Ask Achan: Creating dashboards that deliver

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the third edition of Ask Achan. Who’s Achan, you ask? He’s our in-house HubSpot expert and the Chief Growth Officer here at Concentrate.

Each month, we’ll dive into your HubSpot questions with simple, actionable tips to help you get the most out of the platform. We're passionate about helping B2B companies like yours grow with HubSpot. If you’re struggling with personalisation or engagement, I’m here to guide you through it.

Got a question? Send it my way.

Here's a good question I came across:

Creating dashboards that deliver

Great to hear from you about your positive experience with HubSpot CRM so far and how you're leveraging different features.

Effectively visualising data through custom dashboards is really helpful when managing and reporting on multiple campaigns simultaneously. 

Here's how we set up our dashboards to gain the best insights in scenarios like these:

1. Know your audience

Design your dashboards with the end user in mind. Tailor your dashboards to the specific team using them. Whether it's for leadership, BDMs, or your own use, the reports and visuals should deliver insights that are directly relevant to their goals and decision-making needs. 

2. Define your key metrics

Before you dive into creating dashboards, you need to know what you're tracking. What are your goals for each campaign? Once you’ve got that sorted, choose the right metrics. For example:

• Top of funnel: How many website visits are coming from each campaign? How many new contacts? Form submissions? Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)?
• Middle of funnel: How many Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) is each campaign generating? What's the deal creation rate from those leads? How engaged are they with campaign-specific content?
• Bottom of funnel: Deals closed won attributed to each campaign, revenue generated per campaign, customer acquisition cost (CAC) per campaign, return on ad spend (ROAS) per campaign.

These are the basic categories I’d focus on, but you can refine them based on your specific goals.

3. Choose your dashboard structure

There are two ways to set up your dashboards, depending on how granular you want to get:

• Dedicated campaign dashboards: This is great if you want to focus on one campaign at a time (e.g., “Q3 Content Campaign”).
• Master dashboard with campaign filters: This lets you keep everything in one place, then filter by campaign or time period. If you want a high-level overview but also the option to drill down, this is the way to go.

Both work well, so it’s really about what works best for your team.

4. Must-have reports for your dashboards

When setting up your dashboards, here are the reports that are super useful when you're managing multiple campaigns at once:

• New contacts by campaign: See how many contacts each campaign is generating.
• MQLs/SQLs by campaign: Track how well your leads are progressing.
• Deals by campaign: Understand how each campaign is influencing your deal pipeline.
• Deal stage breakdown: See how leads are moving through the stages for each campaign.
• Revenue by campaign: Track the total revenue each campaign is driving.
• Conversion rates: Measure lead-to-MQL, MQL-to-SQL, and SQL-to-deal conversion rates for each campaign.
• Website sessions by source: Know which campaigns are driving traffic.
• Landing page conversion rates: Check how well campaign-specific landing pages are performing.
• Email performance: Track open rates, click-through rates, and conversions for your campaign emails.

5. Filtering and drill-downs are your friends

HubSpot makes it easy to filter data, so use it to your advantage:

• Report-level filters: You can filter within individual reports to focus on a specific campaign.
• Dashboard-level filters: Set up filters across the entire dashboard to quickly adjust the view based on campaign, time period, etc.

Being able to filter data like this gives you flexibility and helps you focus on what matters at any given moment.

6. Track consistently for accurate data

To ensure your reporting is accurate, make sure you’re tracking campaigns consistently:

• UTM parameters: Use UTM parameters in your URLs to track traffic and conversions by source, medium, and campaign.
• Campaign associations: Use HubSpot’s campaign association tool to tie contacts, deals, and marketing assets to specific campaigns.
  If you stay consistent with your tracking, your data will be much more reliable.

7. Keep it dynamic and iterative

Finally, dashboards aren’t something you set and forget. Make sure to regularly review your reports and adjust your dashboards as campaigns evolve. Over time, you’ll fine-tune what you’re tracking and how you’re reporting to ensure you’re always looking at the right data.

Need help with your dashboards?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or just want someone to help you optimise your HubSpot setup, reach out to our team. At Concentrate, we specialise in helping businesses create custom dashboards that give you the best insights at a glance.

That’s it for this month’s Ask Achan. I’ll catch you next time. If you’ve got a question for the next edition, fill the form below. I’d love to help.

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