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When the year’s over, it’s time to recap: Did you reach your marketing goals? Did marketing ROI improve? How did the newest strategies, experiments or change-ups pan out? While you may think you’ve got a full picture of how the year’s efforts went, you could be lacking important insights.
That’s where the annual marketing report comes in. This report isn’t just a reflection of how well (or not-so well) your campaigns and initiatives performed against your goals. It can also become an important part of the goal-setting process for the year to come.
Reports, reports, reports. Over the course of the year, you’ve probably created dozens of them. But an end-of-year report is still key to getting a bird’s-eye view of your program.
That’s because an annual marketing report can serve as a highly efficient resource for your team — and the entire company. It can:
Overall, the report shows how your team has been working toward reaching — and hopefully crushing — its goals. Meanwhile, it can also uncover or illuminate issues that may need closer attention in the coming year.
Visuals can make complicated analytics more comprehensible. (Image via Unsplash)
The details of the EOY marketing report will differ from business to business. For example, an e-commerce company may focus on SEO metrics while a SaaS provider might dive deep into retention achievements. But the key elements are likely to be similar for most companies, regardless of industry:
A quick online search will bring about a variety of annual marketing report templates you can customize. This could help save you time when creating your first annual marketing report. Use the below best practices with your chosen template to ensure your report is thorough and digestible.
The majority of people who read your report probably don’t have a ton of time to spend digging into every finding. By providing a short summary, you can quickly communicate important points to executives and stakeholders without overwhelming them with all the nitty-gritty details.
The summary should list things like KPI improvements, successfully completed projects, met goals, and financial achievements. Include specific sales numbers and compare these figures to last year’s achievements, if you can.
Raw numbers and metrics may be useful to your team, but other readers could find their eyes glazing over. That’s why it’s key to add insights and context to each number, if possible. Better yet, use a colorful chart to drive the point home in a more visual manner.
An annual report isn’t just a way to bring important figures together. It’s an opportunity for analysis — and that will only happen if your reader understands what they’re looking at.
A quick online search will bring about a variety of annual marketing report templates you can customize. (Image via Unsplash)
Speaking of charts, it’s wise to try to include as many visual elements in your report as possible. These graphics can help pack maximum information without going into extensive explanations.
Plus, visuals can make complicated analytics more comprehensible. They also allow for quick scanning, which is vital for readers who are pressed for time.
Want to make sure your marketing is set up for success next year and beyond? We can show you how.
Always keep the main audience of your marketing report in mind. If you’re presenting information to stakeholders, try to keep the focus off search ranking improvements and complex retargeting stats. These people usually want to see lead and sales growth, so that’s what you should give them. Show them how your efforts affect overall marketing ROI.
If the main audience of your marketing report is lower-level management, you can give extra focus to details such as engagement rates and bounce rates, along with how they changed over time.
Besides comparing marketing achievements to previous benchmarks, it may also be helpful to run a short competitor analysis.
This benchmarking tactic can help you see where you stand with your marketing efforts at the end of the year, what may need improvements next year, and what others are doing that you may also want to experiment with in your own way.
Just as important as what you include is what you leave out of your marketing report. In order to prevent marketing reporting problems, you probably want to avoid things like:
Overall, you want to try to keep the report relevant to the company’s specific needs and goals for the year, rather than simply laying out every statistic you can get your hands on.
An annual marketing report is an efficient way to recap your efforts, gain valuable insights into your strategy, demonstrate achievements to the relevant parties, and help make plans for next year. Down the line, you can look back on these reports to see how far you’ve come.
For an end-of-year marketing report with maximum impact, keep it concise, visually appealing, and easy to digest.
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