Embarking on your inbound marketing journey without data is like sailing a ship without a compass: you might eventually reach your destination, but you'll likely face unnecessary obstacles and delays along the way.
To navigate effectively and maximize your success, a purpose-built, centralized dashboard is indispensable for every business engaged in inbound marketing.
With the right HubSpot dashboards, teams gain a comprehensive overview of their inbound efforts to monitor, manage, track and optimize the entire funnel – and ensure your marketing spend produces the maximum possible ROI.
This article explores the proven method we use at ProperExpression to build best-in-class dashboards in HubSpot to provide clarity, make data-driven decisions and generate more revenue.
Expect to learn:
- The three common problems an inbound dashboard solves
- Why U-Shaped attribution is ideal for inbound marketing
- How ProperExpression builds and uses HubSpot dashboards to make revenue-based marketing decisions
How Do Dashboards Support More Effective Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketers face three common challenges:
1. Resource Allocation
The number of channels B2B buyers use to research vendors has doubled since 2016. But this creates two problems for inbound marketers:
- Finding the right buyers: How do you ensure you’re leveraging the channels your ideal buyers use most?
- Maximizing ROI: How do you allocate spend to produce the highest possible returns?
2. Turning Leads into Revenue
Many inbound marketers produce a high volume of leads – but struggle to convert them into customers with the sales team. From gaps in your nurture funnel to inefficient processes, many inbound strategies prioritize quantity over quality in lead generation and miss the bigger picture.
3. Proving ROI
40% of B2B marketing CMOs feel under pressure to prove ROI faster. But without clear revenue attribution or accurate tracking of individual channels’ performance, it can be difficult to definitively prove your inbound marketing is influencing deals and producing measurable returns.
All three of these problems can be solved with the right dashboards. Reporting dashboards provide a comprehensive, easily accessible executive overview so you can:
- See which channels are producing the highest value leads
- Measure and demonstrate how many deals are influenced by inbound marketing
- Solve bottlenecks in the marketing and sales funnels to ensure more inbound leads turn into revenue
But this raises a question: how exactly do you measure “influence”?
A Guide to Inbound Marketing Attribution
Imagine a lead requests a demo and you have comprehensive data showing every interaction they’ve had with your marketing channels. They liked 12 social posts, clicked a CTA in 6 emails, viewed 4 blogs and clicked on one of your Google ads – but you have no clue how much influence each of those channels had on their decision to take the next step.
Marketers solve this problem by using an attribution model – which is a fancy-sounding way of saying they agree to credit specific channels based on when the lead interacted with them. Two of the most popular models are:
- First-touch attribution: This model gives credit for a given outcome to the first channel a lead interacted with. If you initially created the contact through a LinkedIn ad, the deal is attributed to that LinkedIn ad.
- Last-touch attribution: This model gives credit for a given outcome to the final channel a lead interacted with before converting. If the lead came to your website to request a demo after clicking the CTA in a marketing email, the demo request will be attributed to email marketing.
We believe both models are valuable and use them in our inbound dashboards. But neither captures the truth about most B2B deals – which is that they are influenced by a wide range of factors.
Instead, we use a “U-Shaped” attribution model which gives the first and last touch points 40% of the credit for a conversion – and the remaining 20% goes to every channel the lead interacts with between those two points.
Leveraging this model can be difficult, as it requires a wider range of metrics to gain the full picture. But fortunately, we’ve created a custom system within HubSpot that allows us to use multiple models simultaneously - so with the right dashboard setup, we can easily deploy U-Shaped attribution reporting.
What Should Your Inbound Dashboards Track?
The best way to build a comprehensive inbound dashboard is to break it down into three distinct phases:
1. Bottom of the Funnel
Bottom of the funnel (BoFu) reporting shows how your inbound marketing contributes to actual pipeline and revenue generation. The ideal dashboard features data on total revenue and revenue that is attributable to inbound marketing – helping you understand how integral inbound is to your overarching revenue operations.
Key BoFu Metrics
- Pipeline & Deals Created: Tracking the total deals and pipeline created by all sales and marketing efforts.
- Closed Won Revenue & Deals: Tracking the total revenue generated by all sales and marketing efforts.
- Pipeline & Deals Directly Influenced by Inbound Marketing: Tracking t he total deals and pipeline that were directly influenced by marketing.
- Closed Won Revenue & Deals Influenced by Inbound Marketing: Tracking the total volume of revenue generated that was directly influenced by marketing.
2. Middle of the Funnel Metrics
Middle of the funnel (MoFu) reporting shows how inbound marketing helps move leads through the funnel. It uses a last-touch attribution model to show which channels prompt leads to request a demo or book a meeting.
Key MoFu metrics
- Channels Moving Leads to [Conversion Goal]: Tracking the final channel leads used before converting, which typically means requesting a demo or meeting.
- Demo/Meeting Requests by Lifecycle Stage: Understanding how leads are progressing through the Sales funnel after they request a demo or meeting.
- Pipeline by Channel (Contact Last Touch): Tracking how much pipeline can be attributed (last touch) to each channel.
- Revenue by Channel (Contact Last Touch): Tracking how much revenue can be attributed (last touch) to each channel
Top of the Funnel Metrics
Top of the funnel (ToFu) reporting shows which channels are generating leads – and whether those leads turn into customers. It uses first-touch attribution to understand where new leads come from and how those leads progress through the funnel.
Key ToFu metrics
- New Leads by Channel (First Touch): Tracking which channel generated new contacts.
- Deals by Channel (First Touch): Tracking how many deals can be attributed (first touch) to each channel.
- New Contacts by Lifecycle Stage per Channel: Tracking how leads from each channel are progressing through the marketing and sales funnels.
4 Steps to Maximize the Impact of Your Inbound Dashboard
Strategy: Identifying Your Purpose
Many marketers race ahead to start tinkering with their tracking systems, but this usually ends up a very messy waste of time. Before you do anything, answer a simple question: What am I hoping to achieve with this dashboard?
This ensures you:
- Limit your metrics: Less is often more when it comes to inbound data. You need to view the metrics that will actually inform decisions – and nothing else.
- Integrate reporting into campaigns: Your dashboards exist to support marketing – which means you need a clear plan for how they will fit within your existing workflows.
Preparation: Setting Your Tracking
The next step is to ensure you have the right mechanisms in place to generate all the data you need. There are two essential metrics every inbound marketer needs to track:
- The contact’s original source
- Contact’s last touch source before conversion (demo request or meeting request)
This will help you use first and last touch attribution – and ultimately provide most of the insight you need to inform your inbound marketing strategy.
Implementation: Using Your Inbound Dashboards
Once your tracking is in place and the dashboard is available, we recommend marketers set up two regular cadences:
- Weekly analysis: Undertake a weekly review to monitor campaigns, find bottlenecks or unexplained issues that may require strategic adjustments. This ensures you catch problems and seize opportunities in real-time.
- Monthly analysis: Start each month with a review of the previous month’s performance and compare it to previous periods. Look for trends, such as sudden changes in performance from specific channels. This will help you make larger strategic pivots and reallocate budget to maximize inbound ROI.
Get True Clarity on Your Inbound Marketing with ProperExpression
As a HubSpot platinum partner with expertise in RevOps, we have helped countless companies gain clarity, improve collaboration and drive higher inbound ROI with purpose-built dashboards designed around their specific business objectives.
Want to discuss your current challenges and how our team of HubSpot experts can help?
