With everything you have going on in your business, it can be hard to get an accurate and expansive picture of what’s going on without using analytics and reporting tools to help you. However, these tools and reports are really only as good as the date you’re able to gather and the conclusions you’re able to draw from the information you glean. So to help you make the most of this information, here are three tips for building better marketing reports.
Know Your Audience
In the event that you’re pulling marketing reports to share with others within your organization, what’s going to help you the most is knowing exactly who you’ll be sharing this information with and what you need them to know in order to move the business forward.
According to Jared Lewis, a contributor to Chron Small Business, it’s wise to think about what the needs are for the people you’ll be sharing your marketing report with. Ideally, you shouldn’t be clouding their mind with data and information that isn’t relevant to them. By streamlining your reports based on your audience and their knowledge and understanding of the metrics you’re sharing, you’ll wind up having much more effective reports.
Give Content Through Storytelling
Oftentimes, if people aren’t used to looking at big data sets and don’t have a lot of experience drawing their own conclusions from the numbers, seeing a report can be very confusing and intimidating.
To help those who might be in this camp, Chris Giarratana, a contributor to Moz.com, recommends that you fill in some of these gaps by using the data to tell a story. By giving context, background information, and correlation or causation suggestions based on what you see in the data, you may be able to help others better understand what they’re seeing and how all the numbers in the report actually relate to more abstract parts of the business.
Make Specific Data Easy To Find
Depending on how large or expansive the reports are that you’re running, when you get everything ready to present to others, you may need to do some basic design work to help make specific data a little easier to find.
As a guide for this, MindTools.com suggests that you structure your report so that the most important or sought-after data comes first. If there is other data that you need to include but isn’t as important, move that further down in the report so that the most important information doesn’t get lost in the noise.
If you’ve been having a hard time getting people in your organization to see the value or importance of the marketing reports you have, consider using the tips mentioned above to help things go over more smoothly in the future.
