It’s one thing being awesome at what you do and another thing to prove it. As a marketing professional, you constantly have to inform your clients or management team how your efforts are paying off. Here’s the thing: some initiatives bring results in weeks, some may take years. At the same time, a non-marketing professional may be unfamiliar with the specific numbers or formulas.
So, how do you, as a marketeer, show the importance of your work to others?
Data doesn’t leave that much room for interpretation. You show the client or your manager what you did and how it paid off by providing actual numbers.
However, the way you present the results is what matters here. If you’re thinking, “Oh, I’ll just show them my spreadsheet,” — consider two things. One, non-marketing people may not understand what a 7% CR drop is. Is it a regular fluctuation, or do we need to take immediate action?
Two, people already spend a considerable amount of time looking at spreadsheets — don’t add yours on top of that. In all seriousness, some people find it difficult to get through an entire data report. They don’t finish reading it: either the data is too complex or too many irrelevant numbers.
Hence, the best way to represent what you’ve done is by creating a performance report.
By visualizing your performance numbers, you’ll be doing your client and yourself a favor. Not only does it help them understand the effectiveness of your work, but it might give you a new perspective. By compiling the numbers together, you may see what efforts pay off and which ones you should get rid of.
Choosing the right reporting tool is the key here. If you’re not looking for anything fancy, you may collect the data manually from each channel and present it using Google Slides. However, that will consume a considerable amount of time and leave room for errors or miscalculations.
Alternatively, you can use automated software that does the work for you. There are multiple tools you can choose from based on your needs and budget.
I like to combine my marketing tools with Whatagraph. It automatically pulls performance data from your selected sources and turns it into a visual presentation. You can create reports for channels individually or blend data from different sources to see the full picture. Using professional software, you’ll be able to create the report in 10 minutes or less.
When you’re building the report, try finding the balance between covering everything needed and skipping irrelevant information. Now, there’s no general rule to that, but most marketing reports contain the following elements:
Finally, you should provide an overview of each marketing channel you run. Whatagraph, for example, offers pre-built templates for different channels containing all the vital metrics. But if you’re not using reporting software, here’s a checklist for every channel along with its essential metrics: