Iterative Marketing Podcast Episode 8: The 4 Elements of Effective Reporting

Reporting is an effective way to prove marketing’s value up the organizational chart. But many of us don’t know what to report on and choose “vanity metrics,” which often sell our teams short. Listen to learn four elements to add to your reporting.

In this episode, we discuss…

• Reporting is an effective way to prove marketing’s value up the organizational chart. But many marketers don’t know what to report on and choose “vanity metrics,” which often sell our teams short.
• According to a survey conducted by the Fournaise Marketing Group, 69% of marketers feel their strategies and campaigns do make an impact on the company’s business, but they don’t know how to prove it.
• Iterative Marketing is seeking to establish marketing’s value in organizations by meeting and exceeding expectations through reporting.

Here are four topics to add to your reporting:

1. ROI: This is a top frustration of marketers because it is difficult to prove. Not every marketing activity can be attributed to a specific purchase or new client. When revenue can be directly attributed, it can often trail behind marketing 3-12 months. Through leading indicators (KPIs), marketers can indicate in advance what our trailing indicator (revenue) will be. KPIs can include leads, appointments booked, demos, free trials, etc. Read this blog to learn how to prove ROI with KPIs.
2. Assets: These are long term investments that we bank on in the future, like database contacts, first-party data for retargeting and the goodwill of the brand. Assets don’t equate to immediate sales, but they are vital to the success of the company and future sales. Reporting on assets helps us demonstrate the progress of long term assets and sets us up for future success. Read Steve’s blog, “3 Key Assets for Future Marketing Success.”
3. Iterating and improving: Document and report on the improvements we make to marketing activities based on experiments and data. The goal is to show folks we are producing continual improvement through optimizations. Metrics should always be reported in context of their change over time to show improvement from the month prior.
4. Insights: If our experiments are set up correctly, we are not just improving results, but also generating insights. Thoughtful experiments tell you about the personas you target and the journeys they follow along the buying process. Read Heather’s blog on generating insights from experiments for more information.

Six Actionable Components are the actions we take as marketers to implement Iterative Marketing. They don’t have to be implemented all at once. They are:

1. Brand Discovery: Uncover how your buying audience feels about your product or service and how they rationalize the decision to buy.
2. Persona Discovery: Document the individuals involved in the buying process in a way that allows us to empathize with them in a consistent way.
3. Journey Mapping: Plot the stages and paths of the persona lifecycle, documenting each persona’s unique state of mind, needs and concerns at each stage.
4. Channel and Content Alignment: Align every piece of content and marketing channel/activity to a primary persona and primary marketing stage, identifying new channels and content needs where opportunities exist.
5. Experimentation and Optimization: Conduct thoughtful experiments designed to produce statistically significant business insights and apply the results to optimize performance.
6. Reporting and Feedback: Report and review data and insights to drive decisions in content and strategy, as well as information to be used by the organization as a whole.

For more information on the charity in this episode, please visit United Way.

The Iterative Marketing Podcast,  a production of Brilliant Metrics, ran from February 2016 to September 2017. Music by SeaStock Audio.

Learn more about Iterative Marketing and listen to other episodes on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.