This checklist will help you get organized and track your progress as you develop your integrated communications measurement system. It is designed to be used alongside “7 Steps to Design an Integrated Measurement Dashboard for Your Entire Communications Effort.”
(You may also download this checklist as a PDF by clicking here.)
Step 1: Define your goals and your leadership’s expectations
☐ Meet with leadership to understand their expectations for communications results. Get consensus on goals for your dashboard.
☐ Make a list of people who influence your budget and set your priorities. Add in anyone else who will want to see or use your dashboard.
☐ Set up a meeting with leadership to understand their expectations. Make sure they’re on board with your dashboard goals.
☐ Create your meeting agenda:
☐ Decide on your target audiences
☐ Decide on goals
☐ Decide on who/what the benchmark will be
☐ Decide on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
☐ After the meeting, summarize the agreed-upon definitions in a document. Include a list of the key metrics (including the KPIs) you’ll be reporting on in your dashboard.
☐ Ask senior management to sign off on the KPIs and dashboard.
☐ Based on approved KPIs, make a list of data you’ll need to report on.
Step 2: Determine who is going to use your dashboard and how
☐ Make sure you can answer these questions:
☐ What decisions will be made with the data?
☐ How often do your metrics need to be updated?
☐ Who will see and use your dashboard and/or your reports?
Step 3: Identify your data sources
☐ What will you use for web analytics?
☐ Who owns that web data? Can you get a user name and password? Will they generate reports for you? Can you get a full Excel export to automatically feed into your dashboard?
☐ Do you have a monitoring/listening tool?
☐ Who owns that monitoring data? Can you get a user name and password? Will they generate reports for you? Can you get a full Excel export to automatically feed into your dashboard?
☐ Do you have a CRM platform?
☐ Who owns that CRM data? Can you get a user name and password? Will they generate reports for you? Can you get a full Excel export to automatically feed into your dashboard?
☐ Is there existing market research data on your company (e.g., awareness, preference consideration studies)?
☐ Who owns that data? Can you get a user name and password? Will they generate reports for you? Can you get a full Excel export to automatically feed into your dashboard?
☐ Do you have access to your departmental budget data?
☐ How far back can you get data?
Step 4: Define your metrics
☐ What are your communications goals?
☐ Decide on the best metrics. What are they? (Use this table if you need help)
Step 5: Define what you’re benchmarking against
☐ Identify what peer/competitor keeps leadership awake at night.
☐ Estimate amount of data you will need to collect for your competition.
☐ Do you have the budget to do competitive benchmarking?
☐ Do you have consistent data for the past 13 months? If not, how far back can you gather data?
Step 6: Design your prototype dashboard
☐ Set up a table in Excel or use Smart Art in PowerPoint and populate it with the goals and metrics you’ve selected.
☐ Create sample indexes and charts with the data you have.
☐ Setup a meeting to review your sample with everyone that will be using your dashboard.
☐ At the meeting, go over the indexes and any other calculations with everyone who will be using or seeing your dashboard.
Step 7: Implement your dashboard
☐ Create a detailed set of instructions that codify the decisions you made in the prior steps. Make sure that you explain how to calculate any indexes you’ve defined. Also spell out the definitions of positive, negative neutral if you’re using sentiment. Give examples of any messages you are tracking, and spelling out any parameters (i.e. dates, key media, etc.)
☐ Select a dashboard platform.
☐ Import data into your platform.
☐ Analyze the data for insights, errors, and problems.
☐ Share results with your team.
☐ Share results with leadership.
☐ Train your team on how to use the platform or set up training with your chosen vendor.
☐ Congratulate yourself on a job well done! ∞
