAC goes up, making more sales could actually bring down your profits. You’re bleeding money on acquiring new customers. If you don’t track your CAC, your business may soon collapse, and you won’t even know why.”

“Understanding your CAC helps you plan how many customers you want to acquire in a certain period and then allocate your marketing budget appropriately to get the highest performance and profitability,” Milicevic concludes.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

CPA is similar to CAC but includes all costs associated with acquiring a new customer, not just marketing costs. A low CPA means you’re spending less to acquire each customer, which is good for your bottom line.

According to Kyle Parsons of Ascenditt, “CPA is the metric that calibrates for all other KPIs to tell us if they are performing at sustainable levels. If we know our CPA, then we can safely project our ROI, which is vital to scaling up.”

“For example, if your ecommerce store converts at 7%—but your CPA leaves no room for profit on the sale and lifetime value of the customer—then 7% is actually not a good sustainable number. CPA allows us to look at every other KPI with an honest vision and determine if we’re on the right track.”

Average Profit Per Customer

This KPI measures the average profit generated from each customer. The higher your average profit per customer, the more profitable your business.

Stan Tan of Selby‘s sums it up as: “The more profit you can get out of a customer, the more you can afford to spend on acquiring that customer.”

“For example, if each customer on average is worth $1,000 to you, you can afford to spend anything below $1,000 to be profitable. Whereas if a competitor’s average profit per customer is only $200, they can’t spend anything above $200—but you can because each customer is worth more.”

Most Important eCommerce KPIs for Tracking Marketing Performance

How impactful are your marketing efforts? Marketing performance KPIs provide the answer. They shed light on campaign effectiveness, customer engagement, and the return on your marketing investment.

• Website Traffic
• New Visitors vs Returning Visitors
• Revenue Per Site Visitor
• Time On Site
• Bounce Rate
• Page Views Per Visit
• Average Session Duration
• Traffic Sources
• Mobile Site Traffic
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
• Influencer ROI
• Newsletter Subscribers
• Email Open Rate
• Email Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Unsubscribes
• Social Media Followers
• Social Media Engagement Rate
• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Organic Search Rankings
• Clicks

Website Traffic

Website traffic is a fundamental KPI for any eCommerce business. It’s the number of people visiting your website and a clear indicator of your online visibility and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. 

Monitoring your website traffic can help you understand your audience better, improve your SEO strategies, and optimize your website for a better user experience.

Website Traffic Dashboard template allows you to keep track of a variety of metrics in addition to traffic. This includes total users, bounce rate, vies, and many more.

New Visitors vs Returning Visitors

The balance between new and returning visitors can provide valuable insights into your customer retention strategies and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns in attracting new customers. A healthy mix of both is ideal for a thriving eCommerce business.

Revenue Per Site Visitor

This metric is fairly self-explanatory, and Chloe Thomas of eCommerce MasterPlan recommends tracking it as it: “removes all of the bumps and enables you to quickly track performance across time.”

Time On Site

Jeff Neal of The Critter Depot emphasizes the importance of tracking time on-site, especially for businesses that focus on providing informative content to their customers. Neal says, “Ours is creating in-depth and informative care guides for reptile owners, so the metric we’re obsessively tracking is time on site for our care-guide pages.” 

“We believe if users are spending more time on the site and learning about reptiles as pets, then they are more likely to purchase live insects from our store.”

Bounce Rate

“Bounce rate is an important e-commerce KPI,” says Louis Watton of Shiply. “If lots of users are bouncing off of a page quickly, then you need to assess why that is. Are they not seeing the price they want? Not enough product images? No reviews or reasons to trust the site? The longer people stay on your site, the more familiar they get with your company, and the more likely you are to make a sale.”

The aptly named KPI Dashboard template allows you to see all of your important eCommerce metrics and KPIs, including bounce rate, users, sessions, engagement rate, and more.

Page Views Per Visit

Page views per visit is a measure of user engagement on your website. It shows how many pages a visitor views during a single session. A higher number indicates that visitors are finding your content interesting and relevant, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

Average Session Duration

The average session duration allows you to see how much time visitors spend on your website during a single visit. This KPI can provide insights into user engagement and the overall user experience on your website.

Traffic Sources

Understanding where your website traffic is coming from can help you optimize your marketing strategies and identify the most effective channels for customer acquisition.

Mobile Site Traffic

Mobile shopping is becoming the norm, and tracking mobile site traffic has become crucial for eCommerce businesses. It can help you understand how well your website is optimized for mobile users and identify opportunities for improvement.

PRO TIP: Save Time Creating Your Google Analytics 4 Traffic Dashboard

Yes, you can DIY in Google Analytics 4, but what if you would prefer a simpler, easier route? After all, once you learn how it’s done, you still have to choose the right metrics and design your custom dashboard to answer the important questions your stakeholders have, for example:

1. How many people are visiting my website?
2. Which channels bring in the most users?
3. How engaged are my users?
4. How well is my website keyword optimization performing?

and more…

Now you can benefit from the experience of Google Analytics experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing all the most important website traffic KPIs. This template allows for easy integration with scheduled report delivery. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Return on Investment (ROI)

“If I had to choose one KPI to focus on for e-commerce websites, it would be ROI,” says Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers. “If you’re able to get a positive ROI with your product, you can reinvest your profits into growth, traffic, ads, and conversion rate optimization so you can scale.”

“To get a positive ROI, keep improving your conversion rate while decreasing your lead costs.”

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

“Return on advertising spend is an important metric for e-commerce businesses that use online advertising,” says Anthony Capetola of Sales & Orders. “ROAS lets you assess how effective an ad campaign is, allowing you to determine what adjustments need to be made for any given advertising campaign.” 

Monica Eaton-Cardone of Chargebacks911 agrees: “Monitoring return on ad spend ensures your efforts are leading to an increase in revenue.”Track your ROAS in the Facebook Ad Campaign for eCommerce dashboard in addition to metrics like CTR, page likes, CPM, link clicks, and many more.

Influencer ROI

Josh Brown of Helpjuice suggests tracking influencer ROI if your eCommerce business uses influencer marketing. “More and more e-commerce businesses are relying on influencers to help them increase their reach/brand awareness, traffic, and sales.” 

The problem is that too many businesses look at vanity metrics like how many likes/shares/comments an influencer post received. Instead, you should measure if that activity helps you reach your marketing goals (and ultimately a positive ROI).”

Newsletter Subscribers

The number of newsletter subscribers can be a valuable KPI for eCommerce businesses. It’s the number of people who are interested in your products or services and have opted to receive regular updates from you.

Email Open Rate

The email open rate is a measure of how many people are opening your emails. A high email open rate indicates that your email marketing efforts are effective and that your emails are resonating with your audience.

It’s super easy to track email open rates with this Klaviyo Dashboard template. You can also improve your email marketing campaigns by monitoring additional eCommerce metrics and KPIs like CTR, marked as spam, CTOR, bounced emails, and more.

Email Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The email click-through rate is a measure of how many people click on the links in your emails. A high email CTR indicates that your emails are not only being opened but are also compelling enough to prompt action from your subscribers.

Unsubscribes

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of your email subscribers who opt out of your email list. A high unsubscribe rate could indicate that your email content is not resonating with your audience or that you are sending emails too frequently.

Social Media Followers

The number of social media followers is a measure of your brand’s popularity and reach on social media platforms. It can provide insights into the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategies.

Social Media Engagement Rate

The social media engagement rate is a measure of how actively your followers are interacting with your content on social media. It can provide insights into the quality of your content and how well it resonates with your audience.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click is a key metric for eCommerce businesses that use pay-per-click advertising. It represents the average amount you pay for each click on your ads. Monitoring your CPC can help you manage your advertising budget and optimize your PPC campaigns for better ROI.

In order to stay on top of CPC and other top eCommerce KPIs, you can use the Facebook & Google Ads dashboard template and monitor how your business is performing.

Organic Search Rankings

Syed Ali Hasan of Film Jackets recommends tracking the organic search rankings for your eCommerce site.

“Search rankings are important for measuring the growth performance of an e-commerce store. This will indicate whether your on-page and off-page efforts are working or not.”

“For example, if your desired landing page is ranking on the second page of Google, your next step is to check if it is properly optimized. Is the content creating any relevancy with the page? Does it have the required keywords?”

Clicks

Clicks are a basic but crucial KPI for eCommerce businesses. They represent the number of times users have clicked on your ads, links or any clickable element on your website. Monitoring your clicks can help you understand user behavior and optimize your website for better user experience and conversion rates.This GA4 SEO dashboard makes it incredibly easy to track clicks and countless other eCommerce metrics by medium, period, or other factors.

Most Important eCommerce KPIs for Tracking Customer Service Performance

AI-powered tools are revolutionizing customer service by reducing average resolution time and improving first response time through automated chatbots. AI can also analyze large volumes of customer inquiries, enabling personalized responses at scale. Tools like Zendesk AI or ChatGPT-based support systems can track these improvements while offering insights into frequently asked questions and recurring issues, enhancing overall customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. Customer service performance KPIs are key to evaluating your customer service quality and the success of your customer retention strategies. They help gauge customer satisfaction, measure service efficiency and assess the success of your customer retention strategies.

• Customer Retention Rate
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
• Hit Rate
• Number Of Customer Service Tickets
• Average Resolution Time
• First Response Time

Customer Retention Rate

Nate Masterson of Maple Holistics emphasizes the importance of customer retention rate for long-term success.

“Having customers come back for more is a sure sign that your eCommerce efforts are not being wasted, especially since repeat customers often refer to new customers.” 

Otmara Diaz-Cooper of Diaz & Cooper agrees: “A Harvard Business School study shows that just a 5% increase in retention can increase profits anywhere from 25% to 95%. Finding ways to get more business out of existing customers is hugely profitable and cost-effective.”

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

Customer satisfaction is typically measured by polling customers about their experience.According to David Hoos of The Good, making improvements to overall customer performance will have a positive impact not only on the conversion rate but also on ROAS, average order value, abandonment rate, and lifetime value.

Hit Rate

Hit rate measures the number of successful customer interactions compared to the total number of interactions. A high hit rate indicates that your customer service team is effectively resolving customer issues.

Number Of Customer Service Tickets

The number of customer service tickets can provide insight into the volume of customer inquiries and issues. This can be tracked using a service like HubSpot, which provides insights into your tickets, productivity, open vs. closed tickets ratio, and more.

If you want to get insights into your tickets, productivity, open vs. closed tickets ratio, and other eCommerce metrics, this HubSpot Service dashboard is the perfect tool.

Average Resolution Time

Average resolution time is a measure of how long it takes your customer service team to resolve customer issues. A shorter resolution time can lead to higher customer satisfaction.

First Response Time

First response time is the amount of time it takes for your customer service team to first respond to a customer inquiry or support ticket. Keeping this time as low as possible is crucial for customer satisfaction.

This can be tracked using a tool like Help Scout, which allows you to view the number of minutes, hours, or days it takes for your customer agents to first respond to a customer inquiry or support ticket.If you’re using HelpScout to monitor the effectiveness of your customer service team, then HelpScout for Customer Support Dashboard will help you keep an eye on important metrics, including fist response time, handle time, resolution time, and others.

The Best Tools for Tracking eCommerce Analytics

Having the right analytics tools at your disposal is crucial for eCommerce businesses, and there’s no dearth of platforms available.

When it comes to our respondents, Google Analytics is in the strong lead, used by 53% of businesses for its comprehensive insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics.

Ecommerce platforms are also popular choices, offering built-in analytics that cater specifically to online retail metrics. Similarly, specialized analytics tools provide advanced capabilities, including user segmentation, funnel analysis, and heatmaps.

With the shift to event-based tracking, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has replaced Universal Analytics, offering a more comprehensive view of user interactions across devices and platforms. GA4 is particularly valuable for eCommerce businesses due to its advanced machine-learning capabilities, predictive analytics, and privacy-first design. If you haven’t already transitioned to GA4, now is the time to leverage its power for tracking KPIs like customer behavior, attribution modeling, and revenue trends.

Additionally, consider incorporating AI-powered analytics tools, such as Shopify’s new AI-driven insights, which can predict trends and offer data-driven recommendations. Furthermore, tools like ChatGPT eCommerce plugins provide real-time customer support data and enhance user engagement effectively.

CRM platforms are also indispensable, primarily for tracking customer interactions, lead conversion, and retention. Email platforms, on the other hand, offer valuable insights into email marketing performance.

Finally, ad platforms are used to monitor ad performance, providing data on impressions, clicks, and conversions, essential for creating comprehensive marketing reports.

However, juggling multiple platforms can be a challenge. Thankfully, a comprehensive solution like Databox allows businesses to consolidate data from all these tools into a single view, thereby simplifying the process of monitoring eCommerce KPIs and ultimately making data-driven decisions more efficiently.

Empower Your eCommerce Success with Databox

Staying ahead of the curve requires a keen understanding of your business performance. KPIs serve as your compass, guiding your decisions and strategies toward success. From sales and marketing to customer service, each facet of your business has unique KPIs that reflect its health and growth potential.

However, tracking these KPIs across multiple platforms can be a daunting task with a plethora of tools available and time-consuming manual transfers between various spreadsheets and databases.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone; Databox has your back.

Our software is designed to help you create professional dashboards with ease:

• Connect your data source from our wide range of integrations
• Select the metrics you wish to track and place them on your dashboard
• Watch as your data transforms into visually appealing and easy-to-understand insights

Databox offers over 400 templates that you can customize with your data, or you can create a dashboard from scratch — no coding required. If you end up stumped, our helpful team will be ready to assist.

Regardless of the aspect of your ecommerce performance you wish to track, Databox provides real-time insights into all key metrics in one place.

Don’t let the complexity of data tracking slow down your eCommerce growth. Harness the power of business intelligence and transform your KPI monitoring into a streamlined, efficient process. Sign up for a free trial and start your journey toward data-driven success today.

The post Expert-Recommended eCommerce KPIs: The Essential Guide to Tracking Performance for 2025 appeared first on Databox.

Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker who often speaks on goals as they relate to business success, once said this.

While true, setting meaningful and realistic sales goals can often be a challenge.

Not sure where to start? We polled more than 30 sales professionals and asked them to share tips and real sales goal examples that use the SMART framework to help.

Let’s dive in.

In this post you will learn:

• What Are SMART Sales Goals?
• How Do You Set Realistic Sales Goals?
• 2 Types of SMART Sales Goals
• 5 SMART Goal Examples for Increasing Sales

What are SMART Sales Goals?

SMART is a well-established KPI that you can use to plan and achieve your goals. There are a certain number of interpretations of the acronym’s meaning, but the most common one is that goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Its appeal is obvious: being able to set goals that can be quantified and create accountability have the greatest chance of success. Due to this, SMART goals have become the defacto standard in many industries and a fixture in sales management goals.

So, in a nutshell, sales goals are desired results that your sales team aims to achieve within a specific time frame.

Editor’s note: Would you like to view the current performance of your most important goals at-a-glance, anywhere you go? Monitor your current performance with the Databox mobile app and access any dashboard you’ve built from your mobile device too!

How Do You Set Realistic Sales Goals?

You can set more realistic sales goals by using the SMART framework shared above.

Let’s use an example. Whereas most companies might set sales goals for increasing average contract value (ACV), a team using the SMART framework would set a more specific and realistic sales goal like this:

Increase ACV by 25% by the end of Q3.

Then, run this goal by your sales team to solicit any objections, suggestions, etc. In order to set realistic goals, it’s critical to have buy-in across the team. It’s okay if people feel challenged by the goals, but if they feel they’re completely unrealistic, they’re also not likely to hit them.

This is inherently more realistic because you’ve attached specific numbers with a specific timeline to the goal itself, and you’ve gotten buy-in across the team.

2 Types of Smart Sales Goals

Knowing the SMART approach’s effectiveness, many managers want to take advantage of the framework but don’t know what goal is the best for the job.

There’s more than a few to choose from, so we went to our experts to find out their favorite goal for boosting sales numbers, increasing revenue, and slaying the big goals. 

The advice broke down into two major camps:

1. Activity-based SMART sales Goals
2. Results-based SMART sales goals

PRO TIP: How to Set SMART Goals for Your Sales Team’s Performance

To decide which goals meet the SMART criteria, sales managers need to look at sales analytics for their teams and monitor sales KPIs, for example:

1. Average Time to Close Deal
2. New Deals Amount
3. Number of Customers
4. Average Revenue per New Customer

Based on these metrics, and in light of other revenue-based and activity-based goals, you can identify and set desired goals for future performance, but how to get this information?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our sales experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing an overview of your sales team’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up this Sales Analytics Overview Dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

We’ve outlined them below. 

1) Activity-Based SMART Sales Goals

Goals that focus on increasing a certain tactic or activity are often seen as the most actionable SMART sales goals because they can control the primary variable. Many of our experts extolled the virtues of activity goals to improve sales results and give teams something to shoot for. 

Our experts also consider making contact with leads to be one of the most important activities in the sales cycle. 

Melanie Musson of 360quoteLLC says, “Specific action-based (rather than result-based) goals can help your team because members know exactly what they need to reach for. If a team member knows what they have to accomplish, they can dive in and do it, and they can know they can meet that goal no matter what the overall outcome is for the team. When all team members are ‘in’ the results will follow.”

“While you can’t necessarily control the number of conversions,” says Kevin Picton of Sharpen It – Training and Coaching, “you can set targets for and measure some of the lead-up work that most often results in conversions. In particular, whenever we set KPIs for and measured the number of Customer Visits and Frequency of Customer Visits, more leads were generated. More sales were converted in direct correlation with these activities.”

Steve de Mamiel of The Mongrel Method says, “A goal that focuses on activities that drive results is the most effective at increasing the numbers. For example: To meet face-to-face with six prospects per week.” Mamiel points out that while the industry or sales process might change the required number of prospects, the number remains directly tied to desired outcomes and results. 

Taylor Randolph of ParkFellows suggests that sales reps set goals to “increase revenue by $10,000 by acquiring three new clients.” to do this, Randolph says, “Acquire new clients by talking to 20 new leads and following up at least five times per client.” They can track the number of new leads acquired using this sales leads dashboard.

Many of our experts rely on contact goals to drive sales numbers, including Melanie Hartmann of Creo Home Buyers. “Decide upon the number of contacts each member of the sales team will make each week. This is something that can be controlled and modified as deemed necessary. Focusing on the number of leads is not something that can be controlled by any member of the sales team. The number of leads can only be predicted based on past performance and future modifications to see if more leads are generated with different types of pitches.”

This is also important for Liam Barnes of Directive, who says, “One SMART goal that I think is most effective is X number of conversations had based on previous trends of conversations had. By setting a goal for actual conversations, we are setting ourselves up to increase the number of opportunities driven by sales.”

To understand the numbers by their impact, Trenton Erker of Clarity Online suggests working backward to arrive at the goal. “Figure out the number of calls that it will take to get one more sale per time frame – day, week, month. Then divide it up per day to and add that amount of phone calls to your list. Example: If you make a sale every 20 calls, you’ll need to make 4 more calls/day to make 1 more sale each week.”

Ted Rollins of Valeo Groupe applies the activity goal based on the industry, “Depending on the property type since we represent both senior and student housing, we set a number of tours per week. For instance, 40 (actual walk-through) tours of the property per week, where we engage the prospect and have them complete an information/interest form.”

Knowing the numbers helps you understand exactly how the increase will benefit your conversion rate, says Julio Ahumada of DNA Digital Marketing. “Setting a specific number of contact points with a prospect based on previous experience. Example 20 contact points per week = 1 sale. Increase sales by 50% you increase contact points to 30.”

Sometimes, it’s about more than the numbers on the page. Jyotsna Khan of Tyrannosaurus Tech suggests having a good old fashioned coffee connection, setting the goal of “having coffee with two people in the community once a week or attending three events in a week.”

Deepak Shukla of Pearl Lemon examines the contacts they make by their quality. “How many ‘feel-good’ conversations have you had today?” Shukla asks. “Because it’s not the number of conversations – it’s the ones that made them, and you feel good – that’s what drives sales.”

Michael Bacon of Moxie Media agrees, saying, “Strengthening current client relationships is one of the most effective yet underrated goals for increasing sales.”

For starters, says Bacon, “Periodically follow up with current clients to make sure their goals have not changed, and your product or service is still meeting their needs, so you don’t lose them to a competitor. In addition to ensuring your clients are happy, asking for their feedback provides you with invaluable information on how to improve your offerings and attract even more clients.”

There is another benefit. “When you show clients that you care about their feedback and satisfaction, you build trust. This can make them more patient and forgiving in the future if anything should fall below their expectations. You may even be able to generate additional sales from these satisfied clients.” 

“Checking in with your clients allows you to identify the ones who are most likely to provide you with client testimonials, case studies, and recommendations, all of which should help you gain more clients and increase sales. If possible, go above and beyond in your customer service to build even stronger, more loyal, and more valuable relationships with clients.”

But these have to be SMART goals, reminds Bacon. “Make sure you set SMART goals around current client relationships. Just saying you want to improve relationships is not enough. These goals will vary from company to company, but one example is to implement check-ins every 3 months with all current clients this year.”

“Another could be to address at least half of all client feedback received from these check-ins over the next year. Yet another could be to publish 5 new client case studies or testimonials on your website over the next 6 months.”

Setting duration goals for your prospecting is one way to ensure you’re putting in the effort and reaping the rewards, says Jenny Kelley of Kiwi Creative. 

She reminds us that, “The core of any successful sales process is to form an empathetic relationship with a prospect to understand their problem(s) and emphasize the value of your product or service as the best solutions. To get the best pulse on prospects’ problems or pain points, it’s integral to do proper research and outreach.” 

Kelly says, “One of our best platforms for outreach is LinkedIn. We spend around 90 minutes each day on LinkedIn connecting with prospects, learning about them & their businesses, and identifying areas that Kiwi can provide value. This goal lays a strong foundation for making deals and helping Kiwi gain other referrals.”

“In this sense, our SMART goal for our sales strategy is to spend 90 minutes each day on LinkedIn connecting with prospects and potential leads to learn about their pain points.”

The most critical component of SMART is the Timeliness, according to Samantha Odo of Precondo. “Although the goals you have defined should be achievable and attainable, a realistic timeline needs to be identified. In a growing competitive market, one needs to be an opportunist. Hitting the target at the right time is a crucial element to raise sales. Who serves first, wins first.”

For example, says Odo, “We set a goal to raise sales to 20% by targeting X number of customers. It is all achievable, but at what time? What if other competitors will approach the market more fiercely? Time is money; if it gets lost, we could never recover. Setting a deadline is also a motivation for the team.”

Goals aren’t just for reps, reminds Laura Hall of Laura Hall Consulting “Sales team numbers can be consistently improved when each individual is managed and communicated regularly and effectively. The most important goal any sales leader should have relates to communication. Setting a goal to sit down at least once per week to coach and listen to each person for a minimum of 30 minutes will reap results.”

Says Hall, “This important conversation allows the manager to understand challenges and needs to offer further support, and the team member will become more invested in their success when they can see a way to develop their skills and perform at a higher standard.”

Activity goals aren’t just about how much you’re doing, but how you’re doing it, says Jack Choros of Iron Monk. “I like to set a SMART goal that encourages my sales staff to use assumptive closing techniques on 9 out of 10 sales calls. In other words, instead of asking, ‘Do you think you’d be interested in our service?’ we assume the sale. ‘Based on our conversation today, it seems like the service package ABC would work well for you. Will you be using Visa or Mastercard to pay today?”

Use this sales team activity dashboard to measure and compare your sales team performance and productivity in real-time.

Related Article: 5 Types of Sales Goals Every Sales Manager Should Have

Editor’s Note: Need to know how each member of your team is performing? By tracking close rate by sales rep, you’ll have all the data you need to understand their performance and create individual training plans to help each rep operate at top performance. See how to do exactly that with our sales dashboard software here.

2) Results-Based SMART Sales Goals  

Results-based SMART sales goals are the other side of the coin, engaging reps by leaving the methods open in favor of increasing one or more metrics. While outcomes can be challenging to nail down to a specific number, the incentive to reach those goals can affect input. 

Anissa Short of The Work From Home CEO says: “I have been a part of the sales industry for twenty years, and within that time I have found that the thing which motivates a sales team member differs as much as the team members themselves.” 

“What is consistent, however, is that they all appreciate being recognized for their accomplishment. With that in mind, I have found that the most effective way in which to realize increasing sales is to establish benchmarks that focus on percentage increase rather than a specific amount.”

“For example, if every team member is challenged to increase their individual sales productivity by 5% every month, this goal is not only clear and trackable, but it affords each person the flexibility to work within their respective benchmark securely.”

“Implementing a strategy such as this is not only SMART for the individual, but it produces a SMART win for the entire team collectively.”

Paige Arnof-Fenn of Mavens & Moguls prefers to increase results not through activity-based outreach, but rather by improving results from customers already in play, suggesting we use “Increase # of repeat customers and referrals each year by 10%.” 

Arnof-Fenn calls it “the most cost-efficient way to build a business and scale your brand.”

Hung Nguyen of Smallpdf finds it just as important to keep those customers by reducing churn rate. “Many sales teams tend to focus on short-term goals, i.e., monthly conversion rate.”

“However, if you work on nurturing your existing customer base and appeasing their growing needs with your product, reducing the rate that users/customers ‘cancel’ will contribute to a consistent stream of recurring revenue, without having to get more leads into your sales funnel.”

Adam Hempenstall of Better Proposals coaches an “Increase your total sales by 10% monthly using their assigned sales channel. For our outbound sales reps KPIs, that means constantly setting the bar higher and maximizing the number of calls that turn to deals.”

Says Hempenstall, “The goal is attainable for now since we just started with outbound calls, but I am not sure that this kind of aggressive growth will be possible in the future. Cold calls are not the easiest way to convert prospects into customers, so we’ll see how our sales team handles this challenge.”  

One of the most telling metrics for Andrei Vasilescu of DontPayFull is Incoming Inquiry, calling it the most effective SMART goal for any sales team. “After hours of hard work and efforts of any sales team, if none of your target customers contact your business, you need to reconstruct your sales team or strategy. A person who asks about your products or services through email, text message, or phone call is supposed to be your possible customer. And that incoming inquiry confirms the initial success of your sales team.”

Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers calls Win rate “The SMART goal to focus on to increase sales.” Aufray says, “You want to decrease the number of sales leads you have to contact to close a deal. By increasing your win rate, you will be more efficient and find what’s working and what’s not working to convert a lead into a sale. You will learn the processes, psychology, and techniques to close more sales so your sales numbers will keep increasing.”

Looking at the hard numbers helps Aristide Basque of SH1FT keep the margins high, and recommends Lead to revenue ratio as a key metric for doing so, “because you know how much a lead cost you and you can then calculate the profit you make which is all that matters.”

Sometimes it’s not about how hard you’re working, says Cayley Vos of Netpaths. “The problem for making more money is usually never solved by getting more leads, but by better working the existing leads and clients that you have. The key to solving most problems in business is making more money, and the best way to do this is by charging more for what you already do.”

Vos, therefore, recommends using Increased average order value as a driving metric. 

As an example, says Vos, “We talked with a client who had a fantastic service that he charged 1000 to implement. We suggested that he add a zero to the cost to see what happened. He was skeptical but agreed to follow our advice.”

“The result – clients didn’t bat an eye and happily paid for his service. He just increased his revenue 10x with no extra work. If your average order is 1000 and you can bundle it with 2 other great 1000 products and charge 1997 for it. This gives you nearly double the revenue for the same amount of sales.”

Conversion rates are the driving factor for Toni JV of JVT Media. “If you focus on conversion rates of the people you’re trying to get sales from, you’ll naturally focus on things such as user experience, giving away value, and refining your process. These things will naturally bring more and more sales to your business.”

For Mackenzie Deater of Evenbound it’s about the path to the close, as well. “One great SMART Goal to implement is the percentage of MQLs who convert to sales.”

“For example, let’s say your marketing team delivers 300 marketing qualified leads/month. By setting a SMART goal of converting 5% of those MQLs into a sale each month, you really put the focus on increasing those sales numbers.”

“For many sales teams, the most challenging obstacle to overcome is just a disconnect between what a qualified lead is to them, vs. to the marketing team. By setting this SMART goal of the conversion percentage of MQLs, you can:

1. focus on increasing sales
2. see why your sales team isn’t reaching that goal in the first place. 

It gives you greater insight into how your marketing and sales teams are working together.”

Datis Mohsenipour of Outback Team Building & Training also recommends you get those prospects on the path as fast as possible using lead response time as a cornerstone metric. 

Explains Mohsenipour, “Inside Sales and Harvard Business Report put together a phenomenal report/infographic that highlights many important factors when dealing with leads. One that has always stood out to me and is still hyper-relevant today.”

“According to the report, if you call a lead within the first five minutes of them submitting a form, you are 900% more likely to reach them than if you were to contact them within five to 10 minutes.”

“The likelihood of getting that lead on the phone decreases even more significantly with every five minutes that you tack-on to your response time.”

Says Mohsenipour, “The ‘why’ is pretty self-explanatory. When the lead fills out your contact form, their focus is on researching you and your competitors. So, you’re more likely to get a conversation out of them when they have already allocated time to scope you out.”

“On a similar note, the report goes into detail about how many call attempts you should make to get someone on the line. That magic number = six. So think of all the time you’ll be wasting in follow-up calls if you miss the boat on calling someone within five minutes of them submitting their inquiry. You may need to call them as many as six times… Let’s not forget that your competitors may have already beaten you to the punch.”

For Ethan Taub of Loanry, the individual makes up part of a powerful whole, “ A smart goal that I think is personally effective is a Team goal. It means that we look at each member’s contributions per quarter to create unity in the workplace. It has been largely effective for us.”

All in all, while setting these types of goals is important, ensuring that you (and your team) monitor your progress against your set goals. You can do so with the help of these sales dashboard examples.

Related Article: How to Set, Track, & Achieve Your Monthly Sales Goals

Source: Medium

1. Increase revenue
2. Reduce customer churn rate
3. Increase number of qualified leads
4. Reduce cycle time
5. Increase customer lifetime value

1) Increase Monthly/Annual Revenue

• Specific: We will increase our revenue by $50,000 this quarter while saving on some operating expenses like daily cleaning services, thus saving $2,000 monthly
  
• Measurable: We will increase sales over the next quarter by focusing on the following outcomes: having 10 meetings booked weekly, 5 phone calls daily, prospecting to 30 people daily 
  
• Attainable: Sign 7 new contracts with customers
  
• Realistic: Keep it relevant. We’ll launch two new premium features based on the most requested features–and focus on getting our most active users upscale to our premium partner program.
  
• Time-bound: By the end of the first quarter of 2020
  

2) Reduce Customer Churn Rate

• Specific: Reduce churn rate by 4% by the end of the first quarter of 2020
  
• Measurable: Reach out to 50 at-risk customers weekly. Help 10 new customers with their onboarding process daily.
  
• Attainable: Get 5 at-risk customers to upscale monthly
  
• Realistic: Set up the knowledge base for all existing customers.
  
• Time-bound: At the end of the first quarter of 2020
  

3) Increase Number of Qualified Leads

• Specific: Increase the number of SQL’s in our funnel by 15% by the third quarter of the year
  
• Measurable: Have 60% of free trial customers sign up for our upcoming ebook
  
• Attainable: Add CTAs to 20 blog articles. Create 5 bottom of the funnel pieces of content
  
• Realistic: Reach out to prospects with lead score above 75
  

Time-bound: At the end of the month

4) Reduce Cycle Time

• Specific: Reduce sales cycle time from 100 days to 60  days
  
• Measurable: Ensure the next meeting is booked during the inquiry meeting
  
• Attainable: We will rework on our lead scoring process and focus on leads with a score higher than 75
  
• Realistic: Identify and focus on 3 channels that produce leads in the sales cycle. Purchase  a sales automation tool to automate all your repetitive tasks
  
• Time-bound: At the end of the first quarter of 2020
  

5) Increase Customer Lifetime Value

• Specific: Increase customer lifetime value from $3000 to $5000
  
• Measurable: Maintain a Net Promoter score of 9/10. Have 6 out of 10 long-serving customers switch to annual billing.
  
• Attainable: Engage 10 best serving clients in case studies and promote to your email list. Send monthly personalized emails to your clients offering to help solve their bottlenecks
  
• Realistic: Reduce first response time from 6 hours to 3 hours 2 minutes. Adopt live chat support by the end of January. Update knowledge base monthly with new educational resources.
  
• Time-bound: At the end of the first quarter of 2020

Wrap Up

We hope these SMART sales goals will help you and your teams reach new heights for sales and revenue. Employing even a few of the tips and tricks outlined here can give you a new perspective for managing your sales process, help identify leaks in the funnel, or simply get your sales team performing at a new level—and reaping the rewards.

The post 5 SMART Sales Goal Examples from 30+ Sales Professionals appeared first on Databox.

After all, the vast majority of decisions you make should be based on your company’s specific KPIs and metrics.

To squeeze valuable insights from the raw business data and understand the key performance indicators, companies use business intelligence tools, with the two main options being dashboards and scorecards.

But what exactly are dashboards and scorecards, and how can we tell them apart?

In this article, we will get into both of them in detail, talk about their benefits, and explain the differences between the two.

As companies rely more heavily on performance data, many teams also want faster ways to interpret what those metrics actually mean. Instead of manually scanning dashboards or comparing scorecards, teams now use AI data analysts, like Databox MCP to ask questions in plain English about performance and get answers based on their real metrics, definitions, and historical data. This makes it easier to understand why numbers changed, how trends are developing, and what deserves attention before deciding which reporting approach fits best.

• What Is a Dashboard?
• What Is a Scorecard?
• Benefits of Using KPI Scorecards
• Dashboard vs Scorecard: Differences You Should Know About
• How to Create a KPI Scorecard Dashboard
• Automate Your First KPI Scorecard

What Is a Dashboard?

Dashboards are one of the most frequently used business analysis tools in modern companies. They are used for visualizing large sets of data through graphs, charts, maps, and other visual features, all in one place.  

You can incorporate dashboards to monitor various operational activities within the company and track the most important key performance indicators in a project or process.

Furthermore, dashboards provide an instant overview of key metrics that the highest-ranking members of the company need to make everyday decisions, and are constantly updated when real-time changes occur.

They can also help you better comprehend certain aspects of the business and understand how the company is performing on a certain issue.

The best dashboards are informative, simple, concise, quickly accessible, and include tons of valuable insights.

Depending on the purpose behind it, there are four types of data dashboards you can create:

• Strategic dashboards – Used for monitoring long-term company strategies by analyzing trend-based metrics and KPIs.
• Operational dashboards – Tracking the operations that have a shorter time frame.
• Analytical dashboards – Used by analysts to extract valuable information from larger data sets.
• Tactical dashboards – Best suited for mid-level management. They can help you make better strategies based on the latest trends.

What Is a Scorecard?

A scorecard is a performance management reporting tool that is used for comparing the current activities in your company with the planned objectives and results.

In essence, companies use scorecards to align their strategies with the objectives by tracking important metrics related to customer information, projected growth, financial data, and business activities.

Scorecards are also the perfect solution in case you need to fine-tune the points of control, sharpen the organization’s processes, or optimize any current strategies.

This tool focuses more on providing a static overview of the organization at a specific moment, which means it isn’t really suitable for automatic analyses, real-time updates, or showcasing more granular details. 

To better understand just how beneficial scorecards can be, here is a brief list of some of the main reasons why companies incorporate them:

• They can help you understand whether you are producing the right products, see how profitable they are, and check if they are in line with the current trends.
• They showcase which call center scripts are functioning properly and whether there is any room for improvement in customer experience.
• They analyze the current safety standards and help you figure out ways to make the manufacturing environment more profitable.

In summary, scorecards track KPIs and analyze both the current metric status and the overall target value. Once you understand the gap between the two, you will have an easier time managing performance and coming up with better strategies to reach your company goals.

For best results, scorecards should be updated each week or month, depending on the amount of data you are dealing with.

Benefits of Using KPI Scorecards

Now that you know what scorecards are, it’s time we take a look at their benefits on a more granular level.

There are two main types of scorecards and we will go over both to help you understand their differences and decide which one to utilize.

But, before we get started, we recommend that you also check out our survey where we talked to dozens of experts about the use of scorecards. Seeing real-life examples of how scorecards are used will help you streamline your own company more efficiently.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the benefits.

Traditional Scorecards

Traditional scorecards are used for acquiring a birds-eye overview of the performance of each department, team, and individual within the company.

This type of scorecard is extremely comprehensible, but it’s dependent on the set objective.

Some of the main benefits of traditional scorecards are:

• Time period– The main component of a traditional scorecard is the set time period. You will gain insight into the activities that took place in a specific time period and then analyze them.
• Grading system – The grading system determines your company’s performance levels.
• Comparison – Get comparison insights between individuals, teams, departments, set goals, or historical goals.

Balanced Scorecards

Balanced scorecards provide you with insightful snapshots of your company’s activities, finances, and overall operations.

A great balanced scorecard displays data of both external services and internal functions. They represent a variety of different insights from one central location.

Some of the most notable characteristics of balanced scorecards are that they include the most valuable KPIs, have precise goals, and display target values numerically to make the comparison process easier.

The main benefits of balanced scorecards are:

• Better strategic planning – Creating a strategy and figuring out the most likely outcomes is much easier with balanced scorecards.
• Data-based management decisions – Using balanced scorecards usually forces companies to outline the crucial metrics for their strategic objectives. This makes management consider the data that really matters and make more informed decisions based on that.
• Robust performance reporting – Balanced scorecards improve information transparency both internally and externally, which ultimately leads to more efficient KPI management and advanced performance reporting.
• Tracking progress towards business objectives – Scorecards are the easiest way to monitor how your company is progressing towards the set business goals.
• Setting targets for employees – You can use balanced scorecards to manage employee performance by their outputs and results.
• Minimize the number of meetings – If your whole company has access to the same scorecards, then you won’t have to waste time organizing any unnecessary meetings.
• Determine the most profitable marketing campaigns – You can check out which marketing channels and campaigns generate the most profit.
• Quickly identify important trends – Scorecards allow you to stay up-to-date with all the latest trends.

To put it simply, balanced scorecards help you with strategic planning, improve communication, and allow management to make data-driven decisions.

You can use these scorecards to squeeze value from the raw data and create valuable insights that will streamline your business operations.

As you can see, scorecards can bring tons of value to your company. However, creating them isn’t exactly the easiest task.

Since scorecards provide a static view of your KPIs, you will have to log into multiple tools and build a new scorecard probably each week.

To streamline this process, you can use Databox Scorecards.

With Databox Scorecards, you will receive all the latest updates regarding your KPIs and metrics via email, mobile notifications, or Slack as soon as they occur. This saves both your time and nerves.

Dashboard vs. Scorecard: Differences You Should Know About

Sometimes, you will hear people refer to scorecards and dashboards as essentially the same thing.  

But, this doesn’t actually make much sense when you think about it.

Even though these two business tools share a lot of similarities, there are some striking differences between them that can’t be overlooked.

Here’s a table I created to help you glance over the differences quickly.

Let’s check out these differences in detail.

1. Definition and Purpose

A dashboard is a business tool that provides a visual overview of the most important KPIs and metrics in a company and updates them in real-time.

A scorecard is a framework that analyzes the current strategies and compares them with the company’s overall objectives.

To put it simply, purpose of a digital dashboard apps is to track performance, while a scorecard is focused on managing it.

2. Update features

Dashboards typically come with intelligent alarm systems that track data in real-time, while scorecards do that only occasionally (on a daily, weekly, or monthly manner).

For instance, if you were in a meeting, presenting the latest findings to your team, the dashboard will automatically inform you of any anomalies that occurred in real-time.

Scorecards will show you the exact same updates, but a week or a month later.

3. Measurement Tool

In dashboards, the main measurement tool is the included metrics.

On the other hand, scorecards combine both metrics and target values as the main measurement tool.

3. Goal Period

Scorecards focus on long-term goals, while dashboards are revolved around short-term goals.

4. Performance Indication

While a business dashboard offers users a clear overview of company performances, scorecards display the most important business activity trends in a certain time frame.

5. Audience

Dashboards are most frequently used by low and middle-level management to make everyday decisions, while scorecards are typically used by top management during strategic planning.

6. Decision Nature and Influences

Dashboards are one of the best ways to obtain an operational view of success and most important business activities, while scorecards are centered on company policies.

The data you find in dashboards is mostly used for describing team performance, expenses, and resources, and managing it.

On the other hand, scorecards compare the performance to the company’s target values.

Even though there are dashboards that can be used in a combination with scorecards, the best practice is to include both tools.

How to Create a KPI Scorecard Dashboard

Okay, so we have gone over what scorecards and dashboards are and talked about the main differences between them.

Now, it’s time we take a look at exactly how you can create a KPI scorecard dashboard.

Follow these steps to build a great KPI scorecard dashboard.

Set Business Goals

Since KPI scorecards primarily focus on comparing performances to target objectives, we first need to set up the goals that will be taken into consideration.

You can either choose short-term or long-term goals and don’t forget to define whether you want to look into specific business areas or acquire a general overview.

The most important thing here is to make sure that your objectives are realistic.

Build a Strategy Roadmap

Once you have a goal in place, you have to come up with the right strategies to achieve it.

This is where a strategy roadmap can come in handy – you can use it to make a list of everything you need to implement to reach the desired objectives.

When building a strategy roadmap, remember to always consider your employee’s capabilities and budget.

Define the KPIs and Metrics

Perhaps the most important step to building a great KPI dashboard scorecard is choosing the KPIs and metrics you will use for measuring performance.

Since each business area is full of different KPIs, you have to carefully choose the ones that will be the most valuable when measuring your objectives.

The main things to look out for are that the metrics provide context, are measurable, and that they can develop over time.

Below, you can see an example of what choosing metrics for a marketing scorecard looks like in Databox. The process is very simple, you just have to choose a specific data source and pick out the metrics you are most interested in.

Customize Further Options

While defining the goal, strategy, and KPIs your dashboard scorecard will revolve around is extremely important, you shouldn’t overlook the other aspects.

Some of the options you should also pay attention to are:

• Background color – While this might seem insignificant, the background color is very important for the design of your scorecard.
• Data range – Pick the exact data range you want your scorecard to focus on.
• Delivery options – Choose the channel where you want to receive your scorecard.
• Delivery time – Includes options such as frequency and schedule.
• Recipients – Select the recipients that you want the scorecard delivered to.

Customizing these options manually can take up a lot of time, which is why with software like Databox, you can do it all in one place.

Consult with the Relevant Departments

Lastly, you should always talk to the people in the departments that are relevant to the creation process.

To better understand the data you are working with and visually display it, it’s always recommended to collaborate with the departments that are most knowledgeable about it.

Automate Your First KPI Scorecard

Creating a KPI scorecard from scratch is one of those things that don’t get much easier with time.

You will always have to spend a hefty amount of time pulling data from the various tools, filtering out the most important information, and then building the scorecard in Excel or Google Sheets.

Luckily, advanced tools like Databox can help you automate this process.

The process is as simple as choosing your data sources, selecting the relevant metrics, picking a delivery time, and adding the recipients.

Databox allows you to sync all of your important tools and automatically populates your scorecard on a weekly basis.

Want to impress your shareholders with an outstanding KPI scorecard? Sign up for a free trial and create your scorecard today!

The post Scorecards vs. Dashboards: Definitions, Benefits, and Differences appeared first on Databox.