Media report details the year's marketing journey

Sometimes marketers fall into the pit of either not collecting the right metrics or not collecting metrics at all when it comes to reporting on their campaigns. Growth and engagement is great, but it should be measurable and should show clear return on investment.

Here are three tips on why you should create an impressive year-end media report to tell a story of your marketing journey over the year:

Relate your communications and PR efforts to the company’s business goals

Most marketers are tasked with ‘increasing brand awareness’ but more often than not, this is never measured. A report should be able to tell you:

1. Your brand’s share of voice in relation to your top competitors

2. Sentiment analysis of your digital or PR campaign or even brand as a whole
3. Which campaigns generated the most attention on social media or print media?

4. Did your campaigns bring about an opinion change or contribute to increased sales?

In short, your report should not only be about the success of your campaigns, but it should also tell a story of your marketing journey along with key takeaways from your activities for the year. It should be a benchmark of what worked well and what could be improved.

Demonstrate informed business decisions

Using these insights, you can shape your marketing, PR and digital strategies for the coming year. It will be easier to convince the management of the rationale behind your strategy for the next year, if the report clearly shows the need to make changes. Demonstrate how some of these marketing insights can better inform business decisions. For example, if your company is planning to enter a particular market, show them how you can measure your current brand visibility and ‘buzz’ in that market and accordingly ramp up PR efforts before your office launch.

Justify marketing/PR budget

Putting together a better plan for next year based on the findings from your report could also translate to increased budget for your department for the next year. Once the executive team understands the impact of your marketing initiatives and how you have stolen share of voice from your competitors, they would most likely be willing to increase budget for your marketing department.

Keep these three guiding rules in mind as you begin the complex task of wrapping up for the year. The idea is that your report should be high-level enough to communicate your annual success and demonstrate your marketing, communications or PR team’s impact on the business.