A performance report is a structured document that presents data on the performance of a marketing campaign. It presents information about the brand with the intention of finding out the success or failure of a certain marketing action. It serves to improve the effectiveness of the strategy and optimise it for the future. The data is presented visually and clearly. After this, a series of conclusions are drawn to obtain better results the following month. In digital marketing, strategies must be optimised very frequently. To do this, it is necessary to know how far they have reached, why they have been useful and why they have not. It works on a trial-and-error basis.
Marketing strategies encompass all aspects of the marketing department itself, including advertising campaigns, social media, blogs, newsletters, SEO and SEM. The behaviour of users with the website is decisive for the results report, the conversion rate, clicks or number of visits are metrics that serve to calculate the effectiveness of marketing actions. Making an honest results dashboard measures the value of the work and shows its strengths and weaknesses. Through a useful template, you can make a monthly, quarterly or annual results report.
There are different types of reports, which are divided according to their characteristics. In general, the treatment given to the information in the document can be of two types:
Depending on the content of the document, reports are divided into the following formats:
The intention with which the document is written determines the following classification:
Shows the percentage of users who have responded to a marketing action. It determines the effectiveness of the content that the brand offers. It is calculated by dividing the number of leads by the number of visits and multiplying the result by 100.
The click-through rate or CTR is used to determine the performance of a marketing action. If a user clicks on an advertisement or blog post, it means that the strategy is being developed correctly to impact the visitor. The click-through rate is calculated by dividing the clicks by the number of impressions and multiplying the result by one hundred.
Customer acquisition cost or CAC is used to determine the average cost a brand spends to convert a lead into a customer. It is an indicator that can provide answers on an annual, quarterly or monthly basis. A low CAC will mean that your company is not spending more than it earns.
The first step in calculating the CAC is to add up the costs of the marketing department, sales, employee salaries, overheads, commissions and overheads, then divide the result by the total number of new customers in the same period.
Calculating the Life Time Value or LTV and dividing it by the CAC gives the total value of each customer. It indicates the actual cost of acquiring a new customer from the early stages of the cycle until the sale is made. A high LTV is desirable because it will mean that a higher ROI is being generated for the company.
Knowing how much is invested in each lead helps to determine the efficiency of the marketing effort. It is key to improve the strategy because in order to have a better ROI, the budget invested in the campaign should be recovered. The cost per lead is calculated by dividing the investment of the campaign by the number of leads obtained.
To understand user behaviour, it is useful to know the total number of visits to the website. This does not determine the percentage of sales, but it is useful to know which pages receive more traffic. Similarly, the bounce rate helps to know how many users leave the website after arriving.
The first step to a performance report is to know the reach of a marketing action and whether the content is working properly. It is a good idea to update your metrics on a regular basis.
There is the total reach that refers to the total number of prospects or people that the brand can contact. On the other hand, the reach by channel finds out how many people follow the brand or are subscribed to each social network or communication channel. A monthly growth template is used to automatically calculate the total sum.
Knowing the total visits to your website helps to determine the success of your marketing actions. Higher web traffic increases the number of potential customers and brand recognition. This data can be represented with monthly templates or graphs.
Sales achieved is used to calculate your company's ROI, but sales opportunity calculates how much revenue your brand generates in relation to the number of potential customers. This helps you to understand the value of your web traffic and to find out which channels are most useful for making a profit.
The conversion rate indicates the quality of content. It should be calculated to determine if strategies are working properly. It includes monthly information on visitors, sales and total conversions. Knowing the impact of a marketing action helps to pinpoint areas for improvement.
When the objective of the report is determined and the necessary data is obtained, a content outline should be developed. It should be simple and understandable for any reader.
Presenting the results correctly determines the scope of the results report. It is advisable to combine different presentation formats to show the conclusions and findings of the research. Presenting the results visually with scales, bars or graphs facilitates their analysis and understanding. Finally, a summary of the report should be drawn up that brings together the most relevant points.
It is used to gather the company's metrics in one place, including SEO, social media and PPC analytics, among others.
HubSpot's marketing software offers access to templates for performance reporting, tools for automated calculations and integration with any metric in a marketing strategy, and connects with Google Analytics to simplify analytics.
This is a customised tool that offers templates for reporting, a large gallery with real examples and connects to Google's data sources.