Newsletter subscriptions, social media followers, and general website views are all valuable pieces of information that are important in evaluating the success of a marketing campaign.
However, they are only small fractions of what’s needed to determine if the campaign is actually working or not.
The most important aspect of any successful marketing campaign is the usage of marketing reports at regular intervals throughout the campaign.
The problem with most marketing reports
Most marketing reports don’t include several key pieces of information that are vital to a marketing campaign.
For example, it is important to know the number of people who have viewed a product, but it is even more important to know the actions those viewers took after viewing.
They may include the number of people who viewed a product, but fail to break down exactly how many became newsletter subscribers, purchased products, contacted customer service, etc. The best reports will provide key information like this in an easy-to-understand format.
Bad quality SEO campaign reports
It can be difficult to figure out if an SEO campaign is actually making money or not.
But it’s especially difficult when the SEO campaign reports don’t showcase the metrics that the client actually cares about.
Most of the time SEO reports focus heavily on rankings movements, and traffic changes.
While those are definitely important, the only metric the client ultimately cares about is if they made money or not.
So an SEO client ultimately needs to know how many conversions (usually leads or sales) were actually generated from organic traffic.
The benefits of a good marketing report
The main benefit from a good marketing report is that it gives the client insight into how to adjust their campaign for maximum success.
For example, if very few people are purchasing products after viewing them, then the company may want to try increasing the price to push out more sales, or find a different way to advertise their product.
“If you can’t document an increase in ROI from your work (or the probability that future investment will yield positive returns), you may as well pack your bags.”
Joe Griffin, Director Of Marketing at Roar Digital
A marketing report can also help a company determine whether or not they should continue with the campaign, depending on how well it is performing.
How marketing reports improve a marketing campaign
Marketing reports help companies increase the success of their campaign by providing key pieces of information that are missing from most marketing campaigns.
These reports can help companies determine which areas to focus their efforts on, and adjusting the campaign accordingly.
Marketing reports enable the client to see how well their marketing campaign is doing in real time, alerting them when they need to make changes for maximum success.
Where people go wrong with marketing reports
Most of the time the client and/or agency doesn’t actually take the time to identify the goal of a marketing campaign.
This means that the reports will most likely report on metrics that have no value to the clients.
And the final mistake made by clients is to then make up a goal after the campaign is done in order to try and justify the terrible performance of the campaigns.
The anatomy of an excellent marketing report
To create a good quality marketing report that will actually be useful, you need to lay the foundations before you ever even begin the campaign.
As the client you need to identify what metrics actually matter to your business.
Do you care about phone calls, newsletter signups, form submissions, or ecommerce sales?
The answer will be different from business to business, but you MUST decide on this before you even begin any marketing campaigns.
Once that’s been identified the rest is easy.
The marketing reports must, at some point show how the campaigns are performing at achieving the campaign goal!
Think about it this way.
If you spent $5,000 on a Google Ads campaign, would you rather that your report tell you about the fact that you had a 100% improvement in your click-through-rate?
Or would you rather be informed that you only made $3000 in sales and your campaign is running at a massive loss?
The reality is that most marketing reports won’t provide a clear picture of your return on investment.
Why we built our own digital marketing reports
When we started Launch Experts we basically had to design and build our own custom reports, on a custom platform for our clients.
Simply because the reporting platforms and systems out there today just aren’t really designed to provide clients with the kind of clarity we wanted to give them when it came to their campaign performance.
We focus all of our efforts on maximising campaign return on investment, and so the reporting needed to be crystal clear and leave no doubt if a campaign was working or not.
Frequently asked questions about marketing reports
What is a marketing report?
A typically presented to the client in order to help them determine if the campaign was successful.
Who should create a marketing report?
However, it is typically the responsibility of someone in the marketing or advertising department.
When should a marketing report be created?
Most marketing reports are created either at the end of a campaign or after a set period of time has passed. This allows the company to collect enough data to present a clear picture of how the campaign is going.
What information should be included in a marketing report?
A marketing report typically includes information about the number of people reached through different channels, the number of conversions that took place, and cost details such as money spent on each channel. Marketing reports also include projections for future campaigns.
Conclusion
Most people don’t think of a marketing report as being exciting, but that’s usually because the reports are focusing on things that don’t have value for their business.
Once you see a report which shows that you make $10 for every $1 you spend, trust me… The report will be the most exciting thing you read every single time.
