17 November 2022

The importance of reporting marketing data

Reporting is an incredibly important part of our work, even if it sometimes feels like a waste of time to be looking back instead of moving forward.

Why is reporting so important?

Whether you do it for yourself or for a client, reporting gives us worthwhile perspective.

We need to collect data to understand what we’ve done right when something is successful, and what we’ve done wrong when something misses the mark. How can we evolve and learn unless we look critically at what we’ve already done?

Reporting stops us from getting stuck in a rut and losing our motivation to innovate. If something isn’t working, data can help you to realise why, or simply give you the necessary push to try something different.

For clients, reports can give them reassurance that their investment is paying off. Even if the aim for the client is to not have to worry about social media and leave it all to you, they may still want to witness the progress and keep up-to-date with their accounts.

For us, reporting gives us accountability. When you know that the undeniable data is going to be presented to a client at the end of the month, you make doubly sure that what they’re going to see will be positive.

How do Yawn do reporting?

We like to give monthly reports to our clients that include live data, so that they are always seeing the most up-to-date statistics. For this task, we use Google’s Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio).

Looker Studio is a data-visualisation tool that allows you to create reports using your own data from a number of sources, including Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and Search Console.

You can build multi-page reports featuring tables, pie charts, ‘scorecards’ (unique statistics), and graphs. As well as being able to design your reports however you wish, you can customise everything to match your brand colours (or those of your client).

When finished, sharing your report is as easy as a shareable link, so others can view (but not edit) the data.

Summary

Data reporting is not just for those with clients, laying out statistics about your social media engagement, ad performance, or website traffic can be very beneficial for anyone with an online business presence. Regularly check your data, make sure that everything is on track, and learn from your experiences.