Reporting is absolutely crucial to develop strategic insights to drive marketing campaigns. Yet, finding the time to keep reporting up to speed can be hard to come by. Marketing giants like Facebook and AdWords have reporting built into their platforms but these are not always the metrics that are most important to you, or to your CEO. Plus, there are SO many metrics available in these platforms, that actionable steps can get lost in the black hole of data.
At TribalVision, we often recommend Google Data Studio as a real-time solution for custom and succinct reporting. (Check out our previous post on Google Data Studio Best Practices). Google Data Studio provides a compelling scoreboard which can help to motivate, to save time and to develop trust with your client.
Motivate
Franklin Covey’s 4 Disciplines of Execution describe how a compelling scoreboard can motivate your team:
“People perform best when they are emotionally engaged and the highest level of engagement comes when people who the score: whether they are winning or losing the game. It’s that simple.”
A compelling scorecard can motivate us to continue creating powerful and successful marketing campaigns. Knowing how our campaigns are performing is crucial to how we prioritize our days and can give us a sense of accomplishment.
Save Time
Rather than spending an hour manually pulling metrics, spend 5 seconds updating the dates at the top of your Google Data Studio report. Now, use that hour to dig into your metrics so you can understand what’s happening. Simply reporting the number of sessions or clicks isn’t going to change your business. Instead, step back to determine strategic recommendations based on the data you see.
Develop Trust
A good marketing team should be a trusted partner and in our experience, clear reports help to develop that trust. It shows that we have nothing to hide – good or bad week, the data is there for anyone to see. We often hear clients say of their previous marketing firms that there was not enough transparency into the work being done and how it was performing. It should not be the client’s job to be in the weeds of every platform but that does not mean they shouldn’t have full visibility into its performance.
A Few Scorecard Examples…
Understand Your Audience
Pair stats with visual maps to understand at a glance your audience and how it changes over time. Use this data to continue crafting your brand message and targeting.
Quickly Compare Monthly and Yearly Data
Break down important metrics even further by quickly understanding how you stack up to last month and the year before.
Simplify Your Dashboard
Franklin Covey put it best, “With a successful scoreboard, anyone looking at it can determine in five seconds or less whether the team is winning or losing”. Sometimes less is more when it comes to reporting, the goal should be clear and our status even clearer.
Create Buyer Funnels
The beauty of Google Data Studio is its easy customizability. Create simple graphs to show what’s important to your business like buyer funnels unique to your goals.
