How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports

Feb 18, 2023 11:32:47 PM | Analytics How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports

 

Are you lost on understanding how to build comprehensive marketing reports that will help you increase revenue? Do you have trouble analyzing the data and seeing where there is room for improvement?

Marketing has become increasingly complex, with all the new channels and endless data points. As such, building accurate marketing reports and taking actionable insights from them is a challenging task. You need to be able to gather all of your marketing data into one place, analyze it accurately, and make decisions based on real-time results.

In this article, we offer valuable tips on how to build and analyze comprehensive marketing reports that will not only boost your ROI but also provide insight into customer behavior. Let's take a look at the basics of marketing reporting, so you can get started today!

 

Marketing Analytics

Marketi­ng analytics is the act of monitoring, collecting, and analyzing data for evaluating market success and guiding future business decisions. 

 

What is Marketing Reporting?

Marketing reporting is the process of measuring and visualizing progress towards a common goal, showing value, and identifying actionable steps to improve marketing performance.

With such data, you can take advantage of key metrics to fine-tune your tech stacks and sales funnels while staying focused on one single source of truth.

At its core, marketing reporting helps organizations get a better handle of their customer base by providing a comprehensive overview of the entire organization’s progress toward achieving revenue goals.

By doing so with consistency and accuracy, you can ensure that all teams are working towards the same objectives in order to maximize customer lifetime value and predictable revenue growth.

 

What's the purpose of your marketing report?

Marketing reporting is an invaluable tool for demonstrating the value of marketing efforts. By providing comprehensive insights into customer success teams, revenue growth, customer journey, key metrics and tech stacks, it can be used to identify common goals and objectives for the entire company.

It also provides a single source of truth for sales operations and revops strategy by offering a clear view of customer lifetime, revenue potential, predictable revenue and revenue goals.

Overall, marketing reports enable us to measure our progress towards fulfilling our sales funnel and growing our customer base which is essential for long-term success.

With accurate data at hand, we are able to make decisions that drive towards our desired outcomes and ensure that everyone in the company is working towards a single goal – maximizing revenue.

 

Who's the audience for your marketing report?

The audience for your marketing report can be anyone within your organization who needs to make decisions based on the insights you provide. This could include team leads, department managers, or even the CEO.

To ensure that your report is tailored for each of these audiences, it's important to ask them what they need from the report and understand the decisions they need to make. Knowing this will help you avoid running reports that won't be useful to them and focus on delivering data that will inform their decisions.

Additionally, understanding the goals of each audience and what metrics are important to them will help you provide a more accurate and comprehensive report. 

 

How to Create a Marketing Report

A marketing report is an essential tool for any business to assess the results of their marketing strategies and tactics.

For effective planning, reporting, and analysis, it's important to understand how to create a marketing report that provides necessary insights into your campaigns and data. So let's take a look at how to craft one that will provide meaningful insights into your marketing efforts.

 

1. Schedule your marketing reports.

To ensure that everyone has access to the key metrics they need to reach their common goal, it's important to schedule your marketing reports ahead of time.

This can be done manually or with a tech stack such as HubSpot Marketing Hub Reporting add-on which allows you to set daily, weekly, or monthly reports and send them directly to your team's inboxes.

By keeping your reports on a regular schedule, you can easily track customer service teams’ performance, monitor your sales funnel and customer lifecycle, measure customer lifetime value and satisfaction levels as well as gauge revenue potential and goals.

Regular reporting is the foundation of any successful revops strategy and will help you keep a close eye on your growing customer base.

 

2. Collect feedback from your audience.

Gathering feedback from your audience is an essential part of building and analyzing marketing reports. By asking for input, you can ensure that the information you provide is being used effectively and accurately.

Whether it's by posing an open-ended question or providing a short Google Form, finding out what people think about what you’ve put together will help improve future reports. Feedback from your audience can also let you know if there are any changes that need to be made to make the report more comprehensive or easier to read.

Additionally, feedback from your audience can enable you to gain a better understanding of how they use and interpret the data included in the report, allowing you to make adjustments as needed.

Ultimately, gathering feedback will help create better marketing reports that meet your revenue goals and provide a single source of truth across your entire company.

 

3. Create marketing report templates.

Creating marketing report templates is a great way to make monthly reporting faster and easier. It also provides a reliable, predictable design for your audience to read. Building the same report each and every time can be time consuming, so having a template on hand makes it easier to produce the same output.

This allows you to focus more energy on analyzing the data instead of just spending time building the report. Templates also help ensure consistency throughout all of your reports so that everyone from sales teams, marketing teams, revops teams, customer success teams, and customer service teams are all working from the same set of data.

With this in mind, creating marketing report templates is an invaluable tool for any business looking to analyze their performance and maximise their revenue potential.

 

4. Put your most valuable data first.

It is important for marketing reports to contain valuable and helpful data that can be used in making decisions. To ensure that the most impactful data is seen first, it is essential to prioritize the information in your report. This way, your audience can make their decision without needing to read the entire report.

Doing so also helps to save time by allowing them to focus on the key points rather than getting lost in pages of detail. Putting your most valuable data first ensures that your audience can quickly access what they need and make an informed decision.

By putting the most important information first, you are creating a clear path for your team or other stakeholders to follow when analyzing any given marketing report.

 

5. Visualize your data as much as possible.

Visualizing your data is a great way to make your marketing reports more effective and easier to digest. Studies have found that humans process visual data 60,000x faster than written data, making it the ideal format for quickly conveying information. In addition, visuals are also more believable than written text alone.

When possible, include visuals such as charts from Excel or screenshots from reporting tools in your reports. Heat maps can also be used to illustrate website performance.

By including visuals in your reports, you can make sure that your team and executives fully comprehend the data before them and make decisions based on the information provided.

 

Start Reporting  

Developing an effective marketing report is essential for any successful business. However, analyzing the data within the reports is just as important as creating them. Being able to identify trends and determine where improvements can be made is a great way to stay ahead of your competition and increase your overall success.

By taking the time to build quality reports and analyze the data within them, you'll have all the necessary information you need to make better decisions when it comes to your company's marketing strategies. With a solid process in place, you can ensure that you're getting the most out of your marketing efforts and making sure every dollar spent on advertising has its intended effect.

Ready to take your marketing reporting to the next level? Contact Fine Media today and let us help you build and analyze comprehensive reports that drive your business forward. 

Tumisang Bogwasi

Written By: Tumisang Bogwasi

Tumisang is a 2X award-winning entrepreneur, CEO of Fine Media, and a catalyst for empowering brands. With expertise in inbound marketing and digital marketing, he guides companies to generate leads and drive revenue. In his free time, he enjoys playing squash.