Building a Marketing Dashboard in Looker Studio

Questions the dashboard must answer

• How many leads, bookings or orders did we get this month, and how does that compare with last month?
• Which channels brought them: organic search, paid search, social, email, direct?
• What did paid leads cost per lead?
• Is organic search visibility growing, measured by clicks and impressions?
• Which landing pages turn visitors into leads, and which do not?

Connecting GA4, Ads and Search Console

Looker Studio has free native connectors for Google's own products. Add each as a data source, sign in with an account that has at least read access, and check that the fields you need are available. Each source keeps its own definitions: a GA4 key event, a Google Ads conversion and a Search Console click are counted differently, so do not expect them to match exactly.

One page, few charts

The layout that works for small businesses is simple. At the top, a row of scorecards: leads, cost, cost per lead, organic clicks, each with the change against the previous period. In the middle, one time series of leads by week. At the bottom, a table of channels with sessions, leads and conversion rate, and a second table of landing pages. That is enough to answer the questions above. Everything else can go on a second page for the person who wants detail. Our guide to dashboards people read covers the design principles.

Filters and date comparisons

Add a date range control at the top with a default such as last 28 days, and set the comparison to the previous period on every scorecard. For seasonal businesses, add a second view comparing with the same period last year, since a Swedish shop's December or a restaurant's July says little compared with the month before. A channel filter and, for multi-location businesses, a filter by city or page group are usually the only other controls needed. Every extra filter makes the page harder to read.

Sharing and access

1. Create the report and data sources under a company Google account, not a personal one.
2. Decide whether data sources use the owner's credentials or each viewer's; owner's credentials let viewers see data without their own access to GA4.
3. Share view access by name, avoid public links, and schedule a monthly email delivery as a PDF if people prefer the inbox.
4. Keep edit access to one or two people and note changes in a text box on a hidden page.

When you do not need a custom dashboard: if one person looks at the numbers occasionally, GA4's own reports and Search Console are enough. When several people need the same numbers every month, or you pay for ads and want cost per lead in one place, our tracking and analytics setup fixes the tracking and builds the dashboard on top. Start with the GA4 setup guide, see the pricing page, or book a call.

Frequently asked questions