You have logged in, your business is on MarketBase, and now you are staring at a dashboard full of numbers. What do they actually mean? More importantly, where should you look first?
Your MarketBase dashboard tells a story about your business. Not a complicated one. Three numbers give you the big picture, and three dashboard sections let you dig deeper when you are ready. This article walks you through all of it, one piece at a time.
In this article
- 1. Your three headline numbers: Health, Rank, and Progress
- 2. The 360 Check: your marketing health broken down by area
- 3. The Market Ladder: where you sit among your competitors
- 4. The Marketing Compass: your personalised improvement plan
- 5. What to look at first and how to build a routine
Start with your three numbers
Every time you open your dashboard, three numbers sit front and centre. Together, they answer the only questions that really matter.
Health Score (0 to 10) is your overall marketing fitness. Think of it like a check-up result. An 8 means your foundations are solid. A 4 means there are gaps that need attention.
Market Rank (#X of Y) shows where you sit against the other businesses in your local market. If you are a dentist in Hamilton and there are 18 dentists tracked, your rank tells you exactly where you fall in that group. This is the number that makes it real, because it is about your actual competitors, not some abstract scale.
Progress (0 to 100%) tracks how many of your personalised recommendations you have completed. Health and Rank measure outcomes. Progress measures effort. It is the one number you control directly, and it moves the moment you take action.
For a deeper look at how these three numbers are calculated and how they relate to each other, see How MarketBase Scores Work.
Key point
The three numbers tell a story in sequence. Complete your recommendations (Progress goes up), your marketing health improves (Health Score climbs), and you overtake competitors (Rank rises). Action leads to outcomes leads to results.
The 360 Check: your marketing health breakdown
Your Health Score is a single number, but it is built from nine separate areas of your online marketing. The 360 Check shows you how you are performing in each one.
These nine areas cover the full picture of your digital presence: your Google Business Profile, customer reviews, Maps visibility, domain health, on-page SEO, backlinks, social profiles and citations, website traffic, and opening hours.
Each area gets its own score, and each score is relative to your local market. A score of 75 in Reviews means you are ahead of roughly three quarters of your competitors for that area. A score of 30 means most of them are doing better.
You do not need to understand every area in detail to get value from this section. The pattern is obvious at a glance: high scores are strengths, low scores are gaps. The areas with the lowest scores are where you have the most room to improve, and often where small changes make the biggest difference.
The Market Ladder: your competitive position
The Market Ladder is where competitive intelligence gets concrete. It shows every business in your local market, ranked from top to bottom, with you highlighted in the list.
You can see each competitor's overall rank and how they perform across the nine marketing areas. This is powerful information that used to require expensive agency reports or guesswork.
Picture this
Tina runs a physio clinic in Tauranga. She is ranked 6th out of 14 in her market. When she checks the Market Ladder, she notices the business ranked 4th has a much higher Reviews score but a lower GBP score than hers.
That tells Tina two things: reviews are clearly important in her market, and she already has an edge on profile quality. She knows exactly where to focus next.
The businesses ranked just above and just below you are your most useful reference points. They are close enough in performance that a few targeted improvements could shift your position. For more on how to use this strategically, see Benchmarking Against Local Competitors.
The Marketing Compass: your improvement plan
The Marketing Compass is where your dashboard turns into a to-do list. It shows your personalised recommendations, grouped by marketing area, with completion bars showing how much you have done.
Each recommendation is a specific, practical action. Not "improve your website" but "add your business hours to your Google Business Profile" or "respond to your three most recent reviews." These are things you can do this week, not vague goals for someday.
Your Progress score is calculated from these recommendations. Every time you complete one, your Progress percentage ticks up. Over time, as those actions take effect, your Health Score and Market Rank follow.
Tip
Start with the area that has the lowest score in your 360 Check. Open the Marketing Compass, find that area, and work through its recommendations first. That is almost always where you will see the fastest improvement.
What to look at first
You do not need to study everything every time you log in. Here is a practical approach.
On your first visit, look at your Health Score and your Rank. Those two numbers tell you the big picture. Then scan your 360 Check scores and find the lowest one.
That lowest score is where you start. Open the Marketing Compass for that area, pick the first recommendation, and do it. One action, done today, beats a perfect plan you never get to.
After that first session, your dashboard becomes a check-in tool. Pop in once a week, see if anything has moved, and knock off another recommendation or two.
The businesses that improve their position are not the ones who spend hours analysing. They are the ones who keep showing up and making small, steady improvements.
The businesses that improve their position are not the ones who spend hours analysing. They are the ones who keep showing up and making small, steady improvements.
Build your dashboard routine
5 minutes today
- Check your Health Score and Market Rank for the big picture
- Find your lowest score in the 360 Check
- Complete one recommendation from the Marketing Compass for that area
30 minutes this week
- Look at the Market Ladder and note which competitors sit just above you
- Compare their area scores to yours to spot where they are ahead
- Work through two or three more recommendations from the Compass
Ongoing this month
- Track whether your Progress percentage is climbing week to week
- Check if any rank changes show up as your improvements take effect
Your dashboard, your strategy
Your MarketBase dashboard is not a report you file away. It is a tool you use. The three numbers tell you where you stand. The 360 Check shows you where to dig deeper.
The Market Ladder shows you who you are up against. The Marketing Compass tells you exactly what to do next. That is the whole picture, and it is enough to start making real progress.
You do not need to become a marketing expert to get value from any of this. Log in, find the lowest score, work through the recommendations, and check back next week. That is a strategy, and it works.