Agency Professionals: Metrics for Your Personal Success Dashboard

Creating an analytics dashboard that charts your personal successes at your agency can be beneficial for both you and your company - here's how to do it.

Much of my career has been spent working on the agency side. At one point, I had the idea of creating a custom dashboard to show results in a visual format and also personally know how I was doing to help my team.

This was not intended to be a dashboard of client results (I have previously written a post on best practices there). We had those, too, of course, to show clients program success. In this case, I’m talking about personal results generated to help the agency grow and to display how my work contributed to that.

If you work at an agency, this is really something you should consider doing, too. I recommend trending these data points in a Google Sheet and sharing with your manager to provide insight into your success. It’s easy to do and also a good personal exercise to challenge yourself to improve. After all, at an agency success (specifically marketing and sales) is the responsibility of everyone.

Here are the metrics I saw as valuable:

Revenue generated for your agency: It doesn’t matter if you’re a director, manager, or vice president. You are likely generating revenue for your agency every month. Hopefully not just existing retained revenue, but also new clients and projects. Regardless, this is the top line of what you should be showing in your personal dash.

New projects/clients closed (number + context): At an agency, business development is everyone’s job and you should document the new clients and projects you generate. Also go a step further and document the source of the project/client (for example, from a conference, from Twitter) so you can show context. This only takes a second (in reality you’re not going to be generating too many per month, maybe two to three if you’re really good) so take the time to document detail in addition to number.

Qualified leads generated: Naturally, not every lead you bring in the company will close. Some may in the future as they might not yet be ready; others may love you but not have it in the budget right now. But document this to show the potential value you’re bringing each month from your networks, speaking opportunities, blogging, etc.

Organic stories generated per month mentioning/about your agency: If you’re at any type of digital agency (especially PR) you should be eating your own dog food and be an active participant in industry conversations. Naturally, as part of this, your participation should spark conversations on blogs, in trade publications, etc. This generates a good amount of organic mentions per month and the value for your firm is high. Also include the links to stories you’ve inspired — don’t assume people have seen them.

Traffic driven per month to your agency’s website/blog: If you’re at a marketing or PR firm of any type, you should have built up a personal network to direct interest to compelling ideas. Don’t just share links to your employer’s site without tracking. Take the time to document success. Of course this is a KPI, but one worth documenting to show how you contribute to your firm’s visibility.

I think sharing much more than this to your higher-ups is likely too much. They probably won’t care about much else. But delivering a quick, high-level dashboard is something that demonstrates your personal marketing accountability and if you’re a high performer clearly shows your results. As a note, never report vanity metrics like followers, new likes, +1’s, visits to your personal blog, or other such KPIs here. If you do this you’re actually hurting yourself and shouldn’t engage in this exercise at all. This is because it isn’t about your personal brand, rather how you help your agency.

Also remember, if you start doing something like this you have to follow through and update monthly along with sending a quick note (ideally, share how you plan to improve and are using data to do so). With these caveats aside, I think if you’re willing to be responsible with updating and stick to metrics that matter, this exercise is hugely beneficial for everyone. Not to mention it will help you stand out.

Do you already share a personal dashboard at the agency side? What else would you add?

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