Marketing takes a lot of time, effort and resources. But having spent a fortune on marketing, how do you keep tabs on your progress or know if your investment is paying off?
You certainly can't rely on guesswork or gut feeling to answer these questions or make informed decisions. This is where marketing reports come into play.
Marketing reports provide the data you need to monitor activities, assess performance and make smarter decisions that bring better results. According to Think with Google, marketers who leverage tools to analyze, measure and report their marketing programs are 39% more likely to perform better.
If you are sold on creating high-quality marketing reports that captivate your audience, we've got you covered.
In this article, we'll teach you everything you need to know about marketing reports, how to create them and marketing report templates you can use straight away.
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A marketing report is a collection of data from different sources to evaluate the progress and performance of your marketing efforts and inform future marketing decisions. Businesses of all sizes create marketing reports to glean valuable into their:
Not all marketing reports are created equal. The scope of your marketing reports can vary depending on the data you want to track and the number of marketing channels. The common types of marketing reports include:
When used effectively, marketing reporting puts you on top of your marketing activities and metrics across all marketing channels. At a glance, you'll get a bird's eye view of which marketing campaigns and channels are delivering the best results.
You're probably wondering why you should create reports, especially when key stakeholders aren't compelling you to present them. Or why add another challenging task to your itinerary when you've got customers and other business activities to attend to.
Here are the major perks of creating a detailed marketing report.
There's no better way to understand the customer journey than by using a marketing report. From your marketing report, you can quickly identify:
After investing a significant amount of time and money in marketing, how do you know if your efforts are worthwhile? This is precisely where marketing reports come in.
Whether you're looking to generate leads, turn prospects into customers or increase revenue, your marketing reports will show you whether or not your campaigns are achieving the desired results. You'll quickly figure out which strategies will help you maximize return on investment and get more bang for your marketing buck.
Every marketer and data analyst understands that the struggle with reporting is real. But Visme makes writing a report super-easy regardless of your skill level. It doesn't matter what type of data you want to capture. Visme has thousands of compelling report templates, stock images, visual aids and design elements to make your reports pack a punch.
In today's hyper-competitive business environment, you can't rely on wild guesses and gut feelings to make important marketing decisions. If you want to call the right shots or get your decisions spot on, you need rich and quality data.
We're not just talking about gathering a bunch of isolated numbers for the sake of it. Relevant and actionable data shows how your marketing campaigns have fared and impacted your bottom line.
Moreover, be sure this data is digestible and deeply connected to your business outcomes. A detailed marketing report like the one below gives you all of your granular and enriching marketing data in one place.
Misalignments between sales and marketing teams are a struggle for most businesses. It stifles business growth and costs companies more than $1 trillion yearly.
For this alignment to happen, data needs to flow across departments. And marketing reports are often the missing piece of the puzzle. They provide the data that sales and marketing teams need to:
Now you know why you need a marketing report. The next big question is how do you create a comprehensive and useful marketing report?
We'll go over how to create marketing reports to help you make better decisions and benefit your audience.
Without a clear-cut purpose, your marketing report is just a bunch of isolated numbers without meaning. Before gathering data and creating a report, ask yourself these questions.
Are you looking to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns? Do you want to justify marketing expenses or study marketing trends over a period of time?
Let's face it; you can't possibly fit every single piece of data into your marketing report. Answering these questions will help you focus on data that shape your marketing strategy, inform your decisions and help you perform better.
With a ton of marketing activities going on, you probably have a heap of data that's getting bigger by the hour.
All of this information may be relevant to you. But you want to ask yourself, is it relevant to the management team or people in other departments?
For example, the VP of marketing may be interested in which marketing campaigns bring in more leads, conversions and positive ROI. In contrast, the chief financial officer will want to see how marketing expense translates to sales and impacts the bottom line.
Before writing your marketing report, find out your target audience and what they want to know. This viewpoint will help you decide what data to provide. Plus, your marketing report must reflect the needs of your target audience.
Be sure to make your reports contain valuable information that's easy to understand. Your audience should be able to view the report and have clear direction on the next steps rather than scratching their heads in confusion.
Once you're clear on your target audience, the next important step is to gather, filter and analyze your data.
As your business grows, keeping tabs on granular data and tracking performance can be daunting. It's always helpful to keep an updated document of relevant documents and spreadsheets showing key metrics.
Using analytics tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Hotjar, SEMRush and more to capture key marketing data can make your job a lot easier. You can also use change data capture (CDC) to track changes in your data warehouse, which will help you see the impact that new features have on the way people interact with your website.
Depending on your reporting process, you can do a daily, monthly or weekly dump and then use the data to build your report.
While gathering your data, you may be tempted to report everything, which isn't a good idea. Remember, your audience is typically only interested in the most critical metrics. Please resist the urge to drown them in a sea of meaningful information and lengthy reports.
Start by defining the period you want to focus on. Is it a weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual report?
If you want a clear picture of your marketing performance over a period, it's better to draw comparisons between two different periods—current vs. previous. Also, be sure the metrics align with the goals you shared earlier.
You've got reliable data to build your sales report at this stage. Now it's time to craft your report in a digestible, understandable and actionable format.
First, you want to choose a report writing format that captures the critical information and keeps your audience engaged. The next step is to identify what you should include in your report.
Let's look at your marketing report structure and what you should include in your report.
Marketing report structures aren't one size fits all. They may vary based on the purpose and content of your report, but the most common sections include the following:
Title or Cover Page
This page should be concise and clearly state what your report is analyzing. The cover page should include:
Executive Summary
This section usually comes last. It should summarize the key points of the entire report, highlight successes and failures and discuss future plans.
Introduction
In this section, you want to talk about what your report is about, who it's addressed to, what they'll find it and why they should care.
Body
The body is usually the longest section of your report. Here you'll plug in all the marketing data you collected earlier. Again, make sure to use bullet points and visualizations to enhance readability and visual appeal.
Conclusion
Summarize your marketing report with key takeaways and a clear call to action. Remember to make recommendations and highlight the next steps.
A well-written marketing report should detail key areas and the performance of your marketing activities. While the level of details may vary based on your strategy or how complex your operations are, you should aim to capture the following critical information.
Overview of your marketing strategy
Here you should discuss your marketing goals, target audience and what channels you're using to reach your prospects. It should also highlight the specific action you're taking to execute your strategy.
Campaigns/Areas of Focus
This section should take a deep dive into your recent marketing efforts, including:
You should aim to capture your win, losses, lessons learned and plans for the next phase.
Metrics and Analytics
This section should capture critical figures that show progress, performance and marketing effectiveness. It should reflect how well your campaigns are edging towards your set goals and key performance indicators.
Data-heavy reports can be exhausting, especially when you're slamming your audience with large walls of text and numbers. To keep your audience engaged, visualize your marketing reports with eye-catching charts, graphs, infographics, images, videos and other visual aids.
Using visual aids will make it easier for your audience to digest your report and retain important information. You can create data visualizations such as graphs, charts and maps with the help of Visme's graph maker.
Watch the video below to learn how to create beautiful charts and graphs that make your marketing report effective.
Read this article to learn more about creating charts and other visual aids. Watch the video below to discover how to use data visualization for reporting and business intelligence.
Your marketing report design doesn't have to be dull and uninteresting. Instead, use these design tips to make your report engaging and attractive.
Fortunately, you don't need to be a professional graphic designer to create stunning and interactive marketing report designs that impress your audience. All you need is intuitive software like Visme packed with tons of design tools and templates that make your report shine.
Whether you're a novice or seasoned marketer, report templates are a great starting point. These preset templates help you choose the right data and show you where and how to place them.
Beyond saving you time and effort, they ensure your content and design elements are consistent. In the end, you're sure to have a beautiful and organized marketing report.
Visme offers thousands of fully customizable and user-friendly marketing report templates, layouts and features to suit your specific needs. All you need to do is pick a professionally-designed template and customize it to your taste. And boom, your marketing report is ready to go.
Even if you have little or no design experience, you can fast-track your next marketing report with our stunning, easy-to-use template below.
Writing a useful report requires planning, thoughtful consideration and follow-up. Let's go over some best practices to keep in mind when reporting on your marketing and sales efforts.
If you want to get timely reports for decision-making and ensure that teams are aligned, you need to schedule your reports to run periodically.
One way to ensure you're getting reports at the right time is to set a reminder to compile a report or set it to run automatically. Scheduling your report ahead of time leaves you with enough time to clean your data and reduces the risk of human error.
Whether you're creating reports to share with your team or top management, you certainly want your audience to read till the end.
Nobody wants to read an entire report only to get the key points on the last page. Make sure to place the most useful information early on. Right off the bat, your content should:
Use bullet points, callout quotes and sidebars to effectively grab the reader's attention while breaking up unappealing blocks of text. If you need to capture numbers, you can embed sheets into your documents.
Lumping your reports with endless numbers and charts without context gives limited insight into what your report is all about. Instead, you want to walk your audience through the story behind the report, giving them the information and context they need at every level. This might also call for some interactive marketing techniques as well.
In a nutshell, your story should add more meaning to your data or answer critical questions like:
While telling your story, keep it succinct and add personality to make it enjoyable to read. Watch the video below to get more tips on telling compelling stories with data.
After you've presented your marketing reports and engaged your audience, remember to ask for feedback. You can ask for feedback via email or provide a short survey form for them to fill out.
Getting feedback from those using your marketing reports will help you determine whether it's useful or captures everything they need to know and what you can do to improve your marketing report in the future.
Are you ready to create attractive marketing reports that add value to your business? Look no further; you've hit the jackpot.
Here's a selection of professionally designed templates crafted to provide value and actionable insight into your marketing performance.
If you want to capture your marketing team's performance every week, this template is set up to make your work easier.
This template features a rich blend of bright colors with strong visual contrast. It also uses design elements that draw attention to KPIs and metrics like web analytics, campaigns and social media engagement.
A monthly marketing report template like this one is a perfect way to show your audience what your marketing team has been up to in the past month.
The template has a simplistic cover design and layout that accommodates key marketing performance highlights, metrics, line graphs and timelines that make your report shine.
You can add compelling images, videos and animations to make your report engaging and interactive. Customize this template with your logo, color and fonts to match your brand identity.
Assigning tasks to teams and tracking the progress of each task can be daunting, especially when you're dealing with multiple social media channels. But a single-paged report template like this example simplifies the process for your marketing team and brings everyone on the same page.
It has a rich blue and white color combination and a clean, spaced-out design. At a glance, you can capture a wealth of data, instant feedback and comments.
Simply plug in your marketing data, change the font, typography and color to match your brand and you're ready to go.
Do you want to share your content marketing plans and see if your efforts are paying off? Then, using this simple, clear and concise weekly report template is your best bet.
You can share your content ideas, competitor analysis and keyword search results. Then, fill in the placeholders with your data and descriptive content and make your data more visually appealing by using color-coded vector icons, shapes, charts and more.
Keeping track of quarterly email analytics lets you know how your subscribers engage with your emails. With a template like this one, you can track metrics that directly link to your business goals and put your email marketing strategy and performance into perspective.
Visme gives you the creative freedom to make this template your own. Unleash your creativity and level up your email analytics report by incorporating Visme's graphic vector icons and shapes.
Explore our extensive collection of colorful, isometric, flat and outline graphics to find your perfect match and make your report stand out.
This template is a perfect fit for sharing insights into your promotion campaign efforts, results and expected outcomes.
The cover page features a stunning image of the store and a powerful theme that leaves an impression on your readers.
This template moves further away from traditional neutral and corporate blue. However, the bright and bold yellow color scheme is catchy enough to draw readers into the content and show your brand's personality. The report template has four key sections and uses more text and numbers to get the message across.
This multi-page template has a sophisticated design, modern layout and dynamic elements that grab the audience's attention. It's designed to provide a high-level overview of your overall social media performance.
The template breaks down your report into four sections and beams more light on metrics such as social media reach, interaction and customer gain across multiple social media platforms.
Feel free to tweak colors, gradients, fonts to reflect your brand identity. You can also use charts, images, illustrations, characters, gestures and visualizations to bring your report to life.
This promotional campaign report template is perfect for businesses of all sizes. You can use it to share updates, progress and results of advertisements and other marketing activities.
The template has an appealing design layout and artistic theme with stylized content blocks, colorful borders, background photos and vector icons, all sourced from Visme's rich design and asset library. The colorful line graph makes the financial data compelling and memorable.
Feel free to cut, copy, paste and adjust anything you like until it fits your unique needs.
If you want to ignite new interest in your company's ongoing promotional campaign, this stylish and attractive report template fits the bill.
The template uses a mix of stunning visualizations, color schemes and a uniquely crafted layout to make your information stand out. You can easily customize the template, present information in a compelling way and create an engaging experience for your audience.
What overarching theme would you use to highlight marketing performance in the past year? Our final pick is an annual marketing report template that's sure to leave an impression on your audience.
The template caters to any business regardless of size, niche and scope. Likewise, it covers everything key stakeholders need to know, including your marketing efforts, strategy, achievements and plans for the coming years. Make your report stand out with a variety of stylish fonts, high-quality images and stock photos and visual aids from Visme.
This trendy and modern template features a rich combination of two vibrant color schemes: purple and blue. Each of the following pages features colors from the original palette to maintain a consistent appearance.
Marketing reports indicate where your marketing efforts are successful and need to be optimized to yield better results. However, marketing data is enormous and marketing reporting is an ongoing business process. That's why you need a tool like Visme's report maker that makes it super easy for you to create and share marketing reports in seconds.
Visme provides an incredible array of templates, high-quality images, design and data visualization tools to make your report impactful. With the dynamic field feature, you can ensure your reports are always accurate.
Once done, you can share your marketing report online using a link, embed it on your website, or download it for offline use in multiple formats, like PDF and HTML5. You can track how people are engaging with your report from your analytics tab.
Congratulations and happy reporting!
