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Jean-Marie Bonthous, Seamless Social
The new, free Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard serves as a command center for monitoring and analyzing your marketing efforts, building your reputation, and discovering new opportunities. On a single page you can view:
• Business listings – Find out how many search engines and directories include your business and discover new listing opportunities you may be missing.
• Online business reputation – Learn what customers are saying about you across the Web, so you can be responsive to their needs and provide better customer service.
• Web site traffic – Discover how many people are visiting your site and where they are coming from by viewing Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, or Google Analytics site traffic reports.
• Marketing campaigns – Track key metrics from email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, so you know what is working.
• Online sales – Know how your daily sales are doing with order and revenue reporting from your Yahoo! Merchant Solutions online store1.
• Marketing ideas - Learn about new marketing approaches and leading marketing service providers who can help your business grow.

The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard is specifically designed for small business owners, not marketing experts. Content is presented through colorful charts and graphs so you can quickly and easily get the information you need to grow your business. How-to videos help guide you as you use the Marketing Dashboard.

Reputation Tracker
The Reputation Tracker page of your Marketing Dashboard is where you can view online reviews, ratings, and mentions of your business collected from up to 8,000 sources across the Web. Reputation Tracker is divided into a Reviews section and a Mentions section.
You can use the free Reputation Tracker service, or upgrade to Reputation Tracker Pro. With the free version, you can see the two most recent reviews and mentions of your business, your details, trends, and sources for reviews, ratings, and mentions,
as well as words commonly used in reviews and mentions.

With Reputation Tracker Pro, you can access additional online reviews, ratings, and mentions of your business from up to 8,000 sources, in one place. You can also compare your online reviews, ratings, and mentions with those of your competitors. You can share reviews through email, Twitter, Facebook, and more, and set up email alerts to be notified about new reviews. You can see your details, trends, and sources for reviews, ratings, and mentions as well as words commonly used in reviews and mentions.

Site Traffic
Your site traffic provider is the source of data used for your Site Traffic summary on the Overview page of your Dashboard, and for the data used for your Site Traffic page. Your Manage Services (Marketing Dashboard Services) page will list one or more of the following Site Traffic providers for your Dashboard: Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Google Analytics.
If the domain you’ve created your Dashboard for belongs to a Yahoo! Web Hosting account, you have the option of using Yahoo! Web Hosting as your site traffic data source. If the domain you’ve created your Dashboard for belongs to a Yahoo! Merchant Solutions account, you have the option of using Yahoo! Merchant Solutions as your site traffic data source.

Google Analytics
All Dashboard accounts list Google Analytics as a potential provider of your site traffic data. In order to use Google Analytics as the source of site traffic data, you must have a Google Analytics account and be tracking your site data using Google Analytics.
If you have a Google Analytics account you wish to retrieve data from, you must authorize Yahoo! to access this data.

Managed SEO and PPC
If you have managed search engine optimization (SEO) or managed pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns with OrangeSoda, you can keep track of your managed SEO and/or managed PPC campaign performance right from your Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard.

Managed SEO
Search engine optimization helps optimize your site with the aim of attaining a higher position in organic (unpaid) search engine results. The higher your site ranks in search results for your desired keywords, the more traffic you are likely to get from search results when users perform searches using these keywords and click through to your site from the returned search results. When you have managed SEO services with OrangeSoda, you can view a summary of your SEO performance on the Overview page of your Marketing Dashboard, and see detailed information about key site traffic performance metrics and keyword performance metrics on your Managed Search Engine Optimization page.

Managed PPC
Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns can help you reach more customers. PPC marketing places paid links to your web site in paid link areas of search engine results. “Pay-per-click,” also known as “cost-per-click,” means that you pay a fee when a user clicks through to your site from your paid link. The keywords you use for your PPC campaigns and your keyword spend can help determine where your paid link is positioned among other paid links. The higher your position, the more traffic you are likely to get from clicks on your paid link. When you have managed PPC services with OrangeSoda, you can view a summary of your PPC campaign performance on the Overview page of your Marketing Dashboard, and see detailed information about key campaign performance metrics and keyword performance metrics on your Managed Pay-Per-Click Campaigns page.

Email Campaigns
If you run email marketing campaigns through an account with Constant Contact, you can easily keep track of key campaign performance data right from your Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard. When you sign up for an account with Constant Contact and authorize Yahoo! to retrieve this data for use with the Marketing Dashboard, and then use your Constant Contact account for one or more email marketing campaigns, you will be able to view the following information in the Email section of your Dashboard’s Campaigns tab:
1. A summary of key metrics for your Constant Contact email campaigns. This includes:
• The number of emails sent, opened, and forwarded, and the number of click-throughs from opened emails, as well as the number of opt-out requests, bounced emails, and spam reports.?
2. Detailed information about individual campaigns, including:
• The name of your email campaign, and the date and time it was created.
• The total number of emails sent for this campaign during the selected time period.
• The total number of sent emails belonging to this campaign that were opened during this time period.
• The total number of click-throughs from opened emails belonging to this campaign during the selected time period.
• The total number of emails belonging to this campaign that were forwarded during the selected time period.
• The total number of recipient opt-out requests received from this campaign during the selected time period.
• The total number of sent emails belonging to this campaign that were undeliverable, or “bounced,” during the selected time period.
• The total number of sent emails belonging to this campaign that were reported as spam during the selected time period.

All Dashboard accounts list Google Analytics as a potential provider of your site traffic data. In order to use Google Analytics as the source of your site traffic data, you must have a Google Analytics account and be tracking your site data using Google Analytics.
If you have a Google Analytics account you wish to retrieve data from, you must authorize Yahoo! to access this data.
selected.

Local Visibility
The Local Visibility page of your Marketing Dashboard lets you review your business information on Yahoo! Local and other search engines and directories, as well as your listing sources and other listing opportunities, all in one place. Business information that is potentially incorrect is also highlighted on this page, so you can easily identify errors in your listings.
Yahoo! Small Business provides your Local Visibility service. You have the option of using the free Local Visibility service, or upgrading to Local Visibility Pro.

With the free version of Local Visibility, you can:
• View your listing information on search engines and directories
• Edit your listing information on individual search engines and directories
• See additional listing opportunities
• See listing information that may be incorrect

With Local Visibility Pro, you can:
• Submit your business information to more than 100 directories at once, which can
• help you reach more customers and boost your online visibility
• Submit updates and corrections to business information to more than 100 directories
• at once
• View your listing information on search engines and directories
• Edit your listing information on individual search engines and directories
• See additional listing opportunities
• See listing information that may be incorrect

For many small businesses, nothing beats a free marketing dashboard. With HubSpot, for $750 and up each month, and with a one-year commitment, you get superior functionality: lead tracking, lead nurturing and conversion. And you always have a great view of your marketing funnel.

What do you think about the tradeoff: free versus more functionality? I would love to hear from you.

Photo courtesy of Dawnhops, via Flickr’s Creative Commons