Creating a digital marketing report can be an overwhelming task for new and experienced digital marketers. Take a look at our blog to see how you should structure your digital marketing reports.
Digital marketing is an overwhelming field, especially if you are still establishing your digital marketing agency or are new to generating your own reports. It is difficult enough to figure out exactly how to market online and produce winning recipes for digital marketing success, but deciding what information to include in a digital marketing report and how to structure it can be a stretch too far out of the comfort zone for many fresh agencies and freelancers.
Components
Here are the most important components of a digital marketing report:
1. Cover Page
The Cover page is one of the most important aspects of creating an engaging report. This will be the first page that your client sees and will introduce the report by providing the report title and reporting period that it covers.
The cover page also provides a fantastic opportunity for you to further brand the report by providing a design element that makes the viewer feel excited to open the report, instead of dreading reading through tedious data and jargon to follow.
2. Introduction
A report introduction is a perfect place to outline what the client should expect to see in the report and highlight some of the goals that may have been discussed during the client onboarding meeting.
It is important to use the introduction to highlight to your client how your digital marketing efforts helped them achieve their goals. Doing this before your client is overwhelmed with data and graphs will further emphasize how you are an important part of their success.
3. KPI Overview
The KPI overview is effectively a summary of the results over the reported period, and it provides the client with a “sneak peek” into how your digital marketing efforts have performed.
This data is usually represented by a collection of scorecards that display the most important data that the client would like to see. For example, total media spend, return on investment, and performance on their targeted goal such as business leads generated can be represented as a stand-alone value.
This section is especially important if you are generating a longer report that contains data from multiple different data sources. In the KPI Overview section, you will be able to highlight the most important metrics from each data source in line with your client’s digital marketing goals.
4. Sectioned Data
Once the scene is set, you can then dive deeper into each section of that data and elaborate further on specific results.
To put this in context, a client may be conducting digital marketing across multiple channels such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Active Campaign, etc. By separating each data source’ into separate sections, it will be much easier for your client to understand their performance by channel and will allow them to scan the report faster, while still obtaining the necessary updates from the data that they are looking for.
5. Conclusion/Recommendations
This is arguably the most important section of the report. One of the reasons why brands decide to use a 3rd party digital marketing agency to conduct their digital marketing for them is that, not only is discovering trends and opportunities in the digital marketing world time-consuming, but many brands also just don’t know how to do it and don’t know what they need to do to improve their digital marketing performance.
Being able to provide a clear outline of the digital marketing performance during the reported period and then provide accurate recommendations for the next steps that could further improve performance, is an incredible skill and possibly the exact reason why many brands use digital marketing agencies.
The conclusion or recommendations highlighted in this report will often be referenced in the introduction of the next report as this gives a reminder of the performance position of the client, and sets clear objectives to report on in the next reporting period.
Bonus Components
While the components highlighted above are the most important in structuring a digital marketing report, there are still some extra components that can improve a report, help keep the viewer more engaged and end the report on a positive note.
Media
Media is a great tool to help keep a viewer engaged. Subconsciously, most people will let their point of focus on a page stray from text and tables to eye-catching images and videos.
There are many ways to incorporate media into a report, however here are some of our favorite ways to include media on Oviond:
- Post Previews – In our social media integrations such as Instagram, Instagram Ads, Facebook, and Facebook Ads, you are able to display post previews t when pulling data in a table. Post previews create visual imagery that can be paired with data and ultimately help keep viewers engaged.
- Banner Headings – Creating an on-brand image to use as page headings for the different sections of the report is an opportunity to further emphasize your branding when introducing each section.
- Debrief Video – Since fewer and fewer agencies are meeting with their clients in person to present their digital marketing reports, something that has become more popular in digital marketing is adding a video to each section of the report that explains the data in that section and provides insight to the viewer as they are reading the report. This is a great way to still keep a personal touch on your report even if you are unable to meet personally.
Thank You Page
Leaving your client with a little smile on their face as they are reading the final page of your report must be good for a business relationship right? That is why the thank you page is a nice little add-on to your report that you can use to thank your client for their continued support of your services and for their collaboration in building their digital marketing performance.
A thank you page doesn’t need to say a lot and usually ranges along the lines of simple “Thank You” text, or even a short blurb just to say thank you for taking the time to go through the report and for their continued support.
The thank you page, similar to the cover page, also provides a great opportunity to display your company branding.
Reporting Made Easy
Breaking down a report into a couple of easy components makes it pretty simple right? Take a look at our Design Elements For An Effective Digital Marketing Report blog for the next step on how to create an incredible digital marketing report!
