Every day, people in business make decisions based on facts from information gathered through reports. Their choices also consider metrics, which convey the intricacies of the business, to help drive optimization and growth.

Every business must implement a reporting philosophy to analyze its operational data and metrics weekly, monthly, or yearly. While diligent efforts contribute to the business's growth, having actionable reports guides long-term success.

Why are Marketing Reports Important?

Marketing reports play an essential role in today's dynamic business environment, as they enable the company's or your client's stakeholders to measure the performance of specific strategies.

You need to understand what factors influence your business and the reasons behind them. Reports serve as a central reference point and facilitate team collaboration, allowing them to learn from the data and contribute effectively.

Additionally, marketing reports serve as a record of past performance and can shape future campaigns.

Measuring Your Metrics

Let us discuss the most common type of data to include in a report. While the presentation and display of your data can be creative, it is also essential to be relevant.

1. Summary of findings

Include data summarizing:

• Your marketing activities
• The results you have achieved
• Their impact on the business, and
• The insights you have gained from them

This information will guide and shape the next steps and strategies throughout the company. For clients needing to become more familiar with marketing terminology, presenting the report in an easily understandable format would be beneficial.

2. Leads and Conversions

Marketing performance indicators are a crucial benchmark for obtaining an overall strategy picture. Here, you should include the following information:

• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
• The Return On Investment (ROI)
• Your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

While you can include additional metrics, the ones listed above will provide a complete view of performance within the time frame covered by the report.

3. Traffic Sources

Understanding your traffic sources is more important than most people realize, especially regarding advertising spend. In this context, consider these questions about your traffic:

• How much of the traffic is organic versus paid?
• Is the organic traffic primarily from search engines or referrals?
• What keywords are you ranking for?
• Which keywords contribute to the majority of the traffic?
• How does the conversion rate compare between organic and paid traffic?

Visualizing the above information through graphs and charts helps convey the message quickly and effectively.

4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

You can measure numerous data points, though only a few will be key performance indicators (KPIs). Aligning your objectives with the KPIs you choose to measure will shape your perspective when analyzing the data, whether for yourself or your clients.

Some potential KPIs include:

• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates
• Average time spent
• Campaign revenue
• Sales comparison between specific products

Selecting your KPIs in advance will help you evaluate your performance against your goals.

Next, let's see how we can turn all this data into an actionable report.

Actionable Insights

Sales Goals

To illustrate an example, let us suppose your sales team had set a revenue target for a specific cost-per-click (CPC) campaign. Analyzing campaigns with the highest click-through rates (CTR) and examining their conversion rates, you can gather data points to measure the ad spend against the actual return on ad spend (ROAS).

The formula is:

• ROAS = (Revenue / Ad Spend) * 100

Here's an example:

• Your campaign's current CTR = 5%
• The conversion rate is = 10%
• Campaign Revenue = $5,000 and Campaign ad spend = $1,000
• Using the formula, ROAS = ($5,000 / $1,000) * 100 = 500%

In this example, the campaign has given a ROAS of 500%, indicating that the company earned $5 in revenue for every dollar spent on advertising.

If you still need to achieve the goal, the report should enable you to identify the reasons behind it.

Analytics

Your website or app analytics provide data on the conversion performance of your product. They help evaluate various aspects, including

• The user interface (UI)
• User experience (UX)
• Copy effectiveness
• Click-through rates (CTR) on calls to action

Other analytics, such as SEO performance, help you understand how your website performs compared to your competitors and your visibility on the major search engines.

Campaign Performance

As mentioned earlier, your KPIs will help you evaluate your overall performance. Your report can present data segmented by each specific campaign and any metric you choose to compare for more detailed insights.

The most common metric is assessing campaign performance weekly or month over month. Ultimately, the data should offer meaningful information to understand the areas where you observe an impact and whether you are generating a return.

Output and Outcome

Your data means something; applying context and creating a relatable and easy-to-understand narrative is necessary to extract the desired information. Based on all the details we discussed earlier, your report will highlight your output. However, the result can be entirely different.

As a case study, let's say your site experienced a surge in website traffic during a specific period, which is a positive metric.

• Does your data provide insights into why the spike occurred?
• Was it due to a campaign, a viral social media event that temporarily boosted your product's popularity or an unrelated incident?

The outcome was an increase in sales for a certain period, but if your report does not help you pinpoint the exact cause, then the result is not directly tied to the campaign's output.

By creating comprehensive reports, you can evaluate the story behind each successful outcome and understand the factors contributing to the result.

Your marketing reports can decipher your customer's journey from the first click to the final sale. You can use various online tools to enhance their impact and create visually appealing reports with designs, charts, and graphs. Remember, reports don't have to be dull; feel free to make them creative and enjoyable.

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