Accurate reporting is essential for every business in every industry. Even if you’ve developed a top-notch business model and have the best employees at your side, it’s difficult to know how your business is doing and what can be improved without accurate data. It’s important to pay attention to details and review your reports multiple times (and if possible, always have a second set of eyes reviewing as well).
Digital marketing reporting can run the gamut from big-picture overviews likes marketing budgets to the weekly or monthly analytics showcasing how your campaigns are doing, the results of split testing, and more. Accurate marketing data can benefit different aspects of your business, including:
Good reporting breeds better business decisions. If any data is inaccurate in your reporting, the entire report could be showing you incorrect results. And if you use the misinformation to make future marketing plans for your business, there is a greater risk of a negative outcome.
Are you utilizing your resources efficiently? Knowing how much time is spent on each task and/or campaign can help you better plan for time allotment in the future.
Greater employee satisfaction is linked to better productivity. With proper reporting and analytics, your employees have the benefit of knowing what they’re doing well and how they can improve their work and productivity.
Reports expand on the overall performance of your marketing efforts, including shedding light on what’s working and what can be improved. As a result, these key insights can help improve communication and collaboration among your executives and employees.
In digital marketing, like any business, you want to be sure you’re getting the best return on your investment. Our agency relies on a combination of data analytics and creativity when building comprehensive marketing strategies to grow your brand and/or increase sales.
Our Best Reporting Tips
Automate your data
It’s no secret that data is everything and real-time data is crucial. But so often, someone is stuck plugging in numbers manually. This is not only time-consuming but has a high margin for error. The good news is: Your reporting can be automated! There are many tools out there, one of our favorites is Supermetrics. We recommend automating all your reports with as little manual involvement as possible.
Establish clear KPIs
Then, create your weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly reports based on those.
Make it clear (and pretty)
Create your report so that the data speaks for itself and doesn’t require much explanation. Avoid including too many data points – makes it more confusing and leaves more room for error. You can make it look pretty, too! Highlight the talking points you want to address because of the report.
Create your report as far in advance as possible
You want to be able to use the data to create action items. If those action items have a deadline, the analysis needs to be completed first.
Reports should be actionable
Keep in mind not all data produces significant results. You might dig into a theory or report on a test and your numbers aren’t significant enough to be actionable. This is the most painful part of the job because it feels like time was wasted. Learn from the results, and make plans for future improvements.
Use the historical data
Figuring out your marketing budget and setting realistic goals can be a daunting task. You can use your year-over-year data to project your current goal and calculate your budget needed. If you’re just getting started, it’s all the more reason to set up proper tracking so you can accurately measure how your leads move down the funnel or the lifetime value of a customer.
Review, review, review
Start by looking at the big picture to help catch errors. Do these numbers make sense? What is the story these numbers are telling? What questions do these numbers cause me to ask? If you’re asking these questions, your client or boss will most likely be as well. Dig into the data to find the answers ahead of time.
Get the team involved
Every member of your team should be aware of what they need to do for proper tracking (i.e. sales team logging calls properly, email marketer including UTM’s, etc). Follow up and check that they’re doing it.
Clean your data
Establish a regular system of cleaning and verifying whatever data you are collecting.
Understand your platforms
Know the ins and outs of every platform you are reporting on. KPIs will change and the means of capturing data changes with different digital marketing channels.
OUR REPORTING SERVICES
INBOUND MARKETING
With our full-funnel approach to inbound, we track your leads from lead to prospect to customer, and can develop robust reporting to show you all the costs!
PAID SEARCH
We manage your budget and ad campaigns and make ongoing adjustments to get you a better ROI.
SOCIAL MEDIA
We manage your paid social ads and report on which campaigns had the greatest impact for your KPIs.
SEO
We use reporting (keywords, competitor analysis, etc) to report and make improvements to your organic ranking.
HUBSPOT
As a HubSpot Certified Agency Partner, our team can set up, manage, and track all your inbound marketing needs.
