Measuring your Success with Reports
Tracking progress is a vital part of the step by step process in reaching your short term and long term marketing goals. Reporting is an effective way to monitor your marketing efforts and make adjustments . Reporting assists you in gathering insights regarding your marketing goals. Insights are helpful in further understanding what changes can be made or what is necessary to be done to better meet industry needs, customer needs, and consumer needs. There are multiple types of reporting that should be incorporated into your marketing mix. Here are some of the key things to keep in mind when measuring your success with reports.
Measuring your Success with Reports
1. Are you meeting your SMART Goals?
We’ve discussed the importance in the past of having SMART goals- goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Keeping these things in mind can prove to be very helpful when measuring your success with reports. When looking into the insights of your report, look at the specific demographics of the audience members you are attracting. When it comes to measuring, how many people did you attract over this period of time? How does this compare to last months insights? By comparing month to month reports and seeing how many people viewed your page as opposed to downloading content etc. matters. Be specific in your reports. You will benefit in the future.
2. Do you have questions? Did you obtain answers? 
Measuring your success with reports can help to answer questions you may have regarding your marketing strategy. Reports can help you to see if your content or SEO tactics are eliciting the type of response that you desire or have aligned in your goal setting stage. If you did not obtain the response from your audience that you were expecting, new questions may be raised. Why did this happen? What can we attribute this result to? Check the reports. Does the timeliness of your content play a factor in the result. Most answers lie somewhere within the report. If you are not receiving desirable results in your reports, consider making adaptations in the future to your marketing strategy, and compare the results in next month’s reports.
3. What key things are you consistently tracking?
There is an overwhelmingly large list of thing that are able to be tracked through reporting. Being consistent in the things that you are tracking with your reports can help you long term whether it be sources, leads, or contacts. It can also aid in measuring the progress both short term and long term . Tracking sources can help you to identify what mediums are getting the most views, obtaining feedback, etc. Tracking sources can help businesses to further determine where to invest their time, money, and resources.
4. Have you developed a reporting routine?
If you do not have a reporting routine yet in place, you might want to consider revamping your system. Having a routine for reporting can help you to more easily compare data from time to time. Will you gather your reports weekly, month to month, or quarterly? Having a time table of events is necessary to remain fluid in measuring your success with reports. It is also helpful to establish a specific format of how you will gather such information. You should also take into consideration who will compile which reports, who they are sent to, and when they need to be sent. It is important to know your report viewing audience for readability purposes. You may need to simplify things accordingly.