We've talked about a lot of different metrics and ways of finding and segmenting your audience. Now, we're going to shift gears and talk about how to present that information. You may remember how in an earlier course in this program, we talked about reflecting on your business goals before starting an analysis. We also saw how it helps to determine which metrics you will track to assess whether you're making progress towards those goals. We call those metrics Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. It's no surprise then that one of the most common types of reports is a KPI dashboard. As Microsoft Power BI explains, KPI dashboards are tools that unite data sources and provide at-a-glance visual feedback showing your business is performing against your key performance indicators. They benefit users by providing a fast, easy solution to tracking KPIs and other business metrics, a unified view of data that improves visibility into company health, and customizable data visualization with performance and status indicators. In order to develop a KPI dashboard, you must first have a KPI. As we said, KPIs are derived from your business goals. They have three important characteristics. First, a KPI is measurable, and more specifically, it should be rated or graded. This generally translates to a cost per like cost per acquisition or cost per click, or a rate like click-through rate or view-through rate. Second, it should be directional and target-based. You should have an idea of what success looks like, either through internal or external benchmarks. Lastly, it should be related to the behavior you're looking to impact with your marketing. Looking to increase sales, customer loyalty, lifetime value. Your KPI should ladder up into your goal. You should have one singular primary KPI for any given marketing campaign. That way, you can easily look at your campaign and say, was this successful or not? Having a single KPI also gives your team a metric to focus on and optimize during your campaign. It's important to note there may be different KPIs at different levels of your campaign. Here we see a KPI pyramid. Your business KPI is the company's North star. What will make the company money? This generally focuses on overall sales or acquisitions. Your campaign KPI is what designates the success of the campaign. Is there a specific efficient reach number or course per action you're focused on? Whatever it is, this one primary KPI should indicate success for that campaign. Last, we have your channel KPI. Each channel within your campaign should be there for a reason, with a goal for that channel. For instance, you may use YouTube and Facebook in the same campaign with totally different goals. YouTube may be used for more upper-funnel tactics measured through video completion rate, for instance. While Facebook may be used for lower-funnel tactics and measured on a cost per acquisition or conversion rate. While it's really important to focus on one singular KPI at each level of the campaign, your dashboard may also include secondary KPIs and diagnostic metrics. Secondary KPIs are those that indicate you're on your way to success in your primary KPI. For example, click-through rate may be a secondary KPI for a cost-per-acquisition-focused campaign. CPA is your primary KPI, but CTR can give you information that helps you understand whether you're making progress towards that primary KPI. Diagnostic metrics are those metrics you want to keep an eye on to make sure things are okay. These are metrics like spend, impressions, and reach. If these metrics were to significantly increase or decrease at any given time, you'd want to investigate. As you can imagine, different people require different levels of granularity when looking at a dashboard. After establishing your KPIs, the second step to developing a strong dashboard is understanding your audience. Consider their level, their familiarity with the data, how they usually see information, and what they care about. Is this sea-level audience who usually sees complicated finance charts but needs just a high level insights because they don't have much time to spend on this information? Is this in the weeds team who digs into the details? Is this a client who prefers information be communicated in words? What are their KPIs, and what are they concerned about? Be sure to design for your audience and provide the information they need to know. What kind of chart should you use to show your performance? Well, there are lots of options. Let's go over some of the most common ones. If you're looking to compare results over time, use a linear chart or bar chart if you're focused on only one variable. If you're showing parts of a whole, use a pie chart or a stacked bar chart. If you want to show the relationship between two different variables, a scatter plot or bubble chart should do the trick. You'll want to use color theory and sizing to indicate key metrics and their performance. The easiest way to do this is to represent your primary KPI as a larger area of the report, along with the red, yellow, green indicators, to let readers know how the campaign or initiative is performing overall. In addition to designing your dashboard to call out your KPI loud and proud, you'll most likely want to indicate insights in your KPI dashboard as well. In order to have a strong insight, you should include what happened, why it matters, and what you'll do with this information. For instance, let's say you ran an AB creative test against two different creatives. One with just a product shot, and one with an offer and the product shot. If you find that the offer creative commands a 50 percent lower CPA, that's what's happened. Here's why it matters. We've learned that creative with an offer in it drives more efficient acquisitions than one without. What can we do with this information? Develop more creative with an offer involved or design another test against different offers to see which performs best. Thinking about your audience, incorporating your KPIs, telling your story with a fantastic graphic and a few insights can really take your reports to the next level.
