In the marketing industry, having information on the performance of our actions is vital. Why? Because it allows us to make informed decisions while being able to measure which of our strategies work best.
Attracting traffic and generating conversions is very important, but understanding where our users come from, how they interact with our website and what motivated them to make a purchase (among many other things) is fundamental to think about sustainable and efficient marketing strategies.
At BROOBE we would like to give you an insight of the things you should know about Marketing Reporting:
Marketing Reporting: what is it?
A marketing report is basically a graphical representation of the metrics and KPIs of a business’ marketing strategy over a given period of time.
Why is it so important? Because if we know the numbers of our ecommerce, website, social networks, among others, we will be able to make informed decisions, that is, better decisions. In addition, we will be able to measure and understand what things are working on our site (to boost them) and what things are not (to leave them aside).
Also, knowing the numbers of our business will give us a better understanding of the industry and the context. This will help us not only to keep updating ourselves, but also to perceive the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors.
Digital marketing reports
In marketing, as in many other disciplines, there are different ways of doing the same things with similar results. For example, in cooking, some people add white wine to tomato sauce and others use red wine. Possibly both sauces are tasty, but everyone prepares it according to their taste and preference.
When it comes to making a marketing report, something similar happens: how you do it will depend on what visual layout you are most comfortable with or what metrics are most relevant to your objectives. However, there are certain best practices that you should definitely take into consideration:
- Define the periodicity: depending on what you want to measure, your reports could be daily, weekly or monthly.
- Feedback matters: numbers are fundamental, but don’t lose sight of your users. Feed off their comments because they might indicate something that is not reflected in the numbers.
- Build your own templates: your reports should be like your clothes; they should reflect who you are. So make sure you put together your own templates that you are comfortable with.
- The most important data should come first: marketing is no exception, so you should prioritize your information. Put the most relevant at the beginning of your report.
- More graphics than text: the human brain processes images thousands of times faster than text. So use lots of graphics and visual resources to facilitate data comprehension. Your brain will thank you.
Marketing Metrics
You may have read about metrics and KPI ‘s, and wondered what the difference between the two is.
Well, while metrics are the specific measurements of your users’ actions on your website, KPIs are the set of metrics that are most important to your company’s goals.
Let’s look at the most common ones:
- Number of visits: how many times each user visits your site.
- Dwell time: how long your users stay on a page.
- Bounce rate: what percentage of users leave your site without taking any action.
- Visits per device: how many visits your site has had from different devices (desktop, mobile, tablet).
- Conversions: the actions performed by your visitors (purchase, subscription, clicks, etc).
- Channels: which devices users use when visiting your site.
- Campaign performance: this metric allows you to measure the ROI of your campaigns. That is, you can see the interactions and conversions from your advertising campaigns.
If you want to learn more about how to write a KPI report, this post will be useful.
Digital marketing tools
Nowadays there are a lot of tools that will help you generate reports. Let’s take a look at some of them:
Whenever we talk about Google we are talking about the major leagues.
In favor: It is a platform that allows you to collect and centralize all the information about your website or ecommerce, such as the number of clicks, conversions or even where your users come from.
Against: Being the most complete tool also makes it a bit complex to use.
This tool has different subscription modes that allow you to access different types of information.
In favor: It is quite intuitive to use and with the cheapest subscription it allows you to generate visually attractive and customized reports.
Against: It has problems with some integrations.
It is a tool that allows you to build dashboards and measure the performance of your site.
In favor: you will be able to centralize all the different metrics measurement tools in the same place. In addition, it allows you to customize the style and design in which the information is presented in a more user-friendly way when presenting results.
Against: its cheapest subscription costs $72 per month.
Like Databox, this Google tool allows you to unify data taken from different points.
In favor: it is free. In addition, it allows you to edit and share reports easily.
Against: when there are failures in the visualizations, it is not easy to find the reason.
We have solutions
If the numbers don’t tell you anything or you don’t know where to start analyzing them to improve your sales, contact us. In BROOBE we have a team of specialists in reporting and metrics that will help you boost conversions in your ecommerce, while thinking the best strategy for your business.
