The monthly marketing report often runs to twenty pages and reaches no conclusion. The director opens it, looks for the sales figure, does not find it next to the spend, and closes it. A good marketing dashboard does the opposite: a single screen, a few figures that anyone in the company understands, and the answer to the question “is it going better or worse than last month?”
We build it for managing directors, sales directors and marketing managers who want to see the same figures, calculated the same way, without waiting for somebody to add them up by hand.
Figures that anyone in the company understands
We start from management’s questions, not from what the tools can display. There are usually four or five: how much was spent, how many orders or enquiries came in, what one costs, which channels they come from, and how we stand against the previous period and against the plan.
A figure by itself says nothing. Next to each one we put the comparison with the previous period and with the same period last year, because many businesses are seasonal, and, where there is a target, the distance to it.
- The result: revenue from orders or number of enquiries received, for the chosen period.
- The spend: advertising budgets, added up across all platforms.
- Cost per order or per enquiry: spend divided by results.
- The channels: organic search, ads, email, social media, direct.
- The trend: a single line over time, by week or by month.
The sources: analytics, the ad platforms and real sales
The data sits in different places and does not line up by itself. Google Analytics knows what visitors do on the site. Google Ads and Meta Ads know how much was spent, and each claims conversions by its own rules, so their total usually exceeds the real orders. The store, the invoicing software or the CRM knows what was actually sold, cancellations and returns included.
That is why we take the sales figure from the system where the selling happens and the split by channel from analytics, and we write on the screen where each one comes from. For service businesses, the link between enquiry and contract runs through the CRM. If the source is not recorded there, the dashboard stops at the number of enquiries, and we say so openly.
A marketing dashboard in Looker Studio: connections and automatic updates
We usually use Looker Studio, Google’s reporting tool: it opens in the browser, is shared like a document and connects directly to Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console and spreadsheets. Meta Ads and other platforms outside Google need a separate connector or an automated export. If the company already works with Power BI, the dashboard can be built there.
When there are many sources or the report is opened often, we gather the data in a warehouse (BigQuery, Google’s database for analysis, or, for small volumes, Google Sheets), and the report reads from there. It loads faster and does not run into the connectors’ query limits. Updating is automatic, and a copy can be sent by email on a schedule. The stages of the work are set out below.
- A conversation with the people who will read the report: what decisions they make and which figures they are missing.
- An inventory of the sources; broken measurement is repaired first.
- A paper sketch of the main screen, approved before any chart is built.
- Connecting the data and comparing it with the known figures from the accounts, over a closed period.
- Handover: access rights on the company’s own accounts and a short training session.
Written definitions and what you leave off the screen
The longest discussions are not about charts but about words. Does “revenue” mean with or without VAT, before or after returns? Does “enquiry” include spam messages? Is a “new customer” someone buying for the first time or someone who has not bought for a year? Each term gets a one-line definition, set out on a page of the report. Otherwise marketing and accounts will always have different figures, and both will be right.
Just as important is what you leave out: impressions and likes, which look good and pay no bills; real-time figures, which invite hasty reactions. The test is simple: if the figure doubled or halved, would you do anything differently? If not, it belongs on a detail page.
One limitation to state from the start: the dashboard shows what is happening, not why. The explanation remains the job of a person who knows the campaigns and the market.
Frequently asked questions
Is Looker Studio free?
The basic tool is free and is enough for most companies. Costs can arise with connectors for platforms outside Google and, at large data volumes, with the warehouse where the data is gathered.
Can we include profit as well, not just sales?
Yes, if there is a reliable source for product cost or margin: the store, the stock management software or a spreadsheet that someone maintains. Without one, we show revenue and advertising spend and state clearly that it is not profit.
How often is the data updated?
It depends on the source: some platforms provide same-day data, others with a delay, and conversion figures from ads go on being corrected for a few days. For management decisions, a daily update is usually enough.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.