Marketing Reports: Frequency, What to Do, and Free Templates
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 4:34 am
Make marketing reports is a necessity for any agency or company. And the funny thing is that this is one of the most ignored jobs in the field.
Digital marketing offers an opportunity that those who came before us — before the 2000s, especially — never had: working with data.
Think about Arnaldo, a marketing analyst in 1993: he plans an entire campaign, coordinates the creatives, launches it and… what then?
The results that Arnaldo could monitor would only come online russian phone number weeks later, with the increase in sales of his product. And to monitor them, Arnaldo would have to analyze production directly in the industry or sales at each POS.
Today, we don't need any of that. Everything we do can be tracked in real time. But often this doesn’t happen.
Today's article is about that. We'll talk about how to build reports, of course, but not only that: we'll also analyze the main Analytics platforms, understanding what kind of data they can offer.
Ready to get started?
Where can I find the information to create marketing reports?
First of all, we need to talk about what resources provide the data for your reports.
This part is a bit basic. We will mainly talk about the Analytics available on the main digital marketing platforms: specifically, social networks and Google.
These platforms also allow you to monitor what you are doing in real time, such as the reach of a campaign you have just launched, for example.
It’s important to do this monitoring in real time because you’ll often need to make changes before you see the full report. But we’ll talk more about this throughout the article.
This part may be a little basic for those who have been working with digital marketing for some time.
If you're already familiar with Meta for Business and Google Analytics, consider skipping ahead to the next topic.
But if you think you still have any questions to resolve, it's worth resolving them in the next items.
Starting with Google:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is Google's tracking platform, related to the performance of your website both in the search engine and on the entire internet.
This is by far the most interesting point about Google Analytics. It is not “exclusive”: that is, it will not only provide data about the interaction between your website and Google itself.
For example: if someone came to your page from a link on your Instagram, Google Analytics indicates that that visit arrived on your website from the “social” channel.
If it were exclusive, only people who came to your site from Google would be counted. But thankfully that's not the case.
Google Analytics provides you with information such as:
The number of people entering your website;
The time they spend on it;
Whether they leave the site or continue browsing after the first click;
Comparisons for any period;
User interactions in the events you create;
Among other more specific information. Google Analytics is the great hub of your website, informing you everything you need to know about its success.
Google Analytics is also the place to analyze your results with your Google Ads campaigns. With it, you have access to metrics such as:
Ad impressions;
Clicks;
Amount spent so far;
Current budget;
Conversions (as long as you determine in the tool);
Specific actions with configured events.
These Google Ads settings are a bit more complex. We have a video on our GA4 playlist that explains this in more detail. Watch it below:
Meta Business Suite
Formerly known as Business Manager, Meta Business Suite is Meta's platform that controls the analytics systems of both Facebook and Instagram.
Through it, you can have all the data about organic and paid access to your accounts.
On the organic side, you can measure the performance of your professional pages on both social networks, providing information such as:
Scope of publications;
Evolution of the number of followers;
Likes and comments on your posts;
Follower demographics;
Geographic location of followers.
There isn't much information, especially for those who are used to Google Analytics, which in addition to more data, also offers much greater personalization.
In the sponsored posts section, Meta Business Suite allows you to check:
The available budget;
How much has been spent so far;
Reach and reach trend of each campaign;
Whether the determined goals were achieved.
If we analyze it from the Google Analytics perspective again, it is also quite clear that the information that Meta offers is quite limited.
But is this common on social media? Let's analyze another one to determine once and for all:
LinkedIn Analytics
The platform for tracking results on LinkedIn offers a little more features than Meta Business Suite, but it also doesn't come close to the analysis offered by Google Analytics.
This comparison is a bit unfair, I understand: Google has been working with Google Analytics for decades, and it is practically synonymous with “internet analytics” at this point.
What LinkedIn can offer is a slightly deeper look into the demographics of the audience analyzed, with information such as:
Conversion analysis in ads : who converts, what is the general target audience, which companies convert, what segment they are in, total number of conversions, conversion rate, etc.;
Post performance: simple engagement metrics for non-sponsored posts, such as clicks, impressions, etc.;
Audience demographics: This is where LinkedIn stands out from the rest, largely due to the professional nature of the network. The demographics are more in-depth, allowing you to go beyond age, gender and geographic location, also including the companies and positions where the audience works.
YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics is also quite similar to all of these other platforms, but with some metrics that are more specific to the type of content you post there.
In other words, metrics more specific to audiovisual.
Through YouTube Analytics, you can access:
Views;
Video likes;
Dislikes of videos (the dislike );
Video comments;
Amounts received from monetizations;
Time the person spent watching the video;
If the user watched more videos from your channel;
Subscribers gained and lost;
Whether people clicked on your CTAs (and how many).
Links and instructions to access analytics for each channel
Now that we understand the main analytics channels, it is also interesting to understand the details to start using each one of them.
Most of them are quite intuitive: from the moment you create a business account on social media, you will have immediate access to your analytics on your business manager pages.
Digital marketing offers an opportunity that those who came before us — before the 2000s, especially — never had: working with data.
Think about Arnaldo, a marketing analyst in 1993: he plans an entire campaign, coordinates the creatives, launches it and… what then?
The results that Arnaldo could monitor would only come online russian phone number weeks later, with the increase in sales of his product. And to monitor them, Arnaldo would have to analyze production directly in the industry or sales at each POS.
Today, we don't need any of that. Everything we do can be tracked in real time. But often this doesn’t happen.
Today's article is about that. We'll talk about how to build reports, of course, but not only that: we'll also analyze the main Analytics platforms, understanding what kind of data they can offer.
Ready to get started?
Where can I find the information to create marketing reports?
First of all, we need to talk about what resources provide the data for your reports.
This part is a bit basic. We will mainly talk about the Analytics available on the main digital marketing platforms: specifically, social networks and Google.
These platforms also allow you to monitor what you are doing in real time, such as the reach of a campaign you have just launched, for example.
It’s important to do this monitoring in real time because you’ll often need to make changes before you see the full report. But we’ll talk more about this throughout the article.
This part may be a little basic for those who have been working with digital marketing for some time.
If you're already familiar with Meta for Business and Google Analytics, consider skipping ahead to the next topic.
But if you think you still have any questions to resolve, it's worth resolving them in the next items.
Starting with Google:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is Google's tracking platform, related to the performance of your website both in the search engine and on the entire internet.
This is by far the most interesting point about Google Analytics. It is not “exclusive”: that is, it will not only provide data about the interaction between your website and Google itself.
For example: if someone came to your page from a link on your Instagram, Google Analytics indicates that that visit arrived on your website from the “social” channel.
If it were exclusive, only people who came to your site from Google would be counted. But thankfully that's not the case.
Google Analytics provides you with information such as:
The number of people entering your website;
The time they spend on it;
Whether they leave the site or continue browsing after the first click;
Comparisons for any period;
User interactions in the events you create;
Among other more specific information. Google Analytics is the great hub of your website, informing you everything you need to know about its success.
Google Analytics is also the place to analyze your results with your Google Ads campaigns. With it, you have access to metrics such as:
Ad impressions;
Clicks;
Amount spent so far;
Current budget;
Conversions (as long as you determine in the tool);
Specific actions with configured events.
These Google Ads settings are a bit more complex. We have a video on our GA4 playlist that explains this in more detail. Watch it below:
Meta Business Suite
Formerly known as Business Manager, Meta Business Suite is Meta's platform that controls the analytics systems of both Facebook and Instagram.
Through it, you can have all the data about organic and paid access to your accounts.
On the organic side, you can measure the performance of your professional pages on both social networks, providing information such as:
Scope of publications;
Evolution of the number of followers;
Likes and comments on your posts;
Follower demographics;
Geographic location of followers.
There isn't much information, especially for those who are used to Google Analytics, which in addition to more data, also offers much greater personalization.
In the sponsored posts section, Meta Business Suite allows you to check:
The available budget;
How much has been spent so far;
Reach and reach trend of each campaign;
Whether the determined goals were achieved.
If we analyze it from the Google Analytics perspective again, it is also quite clear that the information that Meta offers is quite limited.
But is this common on social media? Let's analyze another one to determine once and for all:
LinkedIn Analytics
The platform for tracking results on LinkedIn offers a little more features than Meta Business Suite, but it also doesn't come close to the analysis offered by Google Analytics.
This comparison is a bit unfair, I understand: Google has been working with Google Analytics for decades, and it is practically synonymous with “internet analytics” at this point.
What LinkedIn can offer is a slightly deeper look into the demographics of the audience analyzed, with information such as:
Conversion analysis in ads : who converts, what is the general target audience, which companies convert, what segment they are in, total number of conversions, conversion rate, etc.;
Post performance: simple engagement metrics for non-sponsored posts, such as clicks, impressions, etc.;
Audience demographics: This is where LinkedIn stands out from the rest, largely due to the professional nature of the network. The demographics are more in-depth, allowing you to go beyond age, gender and geographic location, also including the companies and positions where the audience works.
YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics is also quite similar to all of these other platforms, but with some metrics that are more specific to the type of content you post there.
In other words, metrics more specific to audiovisual.
Through YouTube Analytics, you can access:
Views;
Video likes;
Dislikes of videos (the dislike );
Video comments;
Amounts received from monetizations;
Time the person spent watching the video;
If the user watched more videos from your channel;
Subscribers gained and lost;
Whether people clicked on your CTAs (and how many).
Links and instructions to access analytics for each channel
Now that we understand the main analytics channels, it is also interesting to understand the details to start using each one of them.
Most of them are quite intuitive: from the moment you create a business account on social media, you will have immediate access to your analytics on your business manager pages.