Marketing Reporting: The KPIs, Reports, & Dashboard Templates You Need to Get Started

Author's avatar Reporting UPDATED Jul 30, 2024 PUBLISHED May 15, 2024 36 minutes read

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    Peter Caputa

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    Reporting on marketing performance is a critical skill that any marketer––from leadership to individual contributors––needs in order to convey the value of their work. In fact, according to Databox’s state of business reporting, marketing is the most monitored and reported operation.

    Driving traffic and leads is important. But, understanding where they came from, how they engage with your website, and ultimately what led to a conversion or purchase (amongst many other insights) is necessary for building a repeatable and sustainable marketing program.

    The challenge? As marketing technology has exploded, digital marketing reporting has gotten more complicated.

    In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about marketing reporting, including:

    google-analytics-kpi-dashboard-template-databox

    What is Marketing Reporting?

    Marketing reporting is an exercise that involves regularly sharing updates on key performance indicators (KPIs), progress toward goals, as well as next steps with your team in order to identify priorities and make adjustments.

    Reporting is typically done through regular marketing meetings, most commonly weekly and monthly. A marketing reporting meeting typically involves sharing numerous marketing reports in order to present a comprehensive view of the strategy and how it is performing.

    What should be included in your marketing reports? We cover that, and more, below.

    Related article: 17 Marketing Report Examples for Sharing Performance With Your Team.

    What is a Marketing Report?

    A marketing report is a visual representation, usually presented in a dashboard or slide deck, of your marketing metrics and KPIs and their progress over a specific time period.

    One reporting meeting may contain several marketing reports. In fact, it should.

    For example, you might present separate marketing reports for your content marketing, paid advertising, and social media efforts. Each report would display marketing KPIs specific to that function.

    This will help you uncover meaningful, actionable insights that will help your team identify opportunities and make adjustments.

    Below is a marketing dashboard example that helps to communicate current performance, progress toward goals, and month-over-month comparisons to help inform and prioritize next steps.

    marketing-report-example

    Types of Marketing Reports

    While there are any number of ways you could organize your digital marketing reports, we think it makes the most sense to organize them according to how frequently they would be shared.

    There are, of course, situations when you need to create a specific KPI report for a particular purpose.

    But, for the most part, here are the most common marketing report types as well as the specific reports you would share during a specified time range.

    Monthly Marketing Reports

    Monthly marketing reports are a management tool used by most marketers and agencies to demonstrate relevant marketing results on a monthly basis. In a monthly marketing report, we usually find metrics focused on web analytics and campaign performance.

    Web Analytics Report

    A web analytics report displays the data derived from the monitoring of your website performance. In this context of KPIs vs metrics, you will typically encounter the following metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) – online conversions, bounce rates, page views, referral traffic, etc. You can see some examples of web analytics dashboards here.

    Digital Marketing Performance Report

    A digital marketing performance report provides you with a complete overview of all your paid advertisement campaigns’ performance. It helps you discover the amount you have spent and if you were able to stay within a planned budget while still reaching your pre-set goals. It should also include the CPA metric so that you know how much you spent to get each new customer. You can see some examples of performance dashboards here.

    Weekly Marketing Reports

    You can view weekly marketing reports as a status check for your goals and campaigns. They are used to generate actionable marketing insights on a medium-term and weekly basis. In the case of weekly marketing reports, the main metrics to watch are traffic and engagements. 

    Website Traffic Report

    A Website Traffic Report provides you with data on the number of people that have visited your site. Monitoring your website traffic can help you discover where your traffic is coming from and how it’s engaging with your site. You can find this and other useful data in your reports. You can see more examples of SEO dashboards here.

    Blog Traffic Report

     A Blog Traffic Report should be a weekly event, as your blog traffic tends to fall after the first week, after the promotions and boosts end. But continual monitoring of the blog traffic via blog traffic reports can show you what is your optimal number of visits over the course of a month, and longer. Check out some examples of content marketing dashboards here.

    Social Media Report

    A monthly Social Media Engagement Report is a great way to keep track of your growth and improve your social strategy accordingly. Understanding how your content performs through tracking account metrics and insights over time is key to building a successful social media strategy for your business. See examples of social media dashboards here.

    Online Advertising Performance 

    An Online Advertising Performance Report provides you data on how your online ads are fairing. By analyzing it on a weekly level you will ensure that your ad investments are stable or adjust them timely if they need more optimization to deliver specified targets. See examples of PPC dashboards, including paid ads templates and paid search templates, here.

    Daily Marketing Reports

    In most cases, daily marketing reports are used for internal company purposes. Their main goal is to spot changes or threats as they appear and react immediately. A daily marketing report should include some of the following:

    Average Session Duration Report

    Average session duration provides you data regarding user engagement from different sources and how useful your content is for each user. 

    SEO Overview Report

    SEO Overview, when reported on a daily level, shows you the increase and decrease of your site metrics, which can help you see, on a daily level, what has a positive or negative impact on your SEO efforts. 

    Keyword Rankings Report

    Keyword Rankings should be reported daily as they fluctuate every single day. If this is something relevant for your company and your clients daily reports are crucial. 

    Annual Reports

    The Annual Marketing Report is meant to deliver the milestones and KPIs (key performance indicators) that you and your clients need to know. It helps you define the key successes, to evaluate what could be improved, and to communicate all that with your team and your clients.

    Marketing CMO Report

    A CMO usually reports to the CEO. These reports should represent everything the marketing team has accomplished over a course of a year. Whether they have hit all the set goals and what were the possible shortcomings. It is there to inform the company management of the overall success of the in-house marketing team. See specific examples of executive dashboards here. This can be built using an executive dashboard software.

    Marketing KPI Report

    With the annual Marketing KPI Report, you can see the performance of your online marketing campaigns and monitor trends over the course of the previous year. 

    What Should a Marketing Report Include?

    Marketing reporting software provides you with actionable reports and easy-to-read snapshots of your campaigns. What to include in your marketing reports depends on your goals and what you are looking to achieve with your marketing efforts.

    But, generally speaking, a good marketing report should cover the following:

    • Output Metrics: Output metrics measure your activities. They are direct measurements of the work you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis. Examples would be things like the number of sales calls, number of blog posts published, etc.
    • Outcome Metrics: Outcome metrics are typically the metrics that companies obsess over. These metrics are the ones that are shared with stakeholders like bosses, clients, and investors. Metrics like traffic, leads, and sales would be considered “outcome metrics.”
    • Quality Metrics: Quality metrics are things like visit-to-signup conversion rates or other metrics that measure the overall quality of an outcome metric like Sessions.
    • Progress Toward Goals: No marketing report is complete without a visualization of your progress toward your goals. Are you on or off track? That should be clearly represented so the team can adjust accordingly.
    • Comparisons: Are you growing month-over-month? Comparing current performance to last month, quarter, or year is an easy way of measuring progress and growth.

    Related article: 34 Marketing Metrics to Include in Every Marketing Report

    How Often Should You Share a Marketing Report?

    This depends on the type of report and the preset agreement you have with your team or your clients. 

    • Monthly reporting allows you to gather enough data to see how changes have affected marketing results while ensuring that underperforming campaigns don’t run for too long. They are ideal for showing your clients the progress you made without overwhelming them. 
    • Weekly reporting is great for your team, and you can see the current changes and adjust strategies accordingly.
    • Real-time reporting is essential for retail as companies must be able to analyze real-time data to make more informed, accurate decisions. 

    Why is Marketing Reporting Important?

    Marketing reports are the outcome of your data-driven marketing. Their main purpose is to help interpret all the data you have collected through easily understandable visualizations. Marketing reporting helps you build context around your data and present your efforts and successes to your clients in a manner that will be clear to them. 

    Here are just some of the things marketing reporting enables you to do:

    1. Track progress towards marketing goals

    Regular marketing reporting helps you obtain data that shows how close you are to reaching your pre-set marketing goals. Based on that data, you can make the necessary changes to ensure that all the goals are met in time. 

    2. Have a clear view of all the outputs and outcomes

    Marketing outputs, in the end, enable marketing outcomes. Marketing Reporting lets you track both and see when and if there is a need for adjustment so that you can reach the desired target. 

    3. Identify emerging trends and be able to react to them quickly

    Marketing Reporting enables you to keep a close eye on the current and emerging trends and to act on them in real-time. Thus improving your chances of reaching the pre-set marketing goals.

    4. Identify the best performing content (and vice versa)

    We want to know what works and what doesn’t so that we can replicate successful tactics. By analyzing what was successful through Marketing Reporting, we can build a far more stable marketing strategy for the future. 

    5. Better marketing forecasting

    When we have the right data, we can make educated predictions regarding some of our desired marketing outcomes. Marketing growth forecasting includes marketing reports that pay special attention to the following – sources of traffic, target audience, click-through rate (CT), conversion rate, number of transactions, the value per transaction, cost per transaction, and return on ad spend. 

    How to Create a Marketing Report

    An effective marketing report needs to be both accessible and actionable. This means that in addition to the numerical figures themselves, it’s helpful to have a data visualization to go along with each metric in your marketing report.

    While most marketing technology tools boast their own analytics, this requires you to log into dozens of separate tools in order to get a comprehensive view of performance.

    This is why dashboard software like Databox (Okay, we’re biased. But, it’s free.) are helpful in that they allow you to collate marketing metrics from multiple sources into one place.

    To build your marketing report, you first should understand some of the most common sections.

    Every report should include Outcome Metrics of some kind. Things like Sessions and Signups.

    how to build a marketing report

    Then, you should also include drill-down metrics that allow viewers to better understand the performance of a specific metric. For example, instead of simply tracking Sessions, you should include a drill-down metric that measures Sessions by channel source in order to see which channels are paying off.

    digital channel reporting

    Next, you should also include a quality metric of some kind––a metric that allows you to measure to overall quality of an outcome metric like Sessions. For Sessions, we’d recommend something like visit-to-conversion rate.

    marketing conversion report

    Finally, you should also track Output Metrics that show the activities your team has executed on. This allows you to draw correlation between activities and results. This way, you can ensure that your team is only spending time on high leverage marketing activities.

    In the example below, you can see “Total blog posts published” as the Output Metric.

    how to build a content marketing report

    Or, you could even add a visualization that measures the volume of each content type your team has published. This way, you can draw correlation between results and the specific types of content your team publishes.

    building a marketing report

    Which Marketing KPIs and Metrics Should I Report On?

    Marketing metrics are specific measurements of the actions or behaviors exhibited on your website. This would include metrics like sessions, bounce rate, average session duration, etc.

    Marketing KPIs are an agreed-upon set of metrics that have been determined to be of importance to your company’s goals and overall business. This could also include metrics like sessions, but more commonly KPIs are reserved for Outcome and Output Metrics that have proven to have an impact on a company’s revenue growth.

    In short, while all KPIs are metrics, not all metrics at KPIs.

    Below, we’ve included some of the more common marketing KPIs and metrics that teams track and report on.

    Web Analytics Metrics

    Simply put Website Analytics Metrics tell you whether your website is getting results for your business. Website Analytics includes the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data. You can then go on and use that website data to determine the success or failure of your pre-set goals and to drive strategy and improve user experience. 

    • Sessions – a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a designated time frame. It underlines usage data and the key to retention and serves to identify the steps a user takes while interacting with your website.
    • Visits – the full-time span that a Visitor spends on your website. This metric serves to measure website traffic volume over a time period. 
    • Avg. Session Duration – the sum of the duration of each session during the date range you specify divided by the total number of sessions. This metric is a great starting point for better understanding and improving your customer journey.
    • Pages per Sessionshow you how many pieces of content (Web pages) a single visitor or a group of visitors views on your website. A high number means that you offer great content that inspires visitors to stay and continue exploring your website while a low one can mean that either your content is lacking or your website’s design is preventing visitors from navigating around it with ease. 
    • Pageviews – the total number of pages viewed. It can provide an indication of how popular a page or post is. Page Views is best used in combination with other metrics for a more definitive insight. 
    • Goal Completions – show the number of completed goals. This metric helps you track how successful your marketing efforts are based on the goals to set and complete over the predefined time period. 
    • Traffic Sources –  the origin or source of a visit to your website. By tracking Traffic Sources metrics you can determine where most of your traffic is coming from and which sources are driving the least traffic to your website. 
    • Bounce Rate –  the number of single-page sessions (bounces) divided by the total number of sessions. It is important to keep the Bounce Rate as low as possible, which can be done by improved page content and design. 

    Marketing performance metrics

    Marketing performance metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) represent a source of useful data for not just marketing professionals but also the company CEO, sales department, and the senior management team. They can all use marketing KPIs in order to get a clear insight into how marketing activities and spending impact the company’s bottom line. 

    This is especially important since more and more marketers are required to show a return on investment (ROI) on their activities. And performance metrics are here to help you understand the extent of how much marketing spending contributes to profits. Monitoring marketing’s progress towards its annual goals

    By carefully and accurately establishing marketing performance metrics marketers can help companies achieve customer satisfaction and monitor the progress towards the pre-set goals. 

    • CPA by Campaign –  measures the aggregate cost to acquire a single paying customer during a  campaign. It provides you with data regarding how much your new customers are costing you. Based on that data, you can then decide what actions you can take to lower the CPA. 
    • CPC by Campaign – the price an advertiser pays a publisher for each click on a link during the duration of a campaign. Tracking this metric is important because the costs can add up quickly, and if you are not careful, you might not see any ROPI from a campaign. 
    • Acquisition by Campaign –  the number of acquired new prospects by your campaign. A high Acquisition by Campaign lets you know how successful your campaign has been when it comes to attracting new prospects. 
    • Clicks –  the number of times a user clicked on something like your ad. All clicks are counted regardless if they end up at the preset destination. Clicks help you gain insight into how well your ad or page is appealing to people who see it. 
    • Impressions – the number of times your content is displayed, regardless of the fact if it was clicked or not. Impressions provide a simple representation of how many people see your ads within a particular channel.

    Website traffic metrics

    We can define Website Traffic as the number of visitors your site gets in a set timeframe. However. there is a lot more to it. A website traffic metric is viewed as a quantifiable indicator of an aspect of your website’s popularity. There are a lot of different website traffic metrics that you could be tracking, as different metrics tend to answer different questions you might have about the efficiency of your website.

    • Users – visitors who have initiated one session with your website or app within a specified period of time. It is important to distinguish between new and returning users. Returning users have a higher conversion rate and new users tend to stay way shorter on your website.
    • Pages per Session – the average number of pages viewed by a visitor during a single session. This metric helps you see how compelling your content is to visitors and if it needs significant improvement. 
    • % New Sessions – the percentage of first-time visits to your site. It can be viewed as an indirect engagement metric and depending on your goals and business you can decide which course of action you will need to take to steer this in the right direction.
    • Top Organic Keywords – the highest-ranked organic keywords used to attract free traffic through search engine optimization. Knowing which Top Organic Keywords to optimize for can significantly improve your SEO efforts.
    • Sessions by Source –  the number of sessions displayed by source. This metric can help you see which source drives the most traffic to your website so that you can adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.
    • Traffic by Channel  – shows you where most of your website traffic comes from. By tracking Traffic by Channel, you will be able to gain insights into what are the most effective methods to acquire visitors.

    Blog traffic metrics

    If you want to know how much traffic your blog is attracting, you need certain sets of data to do the calculations. This is where tracking Blog Traffic Metrics comes in, you could bet measuring just traffic to your blog, and in that case, a blog post with 100,000 visits looks like a dream come true. But what if everyone who visited your post left within 15 seconds of the page loading? That is why more metrics need to be included for you to get more precise data. 

    • Traffic by Blog Post– how many visitors is a single blog post attracting. Tracking this metric lets you evaluate which blog posts perform better and attract more visitors. Based on that you can construct a strategy of updating old blog posts so that they bring in more traffic. 
    • Time on Page – the average amount of time users spent viewing a specific page or set of pages. It helps you determine which pages are keeping visitors’ attention. This is especially helpful with blog pages as you can see which topics the visitors find insightful and engaging. 
    • Signups –  show the number of new visitors that sign up for your blog newsletter or a paid subscription. It can show you which CTAs are effective and it is an important piece of information when it comes to tracking your blog’s conversions. 
    • Top Blog Posts by Session  – show you on which blog posts visitors spend the most time during their sessions on your website. This can help you gain insight into where most of your visitors spend their time after they come to your website. 
    • Top Blog Posts by Signups – show you which blog posts on your blog are generating the most signups. This can help you gain insight into which blog posts are the most effective when it comes to converting your visitors into subscribers.

    Social Media Metrics

    According to marketing consultant Mike Sonders, social drives an average of only 2.2% of traffic to the top 50 public SaaS companies. There is no doubt about the importance of social media metrics now more than ever. But it is equally important to know which ones you should be tracking. 

    • Likes – the number of “votes” your social media page, post, or ad gets. By tracking specific likes, you can see how well your page, post, or ad is performing. 
    • Followers – a follower on social media is a user who chooses to see all of another user’s posts in their content feed. Having a significant number of followers means that you have an established brand presence on social media. 
    • Comments – a way for your followers on social media to interact with your brand. They help you interact with your flowers, answer questions, and see how engaging your content is, depending on how much commenting it inspires. 
    • Reach – the total number of people who see your content. If you consider that Reach is directly related to the number of unique users that are seeing your content, using Reach to optimize your paid campaigns is a great option. 
    • Page Views – the number of times a page’s profile has been viewed by people, including people who are logged into that particular social media platform and the ones who aren’t. This metric helps you see what your audience is interested in and if your page content fares well with social media users. 
    • Sessions from Social Media – the number of times users were directed to your website through social media. Tracking the Sessions from Social Media is very important if you want to know whether your social media efforts are leading to website visits. 

    Thankfully, you can easily track these metrics daily with the help of this social media dashboard software.

    Content Quality Control Metrics

    By tracking Content Quality Control Metrics you will be able to see how well your content is performing and contributing to downstream metrics like conversions, opportunities, and sales. Some of the content metrics you should consider tracking are as follows:

    • Google Keyword Ranking – the position that your website is listed in Google when someone searches that particular phrase or keyword. A ranking of one to ten means that you are on the first page of google search, 10 to 20 on the second, and so on, as search pages have ten hits. Of course, the goal is to be on the first page in the first three hits. Tracking Keyword Rankings can help you better optimize your pages so that they get pushed to some of the more relevant Google search pages. Even a small update means getting from the second to the first page in Google. 
    • Visibility – a metric showing how often your website is found on the Internet. Based on your Visibility metric, which should be as high as possible, you should make adjustments to your content, specifically Keyword Rankings so that it increases in time. 
    • Domain Authority – According to MOZ, Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Knowing your site’s DA is very important simply because higher DA sites perform better than lower DA sites. This means that there’s a direct correlation between high DA scores and higher rankings. And we all want high rankings. 
    • Goal Competitions – the total number of visitors who have completed all elements defined for a particular goal. If you have adequately configured goals, Google Analytics can provide you with critical information, like the number of conversions and your site or app’s conversion rate.

    Marketing Reporting Dashboards and Templates

    Building and sharing marketing reporting dashboards is the essence of modern marketing reporting. If you are just starting, using plug-and-play marketing report templates is the best option. Databox has a great selection of Marketing reporting templates for you to choose from, depending on what you want to include in your marketing reporting.

    google-analytics-kpi-dashboard-template-databox

    Marketing Automation Dashboard Templates

    Marketing automation is defined as the process of utilizing technology to streamline marketing efforts and make them more effective. The current Marketing Automation Databox Templates include:

    And many more…

    Browse all marketing automation dashboards here.

    Ecommerce Dashboard Templates

    An eCommerce dashboard can be defined as a hub for important business and performance data. It enables you to get a snapshot view of your business and dive into your most important data. Databox offers a wide range of Ecommerce Templates, here are just some that you can get right now:

    And many more…

    Browse all ecommerce dashboards here.

    CRM & Sales Dashboard Templates

    CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is an important tool to help you turn a lead into a paying customer. A well designed CRM & Sales Dashboard will help you see where every individual lead is within your sales pipeline. The selection of Databox CRM & Sales Templates definitely has what you are looking for.

    And many more…

    Browse all sales dashboards here.

    Project Management Dashboard Templates

    A simple definition of a project management dashboard is that it is a data Dashboard containing key performance indicators related to specific projects. There is a great selection of Databox Project Management Templates to choose from.

    And many more…

    Browse all project management dashboards here.

    Analytics Dashboard Templates

    A great Analytics Dashboard needs to contain all your key indicators of acquisition, retention, and referrals in one place. With Analytics Databox Templates you are bound to find the perfect fit. Here are just some of the options:

     And many more…

    Help Desk Dashboard Templates

    Help Desk Dashboards are a great option in case you are having trouble understanding Help Scout or Drift. Here are just some of the Help Desk Databox Templates:

    And many more…

    Browse all help desk dashboards here.

    Social Media Dashboard Templates

    Social Media Dashboards are a great way to showcase your social media efforts to your team or your clients. They are easy to follow and can track your most relevant metrics. Social Media Databox Templates include some very useful Dashboards that you might be interested in.

    And many more…

    Connectors & Development Dashboard Templates

    Connectors & Development Dashboard will help you have a better overview when it comes to how successful you and your team are at hitting sprint targets and responsiveness to user demands. There are several Connectors & Development Databox Templates to choose from.

    Browse all software development dashboards here.

    A Paid Search Dashboard is a great way to pull and visualize paid search data so that you can analyze trends and optimize performance. You have a great selection of Paid Search Databox Templates to choose from depending on the data you want to show. 

    And many more…

    Paid Social Dashboard Templates

    Simply put, Paid Social Dashboard is best used to summarize ad engagement and conversion behavior driven by paid social platforms. Depending on the social platform you are using, there is a whole selection of Paid Social Databox Templates at your disposal. 

    And many more…

    Accounting & Payments Dashboard Templates

    Accounting & Payments Dashboards are here to help visualize key accounting KPIs and provide a more comprehensive view of business performance. By doing so they are saving time, offering clarity, and improving your decision-making capabilities. You can check out some of the available Accounting & Payments Databox Templates to see whether they suit your business needs. 

    And many more…

    Browse all financial dashboards here.

    Website Marketing & Sales Dashboard Templates

    Website Marketing & Sales Dashboards help your team react better in real-time. They pull data from various locations and provide you key data that reveals product sales, customer engagement, and more. Depending on your team’s needs you can select from many Website Marketing & Sales Databox Templates.

    And many more…

    App Stores Dashboard Templates

    An App Store Dashboard is here to enable you to gain insights into your sales trends and easily download data for your organization’s apps to analyze it more efficiently. Here are just some examples of App Stores Databox Templates:

    Browse all app store dashboards here.

    Email Marketing Dashboard Templates

    Your Email Dashboard should contain key metrics to demonstrate the performance and ROI of your email campaigns. There are several options to select from when it comes to Email Databox Templates.

    And many more…

    Browse all email marketing dashboards here.

    Video Dashboard Templates

    Your Video Dashboard should contain all the relevant metrics related to the performance of your videos. Some of the options offered are the following Video Databox Templates:

    And many more…

    Browse all video marketing dashboards here.

    Database Dashboard Templates

    The main purpose of a Database Dashboard is to combine the use of metrics and KPIs to produce a visually appealing design that is easily interpreted. Here are just some of the Database Databox Templates:

    Browse all database dashboards here.

    SEO & SEM Dashboard Templates

    By using SEO & SEM Dashboards, you can easily track your efforts when it comes to SEO, Advertising Campaigns, Revenue, Goal Completions, Locations, Channel Groupings, and numerous other relevant data. SEO & SEM Databox Templates have a lot to offer when it comes to visualizing these particular data sets. 

    And many more…

    Editor’s note: Did you know that any Databox dashboard can be displayed on your smart TV? Broadcast your TV Dashboards for free now.

    Reporting On Output vs. Outcome Metrics in Your Marketing Meetings

    Marketers tend to judge their performance based on their outputs, but it isn’t possible to have a full picture without calculating the outcomes. On the other hand, tracking only the outcomes means your team lacks visibility into the specific activities that actually drive those outcomes. Understanding business analysis better can be beneficial when it comes to improving your overall business performance.

     But, first, let’s understand the terminology a bit better – 

    Outcomes represent what your business wants or needs to achieve. While outputs represent actions or items that contribute to achieving an outcome that you have set. 

    Difference between Output and Outcome Metrics

    Much like there is a clear difference between outcomes and outputs, there is a distinction between the metrics that we use to measure them. 

    Output metrics

    Output metrics measure your marketing activities. They are direct measurements of the work you’re doing on a daily or weekly basis. An additional benefit of output metrics is that they let you prioritize your daily activities by keeping you focused on things you can control right now. 

    Outcome metrics

    When it comes to outcomes metrics, they need to help you collect specific data to get insights into the extent to which expected outcomes, like changes in user behavior or knowledge, have been achieved. Simply put, they measure the impact of your outputs. 

    There is a distinction between leading and lagging outcomes. Unlike with outputs where you can control your activities, outcomes often depend on people outside of your organization taking action. We don’t have control over outcomes, but some provide faster feedback than others.

    A leading outcome would be a web traffic spike to your website after content sharing, while a lagging one is determining the success of a single blog post.

    Finding the right Output and Outcome metrics

    To truly determine the impact of your marketing efforts, it is important to look at both output and outcome metrics side by side. Sure, we can say that the ultimate outcome for a business is – growth, while the ultimate output goal is facilitating that growth. But how do we get there? We start by measuring outputs and outcomes.

    Measuring outputs vs. outcomes

    Measuring outputs is done by activity-based metrics that are easily quantifiable, for example:

    • Number of emails sent during an email campaign
    • Number of Events Managed in a month
    • Number of tweets sent out a day

    Measuring outcomes is not as direct, it depends on the desired outcome. By knowing the outcome you want to achieve, you are able to determine the activities that need to be completed and how integral each of these activities is to success. 

    Setting goals

    Having clear objectives that you want to achieve through your marketing efforts is essential for tracking marketing success. This is why setting goals is relevant to all marketers.  

    What are Marketing Goals?

    Marketing Goals are defined as a set of specific objectives you describe in your marketing plan. Goals vary depending on your marketing strategy, They can be tasks, quotas, improvements in KPIs, or various other standards based on which you have decided to measure your marketing success. That being said, it is important to note that marketers often opt for the SMART mnemonic when defining key goals. This helps present a far clearer picture of their intended outcome. So what does SMART stand for?

    • Specific — Make sure your goals are defined as precisely as possible and set real numbers and real deadlines to hold yourself accountable.
    • Measurable — goals that you set need to be both easily trackable and measurable.
    • Attainable — Setting realistic goals is essential. Base your goals on the resources currently at your disposal when it comes to budget, team members, and time constraints. Don’t set them too low, you do want to experience growth in time. 
    • Relevant — your chosen goals need to be closely related to your entire marketing plan, setting random goals is never helpful.
    • Time-Bound — set clear deadlines for achieving your goals. Without set dates, your goals will end up being nothing more than wishful thinking. 

    How to Position your Goals to:

    • Teammates – setting goals for a team requires you to find a balance between maximizing the individual skill sets of each team member and finding the best way to achieve the desired outcome. Set weekly Marketing Reports for your team so that you can see where you are when it comes to hitting your pre-set targets for each time period.
    • Clients – Present your clients with realistic goals and make sure you keep them up to speed with all the development via well-composed Marketing Reports. 
    • Management – Presenting goals to Management is best done on a monthly and annual level. You need to keep them informed on your progress and any possible problems. The Marketing Reports need to be clear and concise.

    Output goals

    An output goal is simply defined by your desired output amount. You set output goals based on your outcome desires and track them through chosen output metrics. 

    Outcome goals

    Outcome goals are the ones that define which output metrics you are to track. Outcome goals are harder to obtain and they specify a result. So we can treat retention and/or increase revenue as marketing goals, outcome goals need to sound more like – retain 80 percent of our tier one customers resulting in X dollars revenue.

    White Label Marketing Reporting

    In general, white-label solutions allow companies to rebrand, developed by other companies, then sell them as their own. In this case, we are talking about Marketing Reports. 

    What are white-labeled reports?

    White Labeled Marketing Reports are reports that let you add your own branding to a report Dashboard created by Databox so that you can present it to your clients. 

    Why is white-labeling important? 

    White Labeling of Making Reports helps your agency’s branding efforts. Even if you use an external tool to create your reports. Having the option of branding them as your own has a great positive effect on how your clients perceive your company and are great for brand reinforcement.

    Most important white-labeling features

    When creating your White-Labeled Marketing Reports, it is essential that you ensure that they have the following features:

    1. Logo

    Incorporating your company’s logo on a Marketing Report is a must. The best location is toward the top of each report in the upper left or right corner. The same location works for Dashboards You can use a watermark in place of the logo as well. To save space and make it more impactful, don’t include your tagline or slogan.

    2. Header/Footer

    Using the header or footer as additional branding opportunities on your Marketing Reports is a great idea. You can include some of the following information in them – general contact information for your agency, your physical address, main phone number, email address, and website address. Having a white label solution that supports custom headers and footers is a great plus.

    3. Colors

    Make sure that the colors you choose to match your brand’s. But at the same time that they don’t diminish the visibility of the data presented. 

    4. Dashboard Domain

    Keep in mind that in case your company provides clients with a unique login to view their white-label reports or dashboard online, branding the Dashboard domain is a huge plus. This will make things a lot easier for your clients as all they need to do is visit a subdomain of your agency website to log in.

    5. Email Domain

    Since you are the one delivering the report to your clients, in most cases, this is done via email. It is important for better branding of your business that you send the report from an agency-branded account and not a solution-branded account. There is no need for your clients to know which Marketing Reporting tool you are using. 

    Stay on Top of Your Marketing Reporting Game

    To finish off, we want to provide you with some useful advice on how you can always stay on top of your marketing game. In order not to miss a beat and ensure success one must keep a close eye on each and every part of their marketing process. 

    google-analytics-kpi-dashboard-template-databox

    Use Project Management Tools

    If you decide not to use project management tools, there is a good chance that you’re wasting a lot of time on the little things and doing more work than necessary. Keeping track of who’s working on what is not easy, and dropping the ball will lead to an inefficient collaboration among team members and teams and spread across email threads and chat software. This usually results in missed deadlines and dissatisfied clients.

    Using project management tools make all the above-mentioned problems go away. You get to run a soothe marketing operation with everyone knowing what their tasks are and how they are contributing. Not to mention that it helps define a clear timeline and meet even the strictest of deadlines. 

    Set up Notifications/Alerts

    You don’t have to check daily when which task is due. By setting up notifications and alerts from anything from team meetings to posting content, you will stay on track and not have delays.

    Editor’s note: Did you know that you can get KPI performance alerts right in Slack? Connect your data and start receiving performance insights directly in Slack now.

    Organize Marketing Meetings

    Weekly marketing team meetings are a great way to inform everyone what is the current state of affairs. You can share RMarketing reports and metrics to demonstrate how far your team is from reaching the set goals and exchange thoughts and ideas. Communication within a team and between different teams is essential for running a successful marketing department. 

    Ready to Build a Free Marketing Report in Databox?

    Chances are, you’re tracking a bunch of marketing metrics across a bunch of different tools.

    You can visualize those metrics, alongside metrics from other tools you’re using, in one place with Databox.

    More importantly, our marketing dashboard software is free. Just create your free account here, connect your data, and build your first marketing report in minutes.

    Author's avatar
    Article by
    Marija Hladni

    Senior Marketing Strategist at Databox

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