Any marketer is probably already familiar with a hugely popular tool like Looker Studio (formerly known as Data Studio), which instantly makes your vast amounts of Data easy to work with the moment you start using it. That's because Looker Studio is a platform designed to help manage the various data coming from the many Tools marketers use, whether it's Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Sheet and many more, in order to transform that data into reports or dashboards that can be customized to your needs, displaying it as graphs, images, or charts.
In this article, Relevant Audience will guide novice marketers who want to make their work more convenient through getting started with Looker Studio like a pro, beginning with creating and customizing reports based on the data you have. If you're ready, let's dive in.
How is Looker Studio different from Data Studio (the former name)?
Before diving deep into how to use it, let's first understand how Looker Studio differs from Data Studio and what additional features it offers users, as follows:
A deeper look at using Looker Studio
Relevant Audience will take you through 3 in-depth tips on Looker Studio that will help make your work twice as easy, as follows:
- Choosing a template or dashboard
After logging in to Looker Studio, you can start using it right away. The first step you need to take is to set up and create a Dashboard. For beginners who have never used it before, there's no need to worry, because Looker Studio gathers dashboards and templates of various kinds to serve as design examples. This makes it easy for newcomers to click and select them to get ideas, or to use them directly.
A key tip for creating a Dashboard is to choose a format that suits the data you want to display. For the most part, these Data visualization diagrams are meant to break down difficult data into images that are easy to understand. But that doesn't mean you have to cram everything into a single image. Creating an overview that can explain the details thoroughly will help make your Dashboard more effective.
- Connecting data sources
Once you've selected the Dashboard template you want, it's time to connect to your data sources, starting with:
- In the Data Tab, click "Add Data Source" in the top right corner.
- A data source window will then appear. Select the type of data source you want to Import. You can connect to databases from more than 24 other tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Sheet, BigQuery and others. In cases where the tool is not part of the Google network, Looker Studio can connect to more than 650 data sources, such as Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft Ads, Position Tracking, SEOMonitor and so on.
- Customizing the report
After connecting all of your Data Sources, it's time to customize the report appropriately. The first thing to keep in mind when customizing a report is that you don't need to display every single metric. Focus only on the important and necessary ones. Emphasize metrics that present relevant, in-depth insights rather than lumping everything together to make it look like a lot, when in reality it's all fluff and no substance. Another equally important point is choosing a chart type that suits the data you want to display, because this helps the report convey an understanding of all the data quickly, correctly, and accurately. For example:
- Table Chart or Heatmap emphasizes presenting data as numbers regarding high and low values, making the information clearer and faster to grasp.
- Line Chart A line graph is well suited to displaying data tied to dates and times, such as comparing data sets.
- Bar Chart A bar chart is a basic graph. You can choose either a vertical or horizontal layout depending on what suits the data you have.
- Pie Chart A pie chart is suitable for data sets of more than 3, helping to break down a large amount of data so it's easier to view.
- Scatter Chart A scatter chart is a graph for comparing relationships, helping you group data more clearly.
In addition, there are many other types of graphs that you can choose and adapt to suit the data you have.
Final thoughts
We hope our introduction helps beginners feel more confident in creating effective reports. We guarantee that once you've tried using Looker Studio, you'll find it's definitely not as difficult to use as you might have thought. For anyone who needs to share complex data with other teams, or has to explain things to clients, we're confident that using it will make your life much easier.
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Relevant Audience is a company that provides services as a Digital Performance Marketing Agency, with the primary goal of delivering digital marketing services that help businesses reach the target audiences searching for their products or services at the right time, place, and device, through various online channels. Our services cover Search Marketing, Social Media Ads, Search Ads and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as well as Influencer Marketing, and we are also part of the Google Partners program.
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