How to Build a Cross-channel Marketing Dashboard

Whatagraph is a tool used to aggregate digital marketing data and present it in a visually appealing way. It works with various popular digital marketing tools, including Google Analytics, Instagram, and Facebook.

Spending time managing multiple digital marketing platforms AND presenting performance data to clients or executives isn't so easy. Building just one cross-channel dashboard can take hours - depending on the marketing mix and the number of marketing tools in use.

Now if you have multiple clients under your belt that you report to, you probably would end up spending more time creating dashboards than actually maintaining and overseeing campaigns. 

Building a personalized dashboard to communicate current achievements and future priorities effectively should be simple and time-efficient. Simplicity and efficiency factors play a huge role for you and for the ones you're reporting to.

Our goal is to help you, a marketing professional, minimize reporting hurdles. We'll also guide you on building comprehensive cross-channel marketing dashboards.  

In today's article, we'll walk you through the cross-channel marketing dashboard creation process step-by-step. We even have a pre-built cross-channel dashboard template for you to use, in case you wish to skip the entire building process. The link will be at the bottom of the article.

Let's first have a look at what makes a great marketing dashboard.

What does a marketing dashboard do?

An outstanding cross-channel dashboard is all about providing insight and connecting multiple marketing platform metrics effectively.

Dashboards have zero value if it gives no insights to the people you're reporting to. In other words, you need something that transforms plain data into information. It also has to provide a seamless transition between the different marketing platforms you're reporting on. 

• A great dashboard facilitates effective decision making – it improves collaboration and relays information well;
• Dashboards need to guide your client's attention to vital metrics and activity;
• Add context and clarity in case the person you're reporting isn't present during your day-to-day activity. 

Take note that this just an example of how to formulate a comprehensive cross-channel dashboard. We use Google Analytics, Instagram, and Facebook platforms for this example. However, it doesn't mean that you're limited to just these platforms! 

Where do we start?

Building a dashboard that's composed of data from different sources can be difficult. 

What platform should you start with?

The beautiful thing about cross-channel dashboards is that you can usually start from any platform. However, we advise you to avoid including on vanity metrics within the dashboard. 

You already have a ton of data to showcase. So, you should focus on metrics that translate to cash flow, one of them being conversions. 

In the example, we begin with website content metrics from Google Analytics. Of course, we didn't forget the conversion metrics for the reporting period.

Having data presented in a line graph helps you quickly deduce any correlation between session numbers and possible conversions for a specific date.

Here, you can also include an average bounce rate of your website content. It's a great way to see how well your audience perceives your content. Take note that a high bounce rate is not always an indication of poor page performance. We included this as a possible metric to track for our example.

Facebook Insights

Let's include Facebook as another platform of choice for our cross-channel dashboard. It's an incredibly versatile tool both as a standalone brand recognition builder and a formidable PPC platform.

Within this portion of the dashboard, we're also using graphs. It's an easy yet effective way to show how a particular metric developed over time. 

The ability to select which type of metrics to look at just makes the client's or executives' lives easier. It eliminates the data clutter and helps focus on the right numbers, one at a time.

Back to the main Facebook insights overview now! 

In the example above, we've included the general page insights and 2-week performance data. It gives a clear overview of Facebook engagement metrics and how those metrics are compared to previous months or years. 

Instagram performance

Let's take a look at a general performance overview of Instagram. 

Again, the main focus here is to showcase the aggregated engagement metrics of a particular platform. In this section, you should see the overall health of a marketing platform. And, how the user base is responding to the content there. 

We're going to dive deeper into individual post performance in only a moment.

What are the demographics looking like?

Looking at your audience's demographic data must be done by every marketer. Are you actually reaching the right people with the digital content you produce? Well, that's going to be answered in this portion of your cross-channel dashboard.

You're more than welcome to allocate demographic information next to each corresponding platform. We've lumped in demographic info from different marketing platforms in this one section. 

Of course, you have the option to different types of visuals to show demographic data:

• Bar graphs
• Line graphs
• Pie charts
• Maps

Select the data presentation method yourself and see just how effective your content is in reaching your desired audience.

So as the dashboard grows, the data you include within will be more detailed. 

It brings us to an even deeper dive into data: evaluating individual content pieces.

In-depth content analysis and comparison 

As we've previously mentioned, there's a ton of different content hosted on various digital marketing platforms. Since we're looking at Instagram and Facebook in our example, we're likely to use videos, images, and text content. 

How can you be sure about what content your audience enjoys the most? We're about to find out.

With a comprehensive dashboard that includes multiple platforms, we can easily conduct an in-depth analysis of individual, best-performing content pieces. And some that have not performed well at all.

Having such a clear view of your best-performing posts helps further develop future campaigns. You get to see exactly what keeps your audience interested, engaged, and active on your pages. 

Metrics that tell a story

Whether you're reporting to your clients or firm executives, your dashboard needs to tell a story. All of this rests on two things – data and visuals.

Data is used to showcase results and explain the reasoning for specific actions that you've taken. Most people – especially in marketing – aren't too keen on making changes if the change is not supported by data; hard numbers. 

Visuals are there to help translate data into something that's easier to digest. The simple reporting process you've come to dread is turned into extensive storytelling, engaging your clients and executives. 

Consider using a cross-channel dashboard template

Insightful cross-channel dashboards tell the story of your progress via visuals and data.

Great internal dashboards help your team monitor the current situation and quickly find any shortcomings within your processes. 

You are welcome to try out our pre-built cross-channel dashboard template for free. The dashboard is already built for you, just connect your desired accounts, and your data will be extracted automatically. Enjoy!