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Feeling stuck with your marketing strategy in today’s digital world?
You’re not alone. Like many companies, we faced a similar situation. We take pride in the fact that we have built comprehensive marketing analytics dashboards for our clients and have given them the means to optimize their campaigns to attract more customers.
But at the same time, we realized that we had overlooked this same rigor for our own marketing efforts. It was like we had built the road but had never taken the journey ourselves.
Like everyone else, we understand the importance of marketing. In today’s day and age, content is king when it comes to letting everyone know who you are and what you do. According to HubSpot, 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing.
Recognizing this gap, we decided to bring the same analytical focus to our internal teams. We built a series of comprehensive marketing analytics dashboards tailored to aid us in our content marketing efforts in social media platforms, email, and search engine platforms. Through our efforts, we have empowered our non-technical teams with data-driven insights to refine our strategies and enhance our content marketing performance.
This blog provides insights into the dashboards that we built. It describes our dashboard development process, its impact, and key steps to consider when building your own marketing dashboard.
As a company dedicated to making decisions with data, we realized the importance of having a comprehensive understanding of our marketing efforts across various channels. While we were already adept at creating dashboards for our clients, we recognized that our internal marketing strategies could benefit from the same level of insight and analysis.
To truly optimize our campaigns and drive more revenue, we wanted to connect the dots between our marketing activities and their impact on our efforts to convert prospects into customers. This led us to build a series of specialized dashboards—each tailored to a specific aspect of our marketing strategy, such as email campaigns, LinkedIn, and overall SEO.
These dashboards were built to go beyond tracking metrics; they were about deeply understanding our audience and using them to make informed adjustments that would elevate our marketing efforts. By centralizing this data, we empowered our teams to make smarter, more strategic decisions, ensuring that every campaign we launched was backed by solid insights and aligned with our broader business goals.
Social media is the first thing that comes to mind while optimizing marketing campaigns to expand your reach to more people. In tandem with analyzing our outreach and follower demographics, we wanted to see what kind of users visit our website from LinkedIn through the captions of our various posts.
This dashboard was created to provide us with a detailed view of our LinkedIn and content marketing efforts. It provided insights into how different content types—such as static images, carousel posts, videos, and blog posts—drive engagement on LinkedIn and bring more users to convert on our website. It helped us answer critical questions, such as which marketing efforts lead to the most traffic and conversions, what type of content resonates best with our LinkedIn audience, and the demographics of users who visit our website from LinkedIn.
Figure 1: Our social media dashboard that links LinkedIn to Google Analytics (GA4)
To make the most out of this dashboard, we tracked the following KPIs:
Our implementation of the dashboard led to significant improvements in our social media efforts. The dashboard:
While our search engine optimization (SEO) strategies were driving traffic, we lacked a clear understanding of the user journey—from the moment they searched a query to when they landed on our website and what actions they took afterward. We needed a way to link our SEO performance with website behavior and conversion rates.
This dashboard was designed to give us a comprehensive view of how our SEO efforts influence user engagement, identify which strategies are most effective, and uncover areas for improvement. It provided us with valuable insights into the search queries that lead users to our site, the pages they visit, and how likely they are to convert. Armed with this information, we could refine our content strategies, optimize blog posts, and enhance SEO tactics to boost visibility. Furthermore, the dashboard allowed us to track the sources of our leads, helping us understand which channels contribute most to conversions.
Figure 2: Our SEO dashboard that links Google Search Console to Google Analytics (GA4)
The following are the KPIs we want to measure to assess the success of our SEO efforts:
Our implementation of the dashboard led to significant improvements in our SEO and our overall marketing performance. The dashboard:
We created this dashboard to measure the success of our email marketing efforts. Our email campaigns were generating traffic, but we didn’t have a clear picture of the journey they took before deciding to convert into a customer. We needed a way to connect our email performance with our website behavior and conversion rates, allowing us to refine our strategies.
This dashboard was built to provide a comprehensive view of how our emails drive user engagement, identify which strategies work best, and pinpoint areas for improvement. It also provided deep insights into the kind of personas are likely to open our emails, visit our website, and convert. We then used these insights to tailor our email content and A/B test changes for maximum user engagement.
Figure 3: Our email marketing dashboard that links HubSpot to Google Analytics (GA4)
To optimize our email marketing efforts, we measured the following KPIs:
Our implementation of the email marketing dashboard led to measurable improvements in our email campaign performance. The dashboard:
Through our dashboard development process, we discovered key factors that maximized their effectiveness.
Here are 4 steps you should consider while building an effective marketing dashboard:
The best marketing dashboards are those that provide insightful and relevant information needed to optimize your campaigns. You can only get relevant information if you have defined your business and strategic objectives. It is crucial to sit down with your colleagues and define your goals and use them to determine your mix of branding and marketing efforts.
Some examples of business and strategic goals may include:
While defining your goals and your north star metrics, you should also determine the marketing channels you must prioritize to move closer to achieving them. For instance, consider the number of leads or sign ups you need per channel, like in PPC, SEO, social media, and email marketing. By knowing the expected outcomes, you can plan better, track the right metrics in your dashboard, and evaluate if each channel is delivering. This makes your KPIs useful and helps you decide on the next steps.
Start by organizing your marketing data in order of importance. The most critical information should always be displayed first, so place it at the top of your dashboard. This way your most vital insights are immediately visible, making it easier to focus on what truly matters.
Finally, remember that your dashboard is not a one-time setup—it’s a living tool. As your marketing strategies evolve, so should your dashboard. Regularly update it to reflect new goals, tactics, or insights. This continuous refinement will help you stay on top of your client’s campaigns and ensure that their marketing efforts are always aligned with their objectives.
(Pro tip: To ensure you get the right data continuously, here is a marketing analytics methodology you should consider following)
As humans, we resonate with two things the most: visuals and stories. To craft a compelling narrative, you need to select the right visuals and data that immediately give you the information you need to plan your next strategy.
Keep your marketing dashboard simple and effective by choosing 6 to 9 key metrics. It can be tempting to include everything, but too much information can overwhelm you and dilute the dashboard’s overall purpose. By focusing on specific metrics, you ensure that the dashboard gives you clear actions to take in your next campaign.
For visualizations, choose a visualization method that helps convey the types of data you want to share. It’s important to take various aspects into account. For example, make sure your presentation of data isn’t visually misleading, use colors strategically (and include a legend to explain what each color represents), create clear pie charts (pies with 5 to 9 sections can be easily understood), and organize data in a coherent way.
During data visualization, choose visualizations that best represent the data you want to share. For instance, a funnel chart may be ideal for measuring the conversion rate of an email campaign you ran recently. Additionally, make sure to use colors strategically and include a legend to explain what they represent. Consider important factors like avoiding visual distortions and organizing your data in a logical, coherent way.
Regardless of which industry you’re in, having a detailed marketing dashboard is pivotal for navigating the digital landscape. This is because it enhances accountability, provides real-time insights, and aids in strategic decision-making.
The key takeaway from the discussion of our dashboards is that there is a marketing dashboard for each goal and marketing channel. The right dashboard will give you the actionable steps needed to make the most out of your marketing. But that is only possible if you have aligned yourself with your stakeholders on the goals you want to achieve. In tandem with the right goal setting, it is imperative that you focus on the right data and visualizations to focus on maximize your campaign’s effectiveness.
Want a fully integrated marketing dashboard that turns your data into dollars?
Contact Data Pilot today to help you use your data to prepare marketing campaigns that drive results for you.
Fill the form and discover new opportunities for your business through our talented team.
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