Google Looker Studio

What Is It Not?

A good way to understand what Looker Studio is, is to understand what it is not. 

Not an Analytics Platform: Many confuse Looker Studio as an analytics tool, like GA4.  Let’s be clear that Looker Studio is not an Analytics tool.  It does not have any ability to track website or application data.  It also does not allow you to create events or tags. 

Looker Studio can be seen as the next step in an Analytics setup after implementing an analytics tools.  For example, you can’t do away with a tool like GA4 or mixpanel that allows you to add tracking codes to your site.  But reporting features and data manipulation in GA4 are limited.  GA4 only allows you to view GA4 tracking data and the reports, shareability and other features are limited.  This is where Looker Studio comes in.  Looker Studio gives you the flexibility to blend integrate data from multiple data source like GA4, Social Media Platforms, Spreadsheets, CRM’s and many more.  You can then blend this data together and present it in a completely custom form.  

Not a Full BI tool: Looker Studio is not a full blown BI tool, but it is probably better categorised as a lightweight BI tool.  Many business would use it as a quick and easy solution, but for heavier business intelligence needs they would likely use a more powerful tool.  

What Makes Looker Studio So Popular with Marketers?

Marketers favour Looker Studio for a number of reasons.  

Versatility, ease of use & Free.  It’s fairly lightweight and runs in the cloud which makes it easy to get started and it’s free.  Marketers don’t need the full gambit of data from the whole business and marketing data is lighter and quicker to come by.  Combined with an intuitive drag-and-drop functionality, Looker Studio has empowered marketers to create impactful visualisations for better decision-making

Wide variety of templates: With a variety of Looker Studio templates available, creating customised dashboards is quick and effortless, allowing marketers to focus on data analysis and the lessons they can learn.

Integration: Its seamless integration with platforms like Google Analytics and Google Ads provides a comprehensive view of campaign performance.   Integration with Google Platforms is easy and free which is perfect for marketers who usually are using some form of Google platform: Google Ads, Youtube, GDN etc…  For non-google integrations Looker Studio has a number of 3rd party integrators that do a great job.