Too Many Dashboards
Clare Jonik,
Clare’s the founder of Feel Good Marketing Co., EVP at Dialect Inc. and a CMA Board Member, helping organisations grow through smart strategy and marketing. Previously Managing Director of Future Plc’s award-winning agency, Fusion, I’ve worked with global brands including Liverpool FC and Skydance. Outside of work, I’m a mum of three, so there’s never a dull moment.
Somewhere along the way, we started mistaking visibility for understanding.
In content marketing—particularly in B2B—we have more data than ever before. Engagement rates, dwell time, downloads, MQLs, pipeline attribution. Every piece of content is measured, tracked and reported on.
And yet, ask a simple question—is this actually building a brand that people want to buy from?—and the answer is often unclear.
Have we optimised for reporting, not decision-making?
I’m seeing a result in the form of measurement paralysis. We can tell you which whitepaper performed best, which campaign drove the most leads, which post had the highest engagement. But we’re far less confident on what’s really shifting perception, building trust, or making a brand more memorable over time.
And in B2B, that matters more than we often admit.
Because while buying cycles are longer and more rational on the surface, they’re still driven by human instinct. Familiarity. Confidence. Preference.
The feeling that this is a brand I trust.
“We’ve built systems to measure what people do. Not how they feel.”
But, that’s starting to change.
Some of the most progressive brands are beginning to look beyond traditional content metrics and track something less tangible, but far more predictive: charisma. Not as a vanity concept, but as a way of understanding emotional resonance, cultural relevance and brand energy in-market.
In a content marketing context, that shows up in signals like:
Whether content is shared because it’s useful—or because it says something meaningful
The depth and quality of engagement, not just volume
Organic advocacy from customers, employees or communities
Whether your content shapes a conversation, rather than just filling space
These aren’t “soft” metrics. They’re early indicators of whether your content is building a brand that people remember, return to, and ultimately choose.
Because even in B2B, brands that are felt tend to be shortlisted.
“The opportunity now isn’t to move away from performance metrics, but to connect them to something more meaningful.”
That requires a shift from dashboards to signals. A more dynamic measurement model that brings together search behaviour, social discourse, content performance and brand perception—and uses AI not just to report, but to interpret.
Not more data. Better answers.
Done well, this allows us to start mapping a clearer chain:
content → emotional engagement → consideration → commercial impact
And that’s where content marketing becomes truly strategic—not just a lead engine, but a growth driver.
For B2B teams, this means rethinking what success looks like. Less focus on content as output, more focus on its effect. Less time producing reports, more time interrogating what’s actually changing in the market.
Because if your dashboard disappeared tomorrow, would you know which content is making your brand stronger?
This is something I’ll be exploring further when I chair a panel at the Content Marketing Association B2B Summit on September 29th: Drowning in data, starving for answers.
We don’t need more dashboards.
We need content that moves people—and measurement that proves it.