Latest / The Same Side: A Digital Marketing Podcast Rooted in Human Connection / Episode 4: Getting the Idea Across with Dashboards

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Episode 4: Getting the Idea Across with Dashboards · The Same Side: A Digital Marketing Podcast Rooted in Human Connection

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Same Side, a digital marketing podcast rooted in human connection.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Jonathan Dance, Director of AdOps and Analytics at Digital Relativity, a full service marketing agency.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I'm going to dig into dashboards and data visualization, but before I do, I want to share one of my greatest wishes for agency partner communication, and that's collaboration.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the kind of collaboration that comes from all interested parties, bringing their respective expertise to the conversation, as well as their curiosity and a desire to learn and solve problems and figure out what comes next.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sounds good, doesn't it?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: With that broad wish rattling around in your brain, let's talk dashboards.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Here at DR, we're usually using dashboards to look at website trends or campaign performance or both at the same time.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: How are things going?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is our strategy bearing fruit?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Did the collective we succeed?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Did we uncover new opportunities or learn something new?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if we didn't succeed, what can we do better?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: How do we turn that information into future success?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So for this to work, you need a dashboard that meets your needs, whether it's for your own day-to-day monitoring, or for reporting to C-suite folks, board members, or other stakeholders, or all that.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we can make dashboards all day long, but if they're not useful to you, they'll just collect dust.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Just like that Be Bold with Bananas Cookbook from the 70s sitting on your hippie Mimaw's shelf.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, I can say that because my mom is a hippie Mimaw, and I mean that in all the good ways.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think she has the banana cookbook though.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, just like you don't want a cookbook that gathers dust, you don't want dashboards that are like ghosts in your cloud storage that just haunt the space that nobody comes to visit.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I do have another wish, and this is just below the collaboration one, or I guess it probably flows from that wish, and it's to make data geeks out of everyone.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge builds on knowledge.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're excited about data, learning new things about data, learning new things about our data becomes more fun and removes the fear of all those numbers.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when thinking about dashboards, and this goes whether you're on the agency side or the partner side, you have to know who it's for.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I alluded to it earlier.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these dashboards need to be appropriate for your audience.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you are the audience, it's important to voice what it is you expect or need to see in the dashboards for them to be meaningful.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you are getting the information you need to do your job, to make decisions, to make recommendations.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so communication is a two-way street.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And at DR, this goes back to the collaboration thing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we use the term partner instead of client.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: We want to work together to leverage your knowledge and ours to do the best work possible.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's difficult to do without two-way communication.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: This goes back to episode one of this podcast, being afraid to ask questions.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'll just relay a scenario where we'll walk through a dashboard and then ask questions and either get blank stares or it's like, yep, looks good, and there's no conversation.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so on one level, that could be a failing of our dashboards, which is entirely possible.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or it could be that the people who are looking at the dashboards aren't sure what questions to ask.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And keep this in mind, we are all learning all the time.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: No one can know everything.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you have questions to ask, that's communicating on a human level.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Questions build engagement and trust, and good answers do too.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when evaluating dashboards created for you, I challenge you to define what success looks like for that dashboard.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something you can use to make decisions, or is it simply a box you're checking that will never get looked at again?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: If it's the latter, work with your agency to make the former.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally, when you look at a visualization, you understand the story it's telling.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this is all about, storytelling.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It may take a second or two to square the chart title with the access titles and the legend, but it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to wrap your head around the big picture.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: One way to make a dashboard more meaningful is to use the right data visualization for the right metrics.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Stick with simple charts that don't have too much information in them.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you have to squint to read the legend or can't decipher meaning because of cool 3D effects, that's probably a good sign you need to simplify.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this goes both for the agency side and the partner side.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you're making the dashboards, try to look at it through your partner's eyes.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: When they look at this stuff, are they going to understand what's going on?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: If I never saw this before, would I know what I'm looking at?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're on the partner side and there's a bunch of stuff in the way of you understanding the dashboard, then again, make sure you voice that concern.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, context, my favorite, is the not-so-secret sauce that gives meaning to the data we're presenting.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Time over time comparisons, campaign-driven conversions, geographic reach for the campaign, budget per platform.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: All these things revolve around what we said we would do in the original media plan.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're saying we're going to target a certain geographic area, we want to make sure that you can see that we not only targeted it, but also served the ads in those areas.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: If there's an inflection point where a campaign takes off, or God forbid it tanks, you'll want to know why.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll make sure we talk about those as well.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So again, having that context as opposed to like, hey, here's some numbers and lines.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck to you.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if we've done our job right, and this is my favorite part of sharing data, there will be a few moments of silence while a partner digests the chart.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then there will be a follow-up question.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Something like, well, what does that mean?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is that good?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: What am I looking at?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And those are good entry points.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally, we get beyond that because they should hopefully know some of those answers already by virtue of a very good dashboard.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, I would expect those questions to become deeper.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Things like, hey, I see that we've got a lot of clicks but not conversions.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is something up with our landing page?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think we should test messaging to improve performance?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are we targeting the right audience?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's never any deepening of these questions, whether you're hearing them on the agency side or asking them on the partner side, that's probably a good indication of the dashboards not being as effective as we'd like.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say it also might reflect the partner's overall discomfort with data, but again, that's back on us because it's our job to help partners understand and become comfortable with the information we're presenting.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: As I indicated before, dashboards need to be more than just numbers and charts.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: They need to tell a story.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: They can't just be a data puke that acts like some magic eye poster where if you stare at it long enough, a picture emerges.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, who doesn't love a good story?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: But with that being the case, then the follow-up question is why do so many dashboards fail at this basic task?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of reasons.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: It could be because the agency isn't sure what's relevant to the stakeholder.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I would say they should know, but I've seen this be the case.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that could be that the fundamental needs of the partner are great and many, and it's difficult to home in on just a few key bits of information.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those conversations are all over the place because the partner's having trouble focusing because they feel like they have to do everything all at once.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: From the agency side, the role of the dashboard is to show what we're doing is what we said we were going to do, and ideally that it's working the way we expected, if not better.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes dashboards also show things that aren't working, and that's just an opportunity to problem solve and to course correct, and preferably collaboratively.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Dashboards are one of the most tangible connection points we have in ad ops.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think of them as the conversation starter, driving discussion about results, what we're learning, and where we could improve.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if the dashboards are built well, that helps build trust with our partners.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: If our dashboard is just a pile of numbers with no context, how is anyone going to know what to do with it?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen and made, once upon a time, dashboards that were crammed with alphanumeric charts without data visualization to highlight KPIs or even cause and effect.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've created dashboards that resembled the movie Inception, dashboards within dashboards, and saying things halfway through my presentation.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Remember in that previous dashboard?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: No one remembered what was in that previous dashboard.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of other things to watch out for are emphasizing vanity metrics like clicks and impressions when they're not tied to the partner goals, or not including seasonal context in your discussion.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: At DR, we work in travel and tourism, convenience store and educational spaces, and you better believe there are fluctuations in keyword search volumes, website traffic, conversion rates, consumer sentiment, all kinds of stuff.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's important to provide that to our partners so that they understand why things are doing what they're doing.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, it comes back to what your KPIs are, key performance indicators or measurements of success, usually conversions of some sort, guide requests, reward signups, college application completions.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if these elements aren't front and center, and if you can't connect the dots from what was done to what happened, a dashboard may as well be an etch a sketch.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing to look out for is overstuffed dashboards designed to be proof of how much work is happening, or that we're thinking about something real hard because, well, look at all those numbers.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that blue book exam in college that you didn't prepare for, or maybe it was just me, where you just wanted to fill up the pages to make it look like something happened here.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is how do you build meaning?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do you provide context?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me give you an example of one way that we do.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So presenting information in a logical way that builds on itself is probably the best way to have that information stick both in your mind and in the minds of your partners.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It never hurts for the presenter to ask questions of the audience to make sure they're following along as well.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So as you're presenting in this logical way, you ask, does that make sense?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is everyone with me so far?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a great way to get feedback, to read the room, and if necessary, even change tack.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So here at DR, we often pair two dashboards together for campaign reporting.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The first dashboard focuses on the ad platforms to show paid media performance.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: This usually includes those foundational metrics I discuss in episode one, such as impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and cost.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: This sets the stage and is usually presented in terms of expectations for specific ad platforms along with industry benchmarks.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: This way the partner can see how their campaigns are performing relative to the general industry sector that they're in.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we also usually include a line chart of impressions and clicks over time by ad platform.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that helps us keep an eye on trends internally, but it also helps us show our partners where things changed during the campaign, whether new platforms were introduced or we decided to reallocate funds from an underperforming platform.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we often use a combination of summary charts with just numbers and campaign names and that sort of thing, along with basic visualizations of ad platform performance, line graphs showing trends over time, like I just mentioned, donut charts showing shares or proportions, bar graphs comparing different time periods, and so on.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I like to do this because people ingest information in different ways.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are very visual, some people like to see those charts, and this provides more touch points for understanding.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the ad platform side dashboard, and then the second dashboard is the website side.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if this sounds super simple, that's good.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: That means you have your head wrapped around all this stuff.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: But on the website side, we use GA4 data to show the relation between ad platforms and user behavior once they reach the website.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's always a discrepancy between how many clicks we see on the ad platform side and actual traffic on the website side.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this can be due to many things, including accidental ad clicks, where the site doesn't load before the user bounces back to where they click the ad because they didn't want to be there in the first place.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Users might be using ad blockers and privacy settings, and so they wind up being invisible to GA4.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It might be bot traffic or click fraud.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, the numbers are never going to be the same.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're never going to match up.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: What we're really interested in is engagement and conversion tracking, real signals of intent.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, ad clicks are signals of intent, but one thing that we've seen is the more we run paid media, the more suppressed engagement numbers are going to be because people who click on ads to visit websites are usually less inclined to stay there than people who have come to the website through organic search or referral traffic.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So at any rate, you can send a million people to the website, but if only five of them are doing anything, then that's probably not money well spent.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: What we really are interested in is engagement, time on site, event tracking, and conversion tracking.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Are they taking the action we want?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are they easily finding the right information?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So while super simple sounding, this helps our partners conceptualize their campaigns beyond the platform side metrics.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: It also makes it easier to reallocate if something is underperforming or if it's overperforming and needs more budget.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have the data to back it up.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It gets everyone thinking about the value of paid media in relation to the partner's goals.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, it provides our partners with the information they need to make decisions or recommendations.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: To achieve clean logic, it's also good to remember that there shouldn't be any useless information in a dashboard.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not telling the story clearly, if it's not clear to you as the partner, it is within your right to ask for a chart or data to be removed.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: As someone who's done a lot of presentations, if you have extraneous stuff in your dashboards, I can almost guarantee that's one of the things that will get the most focus.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's probably because it just doesn't seem like it belongs.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're biologically hardwired for pattern recognition for identifying which one of these things doesn't belong.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're on the partner side of the conversation and aren't sure what it's for, just ask.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I should mention that a great dashboard should be something that the people it's designed for could understand if they were sent the dashboard in, say, a PDF format.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing that really makes a dashboard sing is the right guide.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: The presenter should know the dashboard inside and out, and they should anticipate at least some of the questions likely to come out of the presentation and conversation in advance of the presentation.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I like to do is to take our partners on the same journey of discovery I took when understanding campaign performance for that particular dashboard.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And especially if there's something out of the ordinary going on, being able to walk them through that discovery process is not only educational, but also, again, another opportunity to have a conversation about some bigger picture things like is your website set up well?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: How are the landing pages doing that kind of stuff?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, if I'm interested and excited about what I'm presenting, it helps our partner feel those things as well.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is all about communication, about connecting with each other, even though it's only work, quote unquote.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Few things feel better than both parties feeling heard and understood and having great work come out of that connection.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully this episode has been helpful in your understanding of what makes a useful dashboard, what makes a dashboard go beyond the numbers and get those wheels and conversation spinning.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget, although things may not always go our way, and sometimes we get our wires crossed, we're always on the same side.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next week.