1. Build a digital marketing dashboard
In this last lesson, let's briefly recap what we learned and then dive into building a digital marketing dashboard.
2. Dashboard overview
A dashboard is an extremely effective tool, but only when used properly. They are not a solution for any situation.
A dashboard can relay information in a timely manner. They typically only include basic information that is easy to understand, instead of specific and in-depth information you would find in a report.
They are usually made up of charts so the information is easily read and understood, but they may contain data tables as well.
Even though dashboards contain basic information, they can still be used for making decisions, like determining a campaign budget based on performance statistics or re-allocating resources to fix ad groups that are performing poorly.
3. First look at a dashboard
Now that we know what the dashboard is for, let's take a look at one.
Here is a basic dashboard. It is simple, yet effective, and reports on both the campaigns and ad groups. Let's break this dashboard down to understand the three parts.
4. Dashboard charts review: doughnut/pie charts
The first part is a doughnut chart. Doughnut charts display the relative makeup of a total.
Recall that a doughnut chart is the same as a pie chart, except it has a hole in the middle.
5. Dashboard charts review: stacked column/bar chart
Stacked column and bar charts are effective at showing a few ad group metrics at a time, as a single bar. In the current dashboard, the chart is a stacked column chart. As you can see, the bar chart has the labels on the y axis.
6. Dashboard charts review: scatter/bubble chart
A bubble chart, which is the chart in the dashboard, helps us visualize and understand the relationships between metrics.
A scatter chart is similar to a bubble chart, except it does not have weights. In other words, a scatter chart shows the relationship between two metrics, while a bubble chart can show the relationship between three metrics because of the additional weight metric.
7. Chapter wrap-up
Now that we have reviewed the chart types, you will be able to create a dashboard for the marketing director. This will save them time, since they can refer to the dashboard instead of recreating charts each time a decision needs to be made. Let's discuss a few important items that should be included in this dashboard.
First, it must compare the sources, as the marketing director deals more with big picture items, like total ad spend at the source level rather than at the ad group level.
Second, it must show the percent makeup by source of all paid search impressions.
Third, it should show the relationship between clicks, goal completions, and impressions.
Lastly, it will need to show the total number of impressions, clicks, and goal completions by source.
8. Let's get to work!
Let's get to work!