All your hard work has paid off and you achieved the objectives set out in your communications plan. While you should absolutely take a moment to be proud of your achievements, know that your work isn’t done yet; you still need to report on results to your company, investors, or other pertinent audiences. Results reporting has many benefits, including earning the trust of your stakeholders, positioning yourself as an expert, sharing how your work supports company goals, helping you earn a seat at the table and even earning more budget.

It might not be the most glamorous task, but results reporting is certainly just as important as the planning and execution phases. Without it, how will your stakeholders know what you achieved?

Here are four tips for delivering an impactful results report that tells the story of your work:

  • Be visual: Results reports are often very number- or word-heavy, which means there’s a good chance whoever you’re sending it to isn’t reading it all the way through. Turn results into a graph, chart or infographic and drop in images to make it more visual and keep your readers’ attention. Consider pulling out key results or highlights into sidebars with bigger and bolder font, so it catches the eye of those skimming the report. This ensures the goals you met through your campaign or project are actually being recognized and the work you’re putting into the results report isn’t just a check-the-box task.  
  • Contextualize the results: A good results report doesn’t just share what the results are, it also provides context. For example, if you’re creating a report on your social media ad campaign performance and share that your campaign’s cost per result was $0.10, then you should also include that the industry benchmark is $0.15. This context will help readers who don’t have your specialized knowledge better understand the results and see how your work stacks up compared to competitors or industry standards.
  • Explain what it means: If your campaign results exceed industry standards, share what that means and how it contributed to company goals. For example, if the results from an email campaign resulted in open- and click-through-rates above industry average, it could help you demonstrate how you’re driving traffic to the website or driving purchases by re-targeting customers who are engaging with your newsletter content. This is your chance to reinforce the value of your work by highlighting how you’re achieving or furthering company-wide goals.
  • Be honest. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, objectives aren’t fully met. When this happens, it’s important to be honest about it in your results report and, you guessed it, provide context as to why. If there were extenuating circumstances that impacted the results, share that. For example, if you announced a new restaurant opening, but there was breaking news on the same day, that could help explain why you didn’t secure as many stories. Regardless of what happened, you should include the why — and the insights and learnings you’ll take forward into the next project, so you don’t find yourself in the same position again.

Results reporting is a critical part of any project or campaign, and it helps you become a smarter, more efficient communicator because you can figure out what worked and what didn’t in reaching your target audience. Take advantage of the opportunity to highlight the value of your work and advocate for additional budget, more responsibility or whatever it is you need to be successful.

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