What are Reports and Analytics?
So, the terms reporting and analytics are thrown around a lot in marketing and PR, but what do you really know about these terms, and how much are you supposed to speculate about them? Let’s find the answer by better understanding the details of reporting and analytics below.
Reporting
Firstly, reporting is “the process of organizing data into informational summaries in order to monitor how different areas of a business are performing.”
Analytics
That said, marketing analytics is “the process of exploring data and reports in order to extract meaningful insights, which can be used to better understand and improve business performance.”
What Is the Difference?
For us humans (those without advanced marketing and law degrees), this means that reports are for collating information, and analytics will provide data insights. Reports make your team think by asking essential questions, whereas Analytics typically answer questions that report creating with actionable insight.
Why Analytics Are So Important
The analytics we discussed above give us the answers to place in the reports, and more importantly, they tell us why we should care.
Let’s take, for example, that we are an owner of a popular Ice Cream chain and for some reason, our sales go through the roof right around mid-July. If today’s report says that sales are up over 200% in the last 10 days, then the question might be asked: “Is our growth sustainable?”. Your boss then tasks you with an appropriate job to answer this important question!
Next, you dive in, looking for answers, pulling all sales data over the past 90 days, such as ads that have been run, local news, and competition analytics.
You do, in fact, prove that sales are up, but your ad response may trend downwards due to an outage this past week. Your competitor is running a 2-for-1-deal during this downtime, so that does not explain it. When you get to the local news, you find that the heatwave has hit customers in a 1-mile radius around you. It then dawns on you that this sudden surge in sales is directly correlated with the weather.
Your marketing analytics will point out to you in the current example a suggestion that your company does a community service campaign. That, during this hot time, you should set up misters, shade screens, and free drinks at your location. PR sends a notice to the local news stations and you end up with some earned media coverage that leads to happier, more loyal customers, better brand reputation, and ultimately, further reach for your brand.
Its a win-win and it’s all thanks to now knowing how and when to properly use Reporting and Analytics.
As always, if you find yourself biting off more than you can chew, OCGnow is ready to jump in to help take control of your online presence with accurate reporting and analytics. Call or text us at 904-600-3600, visit our website at www.OCGnow.com, Nashville’s premium full solutions company for Marketing, Creative Design, Print, Web Design, Analytics, Networking, PR, and Crisis Management.
