Let's face it, finding a value-driven reporting dashboard for a small agency can be difficult, to say the least. You may have tried and tested lots of free tools and plugins, and found that you still can't reach the data you're after. But, have you dived deeply enough into HubSpot's own reporting to really appreciate the value of the new tools? and how to create beautiful client Dashboards? Well, if not, now is the time to get started!
Get Started Easily with Databox Dashboard Repoting
My role at HubDo is Inbound Project Manager. I work closely with Consultants and small Agencies to implement Inbound Campaign strategies for their clients. Recently, I was challenged with creating a suite of dashboards for a client to uncover Sales team KPI's, Quotes, Leads and Deals with daily updates across all.
Here's a snippet of the list of requested reports:
KPI / Trend list:
- Outstanding quotes by consultant
- Quotes by consultants with ability to look at detail
- Price requests actioned by consultant
- Outstanding quotes by age - total
- Outstanding unactioned price requests - the queue - aged
- Discounts by day by consultant
- Quotes and Requotes value
- Open rates on quote emails
- Break down by month of when quotes are required.
- Break down of leads/contacts at each stage of the buying process
- Open tasks by sales person
- Overdue tasks by sales person
- Lead price request
- Product quotes
- Close Date of open quotes/deal.... etc
Slightly daunted, but wanting to impress my client, my team and my manager, I stuck to our HubDo Values by 'rising to the Challenge' and headed for my 'quiet space'! My Inbound experience with Campaigns and applying strategy for Consultants is extensive and with the recent updates and changes to the HubSpot platform I was secretly thrilled by the opportunity to drill down into the portal and the data.
Manually building a complex report can be highly frustrating for a client, and for the Marketing Agency who wants to show great ROI for their efforts. I was already very aware and appreciated their frustration. In my own experience, I've seen how agencies build manual reports; downloading data spreadsheets, social channels insights, Google Analytics, webpages, blog traffic, blah, blah, blah! They end up in a spin of numbers and graphs which they then try to analyse to create a custom presentation which explains each KPI, ROI etc. I knew there had to be a much easier way - it got me thinking......
What if we had the capability to do it all in once place and at one time?
As a platform for growth, HubSpot provides the ability to create, and simplify custom reporting dashboards that will benefit all the Marketing, Sales and Services Hub teams. Thankfully, my client's Pro platform with the full Reporting Add-on, gave me the full suite of 200 reporting templates and options to custom create reports based on their preferences, all at my fingertips! Now I understood why the Reporting Dashboard is as HubSpot says, "a single, centralised home for all your marketing and sales data."
The Top 8 Reporting Dashboards that are mostly requested plus some newly added Service Hub reports are now ready to create. Here's the full list:
Sales Hub
- Team Productivity for Sales
- Deal Revenue Leaderboard
- Deals Won and Lost
- Sales Leaderboard
Marketing Hub
- Campaign Performance
- Blog Performance
- Website's visit-to-lead conversion
- Channels that are performing best
Service Hub
- Knowledge Base or help docs search rate
- Knowledge base most searched terms
- Article Health
And what has helped bring these reports into the spotlight is the capability to design and build Custom reports from the new beta 'Reports' and 'Report Library'.
Nothing is sweeter to a client than seeing lots of little green arrows point up and graph lines heading in the right direction!
So, let's jump in to build your HubSpot Dashboard Reports
For my client, the first question they needed answering was, "How do we show these reports to the team without allowing them to manipulate the data?"
HubSpot has created a great way to customize these reports based on the viewers level of permission within the portal. With little manipulation, it's easy to segment high level reports, productivity reports, sales reports etc, to meet the eyes of the respective viewer. See the Share and Visibility options on the Dashboard
"Oh WOW! Is it that easy?" I hear you say...
Choose the type of Report, data sets, pipeline, funnel etc. and the sub-category requirements. Then start building the properties of the report with filters and graph styles of your choice. The choices seem endless.
Now you can play with creating your own custom reports; tweak them, add to them, move or change the graph styles or delete them as you want. By testing and adding more data you'll learn the options and tools that make it easy, and show the best results. The Report Builder is a great way to increase your own experience and 'use-ability' of the HubSpot tools. My client gave me great feedback along this journey and we mutually decided on the best formats, which really helped :)
The Real Test - the Client Engagement and satisfaction
As you present and talk your client through the data, the monthly results and accomplished Goals, you can easily toggle between the Dashboards - Marketing to Sales to Service, OR get really smart and combine lots of great data into your own unique report from scratch, to display one all encompassing report e.g 'KPI's' Monthly.
Another great tool to support your HubSpot Dashboards is Databox . This platform has full integration with HubSpot and offers exceptional tools for connecting your dashboards to beautifully displayed reports on a live URL , which you can then share with your client. This is a great way to deliver an 'End of Month' style report, a full set of dashboards each month. Rather than asking the client to log into their portal to review the dashboards they can now view them live via a Databox connection. See Databox Templates here. Databox has a great free account and starter packages for all size agencies. If you'd like to review and sign up to Databox, use our HubDo link here for reference.
Client Satisfaction is the most important part of any service we offer, and to be able to offer exceptional reporting to clients each month is really rewarding. Now you can expose' the Goals you've achieved each month and discuss the finer points of challenges as well, after all and as my manager states "Facts are stubborn things"! Turn your clients into Evangelists using HubSpot tools and set expectations early by delivering regular data updates and easy to understand reports.
Happy HubSpotting!
