What can you expect as 2020 comes to a close and you transition into 2021? For starters, the pandemic has changed the way businesses operate along with the way they engage with their target audience. With all the social distancing and work from home mandates, it’s no surprise that businesses have transitioned away from their traditional operations and have focused on strengthening their digital presence. In fact, E-commerce is now more competitive and bigger than ever before.
Some good news is that the pandemic has allowed for small businesses to gain market share in the E-commerce industry. According to a survey conducted by Constant Contact, they claim that “60% of people surveyed are making it an effort to shop local this year, 71% of people continue to shop at small businesses at least once a month, 62% plan to shop at a small business they have never shopped at before (by the end of year), and 71% said they will do some holiday shopping this year through small businesses.” In other words people want to shop local!
So with that in mind, what’s your digital marketing game plan to get your target audience's attention?
As marketers we are constantly making important decisions on behalf of our company every day. A lot of the time we will use our best judgement to make these decisions and weave in data and metrics when possible. Today we want to share with you how to build and analyze your marketing reports to make important marketing decisions that will impact your entire organization.
You’re probably already tracking rudimentary marketing metrics such as traffic, leads, and customers– all critical parts of a bigger picture of your marketing funnel. However, these are not enough to inform broader marketing decisions that will impact your entire organization.
This is where marketing reports come into play. Hubspot defines a marketing report as “the process of gathering and analyzing marketing metrics to inform future marketing decisions, strategies, and performance. Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and meet organization-wide goals.” In short, depending on what data you’re reviewing and the purpose of each report, a marketing report informs key decisions.
Look at it this way. No more "eenie, meenie, minie, mo decisions" – marketing reporting is a highly valuable process if used and crafted properly. So how do you build a marketing report? Well that depends on what specific goal(s) you are looking to accomplish. Once your goal has been defined, then your report will utilize specific metrics from your marketing dashboard in order to shine the light over the whole umbrella.
For example, if you are trying to make a decision on whether or not your organization’s marketing campaigns have been successful, it’s important to take a few steps back and look at the whole picture. Most marketers will track their projects and their respective metrics on a weekly basis. From there, the main objective is to directly correlate your marketing initiatives to sales. In marketing lingo, we like to call this the multi-touch revenue attribution – where every marketing interaction is tied to closed revenue (from the first page view to the final nurturing email).
That way, not only do marketers get the credit they deserve but the business leaders are informed to make smarter investments rooted in business value instead of vanity metrics. As a bonus, the multi touch revenue attribution can also help you stay aligned with your sales teams. Here are 5 things worth considering when you build your report:
1. How to Analyze Revenue Reporting
To analyze revenue reporting, figure out what’s working and double down on it. Look at the revenue results from different channels and see where you had the most success. Use this information to decide what marketing efforts to invest in moving forward. For example, if you notice that your Facebook campaigns drove a ton of revenue, run more Facebook campaigns!
Multi-touch attribution reports should be run monthly to understand the broader business impact of your marketing channels. While revenue is important, you should also dig into some of your other metrics for a more complete picture.
2. Channel-Specific Marketing Reports:
Understanding where your traffic is coming from will help you make strategic decisions as you invest in different marketing channels. If you see strong performance from one particular source, you may want to invest more resources in it.
On the other hand, you may actually want to invest in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace with some of your other channels. Whatever you decide, source data will help you figure that out.
3. Blog Conversion Marketing Reports:
Blogs have become a marketers best friend over the years. There’s no question that there’s a direct correlation between how often a company blogs and the total number of leads they generate (not just the traffic the blogs generate). So diving into the metrics of how your blog is performing will allude to which blog topics may be stickier than others. When building a report, we recommend looking at blog metrics on a monthly basis to become informed on strategic decisions.
4. Persona Marketing Reports:
You’ve heard us say this time and time again but every marketer needs to be well-versed in their buyer personas. It’s not enough to just know their demographics but truly understand them. When building a report, it's beneficial to segment your report in categorical “persona data” so that you can cross reference. This will help you determine how accurate your buyer personas are and how successful your marketing is in targeting and reaching them.
Pulling this report on a monthly basis can give you insight into how your campaigns affect new contacts by persona — and might even shed light on an imbalance in resources dedicated to certain personas.
5. Lifecycle Stage Funnel Marketing Reports:
A great way to segment your contact database is by organizing them based off of their lifecycle stage. This will give you an easy to digest idea of how many leads, subscribers, customers, and opportunities you have in your funnel at a certain point in time.
This report will not only help you understand where your focus should be in your pipeline but also how your leads are progressing into the buying process. We recommend using this report to see what areas of your funnel you need to address for greater efficiency.
If you need help with your marketing playbook moving into the new year, we encourage you to get in touch with one of the experts at Oak Street Associates to draft a customized playbook to help you achieve your marketing goals. We understand that everyone’s business is a little different from the others and want to help illustrate your vision to your target audience. With online market space being even more competitive than ever, it’s important to take your marketing strategies seriously. Click here to schedule your free consultation today!