Got 15 Minutes? Run These Reports to Quickly Assess Your Marketing

Spending countless hours analyzing your marketing performance every week? Sure, it's important, but you also have to create content, manage contributors, run your marketing campaigns ... the list goes on. 

What if I told you it was possible to analyze your marketing in just 15 minutes a day? 

Well, with the right reports, it's entirely doable. And while the ramp of period -- deciding what reports are the most important, getting feedback from your team, setting them up -- may take some time, we promise you'll win it back with all the time you're saving once the initial work is done. 

As for those reports we mentioned, let's check out some examples that you'll want to consider including in your new and improved daily reporting routine. 

12 Reports for Analyzing Your Marketing

1) Number of Contacts

This report shows the number of new contacts you are generating over a specific period of time. We recommend that you monitor it throughout the month to ensure that you are on track to hit your goal.

To add some context, you can also add a layer into this report that will compare your performance against the previous month. This will give you a clear frame of reference when determining your performance. 

2) Contact Lifecycle Funnel

It is important to generate new contacts for your company, but it is just as important to make sure those contacts are moving through the different lifecycle stages. This funnel report will show you how leads are converting from marketing qualified leads to opportunities to customers.

Essentially, this will help to give you an idea of how qualified the leads you generate are. This information can then be used to determine if you're running campaigns that are effectively generating the type of leads your sales team can actually close. 

3) Contacts by Conversion

Want to know how many contacts you generate from specific pieces of content? Try this report. 

This report will show you what types of content -- ebooks, blogs, webinars, etc. -- are working, as well as what topics your audience is the most interested in. For even more information about running a content analysis, check out this blog post.

4) Contacts by Segment

This report gives you an idea of how different segments of your audience are responding to your marketing. For example, you may want to focus on comparing the number of contacts you're generating from particular industries. 

To get even more information from this report, you can run it based on who viewed or converted on a piece of your content. This will give you a better idea of how different segments are responding to a specific marketing activity.

5) Contacts by Source

This report shows you how many contacts you generate from marketing efforts that originated in a particular marketing channel. For example, if you're promoting a piece of content on social media, you want to know how many contacts actually saw that piece of content on social media.

By comparing the performance of each marketing channel you're leveraging, it's easy to determine the best places to promote your content. 

6) Average Days to Close by Source

After you figure out how many contacts you are getting from your different marketing channels, it's also important to figure out how many contacts you are closing by these channels. This report is designed to help you determine just that. 

This report will help you figure out what marketing channels are attracting new contacts and helping to close them as new customers. If you know that your social media efforts aren't generating a lot of contacts, but that those contacts close at a much quicker rate, then you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

7) Number of MQLs

In addition to understanding the number of leads coming to your website, you also need to understand how many marketing qualified leads are coming to your website and converting on your content.

Marketing qualified leads often refer to the segment of leads that have shown interest in your company beyond just reading content -- maybe they requested to talk to someone on your sales team or asked for a demo. 

8) MQLs by Source

After you see the number of marketing qualified leads you have, you need to dig into their behavior in order to attract as many of them as possible. That's where this report comes in. 

Similar to the other sources reports, this will give you insight into what marketing channels are the most effective in generating not just leads, but qualified leads for your sales team. 

9) Revenue

Quite simply, your revenue report will show you how much revenue your company is generating per month. 

Given that it's marketing's job to generate leads for the sales team to ultimately turn into revenue for the company, keeping up to date on this number will help you better understand how you're tracking against the goal.

10) Traffic by Source

While it is important to know the total amount of traffic coming to your website, it is also important to understand how that traffic is finding your website, right? This report breaks down the amount of traffic your website is generating from specific channels.

Seeing the breakdown between all of your different marketing channels can help you understand how to prioritize your time and resources. For example, if you are investing a lot of time in social media and blogging, but your social media numbers are not as high as your organic search numbers, this may be a sign that your should shift your primary focus to blogging.

11) Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate

The next step to analyzing the traffic coming to your website is taking a look at your visitor to lead conversion rate. This metric will show you how the traffic coming to your website is or isn't converting into leads.

If this metric is too low, you may need to assess how you are driving these conversions. Are there enough conversion points on your website? Are you asking too much of new visitors? 

12) Blog Leads by Source

This report will show you what marketing channels are the most effective in generating leads for your blog. If you're promoting your blog content across every single channel you have, this report will help you determine which sources are actually delivering results. 

For example, if you find that you're spending a lot of time creating emails that promote your blog content, but they aren't converting people into leads, you may want to try promoting it on a more effective channel. 

What other reports do you think are important to include in your analysis? Let us know in the comments section below.