One of the best ways to communicate the value and progress of your marketing and communications work/efforts/sweat/ blood & tears to stakeholders, especially board members, is to find a way to report out metrics on a regular basis. From my experience working at an agency, I know that it is lovely to tell your client about all the great stuff you can do for them, but what really has value is showing them the impact that you are making on their behalf. In the old days (like 10 years ago), this would mean hours of arranging and photocopying clip books on PR coverage or measuring the length of coverage with a ruler (good luck finding a ruler in your office) and figuring out how many inches your story ran, but these days (ah, you millenials have it good;) there are a number of ways you can present that data using technological tools. Today, I want to share with you a few ways that I have found to present metrics in easily understandable and digestible chunks.
1. Reports and Presentations
Depending on the preferences of your senior staff and board, you may want to consider the good old report or presentation. In either, I would encourage you to present as many high-level metrics that you can with their compariables. Also, while we are all aware that the number of followers you have on Facebook means pretty much nothing in terms of marketing since you can (eh em) buy access to targeted audiences for as little as $10, your leadership may be fixated on that number, so give it to them (especially if it's increasing). I'd also encourage you to pull out 2-4 significant accomplishments about your work and present those as winners. It's easy to get stuck in the data, but telling the story of the outcome that the data represents is your job here. Find the personal example of those wins and share the heck out of it.
Tools: Good ol' Powerpoint and MS Word work just fine here. If you want to get fancy try Prezi or Canva.
2. Dashboards
Dashboards have been all the rage in nonprofits for the last few years as boards try to get a handle on the complexity of the organizations that they are trying to guide. If you haven't been asked for specifics, I say you have full-reign to establish the main metrics that you know you should track. These can be website oriented (Users, Page Views, Sessions, New vs Returning Users, etc.), social engagement (organic and paid;), open rates, CTR, and other major metrics from your activities. If you can fit this all on one simple dashboard, go for it. This can be a useful tool for reporting and will make you look super smart and on-top of things.
Tools: Smartsheets and MS Excel. If you have other free/cheap sources for printable dashboard templates, please let me know.
3. Infographics
Next up, is everyone's favorite friend the infographic. I love a well-designed, well-thought out infographic. You can think of these as dashboards with design elements. If you don't have a designer on staff or retainer, or even if you do, start with thinking about your audience and what they want to know. Find the data that communicates that information and get to work. Infographics can be very powerful, but the require some additional work.
Tools: Picktochart and Canva
4. New Tools to Try- Google Data Studio
If you are super tech focused in your work, give the new Google Data Studio a try. This new product can pull data in real-time from your website and social streams so you can get a snapshot of your metrics. Slick, huh? There are some add-ons that will cost you money, but as we know you won't really have enough time to do this whole project well consistently since you'll be putting out fires elsewhere, so why not see if this is a tool for you. Note- it doesn't download, so if you have dinosaurs on your staff or board this might not be something for you
Remember that your marketing and communications work supports the awareness, programmatic and fundraising functions of your organization. The more that you can show the ways your work directly impacts those areas, especially fundraising, the more you will be able to clearly demonstrate the value of your work and the critical function of communications and marketing strategy and efforts.