You got the perfect campaign with a dream client. You created content that resonated with your audience and you crushed the goals set by the client. Now, the campaign is done and you need to close it. But how do you create a blog campaign report that wows your client and makes them come back for more?
Your blog campaign reports are the final step in your campaign. It's often a critical step for repeat business. Make them count.
Easy, right?
What is a blog campaign report?
Blog campaign reports go by lots of different names. You may hear them called:
- Campaign Reports
- Campaign Summaries
- Proof of Performance
- Campaign Close Reports
- Campaign Recaps
Even if you call it something different, when we talk about a blog campaign report, we mean the report that you send to your client at the end of the campaign to recap the campaign's performance. And, of course, not every campaign has a blogging component, so you may hear the same names with social media added to the front.
During the years that we worked in campaign administration, we prepared and presented countless campaign reports for clients. We also participated with other agencies in their preparation of these reports. The reports with the most impact all have these things in common:
- Simple format (this is incredibly important if someone from the brand wants to forward to their boss without a ton of explanation)
- Great visual content
- The right mix of information and data
What should be in my blog campaign report?
Yup, we said the right mix of information and data. Okay, that's vague. In your campaign report, you should aim to have three sections:
- Campaign Objectives
- Channel Performance (with content samples)
- Observations
Here's what you want to see in each section.
Campaign Objectives
A great blog campaign report should start with a recap. Discuss your campaign objectives and talk about the specific goals that the client set for the campaign. Remember, before you accept any campaign, you should know how the brand plans to measure success. Your objective should talk about the deliverables you were asked to create and a recap of the brand's key performance indicators.
Here's a sample Campaign Objective (which is entirely fictional, btw):
The goal of the campaign was to drive awareness of Brand’s coffee product line through a sponsored blog post, tweets and Instagram shares. The goal was to appeal to small business owners who enjoy a healthy dose of caffeine throughout their workday.
Brand challenged Businessese to achieve the following: 1,500 views on the blog post, 300 total engagements across all channels, and original content that can be shared on Brand’s channels.
Remember, your report may be shared internally by the brand and everyone viewing the report may not be intimately familiar with the campaign details. Make sure that the objective has enough information that someone who was unfamiliar with the campaign will know the goals, what you were supposed to do, and how the brand was measuring success.
Channel Performance & Content Samples
After you've introduced the campaign, it's time to dive into the specific campaign results. To prepare this section, dive into your analytics and compile any supporting data that you'll need. Depending on your client's goals, this could include the percentage of your audience that was reached by the posts, the percentage who engaged with the content, and the cost per engagement.
Next, take the data and prepare sections on the performance of the content that you created. For example, if you created a sponsored blog post, tweets and an Instagram share, offer separate analysis for each channel. Give a very brief summary of the approach that you took for your content and give the results.
We cannot stress enough how important it is to make this section visual. Show your client samples of the deliverables that you created. Include sample images from the channels.
Again, remember that this report will be reviewed and shared internally, so you want to shine. If you got great comments from a reader who plans to buy the product featured as a result of your recommendation, include that comment.
Observations
In our experience, many blog campaign reports often stop after the channel performance summaries. We want to urge you to take it further. As we said above, these reports are your chance to shine. You need to step into the role of expert and there is no greater expert on your audience than you.
The report should close with observations about the campaign performance. What worked? What didn't work? Share numbers. And remember to explain why. These are not necessarily going to be complicated responses. (We swear, we're not trying to make blog campaign reports into a term paper that takes weeks of research to complete.) Remember, your goal is to be the expert and talk to the brand about the performance of the campaign.
Using the same example that we cited above, here's a sample observation that you can include:
Of the blog posts 300 engagements, approximately 200 were pins. This was likely due to the visual images that we shared of the product in use. Additionally, 50 of the engagements were clicks to the Brand’s website, which shows people were genuinely interested in learning more about the product.
The observations are also a place where you can talk about what didn't work. If you didn't meet one of the brand's objectives, you don't have to hide it. Instead, you should use it as an opportunity to offer suggestions for next time. You know your audience best and you can give the brand insights as to what part of the messaging or campaign did not work.
Get Repeat Business with Great Blog Campaign Reports
Way too often, bloggers wait for brands to approach them with opportunities. We want you to use the campaign report as a way to close the existing campaign and to start the conversation for the next project.
When you send your the report to your client, say thank you for the opportunity and offer them ideas about how you can work together in the future. Use the existing results to fuel those conversations. The timing works since your efforts will still be fresh in their mind. And, remember, if something went wrong, use it as an opportunity to talk about what you can do differently in the next campaign for them.
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Want to make blog campaign reports even easier?
Don't worry. If you hate spreadsheets or you still aren't sure how to assemble all of your data into the perfect blog campaign report, we have you covered. We created a mini-course, Closing Strong, that gives you everything you need to create individualized reports that will wow your clients. You get our spreadsheet template, which makes it super simple to track the most important data. (And, if you don't love making spreadsheets, it has formulas included so you can determine reach percentages, engagement rates and the cost per engagement.) We show you how to put everything together and we give you a slide template and a sample report so you can see how a customized version. You'll learn all of our reporting secrets in about 30 minutes. Learn more about creating easy blog campaign reports.
