Reporting is the core part of any activity as the reports offer a view of the performance of organization as a whole. An effective report presents the facts and figures in a way so that the readers can interpret it easily.

MOZ columnist Dominic Woodman has shared an article on preparing effective reports and dashboards.

Woodman says, “If someone tells you the report is for audiences with obviously different decision levels, then you’re almost always going to end up creating something that won’t fulfill the goals we talked about above. Split up your reporting into individual reports/dashboards for each audience, or it will be left ignored and unloved.

Find out what your audience cares about

How do you know what your audience will care about? Ask them. As a rough guide, you can assume people typically care about:

  • The goals that their jobs depend on. If your SEO manager is being paid because the business wants to rank for ten specific keywords, then they’re unlikely to care about much else.
  • Budget or people they have control over.

But seriously. Ask them what they care about.

Educating your audience

Asking them is particularly important, because you don’t just need to understand your audience — you may also need to educate them. To go back on myself, there are in fact CEOs who will care about specific keywords”.

How to Make Effective, High-Quality Marketing Reports & Dashboards

MOZ

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