RACE digital marketing dashboard

Use our practical reporting dashboard integrated with Google Analytics to rapidly report on the performance of your digital marketing

How will this dashboard help me and my business?

Google Analytics is a great, free service, but it contains many metrics and reports. Although custom dashboards can be built in Google Analytics, it's not readily possible to create a dashboard that summarizes the effectiveness of digital marketing across the marketing funnel for a business, particularly for the all-important 'deltas' of month-on-month and year-on-year performance.

The purpose of the Smart Insights dashboard is to help managers to complete a regular monthly review of the current effectiveness of their digital marketing using Google Analytics with Google's Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio).

We use this combination ourselves in our monthly reporting. The dashboard makes it easy to compare digital marketing performance through time with a focus on the key digital marketing measures across the customer lifecycle or marketing funnel defined across the Smart Insights RACE Planning Framework.

The Smart Insights RACE Framework used in all our member resources was developed to help digital marketers plan and manage their activities in a more structured way since we found that many don't have a digital marketing strategy with clear objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators).

By reporting on just four metrics for each of the Reach, Act, Convert and Engage parts of the funnel you can measure the key areas of your digital marketing plan to see which are working or require attention. In addition to overall visits, leads and conversion, the dashboard also includes a comparison of visits, leads and sales for different key low-cost channels used by many businesses of organic search, social media and email marketing.

2023 update - integration with Google Looker Studio (formally GDS)

This dashboard was previously integrated with Google Sheets, but Google stopped supporting the Sheets Add-in for this that was based on the previous Universal Analytics. Our updated dashboard uses Google's Looker Studio for an improved experience and is set up to work with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Note that this integration is subject to the Google API quota for amount of data exchanged per hour and day.

How do I set up the dashboard?

When you click 'download' you will be taken through to a step-by-step instruction page to help you customize the RACE dashboard for your business. We have also included a video explainer from Dr. Dave Chaffey with further guidance.

You will need a Google Account to link to the dashboard, and we suggest you use the Google Demo account (for GA4) when setting up the dashboard for the first time.

Summary - what are the benefits of this template?

The benefits are:

1. Aligned to your digital marketing strategy
2. Simple configuration
3. Quick to setup
4. Provides actionable insight for a marketing funnel
5. Easy for marketers at all levels to use
6. Based on the commonly used and secure Google Analytics and Google Looker Studio platforms

Resource Details

About this guide

• Authors: Dr. Dave Chaffey and Pat Kelly, Smart Insights
• Format: Google Looker Studio dashboard template which you can copy and configure for your business to produce a custom dashboard report using Google Analytics Data. Step-by-step instructions are included.

About the authors

Dr. Dave Chaffey

Dave is co-founder of Smart Insights and creator of the Smart Insights RACE planning framework. For his full profile, or to connect on LinkedIn or other social networks, see the About Dave Chaffey profile page on Smart Insights. Dave is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognized by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.

Patrick Kelly

Patrick was a Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Smart Insights. He has spent many years working with both B2B and B2C brands to implement data-driven marketing strategies covering paid search, SEO, Social media and marketing automation. You will also find him catching up on the latest Marvel releases or playing the latest RPG.

Connect to Patrick on LinkedIn.

How does it work? Is my information secure?

This dashboard is built using Google Looker to report on business marketing performance. It uses Google Analytics data from your Google Account via Google Analytics. This data is only available to those in your business who can sign in with their username and password to have access to the account and know the ID of the website property and view. It is not available to Smart Insights or anyone who doesn’t have this information.