Digital Metrics Reporting that Makes Sense

There’s no shortage of data available for you to pull about engagement with your website, e-newsletter, or social media platforms. Yet making sense of this data can be a challenge. Numbers-heavy analytics reports can fall flat when shared with upper level leadership and those not as familiar with your digital marketing efforts. Your reports, which may tell a tale of marketing wins, can risk just looking like a sea of numbers to your colleagues.

Not only are generic, growth-focused analytics reports confusing; they’re also not serving your communications team well. Take a step back. What are your organizational goals and how does your digital strategy help to achieve them?

Here at Mission Minded, we remind our clients to communicate the big idea first before getting into the details. Not only is this a messaging best practice – it applies to digital analytics too!

Here’s an example:

Let’s say the overall reach of your blog content on Facebook rose by 25% this year. Hooray! But what does this really mean?

Take a Step Back

Follow the formula of Goal → Strategy → Tactic.

• Goal: Share the impact of our organization’s work to key donors to encourage continued generosity.
• Strategy: Given Facebook’s popularity among our target donor audience, we’ll use this platform heavily in communicating impact-driven content to inspire donors.
• Tactic: Use a mix of organic and paid Facebook posts to share blog content about our work, targeting demographics that match our typical donor.

Now Look at the Data

• What was the overall reach of organic and boosted impact-related blog content on Facebook this year? How does this compare to similar content last year?
• How much referral traffic did your impact-related blog content receive from Facebook versus other sources (other social platforms, search engines, etc.)?
• What changes might you make based on what you see?

What’s the Big Idea?

With this data, we can now formulate a more goals-focused, high-level finding to lead with. Remember to minimize jargon!

Facebook was a key tool in helping us achieve our organizational goal of sharing the impact of our work to key donors this year, as it played a major role in pushing audiences to our blog content and reached more people than last year.

See how this tells a more full story than the numbers and statistics we started with? Not only is this more understandable to your colleagues, but it actually shows how this metric helped you achieve a goal. Plus, it helps with benchmarking for the future. Did a given tactic miss the mark in seeking to achieve a goal? It might not be worth your resources to continue that tactic if so.

For colleagues who are interested in the details of the data, you can still include the numbers after this statement. But leading with a high-level, big idea of your findings allows you to better communicate this information while putting more of a focus on the marketing resources you’re currently leveraging and if/how those can best serve you in meeting your goals for the year ahead.

Reach out to us to learn how we can support your organization’s brand, digital strategy and metrics benchmarking!