With the explosion of popularity of the Internet and social media, a new type of marketing has come into being. Businesses are redesigning their marketing strategies to leverage the power of digital channels, but the ability to understand this new form of marketing can be intimidating. Digital marketing is a big topic that includes many disciplines, from social media to search engine optimization, from email marketing to paid advertising. In addition to that, all these various pieces require a different set of tools to help you evaluate your efforts and make strategic decisions about where to focus your resources.
What is a digital marketing report?
A report that one generates from digital marketing activities is called a digital marketing report. In simple terms, a report will display the activities of a person in a specific period. Typical reports will show the number of visitors on your website, number of subscribers on your social media accounts, number of views on your YouTube videos, and if your email campaign had an open rate and click rates or not.
You, as digital marketing executive or manager are accountable for producing digital marketing reports. You are responsible for reporting all the major online marketing metrics to your management chain.
A Marketing Analytics report is basically a report which has all the activities related to digital marketing. The type of reports you use depends on what you are looking for. The analytics report is the collection of data from the website, It provides a detailed analysis of a website’s basic performance and a variety of marketing details. The digital marketing reporting tools are used to find out about their visitors, traffic patterns, and options to improve business.
This post is about a digital marketing report, which analyzes the information about the techniques of delivering services to your potential customers through digital marketing mediums. Digital marketing analytics and reporting tools have been developed for each of the mediums to help you analyze the performance of how well your message is being distributed to your customers, and also to determine what you can do differently in order to improve engagement to your target audience. A digital marketing report will give you an insight into what’s happening online.
Kipfolio:
Klipfolio is a business dashboard software that displays your key metrics on any computer or television screen. And since it’s cloud-based, you can share this information with anyone in the world, including clients in different countries.
But what makes it so valuable is its flexibility. Per Andy Crestodina, Strategic Director & Co-founder of Orbit Media, “it’s a way to combine reports from all kinds of different systems. It’s not just a dashboard with reports from different sources, but you can put several sources into a single report: Google Analytics, Moz, Facebook, HubSpot, SEMrush, and pretty much anything else.
NinjaCat:
NinjaCat brings together information from a range of different sources to help agencies report to clients. These sources include PPC platforms, SEO tools, and social media sites.
Johnathan Dane, the founder of KlientBoost, appreciates this versatility. “It includes the biggest PPC platforms, analytics, and call tracking in one place.”
And it lets KlientBoost hand the reins over to their clients and see their progress for themselves. “Our clients can get a dashboard login themselves and see anything they want at any given time and slice the data much faster compared to logging into their own PPC accounts.”
Cyfe:
Cyfe is one of the best all-in-one, single dashboards for marketers and advertisers. They have deep integrations with most social, analytics, and CRM platforms on the market.
Using these integrations, Cyfe compiles a dashboard that shows how changes in one activity impact result in another. All without logging in and out of ten different tools.
Everything from social media to Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) to finance and sales can be tracked. Custom report building and dashboard management allow you to create different dashboards depending on your goals or team.
For example, the SEO team can have their own dashboard while another focuses on PPC.
Or, if you’re just a boss, doing all of the marketing and advertising things insight, you can create multiple dashboards to keep things manageable. Plus, there’s a free version! And in this economy!
You can structure dashboards around specific segments, like advertising, blogging, email, SEO and more. Each one has its own set of widgets that will pull data from your other tools within a click or two.
You no longer need dozens of tools to track everything. You no longer have to spend all day Friday dumpster diving for raw data.
If you’re looking for a reporting tool that can harness the power of multiple data sources, Cyfe is a great bet. And it doesn’t hurt that they offer a free version, allowing you to test the waters before making a purchase decision.
Metrics Watch:
Metrics Watch is one of the best options available for creating digital marketing reports. It’s easy to set up, doesn’t require any coding or “tech skills,” and it pulls data from your favorite marketing channels, such as:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Google Ads
- Facebook (paid and organic)
- Instagram (paid and organic)
- LinkedIn (paid and organic)
- Mailchimp
This allows you to create comprehensive marketing reports that you can share with your team or clients.
Plus, it has a codeless drag and drop report builder, so you don’t have to worry about technical configurations.
And when it’s time to share your reports, Metrics Watch offers the best method with the least amount of friction.
That’s because unlike other report building tools, Metrics Watch shares reports directly via email. No more messy PDFs to organize and no more user role management for 3rd-party dashboards.
Instead, you get the data you need to the people who need it in a format they already know and love.
Pros
- Drag and drop builder
- Integrates with multiple channels
- Automated sending options (daily, weekly, or monthly)
- No PDF attachments
- No 3rd-party dashboards to share access to
- White-label branding options available
Google Analytics:
Google’s free website analysis tool is the friend of digital marketers worldwide. With a vast range of metrics to offer, Google Analytics gives you insights into every aspect of your website’s performance. Track customer journeys, analyze your content’s performance, and see which channels drive the most visitors.
Pros
- It’s free
- Easy to integrate with most CMS platforms
- Can build customized reports
- Integrates with many other digital marketing analysis tools
Cons
One drawback of Google Analytics is that it almost gives you too much data. All that information can be overwhelming and might mean you get distracted by vanity metrics, instead of focusing on the KPIs that really matter.
The other downside is that it really only handles website analytics, plus some limited SEO data from Google Search Console. If you want to track your social media stats and PPC advertising, you’ll need an additional reporting tool.
Whatagraph:
Not everyone agrees that Google Analytics is easy to use. More importantly, it’s not particularly attractive, and the data can be hard for clients to understand.
Enter Whatagraph. It’s a data visualization tool that takes information from Google Analytics and builds easy-to-read graphs. These are shared via browser or PDF so your clients know how their website is performing.
Whatagraph tracks all your most important website metrics including:
- Traffic sources like search and social media
- Total sessions and average session time
- Bounce rate for specific pages
- Increase or decline of traffic for websites
Douglas Karr of DK New Media prefers this simplified reporting. “Our clients – even technical customers – continue to struggle with implementing and measuring analytics to a point where they are comfortable making informed marketing and business decisions based on the results. Instead, we rely on automated systems [like Whatagraph] that produce simple overview reports for our clients.
Mention:
Social listening can be essential to the agency-client relationship. Companies want to know what people say about them online, which means you need to be able to tell them.
Mention makes this simple. It lets you track any keyword, anywhere online. This means all the major social media platforms, plus extras like review sites and forums.
Mention also features valuable analysis tools to let you:
- Compare their share of voice against major competitors
- Analyze sentiment towards them and their social posts
- See the reach of their marketing campaigns
- Recognize their best-performing content and promote this further.
SEMrush:
Similar to Moz, SEMrush lets you track key SEO metrics for yourself and your competitors. “You don’t need to access Google Analytics or Search Console,” say Andy Crestodina. “Just put any domain into SEMrush and you’ll see a list of all the phrases they rank for.”
These competitor features are particularly interesting to Andy. “It’s brilliant for competitive analysis but also a fast way to jump in a find low-hanging fruit. Want to see all the phrases that your client ranks for on page two of Google? Create a filter, export the data and send it along. Your client will be immediately impressed.”
Use SEMrush to:
- Track your clients’ keyword rankings
- Perform audits to make sure clients’ websites are optimized
- Discover new keywords to target
- Monitor PPC ads and find new opportunities
Supermetrics:
Supermetrics is similar to Cyfe, aggregating data from multiple tools into a single comprehensive dashboard. But instead of its own platform, it relies on connectivity with Google Data Studio to display metrics and data.
Supermetrics can compile data using PPC tools, SEO tools, social, and website analytics, doing all of the heavy liftings for you automatically.
You can schedule reports to be collected, curated, and sent straight to your inbox in CSV format (or linking back to the platform).
You literally don’t have to check the platform if you don’t have time. Set and forget these reports to have them just show up on your doorstep unexpectedly.
They also include templated reports built by professional data analysts. So no need to spend hours trying to become the next Avinash, either.
With cross-platform reporting modules, you can compare traffic, users, and spending across each of your advertising campaigns on a single dashboard.
Automation is probably the best-selling Supermetrics feature. It continually scrubs each connected platform you have to pull real-time data, emailing you weekly, monthly or quarterly reports based on your needs.
AgencyAnalytics:
AgencyAnalytics is a digital marketing reporting tool aimed at agencies. It brings together social media, SEO, PPC, call tracking, website performance, and email marketing metrics in one place. It also includes SEO tools, such as backlink tracking, keyword rankings, and site audits.
Pros
- Integrates with most major digital marketing platforms
- Offers white-label reporting, so you can add your own logo and branding
- Includes competitor analysis and SEO tracking
- Personalize reports by adding comments and recommendations
Cons
The automated reporting with AgencyAnalytics is clunkier than I’d like. Giving clients access to dashboards requires them to have their own login. You can schedule email reports, but they arrive as PDF attachments, which are easy for busy clients to overlook.
Swydo:
If you don’t want to be limited by pre-built templates, Swydo’s fully customizable marketing reports are worth a look. You can set up your own reports from scratch or customize one of the many templates available. You can also combine two metrics from the same data source to create custom metrics.
Pros
- Build reports easily via the drag-and-drop interface
- Customize widgets and report templates to suit your needs
- Create reports in different languages
- Monitor performance against your goals
Cons
There’s no preview option for the widgets in Swydo, so building your report templates can involve some trial and error. The custom metrics also aren’t available on the cheapest plan, which is worth bearing in mind if customization is a deciding factor for you.
Mixpanel:
Aimed predominantly at SaaS companies, Mixpanel offers enhanced event tracking and customer behavior monitoring to help you optimize your conversion and retention rates. It helps you to dive deep into your user behavior trends, create segmentations, and answer vital questions about how your users interact with your website and digital products.
Pros
- Customize dashboards and reports easily to answer your exact questions
- Use segmentation tools to group users and uncover behavioral insights
- Build and analyze funnels to find where potential customers drop off
- Create custom alerts so that you always know when there’s an issue
Cons
Mixpanel isn’t an all-in-one reporting tool. Like Google Analytics, it will help you optimize your website and understand your visitors, but it doesn’t offer other marketing insights. You’ll need an additional reporting tool to cover your PPC and social media campaigns.
Conclusions: Today, most of us are realizing that without proper monitoring and analysis of performance, marketers are unable to prove the assumptions they have made about their digital marketing strategies. This is not just an issue for startups or small businesses. Even large organizations are facing this challenge which is making it hard for them to justify “people power” allocations in their marketing departments.