Reporting in marketing and advertising activities plays a key role, because it demonstrates the effectiveness of actions, helps analyze results and make strategic decisions for further development. It allows you to understand how successful the efforts were, as well as which aspects need correction. With the development of social networks and graphic design, even analytical documents such as a report can be interesting, attractive and informative.
How to properly create a report so that it does not get lost among a bunch of other documents, demonstrates the effectiveness of the actions taken and the importance of the marketer's work - read in our blog.
If your business involves marketing and advertising, you've surely heard, and maybe even created, reports for clients. The report is an important document that not only shows the results of activity for a certain period, but also demonstrates your value as a specialist and can be a decisive factor in making important decisions.
A clear and easy-to-understand report is an opportunity to build a strong and trusting relationship between the client and the marketing specialist. But often creating reports is a difficult stage of work for marketers and freelancers, because it is not about creativity, but about numbers. Although, if you look in detail, any activity can be interesting and filled with creativity at each of the stages.
Although the report is quantitative, effective client communication can go beyond a Google Sheet. Regular reporting in an understandable and interesting format gives the client the opportunity not only to understand whether their investments in marketing and advertising are effective, but also to understand more about your activities, to understand how valuable and necessary your services are.
Creating interesting and creative reports is a useful skill for a marketer, a freelancer, an advertising agency manager, and an employee of a marketing company. In this article, we will analyze how to develop an attractive, clear and informative report for the client so that cooperation with you will be remembered for a long time.
Each person is unique and this is very important for a useful, relevant report. The same templates may not work for different managers. This should be taken into account when preparing a monthly report. Analyze the type of your client, evaluate what is important to him, remember what he paid attention to during the previous communication and how he reacted to certain data. Take all this into account in your activity.
How to personalize the report?
During negotiations and communication with the client, you had to understand what tone of voice is acceptable for your partner. If the business style prevailed in the conversations, then clear, understandable explanations with numbers will be the best option. If you notice that the client does not appeal in professional terms, it is better to provide information in a simple, understandable form, but with accurate data and detailed explanations of what they give us.
When starting work on the project, you were guaranteed to find out what is important for the client and discuss various marketing strategies, among which you determined the most effective one, because it is the one that will help you achieve the desired result. If the client was interested in sales, then you should not include the number of new followers on Instagram in the report, or at least do not make it the main achievement of the month's work.
Show clients how close you are to a strategic goal with numbers and data, based on metrics from Google Analytics. This will not only show your professionalism, but also convince the client of the importance and expediency of your work.
Effective client reporting isn't limited to a boring set of numbers in a Google spreadsheet. Explain each point, provide comments on options for improving certain indicators, if necessary, and tell how it will affect the achievement of the desired result in the shortest period.
To create effective reporting and establish strong partnership relations, it is worth taking as a rule that each individual client deserves his "personal" report. And the sooner the contractor understands this, the sooner communication will be established, and the process of creating reports will be interesting and will not cause complications.
Graphic design is gaining more and more popularity among all spheres of life and activity. The preparation of reports for the client is no exception. Dry spreadsheets with a set of certain numbers do not evoke emotions. Such a negative perception can be reflected in the general impression of the specialist's work and the results obtained.
Make the document not only informative, but also original. Add a banner or graphic elements to the report that better inform about the performance of the activity for the month. Show with the help of graphs and charts how the indicators have changed compared to the previous period, and how much these or other actions bring you and the client closer to achieving the goal.
Example of a visually appealing report
* the material is taken from the website Wezom
Intrigue always attracts. An interesting story, accompanied by the result in the form of numbers, keeps attention and charges emotions. With the help of storytelling, even dry statistical data can be made interesting and informative. The story allows you to reveal the context and meaning of the numbers and demonstrate the results in achieving the set goals.
Data Storytelling helps the client quickly understand key findings and make relevant decisions.
How to effectively use Data Storytelling in reporting?
Think through the whole story from beginning to end, describe the problem or task you are solving, and how the data you receive affects them. Then go to the indicators themselves. Demonstrate to the client how they help to achieve the desired effect and whether they change under the influence of certain actions.
In order to make the report clear, try to avoid "all possible data", even if it is relevant. It is better to focus on the main indicators and on the description of how they help to achieve the goals.
Remember that your client may have an imperfect understanding of terms and may not understand what this or that indicator is talking about. Try to provide a clear and understandable explanation of the data and why it is important in this particular situation. Provide options for action to either maintain or improve performance.
Emotional involvement keeps the client's focus while studying the report and influences his impression. Show how certain data can affect important aspects, for example, financial results or the lives of clients. This creates more motivation to take action based on the report.
Do not leave the client "alone" with thoughts, because this can lead to "wrong" conclusions. At the end, it is important to summarize all the actions and how they affected the data obtained, which of them are effective and which should be abandoned. Provide recommendations for the next reporting period to improve or maintain existing results.
Example of using Data Storytelling in reporting
* the material is taken from the website Companera
Using Data Storytelling will make your reporting not only informative and useful, but also interesting. This will allow the client to more easily and quickly perceive and understand all the necessary information and make important decisions on further actions and costs based on the received data.
Give the client the opportunity to independently interact with important data and indicators. This will allow you to better understand the information provided, to understand how this or that indicator affects the overall picture and what actions allow you to improve the situation and achieve the desired goals.
When creating reports, provide clickable charts and graphs to get additional information about audience segment, sales and their change over different reporting periods.
Of course, this version of the report involves significant marketing efforts, but the result is worth it. The time spent will help the client better understand the situation, assess all risks and the impact of certain factors on marketing activities.
Interactive elements are a valuable client reporting tool that makes statistics interesting, attractive, and most importantly understandable.
Try to provide only clear information necessary for decision-making without unnecessary fluff. After reviewing the report, the client should clearly understand:
Ideally, all indicators should be explained and substantiated by the specialist, and simple and understandable for the client. Analytics and reporting will help monitor the trend of activity development and, if necessary, adjust strategies, optimize them, or develop new ones.
When creating reports, do not forget about branding and its special role in business development and identity. The use of branded elements will not only demonstrate your professionalism, but will also help consolidate the company's recognition among its employees.
The main elements of branding that can be used in reporting:
Placing the company logo in headers, title pages and footers creates a clear identification of the document with the brand.
The use of corporate colors for headings, fonts, graphics and other visual elements reinforces the association with the company's style.
The use of approved corporate fonts in the text of reports is necessary to preserve the unity of the visual style.
Branded graphic elements such as patterns, backgrounds and a single format for data visualization help create consistency between reports and reinforce brand awareness.
If the client's company does not have a developed corporate style, you can create it yourself using the BannerBoo online designer. The service provides many useful templates and elements that you can use in your business.
Branding is an important element for company recognition and its identification among competitors. The use of corporate identity in reporting demonstrates professionalism, builds trust between partners and builds brand loyalty.
Example of using corporate colors in reporting
* the material is taken from the website Gulakpro
Real stories and client testimonials are a powerful way to demonstrate your company's performance, build trust, and highlight the effectiveness of your solutions. These elements not only make the report more interesting to read and understand, but also add a human factor that allows a better understanding of your services, their value and impact on achieving the client's goals.
How to rationally use client reviews and stories in reporting?
Customer reviews and real stories make the report "live", interesting and understandable for the client. They turn an ordinary document into a fascinating tool that demonstrates a valuable understanding of your work as a specialist and helps you find insight that can lead to unexpected decisions in achieving the desired goal.
Regular client reports should be concise and not time-consuming to read. The ability to convey the necessary information briefly and without complex terminology is a guarantee of effective communication between the client and the contractor. Concise reports help convey the main point, focus attention on the most important points, facilitate perception and increase credibility. You can speak the same language with clients and move towards your goals together.
How to achieve brevity in reports?
Conciseness will help you create an effective, and most importantly, understandable report, with which you can convey all the necessary information, demonstrate the importance of your activity, and focus the client's attention on important points to achieve the desired results.
With the development of social networks and graphic design, clients began to better perceive information visually. Marketing is no exception. Monthly reporting requires completely different, creative approaches, because dry and boring Google tables no longer impress anyone.
Visual appeal, interactivity, brevity — this is what clients need now to save time and effectively track marketing activities and advertising budgets.
Managers and employees of the company more easily perceive well-designed and attractive documents. Every specialist should understand that a business can lose or miss the most valuable information if it is presented in a complex and confusing format. That is why the process of creating a report should be approached responsibly. Develop a story around the numbers, intrigue the client, involve him in the process and show how the obtained indicators help to achieve the set goals.
The attractiveness of reports not only makes them effective, but also demonstrates your professionalism, establishes open and sincere communication with the client, where you together look for options to optimize the strategy and with each reporting period achieve better and better results at lower costs.
Reports demonstrate the results of activities and show whether actions, decisions and costs were effective in a particular period. Reporting allows companies to analyze client interactions, monitor client satisfaction, and identify issues that may impact the business.
For the service professional, the report is an important tool that helps to better understand the client's needs and expectations and to focus his attention on those actions that will contribute to the achievement of the client's desired results.
Today, client reports are not just dry tables on Google. This is a unique approach to solving a certain problem. The effectiveness of the report is evaluated:
The presence of these basic aspects will help to establish effective communication with the client, demonstrate the results of your activity as a specialist and evaluate the effectiveness of the chosen strategy.
The structure of a client report depends on the type of report and the objectives it pursues, but in general it should include main sections that ensure clarity, ease of perception and effective communication of important data.
Key sections of the report include the following:
The client report should be structured, clear, concise and visually attractive, because it provides an opportunity to easily understand the information provided, evaluate the work performed and analyze the proposed actions to improve the result.
