Looker Studio Dashboard Setup for Marketing Teams

Why Looker Studio?

Google Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) is free, connects to GA4, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and dozens of other sources, and produces shareable, auto-refreshing reports. For teams not ready for a paid BI tool, it is the best starting point.

The Dashboard Blueprint

A useful marketing dashboard covers four areas:

1. Traffic Overview: Sessions, users, engagement rate by channel over time

2. Conversion Performance: Conversion rate, conversions, revenue by source/medium

3. Campaign Detail: Ad spend, ROAS, CPA, impressions, clicks by campaign

4. Content Performance: Top pages, engagement rate, conversion rate by landing page

Connecting Your Data Sources

Go to Create → Report, then add data sources:

• GA4: Native Google connector, select your property
• Google Ads: Native connector, select your account
• Meta Ads: Requires a third-party connector (Supermetrics, Funnel.io, or Porter Metrics — most have free tiers)

Building the Traffic Scorecard

Add a Scorecard for each key metric:

• Click "Add a chart" → Scorecard
• Set the metric: Sessions
• Add a comparison period: Previous period or Previous year
• Style: show the change as a % with color coding

Repeat for: Users, Engaged Sessions, Conversions, Revenue.

Creating the Channel Breakdown Chart

• Add chart → Bar chart
• Dimension: Session default channel group
• Metric: Sessions, Conversions, Conversion Rate
• Sort by Sessions descending
• Apply a date range filter to your report date range

Date Range Controls

Add a date range control at the top of every page:

• Add a control → Date range control
• Set default: Last 30 days
• Enable "Comparison period" toggle

This lets viewers change the date range without editing the report.

Sharing and Scheduling

Share the report with your team via the share button (view or edit access). Set up email delivery under Share → Schedule delivery to send PDF snapshots every Monday morning automatically.