Not one of you reading this blog would disagree: We live in a world of information overload.

At your company, data likely streams in by the petabyte – sales figures, consumer habits, competitive information, big picture, small picture, and so forth.

When we stop for a second to consider how much information is loading up our servers, we have to ask ourselves – how much of these bits and bytes do we actually need to grow our business, our revenues, and our possibilities?

Here’s recent interaction that got me thinking about this: I was working with a CEO who lamented the fact that his marketing team submitted a 50-page deck every month, crammed with data that spanned the valley of significance. It became an added task for this CEO to distill the deck each month down to the salient points that he then could share with his board.

His view was that the marketing team was just being lazy in dumping a trove of statistics into a PowerPoint deck and calling it a day. The marketing team, conversely, was probably doing this to ensure that, tucked into the 50-page deck, were the stats that really mattered to the CEO.

At the end of the day, this company – and countless others – may have skipped a critical step in the reporting paradigm – setting filters, in the form of KPIs, that can help distill the information down to what is truly most important to the company’s well-being at the time and looking forward.

Trying to focus on 50 pages, or thousands of data points, is a recipe for inertia. In my view, reporting works best when targeted at the top 10 KPIs that represent the strongest indicators of future success. This is not to say that you must live with the same 10 KPIs forever – if a new KPI emerges as critical, swap it out with a less important KPI to keep the list to a maximum of 10.

The key is to apply prioritization and discipline to the way in which your marketing team reports to you, so your success factors are well defined and all stakeholders (including the board members that are scrutinizing you) are satisfied with this alignment.

In the chart below, I’ve shared an example of what one B2B client outlined for their top 10 KPIs. As you can see, each key performance indicator includes a basic description of what the indicator is measuring; the raw numbers, a goal or target for each, and of course, the trends.

Top 10 Marketing KPIs

I really find this view to be genius in its simplicity. In developing 10 top marketing KPIs (and enhancing the list as needed), you bring transparency and accountability to the relationship between marketing and leadership. This is then reinforced when the top 10 KPIs are presented and discussed monthly or quarterly.

Remember, it’s not the destination, but the journey. Without alignment on the definition of success of your marketing strategies, it’s nearly impossible to meet or exceed the collective goals.

If you need an objective voice to help navigate this process, Chief Outsiders’ fractional CMOs and CSOs are adept at helping leaders navigate the path forward. Please reach out if I can be of any assistance.