#dreamdatarecipes

Give your CMO a single view of marketing's contribution to pipeline and revenue

Dreamdata's Alberto Possagno (Senior Account Executive) shows how to build a CMO dashboard that consolidates everything they need to keep an overview of marketing activity and how it contributes to opportunities created and revenue generated.

Supplementary Guide

These steps allow you to replicate the analysis. For context and more examples, we recommend you watch the video above.

What this dashboard gives your CMO

Most CMOs are working with an incomplete picture. Activity is spread across channels, campaigns are tracked in silos, and connecting spend to revenue requires manual work that is rarely timely or trusted.

This dashboard changes that by bringing everything into one place with numbers they can stake their reputation on.

You get a single, unified view of how marketing is contributing to pipeline and revenue without switching between reports or tools.

Step 1: Build a attribution report for closed-wons

The starting point is understanding which marketing channels are actually moving the needle and how much of your new business marketing influenced and which channels deserve credit. 

  • Go to the Analytics Hub and create a new report, and select the Stage Attribution report template.

  • In the left-hand configurator, set the date range to Last 12 Months and aggregate by month.

  • Under Analyze & Measure, add the following metrics: Attributed New Business, Attributed New Business Value, Total New Business, Total New Business Value, and Share of New Business.

  • Set the filter category to Channel and include all the marketing channels you want to consider, such as Paid Video, Content, Review Sites, Webinars, and Events.

  • Segment by Channel, and you can optionally add Source as a second layer for more granular performance data.

  • Select your preferred attribution model and click Apply. We recommend the data-driven attribution model, because the algorithm improves over time and uses data from all your customer journeys to dynamically determine which touchpoints drove pipeline progression.

  • Before sharing anything with your CMO, you can double-click any pipeline metric to see the individual deals behind the number to validate the data.

  • Save the report and give it a name.

Step 2: Build a paid performance report on LinkedIn

With stage attribution in place, the next step is to zoom in on paid performance. 

This report will focus on how LinkedIn spending impacts pipeline and revenue, so your CMO can see exactly what the budget returned and where it had the most impact.

  • Go to the Analytics Hub and create a new report using the LinkedIn Ads Performance template, and we also have templates for Google and Meta available for when you want to create a report on those platforms. 

  • Set the date range to Last 12 Months.

  • Add the influenced and attributed counts for MQLs, SQLs, closed-wons (NewBiz), and ROI.

  • The template comes pre-filtered to LinkedIn and is segmented by campaign. if you wish to report across multiple paid sources, you can add them under the Filter by field.

  • Select the data-driven attribution model and click apply.

  • Use the top 10 campaigns chart to switch between Cost and ROI views to quickly identify which campaigns are delivering returns and which are not.

  • Again, you have the option of clicking into any pipeline metric, e.g., Influenced SQL, to see the deals attributed to each campaign.

Step 3: Assemble the CMO Dashboard

With both reports saved, the final step is bringing everything together. 

Rather than sending your CMO to two separate reports, you can combine them into a single dashboard they can return to at any time and trust every number they see.

  • In the Analytics Hub, create a new dashboard from scratch.

  • Add a text widget at the top with a clear title, for example: NewBiz Impact and Ads Performance - Last 12 Months.

  • Click Add Widget and select the NewBiz Attribution Report we created. Add the key metric tiles, the “Channel by Attributed NewBiz” chart, and the total breakdown table.

  • Click Add Widget again and select the Paid Ads Performance Report. Add the cost and NewBiz metric tiles, the campaign chart, and the campaign breakdown table.

  • Add a text widget above the paid ads widgets to separate the two parts of the dashboard, for example, “LinkedIn Performance”.

  • To compare metrics side by side, duplicate a chart and change its metric, for example, Cost over time next to ROI over time.

  • Click the info icon on any widget to go directly to the source report.

  • Save the dashboard, and you can pin it to the top of the Analytics Hub so your CMO can access it easily at any time.

Wrap up

When your CMO has a reliable, always-on view of how marketing is contributing to pipeline and revenue, the conversation shifts from justifying spend to directing it.

That is only possible when the numbers are credible enough to stake your reputation on.

  • It is built on a unified data model that connects activity across your entire go-to-market stack, so the numbers reflect the full buyer journey rather than a single touchpoint.

  • Every pipeline metric links back to the source deals, so your CMO can drill into any number and see exactly which accounts and customer journeys are behind it.

  • The dashboard updates automatically and is always ready for the next leadership conversation, without waiting for Ops to pull a report.

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