Whenever the term ‘Google’ is attached before any product or service, the expectations of the users rise manifold, isn’t it?
Speaking specifically about Google Data Studio, Google introduced this product in May 2016 to let the users create customized reports using data fetched from Google’s other external sources and marketing services. It has tons of drag and drop options using which you can simply add the essential tables and charts into your report, without requiring any technical knowledge. Back in the days, it was introduced in both paid and free version, but soon after, it was made free for all the users in February 2017.
Different Uses of Google Data Studio
For better understanding, let us analyze different applications of Google Data Studio, categorized into 4 broader groups.
Group 1: Data Connectors
Want to connect your report to the underlying data? Google Data Studio has got you covered! With it, you can explicitly connect 7 further tools. These include:
Campaign Manager – it helps you to measure the overall performance of your digital marketing campaigns and generate reports based on analyzing different aspects such as clicks, impressions, conversions, etc. Also, you can use it to create and share dashboards with your stakeholders.
Google Ads – as the name clarifies it all, you can use Google Ads to create and share catchy online ads to market your products and services. Moreover, you can use it to access performance report data.
Analytics – it is used to analyze how your visitors use your mobile app, website or other internet connected devices.
Google BigQuery – it is another powerful, fully manageable, low cost analytics tool of Google, which helps you to access data from BigQuery tables and merge that within Data Studio.
Google Cloud SQL – it’s impossible to talk about table, charts and forget about SQL, isn’t it? This is why, Data Studio also allows you to set-up, manage, administer and maintain your relational MySQL databases within Cloud Platform.
Google Sheets – Want to create detailed spreadsheets and simultaneously work on them along with several other people? Google Sheets is the perfect option for you!
YouTube – Data Studio can be used to analyze the analytics of your YouTube channel and visualize its overall performance.
Group 2: Data Transformation
You can use Google Data Studio to explore your content or data without having to create several SQL queries. With just a few clicks, you can visualize your data and analyze it for further actions. Moreover, you can use Data Studio to create new metrics based on custom formulas including numeric values, data source and literal text. Also, you can apply several logical, comparison and arithmetic operators to make your data even more informative.
Group 3: Visualization of Data
What’s better than having reports that have wonderful visual effects? Using Google Data Studio, you can:
1. Customize your data and add logos, icons; change backgrounds, text colors and lines. Also, you can make a choice from several fonts, object properties, line styles, etc. to make your reports visually impressive.
2. Add data from Analytics, Google Ads, YouTube, Search Console and Campaign Manager within the same report, instead of having to create different reports.
3. Control dynamics of the data and filter it on the basis of segments, channels, geography, etc.
4. Insert text, images and shapes within your data to make everything easier to read.
5. Enhance visualization by using charts, graphs, tables, time series, bar charts, heat maps, geo maps, scatter charts, area charts, scorecards, bullet charts and other visually appealing texts.
Group 4: Collaboration and Sharing
After all, what’s the purpose of making such appealing and catchy reports, if we aren’t able to share it with other people involved in the project? Google Data Studio helps you to not only create wonderful customize reports, but also in sharing the same with other teammates, using tools such as Google Drive.
Conclusion
Analyzing all the benefits of Google Data Studio, we can say that it is a wonderful tool that can be used to make info creation and sharing even easier and interactive. Digital marketers must use this product to make their work easy.