Basics of Reporting

Basics of Reporting
Snapshot: Basics of Reporting

Today, we’ll be covering:
What is marketing reporting?
Why is marketing reporting important?
Why you need a reporting strategy
Choose the best way to share your reporting
Building your marketing report
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Click what you would like to learn about. Once you have completed all modules you can continue.
What is marketing report?
Marketing reporting is the process of collecting relevant performance data from a campaign, analysing
and summarizing it, and then communicating your findings.
It can be as simple as saying: “We spent $1,000 last month on search ads and generated 12 new leads,
which was above the goal for this campaign. Based on past performance, those leads should eventually
lead to $4,000 in new revenue.”
Why is marketing reporting?

In two sentences, you’ve answered some very important questions:
 How much did we spend?

 What was the result?
 Did we achieve our goal?
 How will this impact the organization?
Why is marketing reporting important?

It’s how marketers show that their work (and the money they spend) has real and measurable impact.
Decades ago, marketers couldn’t say if their ads were the cause, or if there were multiple ads, which
ones were responsible. Maybe it was the weather! The birth of digital advertising has changed the
game. Now we can more easily quantify marketing’s impact, whether that’s in terms of sales, website
sessions, ad impressions or some other metric.
It helps marketers make smarter decisions going forward. Reporting shows you what worked and what
didn’t, and at a basic level, you can use that information as you start planning your next campaign. Social
didn’t generate a single website session for you? Maybe Facebook next time, or maybe you need to
rethink your creative.
Why you need a reporting strategy?
While reporting is important, it isn’t always fun or easy for marketers. A lot of us struggle with it because
there’s too much data scattered over too many platforms, which turns reporting into a time-consuming
chore. Sometimes it isn’t clear what information our audience needs. (Or if it’s even possible to answer
their questions.)
That’s why it’s important to have a reporting strategy – a plan that streamlines the process of reporting
on marketing performance.
Choose the best way to share your reporting

Reporting Frequency
Is your marketing report being used to optimize a campaign that’s currently running? Then you’ll need
to find a way to share updates more frequently – weekly or even daily.
Or maybe your audience is taking a longer view If they’re looking at marketing ROI for an entire
campaign or department, then you might produce reports monthly or quarterly.
Marketing Reporting Tools: Spreadsheet Vs Marketing Dashboards

For years, most marketing reports were delivers as spreadsheet as they could convey large volumes of
information in a clear, organized way.
A spreadsheet might be the perfect way to share data with a hardcore data expert who wants to explore
the raw numbers on their own, but most audiences you should probably use marketing dashboard or a
chart or graphics so you can make complex data easy to understand at a glance.
Tools for building dashboards:

You might already be using a tool (like HubSpot or Google Analytics) that can produce dashboards for
you. These are usually easy to use, but might be hard to customize or use with data from outside that
tool.
You could use a basic dashboarding tool like DashThis or Google Data Studio that’s either low cost free
They often have pre-built templates that make it easy to stand up a new report quickly. Again, you might
find it hard to build your dashboard exactly how you choose.
Build your marketing report

Ask yourself: What types of questions will your report be answering? What kind of charts will you use to
visualize each metric?
One Question Per Chart

As you’re designing your dashboard, a good rule of thumb is to have every chart answer a single
question. In fact, you could even have that question be the title of your chart.
This is a good discipline because it forces you to justify each chart that you include in your report.
Choose The Right Chart For Your KPI
Different kinds of charts are better for visualizing different types of data.
Looking at how a metric (or two metrics) change overtime? You need a line graph.
Need to compare the size, shape or scale of different products, categories or groups? A bar chart makes
accurate comparisons easy.
Pie charts are great for showing the relationship between the part and the whole. For example, if you
wanted to show how much of your overall revenue is due to product A.
Test Your Report With The 5-1-5 Rule

Before you share your report with your Audience, it’s a good idea to test it for user-friendliness. We
recommend the 5-1-5 Rule. Ask yourself. . .
Within 5 seconds, can your audience easily understand what kind of data your report is sharing? (“Oh
this dashboard covers email campaigns. . .”
Within 1 minute , can your audience use the report to gain a useful insight? (“Looks like conversions are
down for this customer segment. . .”)
Within 5 minutes, can your audience use the report to make a business decision? (“We need to change
up for our offer for this segment – let’s use the offer that’s been successful for this other segment.”)

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Basics of Reporting

Snapshot: Basics of Reporting

Why is marketing reporting?

 How much did we spend?

Why is marketing reporting important?

Choose the best way to share your reporting

Marketing Reporting Tools: Spreadsheet Vs Marketing Dashboards

Tools for building dashboards:

Build your marketing report

One Question Per Chart

Test Your Report With The 5-1-5 Rule

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