Marketers all know that marketing reports can be useful tools. However, the truth is that some marketing reports are far more adept at communicating their findings than others. It’s not just about the raw numbers. It’s about how the report translates those numbers into actionable advice.
Marketing reports are crucial in understanding and reinforcing client relationships. To ensure that the business is aware of where they stand regarding their clients and potential prospects, a marketing report should offer a few critical bits of information. Below, 12 associates of Forbes Agency Council share the bits of data they think are most crucial to turning a marketing report from something run-of-the-mill into a truly useful tool for the company.
Members explain how to make your marketing reports more useful with the right information.
Photos courtesy of the individual members
1. A Detailed Summary
A detailed summary is an essential part of any marketing report. The purpose of the summary is to help the client understand their campaign’s overall performance, goals, completed work and so on. The person or agency preparing the marketing report should tailor it to explain these key points in a way that is comprehensive yet simple enough for the specific client to understand. – Adam Binder, Creative Click Media
2. Lead And Customer Conversion Data
The most beneficial report includes not only information on website traffic and impressions on campaigns, but also takes a deeper look into which exact channels and assets drove lead generation and customer conversion. By providing that level of detail for overall marketing efforts and for specific campaigns, we can make more informed future marketing decisions to drive business growth. – Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
3. Actionable Insights
Reporting should always contribute to optimization. A report has to go beyond just stating the numbers and should include actionable insights gleaned from the numbers. This is the true value you can offer a client. What does the data mean, and how can we use it to help improve our marketing? – Brian Sullivan, Sullivan Branding
4. Year-Over-Year Data
Performance tracking and reporting is extremely important in delivering quality marketing services, so that you can optimize as you go and better achieve stated performance goals. A critical piece of data to include in reports is year-over-year (YoY) data. With YoY data, you avoid any type of seasonality issues and you’ll have a cleaner set of comparison data against which to measure. – Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat
5. Competitive Benchmarking
A well-crafted marketing report will be based on KPIs: metrics that align the outcomes with pre-set company goals. But in a competitive environment, meeting the company’s goals might be missing the mark on white spaces and potential growth areas. A great report will point out what competitors have achieved, how and where they are expected to go next, to identify opportunities and threats. – Hamutal Schieber
6. ROI Metrics
Every business, client and CFO wants to understand their ROI. And, while ROI metrics vary by industry, we, as agency partners, must know what’s driving our clients’ business forward and which metrics they’re focused on daily, weekly, monthly. A well-crafted report should speak to the ROI more than the initiatives. It’s the results, not the actions that will keep the relationship going. – Anna Crowe, Crowe PR
7. Actual Human Info
Making sure clients understand how customers are searching for their business is key. By letting clients know who came to their business from searching for it specifically, searching for a similar category, as well as those who were searching for a brand, they’re provided with information that lets them make better informed decisions for the future. – Danny Star, Website Depot
8. Publicity Value
We just started adding publicity values to our reports. Our vendor provides them and they really show the value of editorial placements vs. paid advertising. Sometimes clients have a hard time understanding and measuring how powerful a story or television segment can be. This is definitely making an impact both in reports and call agendas. – Michelle Mekky, Mekky Media Relations, Inc.
9. Outlook On Broader Strategic Goals
The difference between good and excellent reports depends on whether the report has an outlook on broader strategic goals. Oftentimes, routine reports focus on the tactical wins and tend to disregard the bigger picture. Reaching a new target segment may look very inefficient today, but might have exceptional importance for future growth. In this case, those inefficiencies would be investments. – Oksana Matviichuk, Verizon Media at Zenith | Publicis Groupe
10. Key KPI Data
When sending a marketing report, you should highlight KPI metric data showing the client a holistic approach to marketing campaign analysis. Highlighting key information in the form of engaging visuals will make relevant information jump off the page. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
11. Metrics On The Impact Of Your Engagement
With the proliferation of cause marketing, companies can no longer simply raise awareness. It’s critical to showcase tangible social impact metrics that reflect how the company is mobilizing its resources across to achieve its benevolent mission. Incorporating social impact across the company’s entire value change is how organizations can truly change “business as usual.” – Theresa Schieber, Givewith
12. Key Takeaways
Always answer “so what” to add purpose and value to your reporting. Key takeaways presented in a digestible format allows for a digestible report. You can still have details for those who like to dive in further, but keep it user-friendly. We make deliverables visual for a quick read, but if you don’t have designers on hand, a bulleted summary and playing with the font size can go a long way. – Marc Becker, The Tangent Agency
