| name | analytics-dashboards |
| description | Design marketing dashboards and reports for executives, teams, and campaigns. Use when building reporting systems or presenting data. |
| origin | ECM |
Marketing Dashboard Design
When to Activate
- Building a new marketing dashboard or reporting system
- Redesigning existing dashboards that aren't driving decisions
- Preparing data visualizations for stakeholders
- Setting up automated reporting for marketing teams
- Choosing metrics to track for a campaign or channel
- Stakeholders complain they "don't know what's working"
First Questions
- Who is the primary audience for this dashboard? (CEO, CMO, channel manager, campaign team)
- What decisions should this dashboard help make?
- What is the reporting cadence? (Real-time, daily, weekly, monthly)
- What data sources are available? (GA4, CRM, ad platforms, email platform, billing system)
- What tool will you build this in? (Looker Studio, Tableau, Power BI, Databox, custom)
- What are the top 3 questions this dashboard must answer?
Dashboard Hierarchy
Dashboards should form a pyramid. Each level answers different questions for different audiences.
Level 1: Executive Dashboard
- Audience: CEO, CFO, board
- Cadence: Monthly or quarterly
- Purpose: "Is marketing contributing to business growth?"
- Metrics: Revenue influenced, CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC ratio, pipeline value, brand awareness trends
- Design: Maximum 6-8 metrics. Heavy on trends, light on granularity. Always include comparison period.
Level 2: Marketing Leadership Dashboard
- Audience: CMO, VP Marketing, Head of Growth
- Cadence: Weekly
- Purpose: "Which channels and programs are performing? Where should we adjust?"
- Metrics: Channel-level spend, CPA, ROAS, conversion volume, pipeline by source, funnel conversion rates
- Design: 10-15 metrics. Channel comparison views. Pacing against goals.
Level 3: Channel Dashboards
- Audience: Channel managers (paid, organic, email, content)
- Cadence: Daily to weekly
- Purpose: "How is my channel performing and where do I optimize?"
- Metrics: Channel-specific KPIs (CTR, CPC, impression share, open rate, domain authority, etc.)
- Design: Detailed, filterable, actionable. Campaign-level drill-down.
Level 4: Campaign/Tactical Dashboards
- Audience: Campaign managers, individual contributors
- Cadence: Daily or real-time
- Purpose: "What is happening right now and what do I do about it?"
- Metrics: Campaign-specific metrics, A/B test results, landing page performance, creative performance
- Design: Granular, real-time where possible. Alert thresholds.
Metric Selection by Audience
Rule: The higher the audience, the closer the metric should be to revenue.
| Audience | Good Metrics | Bad Metrics |
|---|
| CEO/Board | Revenue, CAC, LTV, market share | Impressions, clicks, followers |
| CMO | Pipeline, ROAS, channel CPA, conversion rate | Individual ad CTR, keyword rankings |
| Channel Manager | Channel CPA, CTR, CVR, ROAS, quality score | Raw traffic without context |
| Campaign IC | Creative CTR, landing page CVR, bid metrics | Only vanity metrics (likes, shares) |
Metric Pairing Principle
Never show a metric alone. Always pair it with context:
- Volume + Efficiency: Conversions + CPA (not just conversions)
- Current + Trend: This month CPA + CPA trend over 6 months
- Actual + Goal: Pipeline generated vs. pipeline target
- Metric + Benchmark: Your CTR vs. industry average CTR
Visualization Best Practices
Chart Type Selection Guide
| Data Type | Best Chart | Why |
|---|
| Trend over time | Line chart | Shows direction and rate of change |
| Comparison across categories | Horizontal bar chart | Easy to compare and read labels |
| Part of a whole | Stacked bar or 100% stacked bar | Shows composition. Avoid pie charts with >4 segments. |
| Single KPI value | Scorecard / Big number | Immediate comprehension |
| KPI vs. target | Bullet chart or gauge | Shows progress toward goal |
| Correlation between two metrics | Scatter plot | Reveals relationships |
| Distribution | Histogram | Shows spread and outliers |
| Geographic data | Map / Choropleth | Spatial patterns |
| Funnel progression | Funnel chart | Drop-off visualization |
Charts to Avoid
- Pie charts with more than 4 segments (use horizontal bar instead).
- 3D charts of any kind (distort perception).
- Dual-axis charts unless absolutely necessary (confusing, easy to mislead).
- Stacked area charts with many categories (unreadable middle layers).
Color and Design Rules
- Use a consistent color palette. One primary color, one accent for highlights.
- Red = bad / declining. Green = good / improving. Use sparingly and consistently.
- Gray for context data, color for focal data.
- Left-align text. Right-align numbers.
- Remove chart junk: gridlines, borders, legends when not needed.
- Every chart needs a clear title that states the insight, not just the topic.
- Bad: "Monthly Revenue"
- Good: "Revenue grew 12% MoM, driven by paid search"
Dashboard Layout Principles
The Z-Pattern
Eyes scan dashboards in a Z pattern: top-left -> top-right -> bottom-left -> bottom-right.
- Top-left: Most important KPI or headline metric.
- Top row: Summary scorecards (3-5 key metrics).
- Middle: Trend charts and comparisons.
- Bottom: Detailed tables and drill-down data.
Information Density
- Executive dashboards: Low density, high white space. One screen, no scrolling.
- Operational dashboards: Higher density is acceptable. Scrolling is fine.
- Every element must earn its space. If nobody acts on a metric, remove it.
Interactivity
- Date range selector (always).
- Filters for segment, channel, campaign, geography.
- Drill-down capability from summary to detail.
- Tooltips for metric definitions.
Executive Dashboard Template
Structure (Single Page)
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ MARKETING PERFORMANCE — [Month/Quarter Year] │
├────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┬─────────────┤
│Revenue │ CAC │ LTV │LTV:CAC │ Pipeline │
│ $X.XM │ $XXX │$X,XXX │ X.Xx │ $X.XM │
│ +12% ▲ │ -5% ▲ │ +8% ▲ │ +14% ▲ │ +22% ▲ │
├────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴─────────────┤
│ Revenue Trend (12-month line chart with goal) │
├─────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┤
│ Channel ROAS │ Pipeline by Source │
│ (horizontal bar) │ (horizontal bar) │
├─────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┤
│ Key Insights & Recommended Actions (3 bullets) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Key Metrics Definitions for Executive Dashboard
- Marketing-Sourced Revenue: Revenue from deals where first touch was marketing.
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): Total marketing + sales cost / New customers acquired.
- LTV (Lifetime Value): Average revenue per customer over their lifetime.
- LTV:CAC Ratio: Target 3:1 or higher. Below 1:1 is unsustainable.
- Pipeline Generated: Dollar value of qualified opportunities created by marketing.
Channel-Specific Dashboard Templates
Paid Media Dashboard
- Spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, conversions, CPA, ROAS
- Breakdown by platform, campaign, ad group, creative
- Pacing: Spend vs. budget (daily and monthly)
- Quality metrics: Quality Score (Google), Relevance Score (Meta)
SEO Dashboard
- Organic sessions, organic conversions, keyword rankings (top 20)
- Page-level performance (top landing pages by traffic and conversions)
- Technical health: Core Web Vitals, crawl errors, index coverage
- Backlink metrics: New referring domains, domain authority trend
Email Dashboard
- Sends, deliverability rate, open rate, click rate, CTOR, unsubscribe rate
- Revenue per email, conversion rate
- List growth rate, list health (engagement segments)
- Automated flow performance vs. campaign performance
Content Dashboard
- Page views, unique visitors, time on page, scroll depth
- Content-attributed conversions (first-touch and multi-touch)
- SEO performance of content (rankings, organic traffic)
- Content production velocity (published vs. planned)
Automated Reporting Setup
Weekly Automated Report (Email/Slack)
- Pull data from sources via API or native integrations.
- Calculate WoW changes for top 5 metrics.
- Flag anomalies (>20% deviation from trailing 4-week average).
- Include a direct link to the live dashboard for drill-down.
- Send Monday morning before the weekly marketing standup.
Tools for Automation
- Looker Studio + Scheduled Email: Free, good for Google-ecosystem data.
- Databox: Good for multi-source automated scorecards.
- Supermetrics: Pulls data from 100+ sources into sheets/dashboards.
- dbt + BI tool: For mature data teams wanting a single source of truth.
Storytelling with Data
The Narrative Arc for Dashboard Presentations
- Context: "Here's what we set out to do this month."
- Results: "Here's what happened." (Lead with the headline number.)
- Why: "Here's why it happened." (Root cause, not just correlation.)
- So What: "Here's what it means for the business."
- Now What: "Here's what we're going to do about it."
Annotation Best Practices
- Annotate charts with key events (product launch, algorithm change, seasonality, outage).
- Use callout boxes for the single most important insight on each page.
- Bold the number, explain the context in plain text.
Common Dashboard Mistakes
- Too many metrics. If everything is highlighted, nothing is. Limit executive dashboards to 6-8 KPIs.
- No comparison period. A number without context is meaningless. Always show vs. prior period or vs. goal.
- Vanity metrics without business metrics. Impressions without conversions. Followers without revenue.
- No defined metric definitions. People argue about numbers because they define metrics differently. Document definitions.
- Dashboard abandonment. Building it once and never iterating. Review dashboard usage quarterly — remove what's not used.
- Missing "so what." Data without insight. Every dashboard view should suggest an action.
- Too many colors. Visual noise kills comprehension. Limit to 3-5 colors max.
- Wrong chart type. Pie chart with 12 slices. Line chart for categorical data. Match chart to data type.
Quality Gate
Before shipping a dashboard:
