4 Digital Marketing Reports Your Team Needs

Are your marketing strategies backed by data? Dive into these four essential digital marketing reports that every marketer needs at their fingertips.

When managing marketing campaigns and proposing data-driven optimizations, it’s important to effectively communicate your marketing activities’ performance to establish a solid foundation of trust and confidence with your manager and secure approval for strategic decisions.

Well-crafted reports highlighting key metrics and insights are among the best ways to convey your success. Whether you’re managing PPC campaigns on Google Ads, leveraging social media platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook Ads, or utilizing SEO (search engine optimization) to boost organic traffic, stakeholders need to see how your efforts impact the company’s bottom line.

Here are four digital marketing reports that will empower you and your team to make data-driven decisions and optimize your marketing strategy. Each report includes key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and recommends reporting tools and software to help you create your own.

1. Executive Summary with Pacing Run Rates

What It Is and Its Purpose

An Executive Summary with Pacing Run Rates offers a high-level overview of your campaign performance and budget pacing. Pacing run rates track the progress of your campaign spend over a set period, helping you stay on track for your budget and performance goals.

This report helps keep your senior management informed on the overall health of your marketing channels and campaigns without overwhelming them with too much detail. It’s important to work with your senior leadership to identify the KPIs and understand what is most important for them to know on a high level. Then, work with your data team to include those in these reports with insights and highlights.

KPIS & Marketing Metrics to Include

As a general best practice, we recommend including the following marketing data for a concise and informative Executive Summary:

• Overall campaign performance metrics: Such as impressions, clicks, and conversions.
• Budget spent vs. allocated: Tracks how much of your marketing budget has been used compared to what was planned.
• Pacing towards goals: Shows daily or weekly spend compared to the target, helping to keep your efforts on track.

Visualizations and Tools

A well-designed summary is key to conveying your message effectively. Use concise formats like bullet points and infographics. Tools that can help automate and streamline the reporting process include:

• Supermetrics: Connects various data sources and automates reporting in Google Sheets or Data Looker.
• Google Looker: Allows you to create customizable and shareable reports with real-time data.

2. Promotional Performance Report

What It Is and Its Purpose

A Promotional Performance Report is designed to track the success of various promotional campaigns. It provides detailed insights into how specific promotions have performed historically, and the performance of various discounts during different time periods, allowing your marketing team to make strategic, data-informed decisions in real time. 

KPIS & Marketing Metrics to Include

To create a comprehensive Promotional Performance Report, include the following marketing KPIs:

• Click-through rates (CTR): Measures the effectiveness of your ad copy and creative by tracking the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it.
• Conversion rates: Indicates the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action (e.g., making a purchase or filling out a form on a specific landing page) out of the total number of visitors.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): Calculates the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): Shows the average cost to acquire a customer through your promotional efforts.

Visualizations and Tools

Compelling visualizations can make your digital marketing report more engaging and initiatives easier to understand. Take, for example, a “Memorial Day Sale” vs. a “President’s Day Sale”—what were the differences in the promotions? How long did they run for, and what were the conversion rate trends for both? A well-crafted visualization or graph can help communicate the key differences.

Some recommended tools for generating these analytics reports include:

• Google Analytics: A comprehensive suite of tools for tracking and analyzing website traffic. It also integrates seamlessly with other Google products, such as Google Ads and Search Console, to give you a complete view of your digital marketing efforts.
• Google Ads: A versatile platform for tracking ad performance across various Google properties, including Google Search, Google Display Network, and YouTube.
• Google Search Console: A suite of tools for monitoring and maintaining your website’s presence in Google Search results. It helps you understand how Google views your site, identify issues affecting your organic search rankings (such as bounce rate), and optimize your site’s performance.
• Ads Manager: Whether you run ads on LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Twitter, or other social media channels, the channel-specific Ads Manager provides detailed insights into the performance of your ad campaigns.

3. Year-over-Year (YoY) Reporting

What It Is and Its Purpose

Year-over-Year (YoY) Reporting helps you to understand long-term trends and growth. This type of report compares marketing performance metrics from the current year to the previous year, providing insights into growth patterns, seasonality, and overall progress.

KPIS & Marketing Metrics to Include

A robust YoY report should include the following marketing metrics:

• Yearly comparisons of traffic, conversions, and revenue: Provides a clear picture of growth or decline.
• Growth rates and trend analysis: Helps in identifying consistent patterns or emerging trends.
• Seasonal performance variations: Highlights how different times of the year affect your business.

Visualizations and Tools

Effective YoY reporting relies heavily on visualizations. Use line graphs and bar charts to show comparisons over time. To take your report to the next level, provide industry-relevant benchmarks for each metric to provide an additional reference point. Recommended tools for creating these reports include:

• Excel or Google Sheets: For detailed data analysis and customizable charts.
• Tableau: Offers advanced data visualization capabilities for more complex datasets.

4. Cyber Week HoH and YoY Reporting

What It Is and Its Purpose

Cyber Week is one of the most critical periods for many ecommerce businesses, and tracking its performance by Hour-over-Hour (HoH) and Year-over-Year (YoY) reporting is vital.

Utilizing a HoH report during peak times like Black Friday can clarify key business fluctuations. For example, do revenue contributions shift significantly during active periods for your retention channels? After your team sends an email blast, how did it impact your Meta retention campaigns in the subsequent hours? Answering these questions equips your marketing team to make informed decisions and strategic optimizations during crucial times.

KPIS & Marketing Metrics to Include

For a comprehensive Cyber Week report, include:

• Traffic and sales comparisons to previous Cyber Weeks: Shows how current performance stacks up against past efforts.
• Hour-over-Hour performance within the week: Breaks down performance into smaller periods within Cyber Week to identify peak times.
• Conversion rates, average order value (AOV), and revenue growth: Provides insights into customer behavior and sales effectiveness.

Visualizations and Tools

Use heat maps and time series analysis to illustrate performance trends during Cyber Week. Tools that can help you generate these reports include:

• Adobe Analytics: Offers powerful insights into customer behavior and web traffic, helping identify target audiences for future campaigns.
• Shopify reports: If you use Shopify, their reporting tools can provide detailed sales and performance data to help support your lead generation efforts.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Marketing Data

These four digital marketing report examples will help provide an overview of your team’s marketing efforts, highlight key metrics and offer actionable insights to drive strategic decisions. By incorporating these reports into your regular reporting routine or marketing dashboard, you can demonstrate the value of your campaigns and their contribution to your business’s overall success.

As a performance marketing agency, we create custom-fit reports that deliver clarity for in-depth marketing analytics, ensuring our clients have access to the actionable insights that matter most. If you’re looking for a paid media partner dedicated to optimizing your marketing performance and achieving your business goals, we’d love to hear from you!