As with every branch of every company, marketing, no matter how mysterious it seems to others, needs to demonstrate its efficiency. Of course, the gigantic influx of new clients after implementing an effective strategy speaks for itself. Still, you’ll need to make a report about your activity as a department or a single marketeer in all other cases.
How do reports are compiled, and what forms do they take? The detailed explanation can be found under the following link https://www.owox.com/blog/articles/examples-of-regular-marketing-reports/.
In this article, we’ll briefly touch on the subject: how does a marketing report should look like, how often do you need to file it, and how to differentiate between reports that are made for the higher-ups and which ones help to measure your efficiency, KPI’s and come up with new strategies.
Introduction: What are we talking about when we say “reports”?
Contents
Came up with the great idea and want to demonstrate all the success it brought to your company, or want to track the marketing department’s yearly progress? In any case, you’ll need to compress the data into a presentation. A marketing report is such a presentation – it can be made even in PowerPoint (only if your company is small and you don’t need to show a lot of data and intricate connections behind it). Another option is one of the services offering to build a spreadsheet to host all the numbers you’ve got and calculate the income and expenses from, say, an ad campaign. Or, if you use specified tools, like Facebook Ads Manager or Google Analytics, they often have an in-built engine to create a report.
Which ones do you need?
If we don’t count the divisional distinction, the reports are usually made either per request or in a set period of time. The first type is the hardest one because you need to learn all the tools for reporting in a few hours, or, if you are lucky, days, in case you’ve never had to work with intricacies like this before. The second one is much more relaxed, but only if you prepare for it beforehand, instead of making the presentation and the reporting on the last day before you need to file it.
Of course, most reports covering the specific timeline are different. You wouldn’t present the data for the team-only short-term progress report in a yearly account before the higher-ups. So let’s find out what’s the difference between short-term reports, mid-range ones, and those that cover a significant amount of time.
Short-term reports (weekly, bi-weekly, daily)
Daily reports are much different from the rest. They are designed to monitor immediate reactions to your implemented decisions and rapidly react to unusual significant changes. Some companies use daily reports to always have a fresh dataset of everything that is going on at your fingertips and base decisions on current events and data. Weekly reports, though, serve as a foundation for monthly ones. They allow marketers to confirm that everything goes according to plan, compare the results with your department’s global strategy, and, just as daily reporting, serve more as an internal tool for detailed observation and keeping the team in check.
Mid-term reports (monthly)
Since most KPIs are based on a monthly plan, mid-term reports are one of the most important ones. They are no longer just for internal use and are created for reporting about metrics concerning your department to the brass. Usually, they involve graphics showing daily progress, ongoing campaigns, and different categories for a lot of metrics – traffic and its sources, sales, etc.
Long-term reports (annual)
The yearly report is the big one. It is watched/read by CEOs to determine if the department got what it needed in the past year, how well did they do by each month, what direction was the most successful. It’s safe to say that you need to prepare your yearly annual from day one or on the first day of the next business year. It shows the big picture regarding your department’s role in the last year’s predictions and sometimes can become the cause of the fundamental changes in the workings of your department or significant raises.
Conclusion
Despite being the much-hated paperwork that is not on the point of a marketer’s job, reports play an important part in evaluating your work. Get used to making and looking through every reporting mentioned above to get a fresh perspective on things you thought are going as they should. It’s not only a useful tool to control and feel the pulse of things happening in the company and your department, but a fantastic opportunity to always stay close to clients and their ever-changing mood, but also focus on all ongoing processes concerning your job.