How to Create a Marketing Dashboard in Excel with ChatGPT

You can turn a blank Excel spreadsheet into a full-fledged marketing dashboard without being a formula expert. Using a tool like ChatGPT as your co-pilot, you can get the exact formulas, setup steps, and even troubleshooting advice needed to build a report that consolidates your key marketing metrics. This article breaks down how to use prompts to guide you through cleaning your data, calculating KPIs, and visualizing your performance in Excel.

Why Bother with a Marketing Dashboard in Excel?

Your marketing data is likely spread across a dozen tabs: Google Analytics for website traffic, Facebook Ads Manager for campaign performance, your email provider for open rates, and Shopify for sales data. Jumping between these platforms makes it tough to see the big picture.

A marketing dashboard solves this by pulling your most important metrics into a single, cohesive view. It helps you:

Spot Trends Instantly: See if your ad spend is rising while conversions are dropping, all in one glance.
Make Data-Driven Decisions: Stop guessing which campaigns are working and start allocating your budget based on clear performance data.
Save Time on Reporting: Build it once, and you have a template for all future weekly or monthly reporting.

With an AI assistant like ChatGPT, you don't have to navigate Excel's complexities alone. It can act as your personal data analyst, guiding you through each step.

Step 1: Gather Your Raw Materials (The Data)

Before you build, you need the ingredients. For an Excel dashboard, this means exporting your data in a format like CSV or XLSX from your marketing platforms. You don't need every metric under the sun - just the ones that matter to your business performance.

Start by identifying your most important channels and metrics. Here’s a typical shopping list:

From Your Ad Platforms (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.): Spend, Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, Revenue.
From Google Analytics: Sessions, Users, Traffic Sources (e.g., Organic, Paid, Direct), Goal Completions, Bounce Rate.
From Your E-commerce Platform (Shopify, etc.): Total Sales, Average Order Value (AOV), Conversion Rate by Traffic Source.
From Your Email Platforms (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, etc.): Emails Sent, Open Rate, Click-Through Rate.

Go into each platform and export a report for your desired date range (e.g., the last 30 days). Try to ensure all your reports share a 'Date' column so you can track performance over time.

Step 2: Set Up Your Excel Workspace for Success

Organization is everything. A tidy workspace makes the process smoother and easier to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

Create a new, blank workbook in Excel and set up a few sheets:

Create a separate sheet for each data source. Name them descriptively, like Data - Facebook Ads, Data - Google Analytics, and so on. Just copy and paste the info from each exported CSV into its corresponding sheet.
Create one final, blank sheet and name it Dashboard. This is where your charts and key performance indicators (KPIs) will live.

Step 3: Use ChatGPT to Clean and Standardize Your Data

Raw data exports are rarely clean. You’ll often find inconsistent date formats, currency symbols that need removing, and annoying blank rows. Cleaning it up manually is tedious, but you can ask ChatGPT for a shortcut.

Copy the first few rows of one of your data sheets, including the headers. Then, describe the problem to ChatGPT.

Sample ChatGPT Prompt for Data Cleaning:

ChatGPT will likely give you precise instructions, such as using the VALUE() and SUBSTITUTE() formulas or guiding you through Excel's "Text to Columns" feature. This turns a long, frustrating manual task into a quick copy-and-paste job.

Step 4: Generate Formulas to Calculate Your KPIs

Now that your data is clean, you can calculate the metrics that truly matter. It’s best practice to add these calculations in new columns within your Data sheets or on a separate Calculations summary sheet.

Instead of fumbling with formulas, just ask ChatGPT what you need.

Sample ChatGPT Prompt for Formulas:

ChatGPT will provide the exact formula, ready to be pasted into your spreadsheet:

For Click-Through Rate (CTR): =`F2/D2` (then format the cell as a Percentage).
For Cost Per Click (CPC): =`C2/F2` (format as Currency).

Repeat this process for all your key metrics across your different data sources, like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and Conversion Rate. Just describe where your data lives, and ChatGPT will provide the formula.

Step 5: Visualize Your Data with Charts

Numbers in a spreadsheet are useful, but charts make those numbers easier to understand. A simple line chart can show you a trend in seconds that you might miss by looking at rows and rows of data.

You can ask ChatGPT for step-by-step instructions on building charts for your KPIs manually.

Sample ChatGPT Prompt for Creating Charts:

ChatGPT will provide a clear, click-by-click guide: "1. Select Column A and Column C by holding down the Ctrl key. 2. Go to the 'Insert' tab on the ribbon. 3. Click 'Line Chart' and choose the first 2-D option."

After creating each chart, cut and paste it into your ‘Dashboard’ sheet. Arrange them in a way that’s logical to you, maybe with high-level metrics at the top and more granular channel data below.

Step 6: Assemble a Professional Dashboard Layout

A good dashboard tells a story, leading from general overview to specific details. You can create eye-catching “KPI cards” for your most important top-line numbers.

To do this:

On your Dashboard sheet, select a cell.
Give it a background color and make the font bold.
Instead of typing a number, link it to your calculated Total Spend, Total Revenue, or Overall ROAS cell. For example, in the dashboard cell, type: ='Data - Facebook Ads'!G50 or wherever your total is.

Need layout ideas? Ask ChatGPT for suggestions.

Sample Prompt for Dashboard Layout:

It will give you excellent ideas for arranging your elements to create a visually appealing and easy-to-understand report.

Limitations to Keep in Mind

Using ChatGPT to build a dashboard in Excel is a fantastic trick, but it's important to be aware of the limitations:

It's Static, Not Live: This is the big one. Your dashboard will not update automatically. To get fresh data, you'll need to re-export new CSVs from your platforms and repeat the copy-paste process weekly or monthly. It’s a process that can be a real time-sink.
It's an Instructor, Not a Doer: ChatGPT can't click around in your Excel file for you. It provides instructions, formulas, and code, but you are the one responsible for implementing them.
Double-Check the Work: While impressively accurate, AI can make mistakes or misunderstand a prompt. Always glance at the formulas it gives you and test them on a small data sample to make sure the output makes sense.

Final Thoughts

Building a marketing dashboard in Excel with ChatGPT as your guide is an excellent way to consolidate your data and generate genuine insights without a deep technical background. You can move from scattered reports to a centralized command center that fuels smarter, faster decisions for your business.

While this project is an amazing way to use AI, you'll notice that the manual routine of updating CSVs can quickly eat into your work week. At some point, you'll want to graduate from static reports to a live system. We built Graphed to do exactly that, it connects directly to platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and Shopify, so your data is always current. You can create dashboards just by describing what you need in plain English and get real-time, interactive reports in seconds instead of hours of spreadsheet work.