Marketing funnel dashboard: how it works and how to set it up

A marketing funnel dashboard puts every stage of your funnel on one screen: how many people arrived, how many engaged, how many asked to talk, and where each of them came from. Without one, the Monday meeting becomes an argument about whose spreadsheet is right. This article explains what a marketing funnel dashboard should show for a company of 10 to 250 people, which numbers to leave off, and how to build it in Reporting on the levelpartner.ai platform from data the platform already holds.

What the dashboard is for

The dashboard has one job: tell you which stage to work on this week. It is not a trophy board for the marketing team and it is not a full analytics suite. If a widget does not change a decision, it does not belong on the screen.

For most stalled companies, the question the dashboard answers is a narrow one. Is the problem upstream, with too few people entering the funnel, or downstream, with people entering and then stalling? The answer decides whether next month's money goes on traffic or on conversion.

What to show and what to leave off

Six to eight widgets is enough. A good set:

• New contacts this week, split by source.
• Form submissions and funnel page conversions.
• Contacts that moved to engaged and to ready, if you tag these stages.
• Appointments booked and appointments attended.
• New opportunities created and their value.
• Opportunities won, attributed to their first source.

Leave off page views without context, social follower counts and email open rates on their own. They move without telling you what to do.

Before you start

• Tracking parameters on your links, and hidden source fields on your forms, so contacts carry a source.
• Stage tags or pipeline stages that mean the same thing to everyone.
• At least a month of data, so the first view is not empty.
• One person who owns the dashboard and presents it.

If your stages are not yet defined, the marketing funnel stages guide comes first. A dashboard built on vague stages produces precise-looking nonsense.

How to set it up

1. Open Dashboard, open the Dashboard Selection Menu, click + Add Dashboard.
2. Enter a Dashboard Name and set the Private Dashboard toggle.
3. Click Confirm to open the blank dashboard.
4. Click + Add a widget manually to open the widget panel.
5. Under General, select Funnel and configure it, then click Save.
6. Click Edit Dashboard, then + Add Widget, and select Stages Distribution.
7. Click Save Changes to keep the layout.
8. Click Opportunities, select Pipelines and open the pipeline you report on.
9. Use the funnel icon and the pie-chart icon on each stage, then save the pipeline.

Reading the dashboard in a weekly review

Read it top to bottom in five minutes, then argue about one thing only: the stage with the biggest drop compared with last month. Assign one change to that stage, with an owner and a date. Next week, start by checking whether the change happened.

What it replaces and the time it takes

The dashboard replaces the weekly export to a spreadsheet, the separate ad platform reports and the hand-counted enquiry log. Because the platform holds the forms, contacts, appointments and pipeline, the numbers come from the same records and agree with each other.

Building it takes two to three hours. Running it takes ten minutes of preparation before each weekly review.

When not to use it

If you have fewer than a few dozen contacts a month, weekly numbers swing too much to mean anything. Review monthly instead, or simply read each enquiry. And if your stages are not applied consistently by workflows, fix that before building a dashboard on top. The guide to funnel management covers keeping that hygiene in place.

Troubleshooting

Source shows as unknown for most contacts. Forms are not capturing link parameters, or contacts are entered by hand. Add hidden source fields to every form and set a source when adding contacts manually.

Numbers differ from the ad platform. The ad platform counts clicks, the dashboard counts contacts. That gap is normal. Compare like with like: clicks to page visits, page visits to contacts.

The won opportunities widget is empty. Opportunities are being marked as won in a different pipeline, or the widget filters by a date the deals do not match. Check the pipeline filter and the date field.

Stage counts jump suddenly. A workflow was edited and started tagging a large existing list. Check recent workflow changes and remove the tags it applied by mistake.

Frequently asked questions

Should the dashboard show revenue?

Show opportunity value created and won, because the platform holds that. Final revenue usually lives in your accounting system and is best reported there.

One dashboard or several?

One per audience or funnel if they behave differently, plus one summary for the leadership meeting. The summary should fit on a single screen without scrolling.

Who should see the dashboard?

Everyone who can change a number on it: marketing, the sales lead and whoever runs the follow-up. Restrict editing to the owner so widgets do not drift.

How does this relate to the wider funnel?

The dashboard is the measurement layer over the marketing funnel. Build the funnel and its tags first, then the dashboard reads from them.

The journey this guide describes