Sankey Chart Excel: How to Visualize your Data using Sankey Charts, Quick & Easy-To-Grasp Steps

Gaining insights from ad campaigns is a daunting task for a considerable chunk of pay-per-click (PPC) managers, especially those that use the Excel app for visualization.

Sometimes, you don’t know where to start.

The amount of data generated by paid search marketing is incredibly enormous because search engines track all users’ activities.

For instance, Google tracks every action (impressions, clicks, page visits, etc.). This data is then presented to PPC managers in granular form.

Working with tabular data is not an easy undertaking, especially if the tables are gigantic. Let’s assume you are trying to troubleshoot for problems contributing to missed goals and objectives.

Where would you start?

Let me give a hint. You should start by visualizing your clients’ funnels to see the journey taken by their respective leads. Visualizing the journey taken by buyers can help you identify leakages.

Essentially, it’s the leakages that are contributing to your problems-missed goals.

What do we mean by goals and objectives?

When a client contracts your agency to manage their PPC ads, they usually have an objective in mind. It could be a return on investment (ROI), traffic, impressions (brand awareness campaigns), conversions, sign-ups, and trials, among others.

Sankey charts provide actionable insights into why your clients’ leads are not taking the desired action at the funnel’s last stage.

Sankey charts in Excel are strategically positioned to visualize your funnel for leakages.

This blog will walk you through the money-making benefits of visualizing your data using Sankey charts and how to generate these charts in Excel in quick and easy steps.

Sankey Charts- Pay-per-Click (PPC) Management’s Best-Kept Secret

What’s a Sankey Chart?

A Sankey diagram is a powerful visualization tool that provides an overview of the flows in a system, such as energy and materials, or the customer journey in PPC advertising.

As each node has a varying height depending on its quantity, you can quickly determine the most notable contributions. This type of segmentation analysis makes it easy to draw conclusions from data.

Essentially, Sankey charts are ideal in visualizing flow components, such as buyer’s journey in paid search marketing.

A funnel is a perfect example of a flow. Sankey can visualize the flow of your target users across each touchpoint. Therefore, it’s easy identifying the touchpoints that contribute to leakages in your clients’ funnel.

The problem could be the interest phase of your target user’s journey. The keywords groups might be misaligned with the user intent causing a surge in bounce rates. A leakage could occur during the commercial intent stage as a user is expected to complete the funnel’s final stage.

The possibilities are limitless, really.

That’s why it’s advisable to visualize your funnel. Sankey visualization is more a must-have rather than a nice-to-have tool.

What are the Benefits of Sankey Diagrams?

  1. Sankey Charts are Incredibly Easy to Create

When you see the drawing of Sankey it looks complex but in reality it is easy to draw.

The minimum requirements needed to create a Sankey diagram aren’t much at all. You just need:

• Two Dimensions
• One Metric

  2. Sankey Charts are Easy to Use on Google Ads Campaigns Data

You can now visualize your Google Ads campaign data using custom Sankey charts purposely for PPC management.

It’s very possible. Just read till the end to learn more

There’s an easy-to-use and affordable data visualization tool loaded with Sankey charts and a whole bunch of other custom pay-per-click charts purposely to save your time.

It’s awe-inspiring.

This tool integrates seamlessly with your favorite spreadsheet tool, Excel, to produce incredibly intuitive and easy-to-read Sankey charts, as you shall discover later.

  3. You Get a Crystal Clear View of the Target Audience’s Journey in the Funnel

In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, leakages on any touchpoint in a funnel can quickly spiral into missed goals, depleted ad budget, or negative returns on investment (ROI).

Knowing where the leakage is coming from in your water tank could be the difference between having plenty of water and an empty tank. Ideally, you don’t want an empty tank.

The same case applies to search engine marketing (SEM).

Leakages can result in a speedy depletion of your client’s ad budget if not mitigated. This is where the awe-inspiring Sankey charts come in.

  4. Sankey Charts Promotes Insight-Driven Decision-Making

Sankey charts’ ability to visualize users’ journey across different touchpoints in a funnel is with no doubt revolutionary.

Sankey empowers PPC managers to make meaningful and data-driven decisions to help their clients achieve their goals.

These charts provide potent insights that can help you patch up trouble-some points along the users’ journey to the desired destination – conversion.

How Can You Generate Sankey Diagrams in Excel?

Excel is an application developed and published by Microsoft.

The spreadsheet app organizes data in columns and rows. Each cell can accommodate different forms of data, such as texts and numbers.

Excel is one of the most heavily used tools for analytics by small and medium-sized PPC businesses. However, it has potentially money-draining weaknesses that could consume your time unproductively and still produce undesirable results.

Firstly, diagramming Sankey charts is nearly impossible because Excel lacks intuitive flowcharts or tree diagram templates. Besides, it’s prone to human error, especially if vast amounts of data are involved.

Secondly, it’s not agile, especially in handling massive amounts of data. Excel is prone to crash, especially if it’s loaded with tons of data.

It’s needless to reinforce that data is gold in today’s digital marketing landscape.

Remember, as a PPC strategist managing multiple ad accounts on behalf of your clients, the last thing you need is a data visualization tool that limits your ability to make maximum use of your massive data.

Lastly, Excel spreadsheet is not collaborative like other tools, such as Google Sheets and a third-party data visualization tool, which we will cover in detail below.

You don’t want to miss the last section.

In light of the Excel revelations above, what’s the solution?

What’s the Solution?

There’s an Excel add-in that’s highly affordable and easy-to-use, especially if you want custom Sankey charts specifically for pay-per-click (PPC) management.

The highly intuitive data visualization tool is called ChartExpo.

What’s ChartExpo?

ChartExpo is a cloud-hosted add-in that enables you to transform Excel from a simple reporting app into a highly responsive data visualization juggernaut.

Using ChartExpo for your data visualization needs, it becomes EASY to get access to all the actionable insights needed to streamline your clients’ funnels for maximum desirable goals.

ChartExpo comes fully equipped with custom Sankey charts and over 50 other different charts purposely for paid search management, all for $10 a month.

Essentially, at a cost less than coffee, you get access to a highly intuitive tool to visualize your campaign data using Sankey charts and more others.

The noteworthy data visualization tool empowers you to visualize your campaign data to gain a 360-degree perspective.

Think of a surveillance camera without blind spots.

ChartExpo’s expansive chart library, which includes Sankey Charts, helps to uncover blind spots holding you back from achieving your goals and objectives.

How Can You Use ChartExpo to Visualize Your Campaign Data Using Sankey Charts in Excel?

To Get Started with ChartExpo for Excel Add-In, follow the Simple and Easy Steps Below.

• Open your Excel desktop application (Excel 2013 with sp1) or later).
• Open the worksheet and click on the INSERT menu
• You’ll see the My Apps option.
• Click on My Apps and then click on See All.

• You will see the screen as shown in the screenshot below.
• You’ll see your add-in ChartExpo for Excel.
• If you don’t, please click on the Refresh button.
• Select this add-in and click on the Insert button.

• Now log in with your Microsoft account or create a new account by clicking the Create New link
• Login with the newly created account and start using the add-in.
• Enter your newly created account and start using the ChartExpo add-in. You’re only required to log in for the first time. Next time, ChartExpo won’t ask for your details again.
• Now you can start using ChartExpo for Excel to access incredible Sankey visualization of your data.

• You’ll see an extensive library of visual charts categorized into six different groups. You can select Sankey chart by expanding the relevant group.

Let’s Analyze a Sample Google Ads Campaign Data in Excel.

As shown on the screenshot above, the data on Excel can easily overwhelm you without creative visualization charts.

Remember, on your ChartExpo, you’ll come across the metric and dimensions buttons.

• When the ‘please select a column for Sankey metric’ message pops, fill in the metric you want to investigate.
• When ChartExpo dashboard tells you ‘Please select columns for Sankey levels’ fill in the campaign dimensions.

• You can also edit the chart to make it more visually appealing.

For example, you can customize the colors and rename the chart with only a click (highlighted by the red boxes on the screenshot below).

• To add the Chart’s header, simply click on the header and rename and press the apply

After some customizations, your chart should look like this:

What are the Results?

It’s easy to analyze the user behavior on social networks to gain insights into leakages or drop-off points.

Judging by the nodes’ size (right-hand side), LinkedIn is the poorest contributor of traffic visits on the landing page. This is a potential red flag if you have PPC ads running on the platform.

It seems that the blog is the biggest recipient of traffic (37%), followed by landing page 2. The campaign has a substantial leakage (drop-off zone) that’s likely to inhibit ROI growth.

It’s worth noting that Pages 1 and 3 need to be optimized to attract more traffic from the social media platforms.

Pinterest and Instagram are the significant contributors of traffic to the campaign followed by Facebook, Twitter, and Quora.

The Sankey chart above provides you with actionable insights into the landing pages getting more visits from social media channels.

Wrap Up

It’s crystal clear that the Sankey charts are incredibly powerful in uncovering leakages across various touchpoints in your clients’ funnels.

The concept of Sankey is synonymous with flow evaluation for leakages and other problems. Some of the money making benefits of Sankey Charts to PPC ad agencies include the following:

1. Sankey charts promote an insight-driven decision-making process in pay-per-click (PPC) agencies.
2. By visualizing your Google Ads campaign data using Sankey charts, you get a 360-degree view of your clients’ leads across various touchpoints during the buying journey.
3. Sankey Charts are strategically positioned to visualize Google Ads accounts data.
4. Sankey Charts are incredibly easy to generate.

Essentially, you need two dimensions and one metric, and voila! You have your intuitive and easy-to-read flow charts.

It’s highly understandable why Excel is one of the most popular spreadsheet apps among young and growing PPC ad agencies. It has proven to be highly reliable in the past.

However, Excel is yet to catch with the highly evolving PPC industry and its strategies, such as revolutionary concepts, i.e. Sankey and other custom visualization charts. Essentially, you cannot use Excel as a stand-alone app to visualize your PPC campaigns without a third-party add-in.

This is where the affordable and easy-to-use ChartExpo comes to your rescue.

ChartExpo is custom-made purposely for PPC marketers because it’s loaded with innumerable tailor-made visual charts purposely built for pay-per-click (PPC) management.

ChartExpo should be your choice data visualization tool in PPC management.

Why?

1. It’s affordable and incredibly easy to use. It comes with a user-friendly interface (UI).

Besides, at $10 a month, you get to access over 50 custom charts purposely for paid search marketing management.

2. It has an export option to facilitate seamless and EASY transfer of your Sankey chart as PNG, JPEG, and other formats.
3. ChartExpo comes armed with intuitive Sankey charts and many more that tell you everything with just a glance.
4. ChartExpo add-in for Excel comes with a Free trial for 7-days. Try it for free for the next one week because you have nothing to lose. Sign up today.

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