Building Digital Marketing Reports: 4 Critical Considerations

Digital Marketing has become one of the most popular techniques that businesses rely on to market their products. This is because these techniques allow businesses to reach a wider audience and efficiently measure the performance of their marketing efforts in a way that can be easily visualized and communicated to decision-makers. This allows them to plan future Marketing Strategies and Campaigns accordingly. In this article, you will learn in detail about Marketing Reports, the Structure of a Marketing Report, Metrics to be included in a Report, and Sample Templates to help build your Marketing Reports.

What is a Marketing Report?

A Marketing Report is a document that combines Data across multiple platforms used by the department to determine the overall performance of the implemented market strategy. The main aim of this report is to evaluate if the current Marketing strategies are working in the right direction. It helps in measuring the progress, depicting value, and identifying actionable steps to improve Marketing performance. 

A standard Digital Marketing Report would generally contain a summary, Traffic Metrics, Engagement Metrics, Conversion Metrics, and Business Impact Metrics. 

Importance of Marketing Reports 

People working in the Marketing department, and also the top management of an organization often need to keep track of the performance of Marketing Strategies. 

Some reasons that highlight the importance of Marketing Reports are:

1. Provide Details on Efforts

These Reports help in quantifying the efforts being put by the Marketing department and measures the tangible benefits from the Campaigns. This can help employees from other fields understand the effort being put into a certain Campaign. They help articulate how Campaigns are fulfilling goals, generating sales-ready Leads, and bringing in revenue. 

2. Help in Baseline Establishment

These Reports help in visualizing the progress being made based on multiple Metrics. Additionally, this helps identify and segment the channels that are working from others, thereby providing direction for campaigns. 

3. Provides Updated Information 

Since Digital Marketing is an immensely dynamic endeavor to carry out, real-time information of the progress and real-world results can help in course correction and strategizing the next steps optimally. This updated information also acts as objective points for the decision-makers in the organization. 

4. Provides Metrics for Historical Comparisons

By using reliable Metrics, you can measure multiple aspects of the Campaigns being run and the channels opted, these Reports provide a method to compare the progress on a Year-on-Year basis. This also helps evaluate the effectiveness of long-term strategies implemented to achieve desired goals in the organization.

5. Improved Understanding of Efforts between Departments

Digital Marketing involves multiple tasks including photography and videography, copywriting, hashtag research, audience research, which at a larger firm will be handled by different departments. Thus this Report helps to establish communication between the departments by keeping track of progress in a holistic manner. These can also help in highlighting which components need more resource investment.

Key Considerations for Building a Digital Marketing Report

Key Considerations while creation of a Marketing Report are: 

1. Expenditure of the Campaign

Most organizations would have different budgets being allocated to their Marketing departments. Sometimes the expenditure and budgets are even dynamic and can vary on a month-to-month basis depending upon the product cycle. Therefore it is important to keep expenditure into consideration and keep track of the amount spent on each Digital Marketing segment basis. This method can help keep the process dynamic and easy to track.

2. Expected Reach of the Campaign 

The number of people being targeted or the estimation of the intended audience of a Marketing Campaign can help decide the choice of Metrics and would help in evaluating its effectiveness.

3. Effectiveness of the Campaign

This refers to the expected amount of Leads that the Campaign would generate. Other parameters such as the number of people receiving the message or participating in the Campaign also correlate to this and help in evaluating the effectiveness of the Campaign.

4. Financial Return of the Campaign

This refers to the amount of revenue that could be gained after carrying out that Campaign. The Cost of Acquisition of a Customer and Cost of Acquisition of a Lead is useful Metrics that can help evaluate this financial return.

Understanding the Structure of Marketing Reports 

Here are the top 10 things that should be included in every Digital Marketing Report:

1. Breakdown by Channel and Device

This part showcases the division of website traffic and analysis of various sources generating Leads. Some important Metrics to be included in this section are Bounce Rate, % New Session, Top pages, Email Campaigns, Top Referrers, etc. For example: identifying which blog is bringing the most traffic to the page. 

2. Initial Summary

This part of the report provides the highlights of the included metrics and gives a holistic overview of the related project. This part should provide the reader with a general understanding of the situation, and what to expect in the complete Report. 

‍3. Conversion Metrics

These Metrics help in tracking the progress and effectiveness of the project. Generally, these Metrics are visualized in the forms of charts, graphs, and projections for easy understanding. Some Metrics that can be included in the section are Channel Breakdown, Revenue Breakdown, Paid Vs. Organic Leads Breakdown, Cost per Conversion, etc. This part also provides a comparison with historical data to help track growth.  

4. Marketing Strategy

This part provides an explanation of the chosen Marketing Strategy and the reasoning behind that choice. This section can be helpful for individuals not well versed with the Marketing terminology and other prerequisites. This includes defining the scope of the project and the channels being proposed for the project. Explanation of the platform-specific jargon could also be provided. 

5 . Lead Acquisition

In this section, the Leads are generated and, listed, and categorized on the basis of various sources such as SEO [Search Engine Optimisation], PPC [Pay-Per-Click], etc. This method also helps with the identification of methods that are generating the Leads most efficiently.  

6. Search Engine Optimization

This section includes the improvement in rankings that can be allocated to the SEO optimization performed on the target website. Historical Data is also depicted to help draw comparisons to the improved rankings.

7. PPC Endeavors

PPC [Pay-per-Click] Campaigns are being used by many Marketing firms. In this section Metrics related to PPC Campaigns are to be included such as Click-Through Rate, Impressions, Ad Spend, Cost per Conversion, ROI, etc. This tracking is helpful in cases where there is a limited budget to be spent on the Campaign. 

8. Social Media Marketing

This section is supposed to include Data from the social media Marketing Campaigns on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Youtube. This includes the number of Leads generated via these channels. 

9. Ideas for Future

In this section, the strategies for upcoming Campaigns can be discussed and even new projects can be proposed. Since the Digital Marketing domain is dynamic and there are frequently new trends being followed every few days, this section plays an important role in strategizing the projects for the future.

Looking to streamline your marketing reports? Check out our blog Marketing Data Warehouse: An Easy Guide and Everything You Need to Know to see how a data warehouse can make a difference!

Key Metrics to Include in the Report

Key Metrics that need to be included in a Marketing Report are: 

1. Overall Campaign results

These contain the overview of all the channels in the Campaign which can give a general idea of the progress and results of the Campaign. These are evaluated on the basis of objectives set for the projects. 

2. Results by channel

This metric depicts the contribution made by each of the channels chosen for the generation of Leads.

3. List of Actions

Bullets points are used to highlight the specific actions carried out in a project to help quantify the efforts of the Marketing team in relation to the objectives achieved by the same.

4. SEO [Search Engine Optimisation] /SEM [Search Engine Marketing]

This metric includes the improvement in ranking due to SEO and SEM. The historical data is also provided to help draw comparisons and measure growth.

5. Paid Media Traffic

These include the Metrics obtained from the paid media Campaigns services utilized for the project such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc. 

6. Website Traffic

This is an important metric to include and evaluate because a website plays an important role in the Lead Acquisition funnel for any business. Tracking the website traffic can give an idea of the upcoming trend of Lead generation down the funnel in the near future. 

7. Social Media Engagement

Metrics pertaining to the engagement of users or audience play an important role as they depict the relevance of the content being circulated. Frequent updates encourage regular engagement from consumers Leading to higher revenue depending upon the business model of the organization. 

8. Blog Traffic

Blogs help in organically increasing the Traffic on the target website and thus generating more Leads down the funnel. Relevant blogs help in creating awareness about the services or products being offered, thus tracking the Traffic on blogs can help evaluate the relevance of the content and help improve the organic Acquisition channels for the company. 

9. Lead Conversion Rates 

This metric is the percentage of visitors on the website who are converted to leads. This percentage can help understand the status of top-of-the-funnel conversion of the business’s marketing efforts.

10. Customer Acquisition Cost [CAC]

Customer Acquisition Cost [CAC] refers to the cost related to acquiring a new customer for the business. This metric is used in relation to Customer Lifetime Value [LTV]  to measure the actual profit being generated by a customer.

11. Customer Lifetime Value

Businesses spend a lot of money to acquire new customers, so it is important to know how much revenue each of these customers is bringing to the business. Customer Lifetime Value is the metric that represents the total amount of money that customer is expected to spend on the offerings of the business during their lifetime. 

12. Click-Through-Rate [CTR] 

Click-Through-Rate [CTR]  refers to the ratio of users who click on an ad / engage with the content per number of impressions of the website. This metric helps in determining if the content advertised is engaging and interesting to the users and thus captures more leads for the product or the service offering.

13. Bounce Rate 

Bounce refers to an instance where a user visits a website and exits / closes the webpage without interacting with the content. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who bounce from the website compared to total visitors/users of the website.

Sample Templates for Marketing Reports 

Some of the Sample Template which you can follow for the creation of your Marketing Report are: 

1. PPC Marketing Report Template   

This Template can help gather data from the Pay-per-Click platforms used for advertising and Lead generation such as Google Ads, Bing ads, Facebook Ads, etc. The Metrics included in the Template are Clicks and costs, Conversions, Revenues, and Ad Performance. The visualization in this Template can help in budget allocation in PPC projects. 

2. Digital Yearbook Marketing Report Template   

This Template visualizes data pertaining to trans on the internet usage, social media platforms, and digital media outlets. This data is divided on a country-wise basis. The knowledge of such patterns can help harness the power of viral trends and increase outreach exponentially. 

3. State of Marketing – Marketing Report Template   

This Template visualizes information pertaining to Inbound Marketing. The parameters related to content Marketing can be visualized and the Organic Campaign performance can be improved. 

This helps provide an overall overview of the Marketing Campaigns being run by the department.

4. Display advertising Campaign Marketing Report Template   

This Template visualizes data relevant to the display advertisement Campaigns being run on various platforms such as Google AdWords, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, Brightcove, etc. all in a single view. The Metrics included in the Template are Cost, Clicks, Conversions, Click Through Rate, and Impressions.  

5. Content Marketing Benchmarks Marketing Report Template

This Template visualizes the data pertaining to tracking the progress of the content Marketing Campaigns being run by the organization. It also highlights the prevalent content Marketing trends on the Internet which can help strategize the plan of action for future projects on the content Marketing domain for the company. 

6. General Marketing Report Template   

This template provides an overview of all the projects and Campaigns being implemented by the organization. Data from all the web analytics sources and other sources like SEO, Social Media, PPC is gathered in a single view. It is aimed at providing a general overview of the scenario. 

7. SEO Marketing Report Template

This Template can gather data from the SEO platforms that one utilizes such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs, etc. The Metrics included in the Template are Organic Sessions, Organic Conversions, Organic Landing Pages, Organic Keywords.

8. Email Marketing Report Template   

This Template displays the data obtained from the Email Marketing Campaigns being carried out by the organization using the platforms such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, or your internal solution. The Metrics included in this Template are the number of Emails Sent, Unique Open Rate, Click Rate, and Overall Campaign Performance. Outbound Email Marketing plays an important role in the Lead Acquisition channels of various business organizations. 

9. Social Media Marketing Report Template   

This Template displays data pertaining to progress on social media platforms of the organization. The data can be gathered from multiple sources like LinkedIn Pages, Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, etc. The Metrics included in the Template are Likes and Followers, Impressions & Reach Engagement, and Top performing Posts. This Template can help in evaluating what kind of outreach is being achieved by different social media channels opted by the company.

10. Ecommerce Marketing Report Template   

This Template displays the data relevant to the Ecommerce Marketing projects being carried out by the organization. This could include the affiliate links included at various instances on the web, sponsored spots on the Ecommerce platform, etc. The Metrics included in this Template are Sessions, Transactions, Revenue, Conversion Rate. 

Conclusion 

In this article, you learned in detail about Marketing Reports, their Structure, Metrics to be included in a Report, Key Consideration before building a Marketing Report, and some Sample Templates to guide you. These Reports paint a pretty good picture of how well posts and ads are doing, what amount is being spent and lost. These Reports show brands what else they can do to resonate with their audiences, or perhaps if their predetermined audience wasn’t correct in the first place.

Automated integration with your Data Warehouses/multiple Data sources and the Analytics Database can make your choice much simpler as a lot of necessary features can be integrated readily.

Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline provides you with a consistent and reliable solution to manage data transfer between a variety of sources and a wide variety of Desired Destinations with a few clicks.

Hevo Data with its strong integration with 150+ data sources (including 60+ free sources) allows you to not only export data from your desired data sources & load it to the destination of your choice but also transform & enrich your data to make it analysis-ready so that you can focus on your key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools. 

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