What is Data Visualisation and its power in Digital Marketing

Data visualisation is one of the easiest ways to make sense of all the numbers we deal with in digital marketing. Rather than digging through rows of stats, visualising data through charts, graphs, or dashboards lets us instantly spot trends, compare results, and make better decisions. Whether it’s tracking ad spend, customer behaviour, or campaign performance, visuals help us see exactly what’s happening without getting lost in the data.

This blog posts is for both freelance marketers as well as people working in digital agencies, and will shed light on what data visualisation is, why it’s important, and how digital agencies use visualisation – but of course there’ll be much more! Dive into the blog to learn more about data visualisation 🙂

Index

What is data visualisation?

Data visualisation is the process of turning data into visual formats like charts, graphs, and maps. It makes complex data easier to understand and analyse by highlighting trends, patterns, and insights that raw numbers alone might not reveal.

In digital marketing, data visualisation helps transform metrics, like customer demographics and sales trends, into digestible visuals, making it clear where you’re winning and where there’s room for improvement. You’ll likely turn to data visualisation when you’re analysing your marketing data.

Why is data visualisation important in digital marketing?

Data visualisation is a huge help in digital marketing because it lets you spot trends and patterns instantly, instead of digging through endless rows of data. By turning numbers into charts, like a line graph to analyse cost per click (cpc) data over an extended period of time (e.g. last 12 months), revenue over time, or cost per acquisition (cpa), you can see right away if costs are rising, cpa’s are dropping, or if revenue is spiking.

I’d say these are the main benefits:

Spotting trends instantly: With a simple line chart for monthly CPC, you can see straight away if costs are going up or down over time. It’s a lot faster and clearer than trying to make sense of raw numbers.
Easy comparisons: Visuals make it easy to compare performance, like checking revenue across campaigns or quarters. A bar chart that shows Q1 vs. Q2 revenue, for example, lets you see which one did better at a glance.
Noticing outliers: Any big jumps or drops are easy to spot visually. If you suddenly see a spike in CPA for a specific month, it jumps out immediately, making it easy to dig into the cause.
Simplifying large data sets: Digital marketing has tons of metrics: from clicks, to conversions, to revenue. Visuals help organize all this data into something you can understand fast. A dashboard with trend lines for each metric lets you quickly see how things are moving over time.
Making data easy for everyone: Data visualisation turns an overload in numbers into simple visuals, so even those who aren’t data experts can understand the trends or key results. A clear chart or graph makes it easy for the whole internal team or the client to grasp insights and make informed decisions together.

In short, data visualisation makes complex marketing data clear and actionable, so you can adjust strategies quickly, spot issues early, and take advantage of new opportunities.

The best visualisation tools in digital marketing

The below are by far the most used visualisation tools in most digital agencies:

Google Sheets: A straightforward, go-to tool for quick charts and graphs. It’s easy to set up and ideal for simple visualisations, like tracking campaign performance or spotting trends.

Google Looker Studio: Great for building interactive dashboards that pull live data from various sources. Perfect if you want a real-time view of how different metrics—like clicks or conversions—are trending over time.

Google Analytics: Comes with built-in reports and visualisations, making it easy to track website and campaign metrics without having to build things from scratch. Handy for spotting user behavior and traffic patterns.

In-platform visualisations: Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Ads, Search Console.. Nearly all digital marketing platforms provide you with in-platform visualisations which can be very useful for quick data analysis activities when optimising your campaigns and activities.

ChatGPT: Useful for generating explanations, insights, or quick analysis of your data. While not a visualisation tool itself, ChatGPT can help interpret trends, suggest strategies based on your data, or explain what your visuals mean, even if you’re not a data expert.

How do digital agencies use visualisation?

All this theory is great of course, but if you work in a digital agency, how can you use visualisation? How do agencies use visualisation?

I say there’s two main ways we use visualisation in an agency context:

Internal use: internally we are constantly analysing our project’s data, and visualisation helps tons with that! We’ll use a lot of sheets, in-platform data, and google analytics in most cases.

External use: when working with clients, we definitely lean on data visualisation to make information easy to digest and to highlight trends. Looker Studio is our go-to tool for this; we create comprehensive reports that cover all our performance marketing activities. Personally, I showcase data and insights to clients every two weeks, and Looker Studio helps me illustrate those findings.

But we also dive into more extensive analyses quarterly or semi-annually, where we take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Clients are particularly interested in these longer-term analyses, as we explore trends in more depth.

It can be tough to get a solid understanding from bi-weekly updates since the data changes daily. But by zooming out and focusing on the broader trends, everything becomes much clearer. I’m a big fan of these quarterly and semi-annual reviews and clients are definitely too!

The best charts and graphs for visualisation in digital marketing

There are tons of really cool graphs and charts out there, but I’ll just introduce you to 4 here, and provide you with some best practices for these.

Line Graph

Line graphs are great for showing trends over time. In PPC management for example, you can use them to track metrics like click-through rates (CTR) or cost-per-click (CPC) across different months.

Tip: Keep it simple! Limit the number of lines to a maximum of three or four to avoid clutter. Use different colours for each line and clearly label your axes so viewers can easily understand what they’re looking at.

Bar Chart

Bar charts are perfect for comparing different categories. In digital marketing, you can use them to compare the performance in terms of revenue for different brands you’re selling in your store, for example.

Tip: Use a horizontal layout for long category names, and try to keep the number of bars manageable (ideally under 10). Make sure to include a clear title and labels to help your audience quickly grasp the differences.

Pie Chart

Pie charts show parts of a whole, making them useful for visualising budget allocations in PPC campaigns. You can illustrate how much of your total budget goes to different channels (like search ads, display ads, or social media).

Tip: Pie charts are great for showing percentage of a whole. You can use them, for example, to visualise the distribution of customers across different Age Groups in your marketing campaigns. This helps you see how your customer base is segmented and allows you to assess which age groups are most interested in your products.

Scatter Plot

Scatter plots are perfect for showing the relationship between two variables. And let me tell you, I love scatter plots. In this case, you could use them to analyse the correlation between Product Views and Products Bought. This visualisation helps you point out any best-sellers that don’t get a lot of views – if that’s the case you could try and make sure those products get more views through specific campaigns.

Tip: Don’t be intimidated by scatter plots. You can find a scatter plot in Google Analytics 4 if you have an e-commerce store, and I’d really suggest you start using it! You can find it under…

Using these graphs effectively can help you visualize your data, draw insights, and make better decisions in your digital marketing strategies!

Practical data visualisation courses

If you want something really practical, I’d suggest you these two courses:

That’s it for this blog post! I hope that’s of any help.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and write me a message there too!

What is data visualisation and why it’s important in digital marketing