Stop 08 · Marketing Analytics & DataTopics · 6/11

Dashboards for Marketing (Looker Studio)

In short

Nobody wants to log into five tools every Monday. A good dashboard pulls the key numbers into one page your boss understands in under a minute.

Building a focused, recurring view of key marketing metrics that stakeholders can check without asking you for a manual report every week — Looker Studio is a common free choice, connecting easily to GA4 and Google Ads.

The blob with a small suitcase looks up at a big station board full of coloured blank tiles.

Think of it like this

The station departure board

At a big railway station, one board shows every train, platform and delay. Nobody reads the timetable book. A marketing dashboard is that board: live, simple, and built for a quick glance.

Watch it happen

Building a dashboard in Looker Studio

Sources

Connect

Charts

Filters

1/5List where the numbers live: GA4, Google Ads, a Google Sheet of offline sales.

The big ideas

What you need to know

KPIs on top

Put the three to five headline numbers in scorecards at the very top, with comparison to last period.

Trends beat totals

A line over time shows whether things are improving. A single number can't.

Calculated fields

Create new metrics, like cost per lead, from existing ones inside Looker Studio.

Design for the reader

A CEO wants five numbers. A campaign manager wants detail. Build separate pages for each.

See it in code

Walk through the code

sql

1CASE2  WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Session source, ".*(instagram|facebook).*") THEN "Meta"3  WHEN Session medium = "cpc" THEN "Paid search"4  WHEN Session medium = "email" THEN "Email"5  ELSE "Other"6END

1/3Any source containing instagram or facebook becomes 'Meta'.

A Looker Studio calculated field that groups messy traffic sources into simple channels. Field names depend on your data source.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Packing 30 charts onto one page.

Do this instead

One page, one question. Move detail to extra pages.

Oops

Showing numbers with no comparison.

Do this instead

Always show change versus last week or last month, so the reader knows if it's good.

Your mission

Make your first dashboard

~45 min

Quick check

Your manager opens the dashboard and asks 'Is this good or bad?'. What's most likely missing?

Go deeper

1Build a simple Looker Studio dashboard connecting to a GA4 or sample dataset.
2Limit a first-draft dashboard to 5-6 key metrics before adding more.
3Practice designing a dashboard someone else could understand without you explaining it.