Google Analytics is a great, free service, but it contains many metrics and reports. Although custom dashboards can be built in Google Analytics, it's not readily possible to create a dashboard that summarizes the effectiveness of digital marketing across the marketing funnel for a business, particularly for the all-important 'deltas' of month-on-month and year-on-year performance.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the Smart Insights dashboard is to help managers to complete a regular monthly review of the current effectiveness of their digital marketing using Google Analytics with Google's Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio).<\/p>\n
We use this combination ourselves in our monthly reporting. The dashboard makes it easy to compare digital marketing performance through time with a focus on the key digital marketing measures across the customer lifecycle or marketing funnel defined across the Smart Insights RACE Planning Framework.<\/p>\n
The Smart Insights RACE Framework used in all our member resources was developed to help digital marketers plan and manage their activities in a more structured way since we found that many don't have a digital marketing strategy with clear objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators).<\/p>\n
By reporting on just four metrics for each of the Reach, Act, Convert and Engage parts of the funnel you can measure the key areas of your digital marketing plan to see which are working or require attention. In addition to overall visits, leads and conversion, the dashboard also includes a comparison of visits, leads and sales for different key low-cost channels used by many businesses of organic search, social media and email marketing.<\/p>\n