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What is a Marketing Research Report and How to Write It

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In essence, a market research report is a document that reveals the characteristics of your ideal customers, their buying habits, the value your product or service can bring to them, and the list of your top competitors.

The marketing research report paints a picture of what kinds of new products or services may be the most profitable in today’s highly competitive landscape. For products or services already available, a marketing research report can provide detailed insights as to whether they are meeting their consumers’ needs and expectations. It helps understand the reasons why consumers buy a particular product by studying consumer behavior, including how economic, cultural, societal, and personal factors influence that behavior.

Furthermore, the purpose of writing a marketing research report is to make calculated decisions about business ideas – whether they’re worth pursuing or not. This requires one primary skill which is observing the pattern which is hidden in the User Generated Content (UGC) written in different tones and perspectives on the social web.

Simply put, writing a market research report is a vital part of planning business activities and serves as a neat way to assimilate all the information about your target market and prospective customers.

Now, there are two key varieties of marketing research report formats – primary and secondary.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Let’s take a look at the main recipes of how to make a market research report in detail:

Primary Research

This method of marketing research involves gathering firsthand information about your market and prospective clients. You study your customers directly by conducting:

  • Interviews (either by telephone or face-to-face)
  • Surveys and polls (online or by email)
  • Questionnaires (online or by email)
  • Focus groups discussions with a sample of potential customers and getting their direct feedback

Some crucial questions that you need to ask your prospective customers in your primary research are:

  • What are the factors that motivate you to purchase this product or service?
  • What do you like or dislike about this type of product or service already available on the market?
  • Are there any areas you’d like to suggest for improvement?
  • What according to you is the appropriate price for this product or service?

Primary research also involves analyzing competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps and weaknesses that you can turn into your strengths.

Secondary Research

The second method of writing a marketing research report is all about analyzing the data that has already been published and using the available information on the web. That is, secondary research is done from reliable reports and statistics found on the websites of other organizations or authority blogs in your industry.

Sources can be:

  • Public: This includes all the free sources like social media and forums, Google Trends, YouGov, and government sources such as the United States Census Bureau.
  • Commercial: This includes industry insights compiled by research agencies like Pew, Gartner, Forrester, and so on. Typically, these are paid.
  • Internal: This is the historical market data your organization already has in-house, such as the Net Promoter Score, customer churn rate, and so on.

Secondary data can help you identify competitors, establish benchmarks, and determine target customer segments or demographics – people who live a certain lifestyle, their income and buying patterns, age group, location, etc.

Market Research Reports Advantages and Disadvantages

Before we discuss how to write a marketing research report, let’s quickly take a look at market research report benefits and also some of the limitations in marketing research reports.

Advantages of Market Research Report

Here are the top reasons why you should invest in creating a market research report.

1. Gives a Better Understanding of Your Customers

The answers to questions like who will buy your product, what are the customers’ pain points, what motivates their buying behavior, and so on will be effectively answered with a market research report. Essentially, it will help you map out the full profile of your ideal customer and consequently, allow you to create tailored products and marketing campaigns.

2. Helps Spot Business Opportunities

As already mentioned, market research will give you insights about your competitors’ strategies, so you can find gaps in their offerings that you can turn into your product’s strengths. You may also find other business opportunities such as potential partnerships with brands that sell complementary products, or an opportunity to better upsell or cross-sell your products. For example, a keyword research report from a SaaS SEO agency provides an opportunity to acquire organic search ranking by creating in-depth, high-converting, and funnel-oriented content.

3. Minimizes Risks

Starting or running a business is synonymous with risk. In fact, nearly half of all small businesses with employees don’t survive for more than five years. Conducting proper market research frequently will allow you to stay on top of trends, and not waste your efforts and resources in things that would likely be fruitless.

For instance, before you launch a new product, conducting market research gives you a much better idea of the demand for your product. Or if an existing product is seeing a big drop in sales, market research helps you determine the root cause of the issue.

4. Facilitates Data-Driven Decision Making

When it comes to business decisions – data over guesswork, always. So, based on your market research results, you can make more informed decisions regarding the pricing, distribution channels, and marketing budget of your products.

Disadvantages of Market Research Report

As with anything, there are a couple of downsides to conducting marketing research as well.

1. Could Be an Expensive Activity

Conducting a comprehensive, in-depth research is usually a costly activity in terms of both time and money. To research the right audience with the right questions requires you to invest a lot of time. If you wish to use data by commercial market research agencies or get help from one such agency in conducting primary research, be prepared to spend a substantial amount.

2. Insights Gathered Could Be Inadequate or Even Inaccurate

Another problem often faced in marketing research is a lack of respondents. While you can figure out who is your target audience, getting them to fill out surveys and questionnaires can indeed be challenging. Plus, you’re using data you collected for drawing conclusions, which may be unreliable.

For example, by the time you act on the data you collected, it may have become outdated. This translates into poor decision making and the whole process may become counterproductive.

How to Prepare Market Research Report

Now, here are some concrete steps and guidelines for writing a marketing research report.

Step 1: Cluster the Data

First off, compile all the relevant data you’ve accumulated from your primary and/or secondary research efforts. Survey results, interview answers, statistics from third-party sources – bring it all together and then analyze the information to sketch out the profile of your target market.

Step 2: Prepare an Outline

Next, create a skeleton of the report so that you understand what information will go where. An outline with sections and subsections will help you structure your marketing research report properly. A typical report includes an introduction, background and methodology, executive summary, results, and a conclusion with links to all references.

With an outline in front of you, start by writing the front matter of your report – an introduction that provides a brief overview of your business and the reason you conducted the market research. Include a summary of the market research process and the results you have analyzed. For instance, you might have been gauging the feasibility of a new product, so summarize that your market research report is for a new product launch.

Step 3: Mention the Research Methods

An important next step is to clearly mention the methods used to conduct the research. That is, if you conducted polls, specify the number of polls, the percentage of responses, the types of people or businesses targeted, and the questions included in the poll. Tag all the resources for demographic information, such as census data.

Step 4: Include Visuals With Narrative Explanation

Visuals such as charts and graphs are an important part of any research paper. They make sure that the findings are easy to comprehend.

So, create tables, graphs, and/or charts illustrating the results of the research. Accompany it with a narrative explanation of the visual data. Highlight the inferences you made based on this data.

Step 5: Conclude the Report With Recommendations

Finally, conclude your report with a section that lists actionable recommendations based on the research results to facilitate decision making. For example, all the numbers may point to the conclusion that your customers desire a particular feature that no other product on the market is currently offering. In this case, it is clear that it’s a good idea to invest your resources in providing that feature and gain a competitive edge.

At the very end of the report, include reference links to all the sources and an appendix for supplementary materials and further reading.

Marketing Research Report Templates

Before you go, check out some templates and samples you can use to better understand the marketing research report structure, and maybe even use them to kickstart your report instead of preparing one from scratch.

  • Market Research Report for New Product Launch
  • Market Research Report for Restaurant (competitor analysis)
  • Social Media Market Research Report

Writing a marketing research report is a tried-and-true way to gain a solid understanding of your target audience and competitors while enabling you to make more informed decisions and minimize investment risks. Sure, it may take considerable time, effort, and even money to conduct thorough research and prepare a report, but when done well, the ROI of it all is well worth it.

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Shahid Abbasi is an SEO strategy & campaign manager at Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.

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Marketing Reporting Examples: How to Build and Analyze Marketing Reports

Run marketing reports that better inform your decisions, bolster your marketing resources, and help your organization grow better.

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MONTHLY MARKETING REPORTING TEMPLATES

Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Drive Templates to Make Your Monthly Reporting Faster and Easier

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Published: 11/03/23

As a marketer, I make crucial daily decisions that can impact the company I work for. Using my best judgment, I track important metrics like traffic, leads, and customers — and I provide a marketing report to back up my decisions.

While the above metrics are crucial to my marketing funnel and flywheel , a marketing report helps me further explore my findings and properly analyze the data to make the best decisions I can for my team and company.

Marketing reports aren‘t just vital for my work, they’re key to any marketer looking to do what‘s right for their organization. In this article, we’ll explore what a marketing report is and how to build one, and we'll spotlight some examples.

→ Free Download: Free Marketing Reporting Templates [Access Now]

Marketing Reporting

Marketing reporting examples, how to create a marketing report, create your marketing report today.

Marketing reporting is the process of gathering and analyzing marketing metrics to inform future marketing decisions, strategies, and performance. Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and meet organization-wide goals.

Marketing reports vary depending on what data you’re reviewing and the purpose of each report. They can assess where your traffic and leads are coming from, what content they interacted with, if and when they converted, and how long it took to become a customer.

Take our free, 20-minute HubSpot Academy course on marketing reporting to measure success and optimize your efforts.

To reiterate: Marketing reports inform decisions .

You wouldn’t run a marketing report to review data performance or check on an ongoing goal — for these purposes, you’d glance at your marketing dashboards.

Look at it this way. Compiling a marketing report for knowledge’s sake is synonymous with scheduling a meeting to review a project. Who wants to attend a 30-minute session to review what could've been shared via email? Not me.

The same goes for marketing reporting. Reports should help you decide or come to an important conclusion — similar to how a meeting would help your team deliberate about a project or choose between project resources.

In short, marketing reporting is a precious process if used and crafted correctly.

what is report writing in marketing research

Marketing Reporting Templates

  • Track leads.
  • Measure CVR.
  • Track channel performance.

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There are hundreds of reports that you can run to dig into your marketing efforts. At this point, however, you’re likely asking, “Where should I start?“ and ”What are those basic marketing reports I can run to get more comfortable with all the data I’ve been tracking?”.

We’ve pulled together these five marketing reporting examples to get started.

You will need some marketing software (like HubSpot Marketing Hub) to do this. You should also ensure your software allows you to export the data from your software and manipulate it in Excel using pivot tables and other functions.

This free guide and video will teach you how to create an Excel graph, make pivot tables, and use VLOOKUPS and IF functions.

Since we use HubSpot for our reporting needs, I'll show you how to compile these reports using the Marketing Hub tool. (The data below is sample data only and does not represent actual HubSpot marketing data.)

1. Multi-Touch Revenue Marketing Report

As a marketer, you’re a big part of your company’s growth. But unless you can directly tie your impact to revenue, you’ll be forever underappreciated and under-resourced. Multi-touch revenue attribution connects closed gain to every marketing interaction — from the first page view to the final nurturing email.

That way, marketers get the credit they deserve, and marketing execs make more innovative investments rooted in business value instead of vanity metrics. As a bonus, multi-touch revenue attribution can help you stay aligned with your sales team.

HubSpot customers can create multi-touch attribution reports quickly; HubSpot’s attribution tool is built for real people, not data scientists. (It also connects every customer interaction to revenue automatically.)

Navigate to your dashboard and click Add Report > Attribution Report . Select from the set of pre-baked best-practice templates, or create your own custom report.

How to Analyze Revenue Reporting

To analyze revenue reporting, determine what’s working and double down on it. Look at the revenue results from different channels and see where you most succeeded. Use this information to decide what marketing efforts to invest in moving forward.

For example, if you notice that your Facebook campaigns drove a ton of revenue, run more Facebook campaigns!

Multi-touch attribution reports should be run monthly to understand the broader business impact of your marketing channels. While revenue is necessary, you should dig into some of your other metrics for a more complete picture.

2. Channel-Specific Traffic Marketing Report

Understanding where your traffic comes from will help you make strategic decisions as you invest in different marketing channels. You should invest more resources if you see strong performance from one source.

On the other hand, you can invest in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace with some of your other channels. Whatever you decide, source data will help you figure that out.

HubSpot customers can use the Traffic Analytics report (under Reports > Analytics tools in your navigation) to break down traffic by source.

Want to get an even deeper understanding of your traffic patterns? Break down your traffic by geography. (Example: Which sources bring in the most traffic in Brazil?) You can also examine subsets of your website (like your blog vs. your product pages).

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5 Things to Remember When Writing a Market Research Report

Filed Under: Best Practices , Market Research , Reporting , Tools & Techniques , Quantitative Research

what is report writing in marketing research

Lynne Bartos

Vice President and Marketing Content Strategist, Marketing

There is nothing more embarrassing for a researcher than to hear a client say “…this doesn’t really address the business questions that we set out to answer.” This is more common an occurrence in research reporting than most of us would care to admit. But unfortunately, much report writing these days falls short of expectations for those on the client side. This is likely due to more emphasis on methodology or analytic technique at the expense of clear graphics, creative story-telling and actionable direction.

What often happens during the report-writing process is that market researchers have their direct research client in mind. They neglect the fact that their direct contact must present these findings to the ultimate stakeholder in the process — someone in senior management or the head of marketing who does not function in the research realm.

We need to take conscious steps to break out of our little bubble to avoid some of the lingo that is prevalent in research circles. You know what I mean if you’ve ever found yourself presenting your findings to marketing folks. While peppering them with terms such as “mean,” “monadic,” “DK/NS,” “latent class,” and the like, you suddenly notice the deer-in-the-headlights reaction. Worse yet, your audience’s eyes glaze over completely. These terms are foreign to many marketers and, frankly, most of them couldn’t care less about such things. They simply want a viable solution to the particular business need they set out to address.

So, when writing a research report for my clients it helps me to keep a few things in mind….

Speak to Marketers in Their Language

Focus on what marketers care most about — getting customers, keeping customers, and increasing their share of the customer’s wallet. So tell them what is meaningful to them….

  • How to position their brand
  • How best to price it
  • Who their best prospects are and how to reach them
  • What message should they be communicating
  • Who are their most loyal and valuable customers
  • How do they keep them loyal to their service or brand

Net, net — put some Marketing-Speak into your report, and leave out the Research-speak.

Tell a good story

A good report tells a good story. So, how do you tell a compelling story? Start by getting organized!

  • Develop an analytic plan that focuses on business issues and objectives — the questions that need to be answered.
  • Outline how the questions will be.
  • Once the data is in, all team members should know how the data relates to those question, and they can craft the best story together.

Remember, every page in the report should contribute to the story! If something doesn’t contour well with your story, stick it in the Appendix. How many hundred-page reports have you been subjected to where the charts are all in the same order as the questionnaire? Where is the story?

It’s also important to stick closely to your analytic plan when crafting your story. The analytic plan is what helps to keep everyone focused on why the research was conducted in the first place.

Insightful Headlines and Bullets

What I also find helpful in getting my arms around the story is to write effective bullets and headlines for the data presented. Too many people think an insight is reiterating the numbers that are in the charts. Remember, anyone can read the numbers on a chart – our job, as researchers, is to pull the deeper insights from seemingly obvious data.

Be Creative and Have a Llittle Fun

Creativity also comes into play! Package the story in a creative way. No one wants to see rows and rows of data. Make the report visually appealing so you don’t intimidate those who are going to be using the findings to help drive strategy. Avoid too much text and too many numbers.

And, don’t be afraid to insert some humor here and there. It reminds your clients that you are human and helps to lighten the tone and keep things relaxed.

Get to the Heart of It

And finally, probably the hardest part of the report process for any researcher is to get straight to the heart of it… what is the story – conclusions, implications, and recommendations. Go to the next step to tell them what the data MEANS, and what they might consider doing to maximize their investment.

And there is nothing sweeter to a market researcher’s ears than to hear a client voice saying, “Thanks, this really addresses the business questions that we set out to answer!”

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9.2: Elements of a market research report

The market research report marks the culmination of the project, but it also marks the beginning of the recommendations’ implementation and action phase. Having established the decision problem, chosen a research method, identified a target population sample, collected and analyzed data accurately, and, hopefully, produced sound findings, the next step is to prepare the report and possibly present it to a group of decision makers. Usually, this involves writing a report and, occasionally, creating a slide show based on the report.

The six fundamental components of a research report are as follows:

  • Title Page: This section provides an overview of the report, including its purpose, who requested it, when and how it was conducted.
  • Table of Contents: This section lists all of the major sections of the report along with any graphs or charts, along with the page numbers where they are located.
  • Executive Summary: This section provides a brief summary of all the details in the report, suitable for both executives and nonexecutives who may not have the time to read the entire document.
  • Methodology and Limitations: The methodology section of the report explains the technical details of how the research was designed and conducted. The section explains, for example, how the data was collected and by whom, the size of the sample, how it was chosen, and whom or what it consisted of (e.g., the number of women versus men or children versus adults). It also includes information about the statistical techniques used to analyze the data. Every study has errors—sampling errors, interviewer errors, and so forth. The methodology section should explain these details, so decision makers can consider their overall impact. The margin of error is the overall tendency of the study to be off kilter—that is, how far it could have gone wrong in either direction. Remember how newscasters present polls before an election? They always say, “This candidate is ahead 48 to 44 percent, plus or minus 2 percent.” That “plus or minus” is the margin of error. The larger the margin of error is, the less likely the results of the study are accurate. The margin of error needs to be included in the methodology section.
  • Findings: If there is additional research or secondary data that supports the study’s conclusions, it can be included in the findings section to help demonstrate that the study accomplished its goals. The findings section is an expanded, more detailed version of the executive summary that provides additional information about the statistics that the research uncovered and that support the study’s conclusions.
  • Recommendations. The recommendations section should include a description of the course of action you believe should be followed in light of the research’s findings as well as the project’s objectives. Examples

Staff members have the most knowledge about the organization or business, so they will know what should and should not be included in the final research report and presentation. When preparing the report, it is important to keep the readership in mind. Avoid using technical jargon that decision makers and other readers will not understand; if you must use technical terms, explain them. Additionally, proofread the document to catch any typos or grammatical errors; ask a couple of people to proofread behind you to catch any mistakes you might have missed. Lastly, since many research reports are presented using slideshows, avoid trying to include every detail of the report on the slides. People attending the presentation will not have the time to go through the lengthy and boring material, and even if they do, it is unlikely that they will be paying attention to the presenter.

During or after the presentation, attendees can review the longer, paper version of the report so they can read the details at a convenient time, if they choose to. Instead of including all the information from the study on the slides, condense each section of the report down to key points and add some “talking points” only the presenter will see.

Albrecht, M. G., Green, M., & Hoffman, L. (2023).  Principles of Marketing . OpenStax, Rice University. CC BY 4.0

Author removed at request of original publisher. (2022). Principles of Marketing – H5P Edition . BC Campus Open Education. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Introduction to Market Research Copyright © by Julie Fossitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Market Research Report

Your blood is pumping. A new opportunity has emerged on your business radar, and it could propel your business in a captivating and profitable direction. It could be a new product or service line, a group of untapped consumers or even – keep your voice down now – a potential merger with a smaller competitor.

what is report writing in marketing research

Before you get too far ahead of yourself, you know that it's smart to thoroughly vet this opportunity by commissioning a market research report. At some point -- probably after your staff has finished gathering the necessary quantitative and qualitative data – you must lay out your expectations for the written report. How you approach this task should get their blood pumping, too.

Issue Three Dictates

If your marketing team is new to the task, they're probably going to love your top three directives:

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They may not think they heard you right; after all, you did say you want a market research report, didn't you? And aren't most reports long, voluminous and yes, sometimes dull products?

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Characteristics of a good business report, what is an r&d report, how to write an executive summary on a marketing plan, how to arrange an information agenda after a meeting, what is an appendix in a business plan.

Tell them to make no mistake: you expect a comprehensive effort that assesses every angle of this new business opportunity. You want the report, as they say, to "see around corners." But there are valid reasons that drive your directives.

Tell a Story

The most compelling market research reports pivot on a story – about why that new product or service line holds such promise, why that group of untapped consumers could benefit from your offerings or why that merger would be a wise investment.

Like all good stories, this one might start with an anecdote or focus on one person – the "main character" – who could serve as your ideal customer. Telling the story of your research through his or her eyes, and with plenty of dynamic quotes, should flow directly into how pursuing this new opportunity would advance your business objectives. This is a crucial part of the story, too, since the opportunity wouldn't even be worth considering if it didn't conform with your business plan.

At this point, you might wish to share with your staff the experience of a well-known manufacturer of a men's fragrance that was ready to embark on a marketing campaign – targeted to men. Then the market research revealed that women, not men, make most of these purchases, and the finding transformed the campaign. Now there was an entirely different story to tell because the main characters shifted to women – who they are, what they do for a living, when they purchase men's fragrances and how they persuade the men in their lives to acquiesce to wearing a fragrance in the first place.

Tell a Visual Story

As much of the quantitative data as possible should be consigned to charts and graphs in the market research report, not the actual written content. Numbers are easier to read, and evaluate, when they're displayed in a graph rather than tucked into a dense paragraph, where the reader may struggle to interpret their meaning.

This point underscores another reality about market research reports: you may think it's being written for your benefit and that of your staff. And for now, it may be. Your audience may also include your business attorney and accountant. But some day, if it's appropriate, new stakeholders may read the report, too, and charts and graphs will make it easier for them to digest.

Of course, you can always overdo a good thing. Only relevant charts and graphs – or those that advance the fundamental story – should be included in the body of the market research report. Ancillary information should be relegated to the appendix – that document repository that comes at the end of a report.

Keep it Brief

By focusing on a compelling story and relying on visuals, your staff should find it easier to address your third cardinal rule. They should know that you will judge the value of their effort on its quality, not the number of pages. (It's up to you if you wish to tell them that many market research reports run from between 10 and 50 pages.) It will also help if they:

  • Use bullet points when they can.* Read each other's work and "peer edit" for clarity and concision.
  • Challenge each paragraph to the relevancy test. In other words, if a paragraph doesn't advance the basic story, strike it.

Heed Two Other Tips

You may hesitate to call it an "outline," but you should convey to your staff that the true value of their report will depend on its organization. So if they don't like the sound of establishing a step-by-step progression of the report, then turn them loose on PowerPoint, which will force the issue (in a good way). In the end, they may decide that this format – and not a paper report – is the best one for their findings.

As liberating as this may be, most market research reports hew to tradition, and necessity, by including:

  • A section on the research objectives.An executive summary.
  • InfoSurv: 10 Tips for Marketing Research Reports That Get Read
  • C+R Research: 5 Things to Remember When Writing a Market Research Report

Mary Wroblewski earned a master's degree with high honors in communications and has worked as a reporter and editor in two Chicago newsrooms. She worked alongside a noted Chicago area nutritionist and holistic healthcare adviser whose groundbreaking work focuses on the “whole” patient rather than focusing on one ailment or problem to the exclusion of everything else. Mary writes extensively about healthy eating and healthy living topics.

A Guide on How to Create a Market Research Report

Tome

A market research report provides valuable insights into consumer behaviors, market trends, competitive analysis, and the overall health of specific industries.

This document serves as a roadmap for businesses to strategize effectively, identify new opportunities, and mitigate risks.

In this article, we will walk you through the essential components of a market research report, the steps to create one, and best practices to ensure that your findings are actionable and accurate.

What is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is a comprehensive document that gathers data about market conditions, customer preferences, competition, and other factors affecting an industry or business. It synthesizes primary and secondary research to present an analysis that helps companies make strategic decisions. The report covers various aspects, from demographic data and consumer surveys to industry trends and competitive dynamics.

Types of Market Research Reports

Market research reports can vary based on the objectives and the scope of the study. Here are some common types:

  • Consumer Analysis Reports: Focus on customer demographics, preferences, and behavior to tailor products and marketing strategies.
  • Competitive Analysis Reports: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competitors within the market, offering insights into competitive advantages and potential opportunities.
  • Industry Analysis Reports: Provide a broad overview of the industry, including trends, size, and growth forecasts.
  • Product Testing Reports: Gather feedback from users about a new or existing product to inform product development and improvement.
  • Brand Loyalty Reports: Analyze customer loyalty and satisfaction to help develop strategies to enhance customer retention.

What Does a Market Research Report Include?

A well-rounded market research report generally contains the following elements:

  • Executive Summary: A concise overview of key findings and recommendations, allowing readers to quickly understand the report's essence.
  • Introduction: Contextualizes the research, including objectives and questions that the report aims to address.
  • Methodology: Describes the research methods used to collect data, whether through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or secondary data sources.
  • Market Analysis: Detailed analysis of the market, including size, trends, growth patterns, and environmental factors.
  • Competitive Landscape: Assessment of key players in the industry, their market share, strategies, and products.
  • Customer Insights: Analysis of customer demographics, buying behaviors, preferences, and needs.
  • Conclusions and Recommendations: Summarize the insights derived from the research and suggest actionable strategies based on the findings.

How to Create a Market Research Report in 5 Steps

Creating an effective market research report involves a structured approach:

  • Define the Purpose: Clearly articulate what you want to achieve with the report. This will guide your research focus and methodology.
  • Gather Information: Use both primary and secondary research to collect comprehensive data. Primary research could include surveys and interviews, while secondary research may involve reviewing existing studies, industry reports, and competitive data.
  • Analyze Data: Interpret the data to identify patterns, insights, and correlations. Use statistical tools and software for accurate analysis.
  • Draft the Report: Organize the findings in a structured format. Start with the executive summary, followed by the introduction, methodology, detailed findings, and conclusions.
  • Review and Revise: Ensure the report is clear, accurate, and free from bias. It may be helpful to have peers or stakeholders review the document before finalizing it.

Best Practices for Creating a Market Research Report

To enhance the effectiveness of your market research report, consider these best practices:

  • Stay Objective: Maintain impartiality to ensure the report is unbiased and reliable.
  • Use Visuals: Incorporate charts, graphs, and infographics to make data easier to understand and more engaging.
  • Keep It Concise: Be clear and concise, avoiding overly complex language or excessive detail that may distract from the key insights.
  • Segment the Data: Provide segmented analysis to offer more detailed insights into different customer groups or market segments.
  • Update Regularly: Market conditions change rapidly, so it’s important to update your reports periodically to keep them relevant.

Create a Market Research Report Using Tome

Presenting your market research effectively is key to influencing strategic decisions.

With Tome, you can effortlessly craft detailed, insightful presentations that communicate complex data in an understandable and engaging manner.

Start leveraging Tome today to enhance the impact of your market research reports and drive meaningful action.

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Learn How to Write a Market Research Report: 10 Steps to Follow for Success

Dec, 2023 - by CMI

Learn How to Write a Market Research Report: 10 Steps to Follow for Success

A market research report is an integral part of the coursework for many business programs. It explores the understanding of subjective views of customers towards a product or service. Still, many students struggle to create market reports that effectively address the business question. So, how do you avoid the deer-in-the-headlights reaction when presenting a market research report?  

In most cases, marketers fail to create impactful research reports because they don’t know the actionable steps to follow. 10 main steps occur in a typical market research study and reporting process, from problem identification to acting on the result. Read on to get all the information you need to write a top-notch market research report.

What Is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is a document prepared to evaluate the feasibility of a new product or service to potential customers. Companies do market research reports to paint a picture of what products, services, or actions may be the most profitable to pursue. Actionable information is obtained through market research prepared in a formal report that reveals the characteristics of customers, the value of a product or service, buying habits, and a list of top competitors.

Writing a market research report helps businesses make calculated decisions about what ideas to pursue or not. It focuses on studying consumer behavior that influences spending decisions, including cultural, economic, societal, and personal factors. As a result, businesses can assimilate critical information and tips about prospective customers and target markets.

10 Steps to Write a Market Research Report That Accurately Highlights Market Opportunities

Identify the problem and objectives.

In market research, there’s a famous saying that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. So defining the potential problem, causes, or opportunities in the market is a great place to start your marketing research papers. The information will help you narrow down the parameters of the study, such as the business objective and research objectives. Whether you want to test a hypothesis about consumer opinion or how consumers will react to a new pricing model, they all require identifying a solid objective.  

Develop your research strategy

This is a crucial step in preparing a market research report because it will define the quality of data collection and the reliability of results. Choose between primary research or secondary research methods. Also, you will need to decide whether you will utilize quantitative or qualitative research methods. The most effective research strategy depends on your sample size and profile as well as the desired outcomes based on the objectives.

Use the help of writing services

In case you feel inefficient in handling crucial market research writing steps, such as defining the problem, identifying research objectives, or developing a research strategy, get the help you need from a professional. Reputable academic paper writing services, such as CustomWritings, have plenty of certified academic writers with extensive knowledge and experience in custom research paper writing of any complexity. You can get one written from scratch by an expert in a stipulated time to make your work easier.

Prepare an outline and set a deadline

If you can write a market research report yourself, develop an outline with sections and subsections you will cover in your paper. A typical market research report includes the following sections:

  • Introduction
  • Methodology

Market research reports also come with a fixed due date. So, allocate time for completing each section to ensure you finish the task before the deadline.

Specify the sample

Before you can start collecting data, you need to specify who will participate in the study. Start by defining your population correctly and defining a sampling frame from which you will draw the sample. For example, you can use a customer list, directory, or membership roster to get a good sample. Large samples produce more reliable results, but the more data you have, the costlier and more time-consuming your research will be. Use statistics to define an optimal sample size.

Gather data and information

Next, conduct fieldwork to collect relevant data. If you’re conducting quantitative research, use text, emails, websites, and social media to reach respondents. For qualitative research, primary data collection typically involves interviews or ethnographic research through video surveys. Find ways to record and organize responses from each source. You can complement each type of research with secondary data that relates to your topic.

Technology has made data analysis a breeze for researchers. Students can use programs such as Excel, STATA, and SPSS to organize, clean, analyze, and interpret basic results of their market research. The type of analysis you’ll adopt will depend on your hypothesis. Some good marketing analyses that you can conduct include:

  • Market segmentation analysis
  • Conjoint analysis
  • Price sensitivity analysis
  • TURF analysis

Present findings in a written report

It’s time to put your study together in a well-written market research analysis report that you will present to an audience of decision-makers. The goal is to make your findings come alive so that the audience understands your objectives and insights uncovered in the research. While data analysis could be complex, the final report should only point to the concrete actions and results. Ensure your college research report includes a title page, table of contents, executive summary, methodology, findings, and recommendations. In some cases, you can accompany your report with a slide presentation, charts, case summaries, and graphs.  

Cross-check

When you’re done with your market research report, take time to read through all the details to see if you’ve missed anything, have made mistakes, or if it has a good flow. Your first draft is never your final product. University students can get editing help from professional editing services, or online editing tools, or just ask a friend to double-check the report. Edit the report as many times as you want to make it clear and concise.

Act on your findings

Local and international businesses prepare market research reports for many reasons. Maybe they want to enter a new market or launch a new product. With a research report in hand, it’s time to act on the findings and the recommendations. This could involve commissioning the production of a product, setting up a social media framework, or taking actions to monitor customer loyalty. Still, stay alert to changes in trends that might require new research to be launched in the future.

Wrapping Up

When a busy business executive or professor grabs your market research report, they want to see something that will give them an idea of the research design, the results, and the big picture that addresses company goals. Follow the guide provided in this article to prepare a clear and actionable market research report.

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Writing a market research report is a tough skill to master. Read our 5 top tips to get you started for writing a successful market research report.

While data collection and results analysis can be highly in-depth and time-consuming processes to complete, they still only mark the beginning of your market research project. The next step is writing a market research report, which is a tough skill to master. The report must effectively communicate your research findings such as consumer trends, market trends, and competitor behaviour surrounding your target audience .

A market research report is a summary of research findings and insights uncovered during the data collection and analysis processes. Research reports usually contain information about a company’s competition, industry trends/opportunities, and recommendations for next steps based on the research questions being addressed.

A good research report helps guide decision-making and highlight market opportunities. You should be clear and concise but also detailed and comprehensive, keeping in mind that stakeholders must be able to interpret your findings with ease. This is no easy task, which is why we have listed our 5 top tips to get you started for writing a successful market research report.

Use language stakeholders can understand

Your market research report will be presented to many stakeholders, not all of which will have a strong understanding of market research terms, so it is important that you write in clear, simple language.

Do not assume stakeholders will understand without explanation, for example, all diagrams should be clearly labelled and accurately describe what they are displaying. It is helpful to imagine you are writing the research report for a reader who has no prior knowledge on the topic to ensure you are explaining your findings comprehensively.

Report on insights through storytelling

Writing a seamless research report is not only easier to read but also ensures you have covered all necessary elements. Work chronologically to unpack your research — What is it about? What did you discover? What should you do next? Your research report should build upon your “story” the further it reads and further support your final recommendations .

Share insights through visual reporting

Visual elements such as diagrams and charts deliver numerical information more clearly than writing. They also help to break up text and keep the reader engaged with the research report and can be easily referenced during presentations. Similarly, images and icons can be used to draw attention to certain findings and make formatting more presentable.

Turn data into actionable insights

Data is meaningless to stakeholders unless it is interpreted and presented with a set of actions or “next steps”. Your goal is to explain how the data you have collected can drive smart business decisions and why these decisions are the best course of action. Outline step-by-step connections to ensure all readers can clearly understand the relationship between data and action.

Avoid vague reporting

It is important to keep your research report brief, including only the most substantial points you want to communicate. All reporting must be supplemented with firm evidence and written in an assertive tone to convey certainty of your findings. Keep recommendations clear and concise, without straying too far from your main points — writing that goes off on tangents can distract from your main points.

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Marketing Reports 101: How to Create One + Templates

Marketing Reports 101: How to Create One + Templates

Written by: Unenabasi Ekeruke

Marketing Reports 101: How to Create One + Templates

You certainly can't rely on guesswork or gut feeling to answer these questions or make informed decisions. This is where marketing reports come into play.

Marketing reports provide the data you need to monitor activities, assess performance and make smarter decisions that bring better results. According to Think with Google , marketers who leverage tools to analyze, measure and report their marketing programs are 39% more likely to perform better.

If you are sold on creating high-quality marketing reports that captivate your audience, we've got you covered.

In this article, we'll teach you everything you need to know about marketing reports, how to create them and marketing report templates you can use straight away.

Table of Contents

What is a marketing report, the benefits of marketing reporting.

  • How to Create a Marketing Report

Marketing Report Best Practices

Marketing report templates, level up your marketing reports with visme.

What is a marketing report

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A marketing report is a collection of data from different sources to evaluate the progress and performance of your marketing efforts and inform future marketing decisions. Businesses of all sizes create marketing reports to glean valuable into their:

  • Overall marketing strategy
  • Marketing goals
  • Key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Marketing activities like research, promotions, content, ads, email, social media and more
  • Expected outcomes and actual results

Not all marketing reports are created equal. The scope of your marketing reports can vary depending on the data you want to track and the number of marketing channels. The common types of marketing reports include:

  • General marketing reports
  • Social media marketing reports
  • SEO marketing reports
  • PPC marketing reports
  • Email marketing reports

When used effectively, marketing reporting puts you on top of your marketing activities and metrics across all marketing channels. At a glance, you'll get a bird's eye view of which marketing campaigns and channels are delivering the best results.

You're probably wondering why you should create reports, especially when key stakeholders aren't compelling you to present them. Or why add another challenging task to your itinerary when you've got customers and other business activities to attend to.

Here are the major perks of creating a detailed marketing report.

Visualize Customer Purchase Journey

There's no better way to understand the customer journey than by using a marketing report. From your marketing report, you can quickly identify:

  • Critical touch points
  • Lead magnets or contents that are driving the most impact
  • Where your prospects are on their journey
  • Prospects who are willing to spend and when they plan to make a purchase
  • What steps you should take to speed up the sales process and much more
  • How to optimize your sales and marketing funnel to convert better

Measure and Analyze Marketing Efforts

After investing a significant amount of time and money in marketing, how do you know if your efforts are worthwhile? This is precisely where marketing reports come in.

Whether you're looking to generate leads, turn prospects into customers or increase revenue, your marketing reports will show you whether or not your campaigns are achieving the desired results. You'll quickly figure out which strategies will help you maximize return on investment and get more bang for your marketing buck.

Every marketer and data analyst understands that the struggle with reporting is real. But Visme makes writing a report super-easy regardless of your skill level. It doesn't matter what type of data you want to capture. Visme has thousands of compelling report templates , stock images, visual aids and design elements to make your reports pack a punch.

Make Informed Business Decisions

In today's hyper-competitive business environment, you can't rely on wild guesses and gut feelings to make important marketing decisions. If you want to call the right shots or get your decisions spot on, you need rich and quality data.

We're not just talking about gathering a bunch of isolated numbers for the sake of it. Relevant and actionable data shows how your marketing campaigns have fared and impacted your bottom line.

Moreover, be sure this data is digestible and deeply connected to your business outcomes. A detailed marketing report like the one below gives you all of your granular and enriching marketing data in one place.

what is report writing in marketing research

Keeps Everyone on the Same Page

Misalignments between sales and marketing teams are a struggle for most businesses. It stifles business growth and costs companies more than $1 trillion yearly .

For this alignment to happen, data needs to flow across departments. And marketing reports are often the missing piece of the puzzle. They provide the data that sales and marketing teams need to:

  • Optimize marketing content to increase emotional appeal and close more sales
  • Achieve their sales and marketing goals
  • Nurture leads through each stage of the sales funnel
  • Increase conversions and drive revenue over the top

How To Create a Marketing Report

Now you know why you need a marketing report. The next big question is how do you create a comprehensive and useful marketing report?

We'll go over how to create marketing reports to help you make better decisions and benefit your audience.

1. Outline the Purpose of Your Marketing Report

Without a clear-cut purpose, your marketing report is just a bunch of isolated numbers without meaning. Before gathering data and creating a report, ask yourself these questions.

  • What is the purpose of this report?
  • What message do we want to share and how do we convey it?
  • What are we looking to learn from this report?

Are you looking to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns? Do you want to justify marketing expenses or study marketing trends over a period of time?

Let's face it; you can't possibly fit every single piece of data into your marketing report. Answering these questions will help you focus on data that shape your marketing strategy, inform your decisions and help you perform better.

2. Know Your Audience

With a ton of marketing activities going on, you probably have a heap of data that's getting bigger by the hour.

All of this information may be relevant to you. But you want to ask yourself, is it relevant to the management team or people in other departments?

For example, the VP of marketing may be interested in which marketing campaigns bring in more leads, conversions and positive ROI. In contrast, the chief financial officer will want to see how marketing expense translates to sales and impacts the bottom line.

Before writing your marketing report, find out your target audience and what they want to know. This viewpoint will help you decide what data to provide. Plus, your marketing report must reflect the needs of your target audience.

Be sure to make your reports contain valuable information that's easy to understand. Your audience should be able to view the report and have clear direction on the next steps rather than scratching their heads in confusion.

3. Gather Your Data

Once you're clear on your target audience, the next important step is to gather, filter and analyze your data.

As your business grows, keeping tabs on granular data and tracking performance can be daunting. It's always helpful to keep an updated document of relevant documents and spreadsheets showing key metrics.

Using analytics tools like Google Analytics , Mixpanel , Hotjar , SEMRush and more to capture key marketing data can make your job a lot easier. You can also use change data capture (CDC) to track changes in your data warehouse, which will help you see the impact that new features have on the way people interact with your website.

Depending on your reporting process, you can do a daily, monthly or weekly dump and then use the data to build your report.

While gathering your data, you may be tempted to report everything, which isn't a good idea. Remember, your audience is typically only interested in the most critical metrics. Please resist the urge to drown them in a sea of meaningful information and lengthy reports.

Start by defining the period you want to focus on. Is it a weekly , monthly , quarterly or annual report ?

If you want a clear picture of your marketing performance over a period, it's better to draw comparisons between two different periods—current vs. previous. Also, be sure the metrics align with the goals you shared earlier.

4. Write Your Report

You've got reliable data to build your sales report at this stage. Now it's time to craft your report in a digestible, understandable and actionable format.

First, you want to choose a report writing format that captures the critical information and keeps your audience engaged. The next step is to identify what you should include in your report.

Let's look at your marketing report structure and what you should include in your report.

Marketing Report Structure

Marketing Report Structure

Marketing report structures aren't one size fits all. They may vary based on the purpose and content of your report, but the most common sections include the following:

Title or Cover Page

This page should be concise and clearly state what your report is analyzing. The cover page should include:

  • Report title
  • Reporting period and the date it was written

Executive Summary

This section usually comes last. It should summarize the key points of the entire report, highlight successes and failures and discuss future plans.

Introduction

In this section, you want to talk about what your report is about, who it's addressed to, what they'll find it and why they should care.

The body is usually the longest section of your report. Here you'll plug in all the marketing data you collected earlier. Again, make sure to use bullet points and visualizations to enhance readability and visual appeal.

Summarize your marketing report with key takeaways and a clear call to action. Remember to make recommendations and highlight the next steps.

What To Include in Your Report

A well-written marketing report should detail key areas and the performance of your marketing activities. While the level of details may vary based on your strategy or how complex your operations are, you should aim to capture the following critical information.

Overview of your marketing strategy

Here you should discuss your marketing goals, target audience and what channels you're using to reach your prospects. It should also highlight the specific action you're taking to execute your strategy.

Campaigns/Areas of Focus

This section should take a deep dive into your recent marketing efforts, including:

  • Projects or campaigns you've run
  • Pending, completed and upcoming task

You should aim to capture your win, losses, lessons learned and plans for the next phase.

Metrics and Analytics

This section should capture critical figures that show progress, performance and marketing effectiveness. It should reflect how well your campaigns are edging towards your set goals and key performance indicators.

5. Visualize Your Data

Data-heavy reports can be exhausting, especially when you're slamming your audience with large walls of text and numbers. To keep your audience engaged, visualize your marketing reports with eye-catching charts , graphs , infographics , images, videos and other visual aids .

Using visual aids will make it easier for your audience to digest your report and retain important information. You can create data visualizations such as graphs, charts and maps with the help of Visme's graph maker .

Watch the video below to learn how to create beautiful charts and graphs that make your marketing report effective.

what is report writing in marketing research

Read this article to learn more about creating charts and other visual aids. Watch the video below to discover how to use data visualization for reporting and business intelligence.

what is report writing in marketing research

6. Pay Attention to Design

Your marketing report design doesn't have to be dull and uninteresting. Instead, use these design tips to make your report engaging and attractive.

  • Enrich and add personality to your marketing reports with images, videos and GIFs
  • Use a consistent color scheme and color contrast for your report
  • Customize your report using brand elements like colors, logos, fonts and layout
  • Make your marketing report more engaging by incorporating animation and interactivity
  • To make your report cleaner and easier to read, use headers or page transitions to divide it into sections
  • Add notes, callouts and comments to bring context to critical metrics and KPIs

Fortunately, you don't need to be a professional graphic designer to create stunning and interactive marketing report designs that impress your audience. All you need is intuitive software like Visme packed with tons of design tools and templates that make your report shine.

7. Leverage Ready-to-Use Marketing Report Templates

Whether you're a novice or seasoned marketer, report templates are a great starting point. These preset templates help you choose the right data and show you where and how to place them.

Beyond saving you time and effort, they ensure your content and design elements are consistent. In the end, you're sure to have a beautiful and organized marketing report.

Visme offers thousands of fully customizable and user-friendly marketing report templates, layouts and features to suit your specific needs. All you need to do is pick a professionally-designed template and customize it to your taste. And boom, your marketing report is ready to go.

Even if you have little or no design experience, you can fast-track your next marketing report with our stunning, easy-to-use template below.

what is report writing in marketing research

Writing a useful report requires planning, thoughtful consideration and follow-up. Let's go over some best practices to keep in mind when reporting on your marketing and sales efforts.

1. Schedule Your Reports

If you want to get timely reports for decision-making and ensure that teams are aligned, you need to schedule your reports to run periodically.

One way to ensure you're getting reports at the right time is to set a reminder to compile a report or set it to run automatically. Scheduling your report ahead of time leaves you with enough time to clean your data and reduces the risk of human error.

2. Put Your Most Valuable Data First

Whether you're creating reports to share with your team or top management, you certainly want your audience to read till the end.

Nobody wants to read an entire report only to get the key points on the last page. Make sure to place the most useful information early on. Right off the bat, your content should:

  • Educate your audience,
  • Highlight compelling figures and interesting insights
  • Draw readers' attention to urgent and critical issues
  • Provide information for decision-making

Use bullet points, callout quotes and sidebars to effectively grab the reader's attention while breaking up unappealing blocks of text. If you need to capture numbers, you can embed sheets into your documents .

3. Tell a Story

Lumping your reports with endless numbers and charts without context gives limited insight into what your report is all about. Instead, you want to walk your audience through the story behind the report, giving them the information and context they need at every level. This might also call for some interactive marketing techniques as well.

In a nutshell, your story should add more meaning to your data or answer critical questions like:

  • What's responsible for the metrics, patterns or trends in your marketing data?
  • What marketing tactics are you implementing that would cause the numbers to skyrocket or decline?

While telling your story, keep it succinct and add personality to make it enjoyable to read. Watch the video below to get more tips on telling compelling stories with data.

what is report writing in marketing research

4. Gather Feedback From Your Audience

After you've presented your marketing reports and engaged your audience, remember to ask for feedback. You can ask for feedback via email or provide a short survey form for them to fill out.

Getting feedback from those using your marketing reports will help you determine whether it's useful or captures everything they need to know and what you can do to improve your marketing report in the future.

Are you ready to create attractive marketing reports that add value to your business? Look no further; you've hit the jackpot.

Here's a selection of professionally designed templates crafted to provide value and actionable insight into your marketing performance.

Template #1: Weekly Marketing Report

If you want to capture your marketing team's performance every week, this template is set up to make your work easier.

This template features a rich blend of bright colors with strong visual contrast. It also uses design elements that draw attention to KPIs and metrics like web analytics, campaigns and social media engagement.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #2: Monthly Marketing Report

A monthly marketing report template like this one is a perfect way to show your audience what your marketing team has been up to in the past month.

The template has a simplistic cover design and layout that accommodates key marketing performance highlights, metrics, line graphs and timelines that make your report shine.

You can add compelling images, videos and animations to make your report engaging and interactive. Customize this template with your logo, color and fonts to match your brand identity.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #3: Social Media Marketing Report

Assigning tasks to teams and tracking the progress of each task can be daunting, especially when you're dealing with multiple social media channels. But a single-paged report template like this example simplifies the process for your marketing team and brings everyone on the same page.

It has a rich blue and white color combination and a clean, spaced-out design. At a glance, you can capture a wealth of data, instant feedback and comments.

Simply plug in your marketing data, change the font, typography and color to match your brand and you're ready to go.

Social Media Marketing Weekly Report

Template #4: Content Marketing Report

Do you want to share your content marketing plans and see if your efforts are paying off? Then, using this simple, clear and concise weekly report template is your best bet.

You can share your content ideas, competitor analysis and keyword search results. Then, fill in the placeholders with your data and descriptive content and make your data more visually appealing by using color-coded vector icons , shapes, charts and more.

Content Marketing Weekly Report

Template #5: Quarterly Email Analytics Report

Keeping track of quarterly email analytics lets you know how your subscribers engage with your emails. With a template like this one, you can track metrics that directly link to your business goals and put your email marketing strategy and performance into perspective.

Visme gives you the creative freedom to make this template your own. Unleash your creativity and level up your email analytics report by incorporating Visme's graphic vector icons and shapes.

Explore our extensive collection of colorful, isometric, flat and outline graphics to find your perfect match and make your report stand out.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #6: Promotional Sales Report

This template is a perfect fit for sharing insights into your promotion campaign efforts, results and expected outcomes.

The cover page features a stunning image of the store and a powerful theme that leaves an impression on your readers.

This template moves further away from traditional neutral and corporate blue. However, the bright and bold yellow color scheme is catchy enough to draw readers into the content and show your brand's personality. The report template has four key sections and uses more text and numbers to get the message across.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #7: Social Media Analytics Report

This multi-page template has a sophisticated design, modern layout and dynamic elements that grab the audience's attention. It's designed to provide a high-level overview of your overall social media performance.

The template breaks down your report into four sections and beams more light on metrics such as social media reach, interaction and customer gain across multiple social media platforms.

Feel free to tweak colors, gradients, fonts to reflect your brand identity. You can also use charts, images, illustrations, characters, gestures and visualizations to bring your report to life.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #8: Promotional Campaign Report

This promotional campaign report template is perfect for businesses of all sizes. You can use it to share updates, progress and results of advertisements and other marketing activities.

The template has an appealing design layout and artistic theme with stylized content blocks, colorful borders, background photos and vector icons, all sourced from Visme's rich design and asset library. The colorful line graph makes the financial data compelling and memorable.

Feel free to cut, copy, paste and adjust anything you like until it fits your unique needs.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #9: Retail Weekly Promotional Campaign Report

If you want to ignite new interest in your company's ongoing promotional campaign, this stylish and attractive report template fits the bill.

The template uses a mix of stunning visualizations, color schemes and a uniquely crafted layout to make your information stand out. You can easily customize the template, present information in a compelling way and create an engaging experience for your audience.

what is report writing in marketing research

Template #10: Annual Marketing Report Template

What overarching theme would you use to highlight marketing performance in the past year? Our final pick is an annual marketing report template that's sure to leave an impression on your audience.

The template caters to any business regardless of size, niche and scope. Likewise, it covers everything key stakeholders need to know, including your marketing efforts, strategy, achievements and plans for the coming years. Make your report stand out with a variety of stylish fonts, high-quality images and stock photos and visual aids from Visme.

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what is report writing in marketing research

Marketing Report Essentials: How To Create Perfect Reports And Impress Clients

  • February 10, 2020
  • 16 minutes read

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Marketing reports are at the core of any marketing strategy.

And while some marketers only think of reporting as a sales pitch, it’s actually much more than that. 

While it’s important to prove the value of the work you provide to your clients or your superiors, it’s even more important to develop an unbiased reporting framework for yourself.

You need to know if your marketing strategy is working in order to make smart decisions.

That said, nobody has hours and hours to put marketing reports together. Efficiency is key.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to create a powerful and thorough marketing report that’ll blow away your clients.

What is Marketing Reporting?

Marketing reporting is the process of evaluating the progress and performance of your marketing campaigns against a predetermined set of goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). 

The goal of marketing reporting is to use data and analytics to inform decision-making on your future marketing endeavors.

What Marketing Reporting is Not

Let’s make a clear distinction: marketing reporting is not a data dump.

Something like a marketing dashboard is not a report on its own—although it may play a key role in your reporting.

The differentiator between a report and a dashboard is that its main purpose is to provide takeaways from the data—not just a bare presentation of the data itself.

The Benefits of Marketing Reporting

You only have so much time in a day. Why should you spend your valuable time producing a report?

Prove Your Worth

Even though quality marketing consistently leads to growth for any business, it’s more often thought of as a risky expense than as a necessary investment. If budgets need to be cut, it’s much harder to cut the operations that generate revenue than the promotion of those operations. 

Creating a compelling marketing report proves the return on investment of your strategy to the decision makers in your organization (or your client’s organization), and justifies future strategies you want to undertake.

Ground Your Strategy

It’s easy for your clients to forget why you’re writing blog posts, or why you’re hiring Instagram influencers . By tying your tactics back to objective business goals like lead generation and revenue growth, you can reinforce the purpose of your actions.

Make Data-Driven Decisions

Even if you’re the world’s best marketer, your intuition and experience will only get you so far. Theories and strategies backed by cold hard data are far more worth pursuing.

How Often Should You Do Marketing Reports?

While you should be checking in on your marketing dashboards and campaign metrics on a consistent basis, full digital marketing reports should be reserved for key decision-making time periods.

For example, you may look at your website traffic, PPC campaigns, and social media metrics nearly every day. If you don’t, you risk missing glaring issues.

By checking these campaigns every day, you may be able to note small wins that you wouldn’t be able to remember three months from now.

However, you should not be providing reports at a high frequency to your clients.

First of all, you risk burning out your client. If your reporting becomes too routine, they won’t have the opportunity to truly digest the information, ask questions, or provide meaningful feedback.

And honestly, they probably just won’t read them.

You’re also risking evaluating your campaigns on too small a sample size. Making big, long term decisions based on day-to-day fluctuations in your data is just as bad as ignoring the data altogether.

And remember: Marketing reports should be period evaluations of success to drive key decision making .

So ask yourself: for the campaign(s) you’re running, what is a reasonable timeframe to truly evaluate your success?

In most cases, marketing reports should take place monthly, quarterly, and annually. 

Monthly Reporting

Monthly marketing reports are best suited for tracking progress and looking at month-over-month or year-over-year improvements.

Campaigns with tighter timelines like PPC and social campaigns can be reported on monthly, but only if you truly have enough time to ask “is this working?”

If you are reporting monthly, remember to take seasonal trends into account. 

For example, you’d expect an eCommerce brand to pick up around Black Friday, so it wouldn’t make sense to compare November metrics to October. In that case, it’s better to compare to the previous year.

Quarterly Reporting

In most cases, quarterly reporting is a long enough timeframe to evaluate your big-picture goals.

Has revenue grown? Is our website traffic up? Did our ad campaign result in more searches for our brand?

Quarterly reporting also provides the chance to reset and evaluate your goals before the next three months of hard work.

Annual Reporting

If you’re an in-house marketing team or you have a big account that renews annually, you should also provide an annual marketing report.

A review of the entire year’s initiatives is a great way to demonstrate your impact, and most organizations will require a report on ROI when factoring their marketing spend into next year’s budget.

Tips for Preparing the Perfect Marketing Report

Creating the report itself is only half the battle. 

Here are some important steps to take in advance to make sure that your marketing reports result in educated discussions with your team, superiors, or clients.

Tip #1 – Determine Why You’re Creating the Report

Are you reporting on the success or failure of a campaign that you’ve just completed?

Are you reporting on the progress of a campaign?

Or are you reporting on performance of a past campaign—such as benchmarking, for example.

By starting by answering why you’re creating the report, the rest of the report will flow much more easily.

Tip #2 – State Your Purpose

Because the goal of your marketing report is to help make a decision, the next step is to write down the goal of your report: what question are you trying to answer?

Your purpose should be tied back to a key business goal .

For example, your purpose may be “What type of social media content drives the most clicks to our website?” or “Did our Instagram hashtag campaign result in our target follower growth?”

Do not report data for the sake of reporting data. You need a clear purpose.

Your marketing report could report on the success of:

  • Social media campaigns
  • SEO efforts
  • Content marketing
  • Paid search and social ads
  • Lead generation
  • Revenue growth

You may choose to report on the success or failure of using one channel, or a comparison of which channels have proven most fruitful so far.

Tip #3 – Determine Your Reporting Audience

Think about who the report is for. As in, who will be the key decision-makers you’re presenting to?

Make sure you consider the goals and motivations of that audience, and give them the information they need.

And this isn’t just about emotional appeal. It’s about arming every decision-maker with the information they require to succeed in their role.

For example, if you’re reporting to your team, their motivation may be “what could I have done differently?” and you may want to tie specific tactics to specific results. 

But if you’re reporting to your client, their motivation may be “is this investment resulting in revenue growth?” In that case, the breakdown of individual tactics may be less important to them.

Make a list of who the report is for, what motivations each person may have based on their role, and what metrics or facts you need to include to make the report meaningful to them.

If you’re presenting to multiple audiences, and their motivations don’t significantly overlap, consider making different reports for each audience.

Tip #4 – Choose a Reporting Period in Advance

Choose a reporting period that’s most relevant to your goal. 

Bigger-picture decisions will require longer timeframes, but smaller tasks and goals may only need a few weeks or a month.

For more on reporting frequency, you can jump ahead to “How often should you do marketing reports?”

Tip #5 – Set a Reporting Schedule (and stick to it!)

Every marketer in the world has an infinite to-do list, which makes it easy to put aside or completely forget about recurring reports.

If you’re aiming for weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual reports, set calendar reminders for yourself. 

And make sure to set the reminders early enough to have the report done by its intended presentation date.

Tip #6 – Choose Your Metrics & Reporting Tools

This is often forgotten at the beginning of a marketing campaign.

Always plan how you’re going to collect your data before starting an initiative.

In fact, if you want to test the effectiveness of a campaign vs. baseline performance, you may need to start tracking well in advance of the campaign.

So which reporting tool is right for you? That will once again depend on your goals.

Here are a few considerations to keep in mind when choosing your reporting tools:

  • Automation: Your data collection and reporting process should be as automated as possible to avoid spending hours copy and pasting data from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. Favor a tool that automates as much as possible.
  • Ease of access: Are you able to easily export data to a spreadsheet or PDF, or link to another tool through an API? Consider how you will access the data.
  • Feature set: Depending on your goals, you may want a tool that combines as many different data channels into one platform, or you may want a tool that gives you a deep dive into one channel.
  • Price: Of course, your budget will always be your limiting factor, but you should factor in your own time when considering the cost of a tool that makes your life easier.

If you’re focused on website traffic or engagement metrics, you’ll almost certainly use Google Analytics . Similarly, if you’re focused on PPC campaign performance, you’ll use the native data reporting capabilities of Google Ads.

If you’re reporting on the effectiveness of your social media campaigns, you’ll want to use a social listening tool like Keyhole .

But to choose the right tool, it’s clear we’ll have to choose our key metrics first. 

What Metrics Should You Include in a Marketing Report?

The most important aspect of any marketing report is the data.

But you can’t simply include any data. You have to choose metrics that are meaningful to the purpose of your report.

Based on the purpose of your report, choose your true key performance indicators (KPIs) .

What are KPIs?

These are the metrics that actually show if you’ve accomplished your goal or not, or the metrics that correlate best with your goals.

Here are the main metric categories that you may want to include:

Reach & Impression Metrics

If your goal is brand awareness, you will likely be most interested in how many eyeballs your content has reached. 

In that case, you’ll want to report on:

  • Social media reach
  • Social media impressions
  • Subscribers
  • Search engine impressions
  • Video views

For example, if you ran a campaign with a branded hashtag , you’ll want to report on hashtag analytics , such as Instagram impressions.

READ MORE: Reach vs. Impressions. What’s the Difference?

Traffic & SEO Metrics

If you’re interested in visitors to your website, you will report on metrics like:

  • User sessions
  • New vs. returning sessions

You’ll get the most use out of these metrics if you compare things like channel sources, your most popular content, user devices, user geography, or other dimensions that matter to your business. Heatmaps can be a valuable tool for visualizing and analyzing these metrics, allowing you to see patterns and variations in user engagement, content popularity, or geographic distribution.

Engagement Metrics

Perhaps you know you already have strong traffic, but your goal was to make more engaging content that results in more time spent on your website.

  • Time on page
  • Time on site
  • Bounce rate
  • Click-Through Rate

These metrics will help you identify your most successful content and highlight where there’s room for improvement. Metrics such as the bounce rate, which can be decreased by employing an  email verification tool  to clean invalid addresses from lists, will help identify highly engaging content while also showing areas that need further optimization.

Conversion & Ad Metrics

Most digital campaigns are about driving conversions, so it’s likely you’ll need to report on revenue-driving metrics like leads and ad spend.

  • Form submissions
  • Advertising spend
  • Conversion rate
  • Cost per acquisition

Business Impact Metrics

These are the metrics that really tie back to the business’s goals: 

  • Sales-qualified leads (SQLs)
  • Opportunities
  • Deals/contracts
  • eCommerce sales

The more closely you can attribute revenue and deals to a specific marketing channel, the more compelling a case you can make for that channel’s success.

How to Create a Marketing Report

If you’ve chosen a clear goal, you’ve identified the key metrics, and you’re using the right tool, the creation of the report itself should be a breeze.

Here’s how to create the perfect report:

Step 1 – Choose Your Format

How you present your report will greatly influence its effectiveness.

For example, a quick email with a few notes and numbers won’t do the job.

In most cases, we’d recommend creating a slideshow with free slide templates using Google Slides or Powerpoint as you can provide a good mix of data and notes.

Most analytics tools will let you export your data into a report, but even in those cases, it’s best to present this data into bite-sized slides as not to overwhelm your audience with tons of data points at once.

Step 2 – Start with Spoilers

Put everything good at the beginning of your report. Don’t save anything for the end.

You should start off by clearly stating your report’s purpose and goals. It should be clear to everyone what they are expected to take away from the report before they’ve even heard it. It’s all about creating the right context.

Include any relevant history that’s necessary to understand the report, including previous campaigns and what business problem or challenge led to the creation of the report.

If your report is really long, you may also want to jump straight to the point and state all of your key takeaways.

In this introduction section, you should also state your reporting period. If it’s your first time preparing that report, you may also want to include justification for why that reporting period is significant.

Step 3 – Review Each Goal & Relevant KPIs

This is the meat of your report.

For each goal (it’s possible you may have only one), include

  • KPIs: What was your measure of success for the goal? Did you achieve it?
  • Successes & Challenges: Provide a bullet point summary of what worked and what didn’t
  • Metrics & Data: Include a summary of the data, including a visual component like a graph or chart
  • Takeaways: What should we conclude from the data?
  • Decision Points: Based on the data, are there any decisions to be made by the audience of the report?

The key here is to provide a data-backed review of each goal, but with enough narrative support that your audience doesn’t have to make conclusions for themselves.

To make things really fast for yourself, you’ll want to build a marketing dashboard. More on that below!

Step 4 – Conclude Your Report

Remember: the point of your report is to help drive decision making.

At the end of your report, restate your successes, challenges, and takeaways that you gleaned from the data.

Summarize any decisions that need to be made, because that’s the reason we’re here!

In most cases, you’ll want to include your recommendations for the decisions directly in your report, so that you’re not forcing your superiors or clients to make decisions on the spot.

How to Build a Marketing Dashboard

While we’ve made it clear from the start that there’s a major difference between creating a full-blown marketing report and building a marketing dashboard, having an easily accessible data dashboard will make creating your reports much easier.

A marketing dashboard allows you to see all of your data in one place so that you can periodically check in on a daily or weekly basis.

A clean dashboard will also let you easily take screenshots when it comes time to build your report, saving you tons of time.

Website & Ad Performance Dashboards

For website traffic and ad performance, tools like Google Analytics and Google Ads have built-in dashboards that summarize the most commonly used metrics. 

If you want to change these dashboards, they also offer the ability to customize which metrics appear on the main dashboard.

If you want to get more sophisticated, Google Data Studio lets you import data from multiple sources into one visual dashboard.

Social Media Analytics Dashboards

For social media metrics, Keyhole aggregates all of the most important social media analytics into one place. 

While Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter all have dashboards of their own, you’ll save tons of time by aggregating them all in one place.

Keyhole will summarize:

  • Campaign & event tracking data
  • Influencer performance
  • Brand visibility metrics
  • Competitor data

And not only does it get you the data you need, it’s presentation-ready too.

Switch To Keyhole

Creating reports doesn’t have to be a cumbersome experience. If you’ve determined clear objectives, then it’s all about having the right tools.

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10 tips for writing a market research report.

Fuel Cycle blog: 10 Things to Remember When Writing a Market Research Report

Every market researcher’s biggest nightmare is for a client to say, “this doesn’t address our business issues.”  

However, this type of issue is prevalent; even if we pretend it doesn’t occur. Most reports don’t reach the expectations of clients – this is due to the wrong writing techniques being used.  

Rather than a focus on clear information and direct storytelling, market researchers will focus on methodology or analytics.  

The main issue lies with the fact that market researches only consider the direct research client. They fail to realize that this research will later be presented to stakeholders or senior management.  

What is a market research report? 

It’s essential to understand what precisely a market research report is. The definition seems to get confused sometimes.  

Your market research report should include all market data, that’s relevant to your client. This could be trends, consumer behavior, and competitive analysis.  

The report should be presented in a way that allows businesses to identify their opportunities – giving them a clear idea of the real world, and how they can be improving.  

These reports are written every single day in the marketing industry, and so making sure yours stands out and is genuinely useful is crucial.  

Market reports have multiple benefits.  These include validating internal research and gather industry information quickly.  

When writing a research report for your clients, you should keep the following things in mind.  

1. Always research  

It’s called a “research” report after all. However, so many marketers fail to do exceptional research.  

Before you can even begin writing your report, you need to know as much as you possibly can. It’s not something that you should research and write as you go along.  

Make sure you look into the market that you’re analyzing and find out specific information. This will make your report valuable and exciting.  

This is also the step that you calculate the cost of performing the research, yourself. The research can be compiled from tools, platforms or internal data.  

2. Understand the objectives  

Has your client given you a specific reason/objective for the research report?  If they have, every single aspect of your report should point towards reaching those objectives.  

Once you’re aware of your objectives, researching and writing the report will become much clearer.  

If you don’t aim towards reaching objectives, the report could be completely useless.  

3. Create an outline  

Once you’ve researched and understood the objectives, you can start to prepare our report. Many people make the mistake of diving right into writing, which isn’t the best way.  

You should create an outline – so that you can make your way through seamlessly. This helps to eliminate the chance of you repeating yourself, or missing important parts out.  

Once you have the outline, just fill it in. It’s the best way to begin writing your outline and is a common writing technique for journalists and authors.  

Here’s an example of an outline that you can use: 

  • Title  
  • Table of Contents 
  • Introduction  
  • Methodology and background  
  • Executive summary  
  • Conclusion  
  • Appendix  

Obviously, add other sections in wherever necessary. This outline should guide you through your entire market report. Every single section is unique to your report.  

4. Speak their language  

We’re not specifically talking about their original language – although that’s also a big must. We’re talking about marketer’s language. Give them the information that they really want to hear. Otherwise, they won’t find the report beneficial.  

Things like pricing, best prospects, and valuable customers all sparks interest in marketers.  

“You should find the perfect balance between valuable research and marketing language. This will ensure that your report is useful to all those reading it.” — Diana Adjadj, Copywriter at Trust My Paper . 

5. Perfect your storytelling skill 

Storytelling is crucial when it comes to a market report. A good report also tells a good story.  

Every single page in your report should contribute to some form of a story. If it doesn’t add to it, cut it out, or place it in the Appendix.  

If you don’t find your storytelling skills, you will just be left with a report that has no structure and little excitement.  

Storytelling is something that many marketers are leading into. In fact,  92% of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story. In the same way, you should create a report that works in the same way. Create a linear and expressive narrative.  

6. Split it up  

Your report will probably contain extensive research. When you try to present this all in one, it can be difficult to follow.  

Use headlines and bullet points to make everything a little easier to digest. As a researcher, it’s your job to pick out the deeper insights from obvious data – presenting this simply is key.  

7. Inject in creativity  

Your report won’t read well if you’re not creative with it. Writing it is only one aspect of market research reports – making it fun and interesting is the final hurdle.  

Read over your report, evaluate if you’ve creatively presented your findings.  

8. Use charts and graphs  

Charts and graphs add credibility to your report. They are absolutely essential to every report.  

Not only do they present valuable data clearly and concisely, but they also make the report much easier to understand.  

You could also consider using images if they are relevant. A picture speaks a thousand words, after all.  

9. Get to the point  

Probably your hardest task – getting straight to the point of your report. What does all the data that you’ve compiled together really mean?  

“Ultimately, you want to show the marketers and executives what they can do with your data, how they can invest, and how to maximize their sales.” — Melanie Sovann, Sales Copywriter at Studicus.com . 

If you do your report well, you’ll get only positive replies at the end. They will be able to use it effectively and make the most out of all your hard work.  

So, look into all aspects of your report. The implications, conclusions, and recommendations should all lead to one point. Obviously, this is also linked to the objective, too.  

10. Don’t forget to include an Appendix  

Every report needs an appendix. However, this should also be used as a way to include any information, that didn’t add enough to the story.  

For instance, if you have a point that isn’t directly related to an objective, but can provide extra information, place it in the Appendix.  

“Including an appendix is a great way to keep your main text streamlined and concise, without missing out any information that may be needed.” — Estelle Leotard, Technical Writer at Grab My Essay .

Once you’ve finished your report, ask somebody else to read it. From here, see if you’ve missed anything out, you’ve made any mistakes, or if it’s easy to follow.  

You can edit your report as many times as you want – your first draft will, more than likely, not be your final product. Just keep going, and keep finding ways to make it more concise and clear – if you need to take out points and add them to the Appendix, don’t be afraid to do so.  

You can also use various tools and platforms to help you write your market report,  Google Analytic reports help with marketing  immensely.  

For personalized Market Research guidance, request a Fuel Cycle demo today.

Marie Fincher is a content writer with a background in marketing, technology, and business intelligence. She frequently writes about Data Science, BI, new marketing trends and branding strategies. Marie gradually changed her focus from working in marketing to writing about it. She is currently a full-time writer at Best Essay.Education and an editor at WoWGrade.net .

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How to Write a Marketing Report

Last Updated: March 21, 2024 References

This article was co-authored by Michelle Arbeau . Michelle Arbeau is a Numerologist & Life Strategist, and the CEO of Authentic You Media and Eleven Eleven Productions. She’s based in West Hollywood, California. With over 20 years of experience, she specializes in numerology, mediumship, and business advice. In 2015, Best Businesses named her the Best of West Hollywood Celebrity Numerologist, and she’s been hailed as the #1 Numerologist in the World and the #1 Celebrity Numerologist. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 305,582 times.

Your business may spend a large amount of time and money on marketing. A smart business owner needs to assess how well their marketing plans are working. Specifically, your marketing efforts should get the attention of prospects. Eventually, a percentage of those prospects should become clients. You can perform market research to ask your clients about the effectiveness of your marketing message. Companies summarize the results of their research in a marketing report. Use the results of the report to make improvements in your business.

Evaluating Your Marketing Efforts

Step 1 Consider why you should perform market research and write a report.

  • Market research is the process of evaluating how well your marketing efforts are working. Specifically, does your marketing get the attention and interest of prospects? Are you converting enough of those prospects into clients?

Step 2 Identify your customer.

  • The more specific you can be about the identity of your customer, the better you can address their needs. Ask yourself, "Who am I targeting with this product?" and "What do they want?"
  • Look at your current customers. What's the average age? Gender? Education level? Personality? Lifestyle? Hobby? Occupation? Marriage status? Values? [3] X Research source
  • It is also important to know where your customers are coming from. Sources include search engines, social media, backlinks, referral traffic, and subscriber lists.

Step 3 Evaluate your customer’s problem.

  • For example, based on customer surveys and your industry knowledge, you uncover a customer problem. In this case, customers are losing time working or studying when their cell phone dies. If they forget their charger, they may lose hours of productivity.

Step 4 Detail your solution to the customer's problem.

  • For example, to solve the problem of dying cell phones, you create a phone charger built into a backpack. Your customers use backpacks to store computers and other work or school items. As a result, the worker or student can always charge their phone.

Step 5 Determine how well your product solves your customer's problem.

  • Over time, more customers buy your backpack and like using the built-in phone charger. These clients also believe that your product is different and better than competing products. You are building brand equity with your customers. To find out more about brand equity, see how to build brand equity.

Step 6 Identify your competitive advantage.

  • You continually add blog posts, articles and other content to your website. Adding content drives traffic to your site. Your content also keeps a percentage of your audience coming back for new content.
  • Your site offers an opt-in button for readers to subscribe to additional content that is emailed to them. This group gets a weekly email from you with new content links.
  • You have an attractive home page that includes a picture of someone using your backpack phone charger. The site allows the user to easily navigate to your content page and to web pages with product information.
  • You provide an e-commerce option for customers. Clients can buy your product online and receive their backpack in just 2-3 business days.
  • This should also include information about the sales channels used, like online, bricks & mortar, types of retailers, etc. Analyze how well your product is doing in each of these channels.

Step 8 Evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing.

  • Note your market share compared to competitors and market share trends. Are you gaining market share, losing it, or holding your own?
  • For more on market share, see how to calculate market share.
  • Keeping a close eye on your ROI is essential in order to stay abreast of how much you’re spending on marketing versus your return on that investment. Comparing what you’re spending on marketing versus your return on that investment is paramount to a good report.

Step 9 Summarize your findings for your marketing report.

  • Your report should include such items as definition of the market size, competitors and their marketing size, as well as estimates of market share.
  • You can use the market report to make changes to your marketing process. These changes can help you get more business from the time and money you spend on marketing.

Writing Your Executive Summary

Step 1 Think about the purpose of an executive summary.

  • The summary should include specific, numeric details from the rest of your report. These details should be condensed into bullet points and made prominent on the report. [8] X Research source

Step 2 Describe your company.

  • For example, if your backpack charging company had plans to expand into purse chargers or another similar product line, include these plans in your summary.
  • This should also include the sales channels being used by your business, as well as competitors and their sales channels. Are you different? Why? If not, do you have a competitive advantage that can be exploited in your marketing and sales efforts?

Step 3 Detail the objective of your research.

  • For example, you could be examining how well advertisements for your backpack are reaching college students, as they would be a likely audience for your product. If your ads are primarily reaching adults, who don't generally carry backpacks, this would be an issue to raise in your evaluation.

Step 5 Display marketing conversion data.

  • For example, if only 1 in 20 of your site's visitors actually buy one of your backpacks, you may want to reconsider the design of your websites, the ease of purchase, or the price of your product.

Step 6 Admit any data collection difficulties or incomplete sections.

Completing Your Marketing Report

Step 1 Forecast future trends.

  • You should also consider the fact that other competitors will arise if you are successful. Significant returns attract more competition, so if you don't have direct competitors now, rest assured that you will in the future. Have a plan in place to sustain your competitive advantage in spite of new entrants to the market.
  • For example, perhaps you perceive that college students may be carrying backpacks less often as they switch to an all-digital education. You could remark on how this will hurt your business and explain how you will respond to it.

Step 2 Calculate marketing return on investment.

  • To get the most out of your focus group, carefully plan the exact series of questions you want to ask. Your marketing report should include the questions you ask and why those questions are important to you.
  • In your survey or focus group, ask people how they first heard about your product. If you’re the backpack company, you might determine that most customers find you when they read a blog post or article that is posted to your site.
  • Document the results of both your surveys and your focus groups. Your report should provide both questions and responses. Give the reader the percentage of each type of response. For example, maybe 40% of respondents first learned about the backpack company by finding a blog post or article that was posted on the website.
  • Your qualitative research (survey and focus group questions) may be 5 to 10 pages of your report. The responses to those questions will also be 5 to 10 pages of material.

Step 4 Use your marketing report to make changes in your business.

  • Evaluate the extent to which your customers view your product as different and better than the competition. If they don’t see a difference, dig into their responses and find out why.
  • Say, for example, that most clients see you backpack and built-in phone charger as about the same as a competitor’s product. In fact, your phone charger includes a reinforced case that makes your charger much more durable.
  • Decide on some conclusions. You conclude, for example, that your website needs to emphasize that your phone charger case is much more durable than the competition.
  • You decide to make changes to your website and your other marketing communication pieces. After a period of time, you can assess these changes to see how they have impacted your market share. Perform more market research to evaluate the impact of your changes.

Expert Q&A

Michelle Arbeau

You Might Also Like

Write a Market Description

  • ↑ http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217345
  • ↑ http://articles.bplans.com/how-to-write-a-market-analysis/
  • ↑ https://www.inc.com/guides/2010/06/defining-your-target-markets.html
  • ↑ http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelskok/2013/06/14/4-steps-to-building-a-compelling-value-proposition/
  • ↑ http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/competitive_advantage.asp
  • ↑ https://www.shopify.com/blog/13444793-how-to-evaluate-market-demand-for-your-new-product-idea
  • ↑ http://www.marketingmo.com/strategic-planning/how-to-write-an-executive-summary/
  • ↑ https://www.ironistic.com/good-marketing-report/
  • ↑ http://www.tdbank.com/small_business/workshops/IdentifyYourTargetMarket/texttarget_market.htm
  • ↑ https://neilpatel.com/blog/10-ways-to-make-customers-fall-in-love-with-your-business/

About This Article

Michelle Arbeau

To write a marketing report, start by creating a 1-2 page executive summary that provides a description of the company’s goals. Next, detail the objective of your research and evaluate how well the company is reaching their intended audience. Then, include figures that represent how many visitors to your website purchased the company's product. Additionally, report on the returns the company is getting from its marketing dollars so you can tell if the money was well-spent. To learn more from our Business co-author, like how to use the marketing report to make improvements, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Explore 6 Stunning Marketing Report Examples with Free Templates

Marketing reporting is a crucial element of your marketing strategy. It shows whether your campaigns are hitting their targets or need to be redefined. 

But although reports are important, you don’t want to spend much of your time visualizing and analyzing your marketing performance. 

This is where reporting tools come into play. 

With automated reporting, you have plenty of time to develop actual marketing campaigns while essential metrics are collected and visualized in real time. 

We bring you the six most popular marketing report examples based on our template usage.

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool

Mar 29 2023 ● 6 min read

Explore Stunning Marketing Report Examples with Free Templates

Table of Contents

What is a marketing report, 6 reasons you need a marketing report, 1. access your data easily, 2. track the customer journey, 3. make data-driven decisions, 4. align marketing and sales team goals, 5. speed up your reporting, 6. proving your efforts, how often should you create a marketing report, how to visualize your clients’ marketing data, 6 essential marketing report examples + templates, 1. marketing campaign report, 2. social media marketing report, 3. seo marketing report, 4. ppc marketing report, 5. ecommerce marketing report, 6. email marketing report, why use whatagraph to create marketing performance reports, automated data sourcing, unlimited reports, stunning report templates, drag-and-drop to edit templates, automated delivery, are you ready to start reporting.

A marketing report is a type of report that sources data from your marketing channels in real-time, visualizes it using different graphs, charts, and tables, and allows you to share the insights with your co-workers, clients, managers, etc.

marketing reporting tool in Whatagraph

With a marketing report at your fingertips, you can easily stay on top of your marketing performance across all your channels and identify areas of improvement.

As a marketing specialist, you need a way to access data on your essential marketing KPIs easily. A digital marketing report helps you easily connect your data.

You can include key performance indicators from all the important marketing channels, from social media to email, from SEO to paid ads, and Google Analytics 4.

As a marketer, you want to know where exactly your prospective customers are on their journey. You want to know what device they’re using, when they’ll purchase your product, etc. A marketing report is a source of high-quality data that you can use to offer your prospects exactly what they’re looking for.

You can shape and reshape your entire marketing strategy thanks to your marketing reports. No matter how good you are at your job, your intuition and experience only get you half the way. But to back up your strategy, you need to rely on solid data that comes from your marketing reports.

For a company to reach its business goals, it’s important that data flows freely across the entire organization. Marketing reports can help in this aspect, as well. For example, let’s say that in the midst of a campaign, the sales team finds out that the revenue is less than the set target.

They might not know the reason behind it, but they can pass the ball to the marketing team to look into the issue.

The marketing team can look into the report, identify the issue, make improvements to their strategy, and bring sales back on track.

With so many marketing metrics available, selecting the right ones can be challenging. Luckily, you don’t have to make hard choices today.

Instead of building marketing reports from scratch, you can use our marketing report templates , each with preset KPIs, visualization elements, and a ton of customization options. If you have a different idea, just add different metrics or rearrange the existing ones.

You and I might be aware that marketing is worth the investment and that quality marketing leads to business growth. However, for many people, it’s still a support function and a risky expense. That’s where your marketing reports come in. If you can show that your campaigns are generating leads, turning your prospects into customers, and bringing in revenue, you can prove the value of your marketing efforts.

40 data sources

You should create a marketing report at least on a monthly basis . Weekly or daily reports can be helpful for marketers, as well, but less so for clients, who could easily get overwhelmed by the number of reports and start ignoring them.

Our own research actually shows that a majority of clients would prefer monthly reports or real-time insights via a shared dashboard they can access at wish.

Monthly marketing reports allow you to collect just enough data to see how changes have affected marketing results while also ensuring that faulty campaigns don’t run for too long.

Of course, you don’t have to stick to a monthly or weekly reporting plan. Whatagraph allows you to send reports at your own custom intervals or give the clients a link to access a dashboard in real-time.

But that shouldn’t concern you either. Whether you choose to create a daily, weekly , or monthly report, with Whatagraph, you only need to create the report once, and the data updates automatically.

Presenting clients with a clear and concise marketing report goes a long way to keeping them not only informed of your marketing efforts but also telling them whether they are getting a solid return on investment on their marketing budget.

Here’s what a comprehensive marketing report should include:

  • Visuals : Graphs, charts, and value widgets are much better than tables or rows of data.
  • Upfront key results : This is what most clients came for in the first place. This can either be the header section or even the entire first page of your report. Apart from these single-value widgets, Whatagraph reports allow you to include notes and commentaries as to why things happen the way they do so your clients can understand the campaign performance as a whole.

Visualize your clients main KPIs

  • Bad results as well : Don’t shy away from the bad results. Include them upfront as well, and make sure to explain what happened and what you’re going to do about it.
  • Use headers for sections : They make it easier to follow what each section is talking about in the report.
  • Keep it to the point : Whether you have two or seven pages of materials, try to keep your report short and concise. You should also add a summary at the top of the report that would outline the high-level results for the client.

At all times, you should have a great all-around marketing campaign report in your library, the one that encompasses all your marketing activities — from content marketing to SEO, to eCommerce and everything in between.

This kind of general marketing report is more of an overview. If you need to delve deeper into the metrics, you better check some of the report templates below.

A general marketing report should include:

  • Campaign performance
  • Bounce rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Channel performance by source
  • Goal completion

The best way to start is with Whatagraph’s Ultimate Cross Channel Analytics Report Template .

It’s a one-stop report for presenting all your marketing results from social to email, SEO, and PPC data with attractive visuals.

cross channel report template in Whatagraph

  • Performance overview : Time passed, Goal completions, Number of leads, Media spend, Conversions, and Cost per conversion
  • Acquisition overview : Top channels conversions vs. users (direct, organic, paid, referral)
  • Website overview : Users, New users, Bounce rate, Average session duration, and Page performance
  • Target audience overview : Users per device, Demographics, and Interests: In-market segments
  • Google Ads overview : Time passed, Impressions, Clicks, Conversions, and Cost
  • Organic traffic overview : Time passed, Users, New users, Average rank, Goal completions, and Conversion rate
  • Facebook Ads overview : Time passed, Impressions, Link clicks, Pixel leads, Conversions, Cost per conversion, and Total spend

As you can see, our cross-channel report template allows you to overview and optimize the performance of individual channels without digging deep for each channel

Instead, present your stakeholders with the most important KPIs and report on your progress.

When it comes to social media reporting, you’re generally interested in two aspects:

  • Paid — such as Facebook Ads
  • Organic — such as photos, videos, and blogs

You’re most likely to use the most popular social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, so you need to include them in your reports.

The most important metrics in this type of report include:

  • Likes and follows
  • Demographics
  • Impressions
  • Top performing posts

However, in this case, it is important to organize your data by channel.

To help you with that, Whatagraph’s Social Media Report Template handles all your social media data analytics and evaluates the campaign effectiveness for each client.

social media marketing report in Whatagraph

Our social media template has the following default sections:

  • Overview : Sources, Impressions, Clicks, Engagements, and CTR by source
  • Paid channels overview : Sources, Impressions, Clicks, Engagements, and Click-through rate (CTR) by channel
  • Facebook page : Total page likes, New page likes, Page impressions, Reach, Likes over time, Page engagement, Top performing Facebook posts
  • Instagram : Followers, Engagement rate, New followers, Reach, Activity (website clicks, phone call clicks, get direction clicks, profile visits, etc.), Top locations, and Top Instagram media
  • Twitter : Total followers, Following, New followers, Retweets, and Top tweets
  • LinkedIn : Total followers, Post impressions, New followers, Engaged users, and Network by industry
  • Snapchat : Swipes, Screen time, Shares, Saves, Engagement, and Engagement by device
  • Pinterest : Followers, Views, Likes, Profile reach, Profile performance, and Performance by gender.

Of course, if you don’t need all the social media channels, you can easily remove them and add others like TikTok and YouTube.

Search engine optimization is an important part of any long-term digital marketing plan. It’s time to upgrade your reporting with an all-in SEO marketing dashboard that includes the SEO overview, website traffic report, Ahrefs links, backlink status report, etc.

When creating an SEO marketing report, you need to include

  • Organic sessions
  • Organic conversions
  • Organic landing pages
  • Keyword rankings

Luckily, you don’t need to create one from scratch. Whatagraph’s SEO Report Template can become your go-to reporting source for keeping an eye on your SEO and organic performance, changes in keyword rankings, organic CTR, branded and unbranded search terms, and many more SEO-related metrics.

SEO marketing report in Whatagraph

Our SEO marketing report by default has the following sections:

  • Google WEB search impressions
  • Google WEB search clicks
  • Percent new organic sessions
  • Organic goal completions
  • Organic search funnel: Sessions, Users, and Goal completions
  • Organic traffic compared to the previous year
  • Ahrefs metrics: Backlinks, Refpages, Links internal, Linked root domains, Dofollow
  • Google Search Console: Keyword performance by rank
  • Ahrefs backlinks
  • Ahrefs page information

But this list of channels and metrics is not set in stone. If needed, you can add more channels, such as SEMrush and their metrics, ultimately turning this SEO marketing report into a true cross-channel marketing report.

PPC is one of my favorite marketing strategies because the return on investment is so easy to track. However, in order to drive conversions, PPC results need to be monitored and optimized.

Whatagraph’s PPC Report Template helps you gather key metrics such as cost per click, conversions, and click-through rate from platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads , and more.

PPC report Whatagraph

Our consolidated PPC overview by default has the following sections:

  • Main KPIs : Time passed, Conversions, Clicks, Impressions, and Cost;
  • Insights : A textbox where you can write your own insights into the results;
  • Further actions : A textbox where you can suggest further actions;
  • Channel split : Traffic and conversions per Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Cost per conversion.

Using our PPC report template, you can create an engaging paid media report for your clients in minutes and have it delivered to them automatically.

As your clients’ products and services change and evolve, so should your eCommerce marketing strategy evolve to support them.

Ecommerce marketing depends on a number of marketing channels, so there’s never a shortage of metrics to track. However, every eCommerce report worth its ink should include

  • Transactions
  • Pages per session
  • Average order value

It’s a good thing that you don’t have to extract all those metrics from social media and Google Analytics 4 manually.

Ecommerce marketing report Whatagraph

Email marketing is a shortcut to getting your clients’ products and services in front of people. But you can’t just dispatch a series of emails and hope for the best.

An email marketing report helps you track the email campaign performance and how the changes you make affect your bottom line.

Some of the most essential KPIs you should report include

  • Number of emails sent
  • Unique open rate
  • Overall campaign performance

In other words, you want to know how many people opened your email and converted as a result.

Our Email Report Template does just that. Keep all your key email marketing metrics in one place to report on the progress of your marketing campaigns.

email monitoring report in Whatagraph

  • Total subscribers
  • Unsubscribed total
  • Emails sent
  • Successful deliveries
  • Unique opens
  • Unique clicks

No manual work is needed. With our expert data visualization, the progress of your email campaigns becomes easily visible.

Every single one of these six types of marketing reports includes a large number of KPIs to the point that visualizing all that data would take too much time. Imagine doing that every month or even week for multiple clients.

With Whatagraph, you can connect your data sources once and get instant insights into your marketing results.

Because every time you create a new report, the data is refreshed — as simple as that.

No need to go back and forth through different reports for hours to make a cross-channel overview. Connect your accounts once, and the data fills in and updates automatically every time.

Whatagraph allows you to create cross-channel analytics reports with data from a range of social media, web analytics, SEO strategy, PPC, eCommerce, and email marketing platforms.

Whatagraph marketing report

If you don’t have time to create a report from scratch, pick a report template from our library and connect your sources. Each template comes with pre-loaded visualization elements that will come to life once you connect your account.

You can choose to edit the template by introducing additional widgets for different dimensions and metrics. Customize your report template by adding graphs and charts, images, text boxes, funnels, calendars, and more.

Customize reports in Whatagraph

Add your or your client’s logo or change the color scheme of the design elements to make the report more in line with your client’s branding. For a fully professional look, you can use the white-labeling option and remove Whatagraph’s logo from your reports for good.

Once you’ve customized your marketing report to your client’s liking. The only thing that remains is to schedule the delivery. It makes little difference if the clients want your report in their mailbox once a month or every week.

Set the sending interval for each account, the period to report on, and the number of recipients, and every report will be delivered automatically .

Whether it’s social media, SEO, or cross-channel reporting, getting hold of your clients’ marketing data would be hard to imagine without marketing reporting software that automates the bulk of reporting tasks and, in the end, makes the whole report look smart and engaging.

Visit our library of marketing report templates and pick the ones you need.

40+ data

Published on Mar 29 2023

Nikola is a content marketer at Whatagraph with extensive writing experience in SaaS and tech niches. With a background in content management apps and composable architectures, it's his job to educate readers about the latest developments in the world of marketing data, data warehousing, headless architectures, and federated content platforms.

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Marketing Research Report: A Comprehensive Guide

what is report writing in marketing research

A marketing research report is a detailed statement issued by a company’s marketing division that analyses current market dynamics in a specific sector and forecasts future trends in the market using both measurable and non-quantifiable data. We will attempt to illustrate how to produce a marketing research report in this post.

What Is the Best Way to Write a Marketing Research Report?

Carry out a thorough market analysis

The first stage in producing a marketing research report is to conduct a market survey. A marketing survey necessitates the accumulation of both quantifiable and non-quantifiable statistics from a sample group of customers who may be picked at random or meticulously based on specific corporate objectives.

Make sure you know what you want from your research.

Surveys might vary from one another in terms of their research goals. For example, some surveys are product-focused, customer-focused, or brand-focused. For example, studies such as brand equity research, brand name analysis, ad monitoring, and commercial eye monitoring are conducted to test the association of a business with a set of customers. On the other hand, product-based studies comprise demand estimates, distribution network audits, and market testing. Furthermore, there’s also a subset of survey methods conducted solely to provide information about client behaviour.

Conduct a situational analysis.

The marketer must next survey the firm and analyse its relative position after gathering information from customers. Two forms of analysis are required from a marketing researcher. First, internal and external analyses are conducted utilising marketing methodologies such as PESTEL, SWOT, and Porter’s Five Forces Model. These tools assist businesses in determining their competitive edge within a specific industry; for instance, we have conducted the SWOT and PESTEL study for Marks and Spencer. It is international clothes, gourmet food, and homecare business headquarters in Westminster.

PESTEL Analysis

  • Political: 

Marks and Spencer have been embroiled in political controversies in recent years. Marks and Spencer have been accused of being pro-Zionist by pro-Palestinian organisations.

Profitability was pushed to unsustainable levels, and the corporation relied heavily on British supply, unlike its competitors, who relied on low-cost nations.

The firm follows fairtrade and environmentally sustainable policies. It’s also been linked to charity causes like breast cancer.

  • Technological:

As part of their production process innovation, Marks & Spencer discontinued the St. Michael branding in 2000 and substituted it with the Marks and Spencer name.

  • Ethical: 

Marks and Spencer, for example, has a policy that allows a Muslim employee to refuse to serve a guy who consumes pork and alcohol.

SWOT Analysis

  • Strengths: Over a century of brand recognition, strong reputation, and high-quality items in gourmet foods, clothes, and household goods are just a few of the strengths.
  • Weaknesses: Marks and Spencer have flaws in several areas. It is a pricey brand that is reliant on British components. Furthermore, it struggles to appeal to a younger audience and misses putting on the 21st-century fashions and trends.
  • Opportunities: It needs to take advantage of economic prospects in other nations. The brand has approximately 800 outlets in the United Kingdom and 300 outlets in 40 other countries. Yet, the brand’s distribution system must be greatly improved.
  • Threats: Tesco, Debenhams, and Asos rule the commercial sector in the United Kingdom. Another huge threat is online buying.

Using the 4 Ps of Marketing (Product, Price, Promotion, and Place), build an efficient marketing strategy.

An efficient marketing strategy aids in the development of creative regulations about the product, its price, the locations where the product must be marketed, and the promotion strategies utilised. For example, it is a hypothetical marketing mix for a sugar-free chocolate bar that Nestle is releasing in Europe.

  • Product: Kit Kat is a bar of four-fingered chocolate with a strong brand appeal. Altering the product itself might be dangerous. It is recommended that the sugar-free variant be marketed alongside the existing version rather than as a substitute.
  • Price: The original product has a very low price. It is recommended that the sugar-free variant not be costlier than the original, as this may deter potential purchasers.
  • Place: It is recommended that the new product be offered at various locations, including newsstands and cigarette sellers, in addition to supermarkets.
  • Promotion: Because customers identify Kit Kat with the classic tagline “have a break, have a Kit Kat,” marketers do not need to modify the catchphrase, but they can add the extra aspect of being nutritious and sugar-free.

The important factors to keep in mind while creating a marketing research report were discussed above. Here’s a basic rundown on how to get started:

  • To gather information, do a market survey.
  • Next, make a situational analysis of the firm using the data.
  • PESTEL, SWOT, or Porter’s Five are some of the tools you can use.
  • Finish with a marketing research report that includes your marketing strategy ideas.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a marketing research report.

A marketing research report is a detailed presentation that details a marketing research project’s aims, methods, conclusions, and recommendations.

What are the primary tools to use when conducting situational analysis for a marketing research report?

Some of the most common tools for situational analysis include SWOT or PESTEL analysis, or Porter’s five forces model.

What is the importance of market research?

Market research will aid in the development of an effective marketing plan. It’s one of the reasons why market analysis and research is critical for businesses seeking to make well-informed decisions.

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what is report writing in marketing research

Home Market Research

Research Reports: Definition and How to Write Them

Research Reports

Reports are usually spread across a vast horizon of topics but are focused on communicating information about a particular topic and a niche target market. The primary motive of research reports is to convey integral details about a study for marketers to consider while designing new strategies.

Certain events, facts, and other information based on incidents need to be relayed to the people in charge, and creating research reports is the most effective communication tool. Ideal research reports are extremely accurate in the offered information with a clear objective and conclusion. These reports should have a clean and structured format to relay information effectively.

What are Research Reports?

Research reports are recorded data prepared by researchers or statisticians after analyzing the information gathered by conducting organized research, typically in the form of surveys or qualitative methods .

A research report is a reliable source to recount details about a conducted research. It is most often considered to be a true testimony of all the work done to garner specificities of research.

The various sections of a research report are:

  • Background/Introduction
  • Implemented Methods
  • Results based on Analysis
  • Deliberation

Learn more: Quantitative Research

Components of Research Reports

Research is imperative for launching a new product/service or a new feature. The markets today are extremely volatile and competitive due to new entrants every day who may or may not provide effective products. An organization needs to make the right decisions at the right time to be relevant in such a market with updated products that suffice customer demands.

The details of a research report may change with the purpose of research but the main components of a report will remain constant. The research approach of the market researcher also influences the style of writing reports. Here are seven main components of a productive research report:

  • Research Report Summary: The entire objective along with the overview of research are to be included in a summary which is a couple of paragraphs in length. All the multiple components of the research are explained in brief under the report summary.  It should be interesting enough to capture all the key elements of the report.
  • Research Introduction: There always is a primary goal that the researcher is trying to achieve through a report. In the introduction section, he/she can cover answers related to this goal and establish a thesis which will be included to strive and answer it in detail.  This section should answer an integral question: “What is the current situation of the goal?”.  After the research design was conducted, did the organization conclude the goal successfully or they are still a work in progress –  provide such details in the introduction part of the research report.
  • Research Methodology: This is the most important section of the report where all the important information lies. The readers can gain data for the topic along with analyzing the quality of provided content and the research can also be approved by other market researchers . Thus, this section needs to be highly informative with each aspect of research discussed in detail.  Information needs to be expressed in chronological order according to its priority and importance. Researchers should include references in case they gained information from existing techniques.
  • Research Results: A short description of the results along with calculations conducted to achieve the goal will form this section of results. Usually, the exposition after data analysis is carried out in the discussion part of the report.

Learn more: Quantitative Data

  • Research Discussion: The results are discussed in extreme detail in this section along with a comparative analysis of reports that could probably exist in the same domain. Any abnormality uncovered during research will be deliberated in the discussion section.  While writing research reports, the researcher will have to connect the dots on how the results will be applicable in the real world.
  • Research References and Conclusion: Conclude all the research findings along with mentioning each and every author, article or any content piece from where references were taken.

Learn more: Qualitative Observation

15 Tips for Writing Research Reports

Writing research reports in the manner can lead to all the efforts going down the drain. Here are 15 tips for writing impactful research reports:

  • Prepare the context before starting to write and start from the basics:  This was always taught to us in school – be well-prepared before taking a plunge into new topics. The order of survey questions might not be the ideal or most effective order for writing research reports. The idea is to start with a broader topic and work towards a more specific one and focus on a conclusion or support, which a research should support with the facts.  The most difficult thing to do in reporting, without a doubt is to start. Start with the title, the introduction, then document the first discoveries and continue from that. Once the marketers have the information well documented, they can write a general conclusion.
  • Keep the target audience in mind while selecting a format that is clear, logical and obvious to them:  Will the research reports be presented to decision makers or other researchers? What are the general perceptions around that topic? This requires more care and diligence. A researcher will need a significant amount of information to start writing the research report. Be consistent with the wording, the numbering of the annexes and so on. Follow the approved format of the company for the delivery of research reports and demonstrate the integrity of the project with the objectives of the company.
  • Have a clear research objective: A researcher should read the entire proposal again, and make sure that the data they provide contributes to the objectives that were raised from the beginning. Remember that speculations are for conversations, not for research reports, if a researcher speculates, they directly question their own research.
  • Establish a working model:  Each study must have an internal logic, which will have to be established in the report and in the evidence. The researchers’ worst nightmare is to be required to write research reports and realize that key questions were not included.

Learn more: Quantitative Observation

  • Gather all the information about the research topic. Who are the competitors of our customers? Talk to other researchers who have studied the subject of research, know the language of the industry. Misuse of the terms can discourage the readers of research reports from reading further.
  • Read aloud while writing. While reading the report, if the researcher hears something inappropriate, for example, if they stumble over the words when reading them, surely the reader will too. If the researcher can’t put an idea in a single sentence, then it is very long and they must change it so that the idea is clear to everyone.
  • Check grammar and spelling. Without a doubt, good practices help to understand the report. Use verbs in the present tense. Consider using the present tense, which makes the results sound more immediate. Find new words and other ways of saying things. Have fun with the language whenever possible.
  • Discuss only the discoveries that are significant. If some data are not really significant, do not mention them. Remember that not everything is truly important or essential within research reports.

Learn more: Qualitative Data

  • Try and stick to the survey questions. For example, do not say that the people surveyed “were worried” about an research issue , when there are different degrees of concern.
  • The graphs must be clear enough so that they understand themselves. Do not let graphs lead the reader to make mistakes: give them a title, include the indications, the size of the sample, and the correct wording of the question.
  • Be clear with messages. A researcher should always write every section of the report with an accuracy of details and language.
  • Be creative with titles – Particularly in segmentation studies choose names “that give life to research”. Such names can survive for a long time after the initial investigation.
  • Create an effective conclusion: The conclusion in the research reports is the most difficult to write, but it is an incredible opportunity to excel. Make a precise summary. Sometimes it helps to start the conclusion with something specific, then it describes the most important part of the study, and finally, it provides the implications of the conclusions.
  • Get a couple more pair of eyes to read the report. Writers have trouble detecting their own mistakes. But they are responsible for what is presented. Ensure it has been approved by colleagues or friends before sending the find draft out.

Learn more: Market Research and Analysis

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Research Method

Home » Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Table of Contents

Research Report

Research Report

Definition:

Research Report is a written document that presents the results of a research project or study, including the research question, methodology, results, and conclusions, in a clear and objective manner.

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the findings of the research to the intended audience, which could be other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public.

Components of Research Report

Components of Research Report are as follows:

Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for the research report and provides a brief overview of the research question or problem being investigated. It should include a clear statement of the purpose of the study and its significance or relevance to the field of research. It may also provide background information or a literature review to help contextualize the research.

Literature Review

The literature review provides a critical analysis and synthesis of the existing research and scholarship relevant to the research question or problem. It should identify the gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the literature and show how the current study addresses these issues. The literature review also establishes the theoretical framework or conceptual model that guides the research.

Methodology

The methodology section describes the research design, methods, and procedures used to collect and analyze data. It should include information on the sample or participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis techniques. The methodology should be clear and detailed enough to allow other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the study in a clear and objective manner. It should provide a detailed description of the data and statistics used to answer the research question or test the hypothesis. Tables, graphs, and figures may be included to help visualize the data and illustrate the key findings.

The discussion section interprets the results of the study and explains their significance or relevance to the research question or problem. It should also compare the current findings with those of previous studies and identify the implications for future research or practice. The discussion should be based on the results presented in the previous section and should avoid speculation or unfounded conclusions.

The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the study and restates the main argument or thesis presented in the introduction. It should also provide a brief overview of the contributions of the study to the field of research and the implications for practice or policy.

The references section lists all the sources cited in the research report, following a specific citation style, such as APA or MLA.

The appendices section includes any additional material, such as data tables, figures, or instruments used in the study, that could not be included in the main text due to space limitations.

Types of Research Report

Types of Research Report are as follows:

Thesis is a type of research report. A thesis is a long-form research document that presents the findings and conclusions of an original research study conducted by a student as part of a graduate or postgraduate program. It is typically written by a student pursuing a higher degree, such as a Master’s or Doctoral degree, although it can also be written by researchers or scholars in other fields.

Research Paper

Research paper is a type of research report. A research paper is a document that presents the results of a research study or investigation. Research papers can be written in a variety of fields, including science, social science, humanities, and business. They typically follow a standard format that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections.

Technical Report

A technical report is a detailed report that provides information about a specific technical or scientific problem or project. Technical reports are often used in engineering, science, and other technical fields to document research and development work.

Progress Report

A progress report provides an update on the progress of a research project or program over a specific period of time. Progress reports are typically used to communicate the status of a project to stakeholders, funders, or project managers.

Feasibility Report

A feasibility report assesses the feasibility of a proposed project or plan, providing an analysis of the potential risks, benefits, and costs associated with the project. Feasibility reports are often used in business, engineering, and other fields to determine the viability of a project before it is undertaken.

Field Report

A field report documents observations and findings from fieldwork, which is research conducted in the natural environment or setting. Field reports are often used in anthropology, ecology, and other social and natural sciences.

Experimental Report

An experimental report documents the results of a scientific experiment, including the hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions. Experimental reports are often used in biology, chemistry, and other sciences to communicate the results of laboratory experiments.

Case Study Report

A case study report provides an in-depth analysis of a specific case or situation, often used in psychology, social work, and other fields to document and understand complex cases or phenomena.

Literature Review Report

A literature review report synthesizes and summarizes existing research on a specific topic, providing an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject. Literature review reports are often used in social sciences, education, and other fields to identify gaps in the literature and guide future research.

Research Report Example

Following is a Research Report Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Academic Performance among High School Students

This study aims to investigate the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students. The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The findings indicate that there is a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students. The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers, as they highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities.

Introduction:

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of high school students. With the widespread use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, students can connect with friends, share photos and videos, and engage in discussions on a range of topics. While social media offers many benefits, concerns have been raised about its impact on academic performance. Many studies have found a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance among high school students (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010; Paul, Baker, & Cochran, 2012).

Given the growing importance of social media in the lives of high school students, it is important to investigate its impact on academic performance. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students.

Methodology:

The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The questionnaire was developed based on previous studies and was designed to measure the frequency and duration of social media use, as well as academic performance.

The participants were selected using a convenience sampling technique, and the survey questionnaire was distributed in the classroom during regular school hours. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.

The findings indicate that the majority of high school students use social media platforms on a daily basis, with Facebook being the most popular platform. The results also show a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students.

Discussion:

The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. The negative correlation between social media use and academic performance suggests that strategies should be put in place to help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. For example, educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this study provides evidence of the negative impact of social media on academic performance among high school students. The findings highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. Further research is needed to explore the specific mechanisms by which social media use affects academic performance and to develop effective strategies for addressing this issue.

Limitations:

One limitation of this study is the use of convenience sampling, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other populations. Future studies should use random sampling techniques to increase the representativeness of the sample. Another limitation is the use of self-reported measures, which may be subject to social desirability bias. Future studies could use objective measures of social media use and academic performance, such as tracking software and school records.

Implications:

The findings of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. Educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. For example, teachers could use social media platforms to share relevant educational resources and facilitate online discussions. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. They could also engage in open communication with their children to understand their social media use and its impact on their academic performance. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students. For example, schools could implement social media policies that restrict access during class time and encourage responsible use.

References:

  • Kirschner, P. A., & Karpinski, A. C. (2010). Facebook® and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1237-1245.
  • Paul, J. A., Baker, H. M., & Cochran, J. D. (2012). Effect of online social networking on student academic performance. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 8(1), 1-19.
  • Pantic, I. (2014). Online social networking and mental health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(10), 652-657.
  • Rosen, L. D., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2013). Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 948-958.

Note*: Above mention, Example is just a sample for the students’ guide. Do not directly copy and paste as your College or University assignment. Kindly do some research and Write your own.

Applications of Research Report

Research reports have many applications, including:

  • Communicating research findings: The primary application of a research report is to communicate the results of a study to other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public. The report serves as a way to share new knowledge, insights, and discoveries with others in the field.
  • Informing policy and practice : Research reports can inform policy and practice by providing evidence-based recommendations for decision-makers. For example, a research report on the effectiveness of a new drug could inform regulatory agencies in their decision-making process.
  • Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research in a particular area. Other researchers may use the findings and methodology of a report to develop new research questions or to build on existing research.
  • Evaluating programs and interventions : Research reports can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and interventions in achieving their intended outcomes. For example, a research report on a new educational program could provide evidence of its impact on student performance.
  • Demonstrating impact : Research reports can be used to demonstrate the impact of research funding or to evaluate the success of research projects. By presenting the findings and outcomes of a study, research reports can show the value of research to funders and stakeholders.
  • Enhancing professional development : Research reports can be used to enhance professional development by providing a source of information and learning for researchers and practitioners in a particular field. For example, a research report on a new teaching methodology could provide insights and ideas for educators to incorporate into their own practice.

How to write Research Report

Here are some steps you can follow to write a research report:

  • Identify the research question: The first step in writing a research report is to identify your research question. This will help you focus your research and organize your findings.
  • Conduct research : Once you have identified your research question, you will need to conduct research to gather relevant data and information. This can involve conducting experiments, reviewing literature, or analyzing data.
  • Organize your findings: Once you have gathered all of your data, you will need to organize your findings in a way that is clear and understandable. This can involve creating tables, graphs, or charts to illustrate your results.
  • Write the report: Once you have organized your findings, you can begin writing the report. Start with an introduction that provides background information and explains the purpose of your research. Next, provide a detailed description of your research methods and findings. Finally, summarize your results and draw conclusions based on your findings.
  • Proofread and edit: After you have written your report, be sure to proofread and edit it carefully. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and make sure that your report is well-organized and easy to read.
  • Include a reference list: Be sure to include a list of references that you used in your research. This will give credit to your sources and allow readers to further explore the topic if they choose.
  • Format your report: Finally, format your report according to the guidelines provided by your instructor or organization. This may include formatting requirements for headings, margins, fonts, and spacing.

Purpose of Research Report

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the results of a research study to a specific audience, such as peers in the same field, stakeholders, or the general public. The report provides a detailed description of the research methods, findings, and conclusions.

Some common purposes of a research report include:

  • Sharing knowledge: A research report allows researchers to share their findings and knowledge with others in their field. This helps to advance the field and improve the understanding of a particular topic.
  • Identifying trends: A research report can identify trends and patterns in data, which can help guide future research and inform decision-making.
  • Addressing problems: A research report can provide insights into problems or issues and suggest solutions or recommendations for addressing them.
  • Evaluating programs or interventions : A research report can evaluate the effectiveness of programs or interventions, which can inform decision-making about whether to continue, modify, or discontinue them.
  • Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies.

When to Write Research Report

A research report should be written after completing the research study. This includes collecting data, analyzing the results, and drawing conclusions based on the findings. Once the research is complete, the report should be written in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

In academic settings, research reports are often required as part of coursework or as part of a thesis or dissertation. In this case, the report should be written according to the guidelines provided by the instructor or institution.

In other settings, such as in industry or government, research reports may be required to inform decision-making or to comply with regulatory requirements. In these cases, the report should be written as soon as possible after the research is completed in order to inform decision-making in a timely manner.

Overall, the timing of when to write a research report depends on the purpose of the research, the expectations of the audience, and any regulatory requirements that need to be met. However, it is important to complete the report in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

Characteristics of Research Report

There are several characteristics of a research report that distinguish it from other types of writing. These characteristics include:

  • Objective: A research report should be written in an objective and unbiased manner. It should present the facts and findings of the research study without any personal opinions or biases.
  • Systematic: A research report should be written in a systematic manner. It should follow a clear and logical structure, and the information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand and follow.
  • Detailed: A research report should be detailed and comprehensive. It should provide a thorough description of the research methods, results, and conclusions.
  • Accurate : A research report should be accurate and based on sound research methods. The findings and conclusions should be supported by data and evidence.
  • Organized: A research report should be well-organized. It should include headings and subheadings to help the reader navigate the report and understand the main points.
  • Clear and concise: A research report should be written in clear and concise language. The information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand, and unnecessary jargon should be avoided.
  • Citations and references: A research report should include citations and references to support the findings and conclusions. This helps to give credit to other researchers and to provide readers with the opportunity to further explore the topic.

Advantages of Research Report

Research reports have several advantages, including:

  • Communicating research findings: Research reports allow researchers to communicate their findings to a wider audience, including other researchers, stakeholders, and the general public. This helps to disseminate knowledge and advance the understanding of a particular topic.
  • Providing evidence for decision-making : Research reports can provide evidence to inform decision-making, such as in the case of policy-making, program planning, or product development. The findings and conclusions can help guide decisions and improve outcomes.
  • Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research on a particular topic. Other researchers can build on the findings and conclusions of the report, which can lead to further discoveries and advancements in the field.
  • Demonstrating expertise: Research reports can demonstrate the expertise of the researchers and their ability to conduct rigorous and high-quality research. This can be important for securing funding, promotions, and other professional opportunities.
  • Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies. Producing a high-quality research report can help ensure compliance with these requirements.

Limitations of Research Report

Despite their advantages, research reports also have some limitations, including:

  • Time-consuming: Conducting research and writing a report can be a time-consuming process, particularly for large-scale studies. This can limit the frequency and speed of producing research reports.
  • Expensive: Conducting research and producing a report can be expensive, particularly for studies that require specialized equipment, personnel, or data. This can limit the scope and feasibility of some research studies.
  • Limited generalizability: Research studies often focus on a specific population or context, which can limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations or contexts.
  • Potential bias : Researchers may have biases or conflicts of interest that can influence the findings and conclusions of the research study. Additionally, participants may also have biases or may not be representative of the larger population, which can limit the validity and reliability of the findings.
  • Accessibility: Research reports may be written in technical or academic language, which can limit their accessibility to a wider audience. Additionally, some research may be behind paywalls or require specialized access, which can limit the ability of others to read and use the findings.

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Home • Knowledge hub • How to write a market research report for a new product launch

How to write a market research report for a new product launch

Report writing

When launching a new product to market, it’s imperative to be prepared with relevant information. You need a deep understanding of your market, how your products will benefit that market, the potential challenges you might run into, and much more.

This is why it’s so important to write an in-depth, professional, and relevant market research report. Not only to gather and display all the right information but also so that you can share that information clearly and easily with people within and outside your organization. This is important for a wide range of different reasons.

In this article, we’ll look at why market research reports for product launches are so important and show you how to do it as effectively as possible.

Why market research reports are important

Conducting a detailed and relevant market research report before you launch your new product is a good idea for all kinds of reasons. Here are some of the main ones:

  • Get buy-in from senior decision-makers . When launching any product, you’ll always want the full support of the top decision-makers at your organization. This can be a tricky thing to acquire, especially if your team is relatively unproven. A detailed and informative market research report can be the deciding factor in winning their support, convincing them that your product is well-placed to succeed, and making it much easier to achieve your goals.
  • Learn more about your customers and target audience . One of the main reasons to conduct market research is to understand your prospective customers in more detail. The work you do to compile a report will give you a clear and detailed understanding of what your customers want, what they already like, where they conduct their own research, and much more. This will arm you with the insights and knowledge you need to launch your product confidently and successfully.

Discover ideas for new products and how to improve existing ones . When you research your target market, you’ll likely stumble upon inspiration for new products in addition to the one you’re planning to launch. The feedback you get from your research will also be laced with ideas for improving and tweaking existing products

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what is report writing in marketing research

How to write a market research report effectively

In the rest of this guide, we’ll show you what you need to do to ensure your market research report is as detailed, relevant, and valuable as it possibly can be. Let’s start with the type of information you need to include.

What you need to include:

Buyer personas.

This is a crucial part of getting to know your customers and the different groups they fall into. You should start by researching your target market members as much as possible through a range of channels — interviews, social media research, email surveys, and more. Then, divide them into demographics and create a detailed persona to represent each one.

This is an incredibly valuable step because it allows you to break down your market and make broad predictions about each group’s preferences, pain points, habits, and desires. If done right, this helps you target your future marketing much more accurately and effectively.

Understand your competitors

Getting to know your competitors is a key element of market research. It allows you to understand what you will be up against when launching your product and what segments of your market might be easier or more difficult to sway from their loyalty to your competitors.

Your research report should contain detailed information about each of your competitors and what they offer. What do their products lack that yours can provide? Why do your customers go to them? How dominant are they in your market? What kind of loyalty do they command? What are some of the keys to their success? All this will help you understand what you’re up against and strengthen your chances of success.

Who did you talk to?

Much of your market research will involve talking to various people and groups of people in situations like focus groups, interviews, and surveys. It’s important to document this side of your research carefully and include it in your market research report. Be sure to break down the people you spoke to into demographics and be as specific as possible — try to align this with your buyer personas.

This will help you understand what different demographics want, identify any areas you may have missed, and see any opportunities for segmentation or expansion, as well as providing clear visibility into your research process and allowing you to justify your findings and decisions to other company members carefully.

Clearly show what will happen next — how will you use your findings? 

When you present your market research report to decision-makers in your organization, their primary concern will be what you want to do with it. Research is only valuable if it has a practical application, which should be a key element of your report.

It’s best to be specific — create plans and roadmaps for campaigns, build strategies, and include timelines and carefully researched cost estimates. If you can present a clear and viable plan for your product launch, it will be much easier to gain the support and buy-in of the higher-ups in your company. Be ready to defend and justify these plans.

Primary vs Secondary Market Research

There are two main types of research you’ll need to do when preparing your market research report: primary and secondary. Here is the difference:

  • Primary research . This refers to the first-hand information you have gathered during your research — straight from the primary source. Examples include interviews with individuals, focus groups, surveys, and information from sales teams. It helps add a human touch to your research, incorporating real people’s distinct voices and opinions.
  • Secondary research. This is data that your company didn’t personally collect but is available in the form of things like public records, trend reports, and market statistics. While it lacks the specific human element of primary research, it’s a great way to gain valuable overall insights about your target market without having to conduct huge research projects yourself.

Convincing company decision-makers with your market research report

One of the most essential functions of a market research report is to convince your company’s key stakeholders that you are prepared for a product launch and have everything in place to begin the process successfully.

When creating your report, you should always have this goal in mind. Here are some ways to do that:

  • Always clearly tie your research for business outcomes. For every conclusion your report reaches, explain what this means for the business and what concrete actions you will take as a result.
  • Use as many stats and as much hard data as possible. Clearly express this data in the form of graphs and other visual aids. Show where your data came from, how you collected it, and how your findings will impact your product launch.
  • Consider using Porter’s 5 Forces Model . This business model is aimed at understanding and explaining the fundamental market forces at work in any given industry. It can be illuminating to tie your research into this model.

A well-researched and detailed market research report is an essential part of a successful product launch strategy. It allows you to clearly understand your market, formulate concrete plans and strategies, and gain the support of your organization’s decision-makers.

Without one, you’ll be plunged into the dark, facing the monumentally challenging task of launching a product without the support of extensive research and data. To find out more about how Kadence can help you prepare a market research report and launch your product with confidence, contact us .

Helping brands uncover valuable insights

We’ve been working with Kadence on a couple of strategic projects, which influenced our product roadmap roll-out within the region. Their work has been exceptional in providing me the insights that I need. Senior Marketing Executive Arla Foods
Kadence’s reports give us the insight, conclusion and recommended execution needed to give us a different perspective, which provided us with an opportunity to relook at our go to market strategy in a different direction which we are now reaping the benefits from. Sales & Marketing Bridgestone
Kadence helped us not only conduct a thorough and insightful piece of research, its interpretation of the data provided many useful and unexpected good-news stories that we were able to use in our communications and interactions with government bodies. General Manager PR -Internal Communications & Government Affairs Mitsubishi
Kadence team is more like a partner to us. We have run a number of projects together and … the pro-activeness, out of the box thinking and delivering in spite of tight deadlines are some of the key reasons we always reach out to them. Vital Strategies
Kadence were an excellent partner on this project; they took time to really understand our business challenges, and developed a research approach that would tackle the exam question from all directions.  The impact of the work is still being felt now, several years later. Customer Intelligence Director Wall Street Journal

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What are the best practices for writing a business report

What are the best practices for writing a business report

Writing an effective business report requires careful planning, clear organization, and attention to detail. Here are the key best practices to follow;

Define the Purpose and Audience

  • Identify the report’s objective: What decision or action should result from this report?
  • Understand your audience: Who will read the report? What is their level of knowledge on the subject?
  • Tailor the content, tone, and level of detail to your audience’s needs and expectations.

Plan and Structure Your Report

  • When you start writing, make an outline to help you arrange your ideas and guarantee a logical flow.
  • Use a standard structure that typically includes: a. Title Page b. Table of Contents (for longer reports) c. Executive Summary d. Introduction e. Body (main content, divided into sections) f. Conclusion g. Recommendations h. Appendices (if necessary)

Write a Compelling Executive Summary

  • Summarize the key points, findings, and recommendations in 1-2 pages.
  • Make it stand-alone: readers should understand the main ideas without reading the full report.
  • Write this section last, after you’ve completed the rest of the report.

Craft a Clear Introduction

  • State the report’s purpose and scope.
  • Provide necessary background information.
  • Outline the report’s structure to guide the reader.

Develop the Body of the Report

  • Organize information logically, using headings and subheadings.
  • Present one main idea per paragraph, with supporting details.
  • Use transitions between sections to maintain flow and coherence.

Support Your Points with Data and Evidence

  • Include relevant data, statistics, and research findings.
  • Use visual aids like charts, graphs, and tables to present complex information.
  • Cite all sources properly to maintain credibility.

Write Concisely and Professionally

  • Use clear, concise language. Avoid jargon unless necessary for your audience.
  • Write in a formal, objective tone.

Conclude with Impact and Provide Actionable Recommendations

  • Summarize the key findings in the conclusion.
  • Provide clear, specific, and actionable recommendations based on your analysis.
  • Ensure recommendations are realistic and aligned with the report’s purpose.

Format for Readability

  • Use consistent formatting throughout the report (fonts, spacing, headings).
  • Include plenty of white space to avoid overwhelming the reader.
  • Use bullet points or numbered lists for easy scanning of key information.

Review and Refine

  • Proofread carefully for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.
  • Check that all figures, tables, and page numbers are correct and consistent.
  • Have a colleague review the report for clarity and effectiveness.

Consider the Presentation

  • If presenting the report in person, prepare a summary of key points.
  • Be ready to answer questions and provide additional context.
  • Consider creating a slide deck or handout for important data or recommendations.

What key elements should be included in the introduction of a business report?

The introduction of a business report sets the stage for the entire document. It should provide a clear and concise overview of the report’s purpose, scope, and key findings. Here are the essential elements to include;

Purpose Statement

  • Clearly state the reason for writing the report.
  • What is the main objective?
  • What problem is it trying to solve or question is it seeking to answer?
  • Define the boundaries of the report.
  • What topics are included, and what are excluded?
  • Indicate the time period covered or the specific area of focus.

Methodology

  • Briefly describe the research methods or data collection techniques used.
  • This can include surveys, interviews, case studies, or data analysis.
  • Specify the constraints or difficulties encountered while conducting the research.

Key Findings

  • Provide a brief summary of the most significant results or conclusions.
  • This will give the reader a preview of what to expect in the subsequent sections.

Organization

  • Outline the structure of the report.
  • Indicate the major sections and subsections that will follow.

Example Introduction: This report aims to evaluate the effectiveness of our new marketing campaign launched in Q2. We conducted a survey of 1,000 customers to gather feedback on brand awareness, product satisfaction, and purchase behavior. The key findings reveal a significant increase in brand recognition and a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and repeat purchases. The report is organized into four main sections: campaign overview, survey results, customer analysis, and recommendations.

How can the purpose and scope of the business report be defined?

The purpose and scope of a business report are crucial for ensuring that the document is focused, relevant, and valuable. Here are some effective strategies to define these elements;

Understand the Target Audience

  • Who will be reading the report? Identify their needs, interests, and level of expertise.
  • What do they want to know? Consider their specific questions or concerns.

Identify the Problem or Question

  • What is the issue or challenge you are addressing? Clearly articulate the problem or question the report aims to solve.
  • What is the desired outcome? Define the goals or objectives you hope to achieve.

Set Clear Boundaries

  • What topics are included? Determine the specific areas of focus for the report.
  • What topics are excluded? Define the limitations or boundaries of the research.
  • Consider timeframes or geographic locations. Specify the relevant time period or regions.

Align with Business Goals

  • How does the report contribute to the overall business strategy? Ensure that the purpose and scope align with the company’s objectives.

Consult with Stakeholders

  • Gather input from relevant individuals or departments. Involve those who have a vested interest in the topic.
  • Ensure alignment and consensus. Work together to refine the purpose and scope.

Create a Clear Statement

  • Write a concise and informative statement. Communicate the purpose and scope of the report.
  • Use specific language and avoid ambiguity. Be precise in your definitions.

Example: This report aims to evaluate the effectiveness of our new marketing campaign launched in Q2. The scope of the report will include an analysis of brand awareness, website traffic, and sales data from the targeted demographic. The objective is to determine whether the campaign has met its goals and identify areas for improvement.

What are the best practices for organizing the structure and sections of a business report?

A well-organized business report enhances its readability, comprehensibility, and effectiveness. Here are some best practices for structuring your report;

Logical Flow

  • Follow a clear progression of ideas. Ensure that the sections build upon each other and lead to a logical conclusion.
  • Make use of headers and subtitles. To help the reader explore the report.

Consistent Structure

  • Maintain a consistent format. Use a standard outline or template for all sections.
  • Use parallel structure for headings and subheadings to improve clarity.

Clear Introduction and Conclusion

  • The introduction should provide a clear overview of the report’s purpose, scope, and key findings.
  • The conclusion should summarize the main points, reiterate the key findings, and provide recommendations or next steps.

Well-Defined Sections

  • Use clear and concise section headings. Make sure they accurately reflect the content of the section.
  • Ensure each section has a clear purpose. Each section should contribute to the overall goal of the report.

Supporting Evidence

  • Provide evidence to support your claims. Use data, statistics, quotes, or examples to strengthen your arguments.
  • Cite your sources appropriately. Give credit to the original authors or researchers.

Visual Aids

  • Use visual aids like charts, graphs, or diagrams to enhance understanding and engagement.
  • Ensure visual aids are clear, well-labeled, and relevant to the content.

Concise and Clear Writing

  • Use clear and concise language. Steer clear of technical phrases and jargon that could mislead the reader.
  • Write in a professional and objective tone. Maintain a neutral perspective.

Proofread and Edit

  • Carefully proofread your report for errors. Check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes.
  • Edit for clarity and coherence. Make sure your concepts are coherent and simple to understand.

Example Outline

Introduction

  • Purpose of the report
  • Scope and methodology
  • Key findings

Background and Context

  • Relevant industry trends
  • Company overview

Data Analysis

  • Key metrics and results
  • Visual representations (charts, graphs)

Discussion and Findings

  • Interpretation of data
  • Insights and implications

Recommendations

  • Suggested actions or strategies
  • Future directions
  • Summary of key points
  • Reiteration of findings
  • Final thoughts

How should data and research be effectively presented in the report?

Data and research are essential components of a business report. They provide credibility, support claims, and inform decision-making. Here are some effective strategies for presenting data and research;

Clarity and Conciseness

  • Present data. Avoid overwhelming the reader with excessive detail.
  • Use simple language and avoid technical jargon. Make the data accessible to a wide audience.
  • Utilize visual aids like charts, graphs, and tables to enhance understanding and engagement.
  • Choose the appropriate visual representation for the type of data you are presenting.
  • Ensure visual aids are clear, well-labeled, and easy to interpret.

Contextualize Data

  • Explain the significance of the data. Connect it to the overall purpose and objectives of the report.
  • Provide context by comparing data to benchmarks, industry standards, or historical trends.

Highlight Key Findings

  • Identify the most important or relevant data points. Focus on the key takeaways that support your conclusions.
  • Use clear and concise statements to summarize the findings.

Cite Sources

  • Give credit to the original sources of your data and research. This demonstrates credibility and trustworthiness.
  • Use a consistent citation style (e.g., APA, MLA) to maintain consistency throughout the report.

Address Limitations

  • Recognize any restrictions or biases in the information or study.   This demonstrates transparency and critical thinking.
  • Explain how these limitations may affect the validity of your conclusions.

Integrate Data with Narrative

  • Weave data and research seamlessly into your narrative. Make use of it to strengthen your claims and provide examples.
  • Avoid presenting data in isolation. Connect it to the broader context of the report.

Tailor Presentation to Audience

  • Consider the needs and interests of your audience. Adjust the level of detail and complexity accordingly.
  • Make sure your examples and phrasing speak to your audience.

What techniques can be used to ensure clarity and conciseness in business report writing?

Clarity and conciseness are essential qualities for effective business reports. Here are some techniques to help you achieve these goals;

Use Simple Language

  • Use clear and straightforward language that is easy to understand.

Be Specific

  • Provide concrete details and examples to support your claims.
  • Avoid vague or general statements that may leave the reader unsure of your meaning.

Use Active Voice

  • Active voice improves the clarity and engagement of your work.
  • Avoid passive voice whenever possible.

Keep Sentences Short

  • Break up long sentences into shorter ones.
  • Avoid complex sentence structures that can be difficult to follow.

Use Strong Verbs

  • Choose strong verbs that convey your meaning clearly and concisely.
  • Avoid weak verbs like “is,” “are,” and “have.”

Eliminate Redundancy

  • Remove unnecessary words and phrases that do not add value to your writing.
  • Avoid repeating the same information in different ways.

Use Headings and Subheadings

  • Divide your report into clear sections using headings and subheadings.
  • This will improve readability and make it easier for readers to find the necessary information.

Use Visual Aids

  • Charts, graphs, and diagrams can help to clarify complex information.
  • Use visual aids sparingly and ensure they are relevant to your content.
  • Check your report for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
  • Read your report aloud to identify any awkward or unclear passages.

How important is the use of visual aids like charts, graphs, and tables in a business report?

Visual aids are crucial in a business report. They serve several essential functions;

  • Enhance Understanding: They can simplify complex data, making it easier to grasp and digest.
  • Improve Engagement: Visuals can make the report more interesting and engaging, keeping readers interested.
  • Support Claims: They can provide concrete evidence to support claims and arguments.
  • Save Space: They can often convey information more efficiently than text alone.
  • Make Data More Accessible: Visuals can make data more accessible to a wider audience, including those who may struggle with text-heavy content.

When using visual aids, it’s important to;

  • Choose the appropriate type of visual: Different types of visuals are better suited for different types of data.
  • Ensure clarity and accuracy: The visual should be clear, easy to understand, and accurately represent the data.
  • Label and annotate properly: Provide clear labels and annotations to explain the visual.
  • Integrate with the text: Reference the visual in the text to explain its relevance.

What is the recommended approach for writing the executive summary of a business report?

Crafting a compelling executive summary is crucial for a business report**.** It should provide a concise and informative overview of the entire document. Here’s a recommended approach;

Write the Executive Summary Last: While it’s the first section readers will see, it’s often easier to write it after you’ve completed the main body of the report. This ensures it accurately reflects the key points and conclusions.

Keep it Concise: The executive summary should be a brief overview, typically no more than one page. Aim for a length that can be read quickly.

Include Essential Elements

  • Purpose: Clearly state the reason for writing the report.
  • Key Findings: Summarize the most important results or conclusions.
  • Recommendations: If applicable, outline the suggested actions or strategies.
  • Scope: Briefly touch on the topics covered and the methodology used.

Use Clear and Concise Language: Avoid jargon or technical terms that might confuse readers unfamiliar with the subject matter. Use simple, direct language.

Follow a Logical Flow: Ensure the executive summary follows a logical progression, leading the reader from the purpose to the key findings and recommendations.

Make it Standalone The executive summary should be self-sufficient. Readers should be able to understand the main points of the report without reading the entire document.

Review: The executive summary is often the first part of the report a reader will see. Make sure it displays a professional image.

Example: This report evaluates the effectiveness of our new marketing campaign launched in Q2. Key findings include a significant increase in brand awareness and a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and repeat purchases. We recommend continuing the campaign and exploring additional channels to reach a wider audience.

How should conclusions and recommendations be formulated in a business report?

The conclusions and recommendations sections of a business report are crucial for summarizing your findings and providing actionable insights. Here are some tips on how to formulate these sections;

Conclusions

  • Summarize Key Findings: Restate the most important findings or results from your research.
  • Relate Findings to Purpose: Connect your conclusions back to the original purpose of the report.
  • Avoid New Information: Don’t introduce any new data or arguments in the conclusions.
  • Be Actionable: Ensure your recommendations are specific, practical, and implementable.
  • Align with Findings: Recommendations should be directly based on your conclusions and research.
  • Prioritize Recommendations: If you have multiple recommendations, prioritize them based on their importance or feasibility.
  • Consider Implications: Discuss the potential implications of implementing your recommendations.
  • Our analysis revealed a significant increase in website traffic following the launch of our new marketing campaign.
  • Customer satisfaction surveys indicated a positive response to the new product features.
  • Sales data showed a modest increase in revenue compared to the previous quarter.
  • Continue investing in digital marketing efforts to maintain website traffic and engagement.
  • Consider expanding the product line to capitalize on the positive customer feedback.
  • Monitor sales data closely to identify trends and optimize marketing strategies.

Additional Tips

  • Be Clear and Concise: Use clear and concise language to express your conclusions and recommendations.
  • Avoid Overstated Claims: Be cautious about making overly broad or sweeping statements.
  • Consider the Audience: Tailor your conclusions and recommendations to the specific needs and interests of your audience.
  • Review: Check for any spelling or typos.

What are the best practices for proofreading and editing a business report before submission?

Proofreading and editing are essential steps in ensuring the quality and professionalism of your business report. Here are some best practices to follow;

Take a Break

  • Step away from the report for a period of time to gain a fresh perspective.
  • Return to it with a clear mind to catch errors you may have overlooked.
  • Read the report aloud to identify awkward phrasing or grammatical errors.
  • This can help you catch inconsistencies or areas that don’t flow smoothly.

Check for Clarity and Conciseness

  • Ensure your writing is clear and easy to understand. Avoid jargon or overly complex language.
  • Eliminate any unnecessary words or phrases to make your report more concise.

Verify Facts and Figures

  • Double-check all data, statistics, and citations. Ensure they are accurate and up-to-date.
  • Verify sources to maintain credibility.

Check for Consistency

  • Maintain consistency in formatting, style, and terminology throughout the report.
  • Use a consistent citation style (e.g., APA, MLA) if applicable.

Look for Errors

  • Review for mistakes.
  • Use a spell checker and grammar checker as tools, but don’t rely solely on them.

Get a Second Opinion

  • Ask a colleague or friend to review your report.
  • A fresh pair of eyes can help identify errors you may have missed.

Use a Proofreading Checklist

  • Create a checklist of common errors to help you stay focused during the proofreading process.

Consider Professional Editing

  • If you’re unsure about your editing skills, consider hiring a professional editor.
  • A professional can help ensure your report is polished and error-free.

How can a business report be tailored to meet the specific needs and expectations of its intended audience?

To tailor a business report for a specific audience, you need to carefully consider who they are, what interests them, and the report’s goal. Here’s how you can do this;

Know Your Audience

  • Identify Who They Are: Find out if the audience includes senior management, clients, investors, or a particular department.
  • Gauge Their Knowledge: Understand how familiar they are with the topic. Use technical terms if they’re experts, or keep things simple if they’re not.
  • Understand Their Priorities: Focus on what’s most important to them, like financial performance, strategic advice, or operational details.

Clarify the Report’s Purpose

  • Define the Goal: Be clear on why you’re writing the report. Is it to inform, persuade, analyze, or recommend?
  • Highlight Key Points: Emphasize the information that matches the audience’s interests and the report’s goal.

Structure the Report Effectively

  • Organize Logically: Arrange the content in a logical order for the audience, like starting with a summary for busy executives.
  • Use Headings: Break the report into sections with clear headings, making it easier to navigate.

Choose the Right Tone and Language

  • Match the Tone: Use a formal tone for senior management or clients, and a casual tone for internal teams if needed.
  • Avoid Jargon: If the audience isn’t familiar with technical terms, explain them or avoid using them.

Include Relevant Data and Visuals

  • Focus on Important Data: Provide data that supports your main points and is relevant to the audience.
  • Use Visuals: Add charts, graphs, and tables to make complex data easier to understand and to highlight key points.

Provide Clear Recommendations and Conclusions

  • Actionable Advice: Tailor recommendations to what the audience can do with the information.
  • Summarize Findings: Keep conclusions brief and ensure they align with what the audience expects.

Review and Revise

  • Get Feedback: If possible, get input from someone who understands the audience to make sure the report meets their needs.
  • Edit for Clarity: Make sure the report is clear, concise, and free of unnecessary details that could confuse the reader.

Consider the Presentation Format

  • Select the Right Format: Depending on the audience, decide if the report should be a written document, a slide deck, or an interactive format.
  • Highlight Key Points: In a presentation, use bullet points and bold text to emphasize important information.

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Geektonight

  • Research Report
  • Post last modified: 11 January 2022
  • Reading time: 25 mins read
  • Post category: Research Methodology

what is report writing in marketing research

What is Research Report?

Research reporting is the oral or written presentation of the findings in such detail and form as to be readily understood and assessed by the society, economy or particularly by the researchers.

As earlier said that it is the final stage of the research process and its purpose is to convey to interested persons the whole result of the study. Report writing is common to both academic and managerial situations. In academics, a research report is prepared for comprehensive and application-oriented learning. In businesses or organisations, reports are used for the basis of decision making.

Table of Content

  • 1 What is Research Report?
  • 2 Research Report Definition
  • 3.1 Preliminary Part
  • 3.2 Introduction of the Report
  • 3.3 Review of Literature
  • 3.4 The Research Methodology
  • 3.5 Results
  • 3.6 Concluding Remarks
  • 3.7 Bibliography
  • 4 Significance of Report Writing
  • 5 Qualities of Good Report
  • 6.1 Analysis of the subject matter
  • 6.2 Research outline
  • 6.3 Preparation of rough draft
  • 6.4 Rewriting and polishing
  • 6.5 Writing the final draft
  • 7 Precautions for Writing Research Reports
  • 8.1.1 Technical Report
  • 8.1.2 Popular Report
  • 8.2.1 Written Report
  • 8.2.2 Oral Report

Research Report Definition

According to C. A. Brown , “A report is a communication from someone who has information to someone who wants to use that information.”

According to Goode and Hatt , “The preparation of report is the final stage of research, and it’s purpose is to convey to the interested persons the whole result of the study, in sufficient detail and so arranged as to enable each reader to comprehend the data and to determine for himself the validity of the conclusions.”

It is clear from the above definitions of a research report, it is a brief account of the problem of investigation, the justification of its selection and the procedure of analysis and interpretation. It is only a summary of the entire research proceedings.

In other words, it can be defined as written documents, which presents information in a specialized and concise manner.

Contents of Research Report

Although no hard and fast rules can be laid down, the report must contain the following points.

  • Acknowledgement
  • Table of contents
  • List of tables
  • List of graphs
  • Introduction
  • Background of the research study
  • Statement of the problem
  • Brief outline of the chapters
  • Books review
  • Review of articles published in books, journals, periodicals, etc
  • Review of articles published in leading newspapers
  • Working papers / discusssion paper / study reports
  • Articles on authorised websites
  • A broad conclusion and indications for further research
  • The theoretical framework (variables)
  • Model / hypothesis
  • Instruments for data collection
  • Data collection
  • Pilot study
  • Processing of data
  • Hypothesis / model testing
  • Data analysis and interpretation
  • Tables and figures
  • Conclusions
  • Shortcomings
  • Suggestions to the problems
  • Direction for further research

Preliminary Part

The preliminary part may have seven major components – cover, title, preface, acknowledgement, table of contents, list of tables, list of graphs. Long reports presented in book form have a cover made up of a card sheet. The cover contains title of the research report, the authority to whom the report is submitted, name of the author, etc.

The preface introduces the report to the readers. It gives a very brief introduction of the report. In the acknowledgements author mention names of persons and organisations that have extended co-operation and helped in the various stages of research. Table of contents is essential. It gives the title and page number of each chapter.

Introduction of the Report

The introduction of the research report should clearly and logically bring out the background of the problem addressed in the research. The purpose of the introduction is to introduce the research project to the readers. A clear statement of the problem with specific questions to be answered is presented in the introduction. It contains a brief outline of the chapters.

Review of Literature

The third section reviews the important literature related to the study. A comprehensive review of the research literature referred to must be made. Previous research studies and the important writings in the area under study should be reviewed. Review of literature is helpful to provide a background for the development of the present study.

The researcher may review concerned books, articles published in edited books, journals and periodicals. Researcher may also take review of articles published in leading newspapers. A researcher should study working papers/discussion papers/study reports. It is essential for a broad conclusion and indications for further research.

The Research Methodology

Research methodology is an integral part of the research. It should clearly indicate the universe and the selection of samples, techniques of data collection, analysis and interpretation, statistical techniques, etc.

Results contain pilot study, processing of data, hypothesis/model testing, data analysis and interpretation, tables and figures, etc. This is the heart of the research report. If a pilot study is planned to be used, it’s purpose should be given in the research methodology.

The collected data and the information should be edited, coded, tabulated and analysed with a view to arriving at a valid and authentic conclusion. Tables and figures are used to clarify the significant relationship. The results obtained through tables, graphs should be critically interpreted.

Concluding Remarks

The concluding remarks should discuss the results obtained in the earlier sections, as well as their usefulness and implications. It contains findings, conclusions, shortcomings, suggestions to the problem and direction for future research. Findings are statements of factual information based upon the data analysis.

Conclusions must clearly explain whether the hypothesis have been established and rejected. This part requires great expertise and preciseness. A report should also refer to the limitations of the applicability of the research inferences. It is essential to suggest the theoretical, practical and policy implications of the research. The suggestions should be supported by scientific and logical arguments. The future direction of research based on the work completed should also be outlined.

Bibliography

The bibliography is an alphabetic list of books, journal articles, reports, etc, published or unpublished, read, referred to, examined by the researcher in preparing the report. The bibliography should follow standard formats for books, journal articles, research reports.

The end of the research report may consist of appendices, listed in respect of all technical data. Appendices are for the purpose of providing detailed data or information that would be too cumbersome within the main body of the research report.

Significance of Report Writing

Report writing is an important communication medium in organisations. The most crucial findings might have come out through a research report. Report is common to academics and managers also. Reports are used for comprehensive and application oriented learning in academics. In organisations, reports are used for the basis of decision making. The importance of report writing can be discussed as under.

Through research reports, a manager or an executive can quickly get an idea of a current scenario which improves his information base for making sound decisions affecting future operations of the company or enterprise. The research report acts as a means of communication of various research findings to the interested parties, organisations and general public.

Good report writing play, a significant role of conveying unknown facts about the phenomenon to the concerned parties. This may provide new insights and new opportunities to the people. Research report plays a key role in making effective decisions in marketing, production, banking, materials, human resource development and government also. Good report writing is used for economic planning and optimum utilisation of resources for the development of a nation.

Report writing facilitates the validation of generalisation. A research report is an end product of research. As earlier said that report writing provides useful information in arriving at rational decisions that may reform the business and society. The findings, conclusions, suggestions and recommendations are useful to academicians, scholars and policymakers. Report writing provides reference material for further research in the same or similar areas of research to the concerned parties.

While preparing a research report, a researcher should take some proper precautions. Report writing should be simple, lucid and systematic. Report writing should be written speedily without interrupting the continuity of thought. The report writing should sustain the interest of readers.

Qualities of Good Report

Report writing is a highly skilled job. It is a process of analysing, understanding and consolidating the findings and projecting a meaningful view of the phenomenon studied. A good report writing is essential for effective communication.

Following are the essential qualities of good report:

  • A research report is essentially a scientific documentation. It should have a suggestive title, headings and sub-headings, paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence.
  • Good research report should include everything that is relevant and exclude everything that is irrelevant. It means that it should contain the facts rather than opinion.
  • The language of the report should be simple and unambiguous. It means that it should be free from biases of the researchers derived from the past experience. Confusion, pretentiousness and pomposity should be carefully guarded against. It means that the language of the report should be simple, employing appropriate words, idioms and expressions.
  • The report must be free from grammatical mistakes. It must be grammatically accurate. Faulty construction of sentences makes the meaning of the narrative obscure and ambiguous.
  • The report has to take into consideration two facts. Firstly, for whom the report is meant and secondly, what is his level of knowledge. The report has to look to the subject matter of the report and the fact as to the level of knowledge of the person for whom it is meant. Because all reports are not meant for research scholars.

Steps in Writing Research Report

Report writing is a time consuming and expensive exercise. Therefore, reports have to be very sharply focused in purpose content and readership. There is no single universally acceptable method of writing a research report.

Following are the general steps in writing a research report:

Analysis of the subject matter

Research outline, preparation of rough draft, rewriting and polishing, writing the final draft.

This is the first and important step in writing a research report. It is concerned with the development of a subject. Subject matter should be written in a clear, logical and concise manner. The style adopted should be open, straightforward and dignified and folk style language should be avoided.

The data, the reliability and validity of the results of the statistical analysis should be in the form of tables, figures and equations. All redundancy in the data or results presented should be eliminated.

The research outline is an organisational framework prepared by the researcher well in advance. It is an aid to logical organisation of material and a reminder of the points to be stressed in the report. In the process of writing, if need be, outline may be revised accordingly.

Time and place of the study, scope and limitations of the study, study design, summary of pilot study, methods of data collection, analysis interpretation, etc., may be included in a research outline.

Having prepared the primary and secondary data, the researcher has to prepare a rough draft. While preparing the rough draft, the researcher should keep the objectives of the research in mind, and focus on one objective at a time. The researcher should make a checklist of the important points that are necessary to be covered in the manuscript. A researcher should use dictionary and relevant reference materials as and when required.

This is an important step in writing a research report. It takes more time than a rough draft. While rewriting and polishing, a researcher should check the report for weakness in logical development or presentation. He should take breaks in between rewriting and polishing since this gives the time to incubate the ideas.

The last and important step is writing the final draft. The language of the report should be simple, employing appropriate words and expressions and should avoid vague expressions such as ‘it seems’ and ‘there may be’ etc.

It should not used personal pronouns, such as I, We, My, Us, etc and should substitute these by such expressions as a researcher, investigator, etc. Before the final drafting of the report, it is advisable that the researcher should prepare a first draft for critical considerations and possible improvements. It will be helpful in writing the final draft. Finally, the report should be logically outlined with the future directions of the research based on the work completed.

Precautions for Writing Research Reports

A research report is a means of conveying the research study to a specific target audience. The following precautions should be taken while preparing a research report:

  • Its hould belong enough to cover the subject and short enough to preserve interest.
  • It should not be dull and complicated.
  • It should be simple, without the usage of abstract terms and technical jargons.
  • It should offer ready availability of findings with the help of charts, tables and graphs, as readers prefer quick knowledge of main findings.
  • The layout of the report should be in accordance with the objectives of the research study.
  • There should be no grammatical errors and writing should adhere to the techniques of report writing in case of quotations, footnotes and documentations.
  • It should be original, intellectual and contribute to the solution of a problem or add knowledge to the concerned field.
  • Appendices should been listed with respect to all the technical data in the report.
  • It should be attractive, neat and clean, whether handwritten or typed.
  • The report writer should refrain from confusing the possessive form of the word ‘it’ is with ‘it’s.’ The accurate possessive form of ‘it is’ is ‘its.’ The use of ‘it’s’ is the contractive form of ‘it is.
  • A report should not have contractions. Examples are ‘didn’t’ or ‘it’s.’ In report writing, it is best to use the non-contractive form. Therefore, the examples would be replaced by ‘did not’ and ‘it is.’ Using ‘Figure’ instead of ‘Fig.’ and ‘Table’ instead of ‘Tab.’ will spare the reader of having to translate the abbreviations, while reading. If abbreviations are used, use them consistently throughout the report. For example, do not switch among ‘versus,’ and ‘vs’.
  • It is advisable to avoid using the word ‘very’ and other such words that try to embellish a description. They do not add any extra meaning and, therefore, should be dropped.
  • Repetition hampers lucidity. Report writers must avoid repeating the same word more than once within a sentence.
  • When you use the word ‘this’ or ‘these’ make sure you indicate to what you are referring. This reduces the ambiguity in your writing and helps to tie sentences together.
  • Do not use the word ‘they’ to refer to a singular person. You can either rewrite the sentence to avoid needing such a reference or use the singular ‘he or she.’

Types of Research Report

Research reports are designed in order to convey and record the information that will be of practical use to the reader. It is organized into distinct units of specific and highly visible information. The kind of audience addressed in the research report decides the type of report.

Research reports can be categorized on the following basis:

Classification on the Basis of Information

Classification on the basis of representation.

Following are the ways through which the results of the research report can be presented on the basis of information contained:

Technical Report

A technical report is written for other researchers. In writing the technical reports, the importance is mainly given to the methods that have been used to collect the information and data, the presumptions that are made and finally, the various presentation techniques that are used to present the findings and data.

Following are main features of a technical report:

  • Summary: It covers a brief analysis of the findings of the research in a very few pages. 
  • Nature: It contains the reasons for which the research is undertaken, the analysis and the data that is required in order to prepare a report. 
  • Methods employed: It contains a description of the methods that were employed in order to collect the data. 
  • Data: It covers a brief analysis of the various sources from which the data has been collected with their features and drawbacks 
  • Analysis of data and presentation of the findings: It contains the various forms through which the data that has been analysed can be presented. 
  • Conclusions: It contains a brief explanation of findings of the research. 
  • Bibliography: It contains a detailed analysis of the various bibliographies that have been used in order to conduct a research. 
  • Technical appendices: It contains the appendices for the technical matters and for questionnaires and mathematical derivations. 
  • Index: The index of the technical report must be provided at the end of the report.

Popular Report

A popular report is formulated when there is a need to draw conclusions of the findings of the research report. One of the main points of consideration that should be kept in mind while formulating a research report is that it must be simple and attractive. It must be written in a very simple manner that is understandable to all. It must also be made attractive by using large prints, various sub-headings and by giving cartoons occasionally.

Following are the main points that must be kept in mind while preparing a popular report:

  • Findings and their implications : While preparing a popular report, main importance is given to the findings of the information and the conclusions that can be drawn out of these findings.
  • Recommendations for action : If there are any deviations in the report then recommendations are made for taking corrective action in order to rectify the errors.
  • Objective of the study : In a popular report, the specific objective for which the research has been undertaken is presented.
  • Methods employed : The report must contain the various methods that has been employed in order to conduct a research.
  • Results : The results of the research findings must be presented in a suitable and appropriate manner by taking the help of charts and diagrams.
  • Technical appendices : The report must contain an in-depth information used to collect the data in the form of appendices.

Following are the ways through which the results of the research report can be presented on the basis of representation:

  • Writtenreport
  • Oral report

Written Report

A written report plays a vital role in every business operation. The manner in which an organization writes business letters and business reports creates an impression of its standard. Therefore, the organization should emphasize on the improvement of the writing skills of the employees in order to maintain effective relations with their customers.

Writing effective written reports requires a lot of hard work. Therefore, before you begin writing, it is important to know the objective, i.e., the purpose of writing, collection and organization of required data.

Oral Report

At times, oral presentation of the results that are drawn out of research is considered effective, particularly in cases where policy recommendations are to be made. This approach proves beneficial because it provides a medium of interaction between a listener and a speaker. This leads to a better understanding of the findings and their implications.

However, the main drawback of oral presentation is the lack of any permanent records related to the research. Oral presentation of the report is also effective when it is supported with various visual devices, such as slides, wall charts and whiteboards that help in better understanding of the research reports.

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Prediction Market

This report covers existing and upcoming prediction market platforms and dives into the latest developments.

Prediction Market

Research Disclaimer

Crypto.com Research and Insights disclaimer for research reports

Executive Summary

  • With the largest trading volume in the market, Polymarket has been one of the most discussed players in Web3 prediction markets lately. There are other players, however, including Azuro and new players like Drift (BET).
  • Capitalising on the year of US elections, Polymarket has accumulated $473 million in total trading volume in August 2024 (60 times higher than in August 2023). Its polls are increasingly cited by mainstream media to gain insights to outcomes across politics and business.
  • Polymarket has stood out due to factors including its simplicity. It features mostly binary outcome markets, and users can bet with USDC. It also represents one of the earlier hybrid-decentralised, low-fee prediction market platforms. 

Established in 2021, Azuro is an infrastructure and liquidity layer for hosting on-chain predictions, betting, and game applications. At the time of writing, it hosts over 30 applications, most of which are sports-focused. 

  • Azuro adopts the peer-to-pool mechanism, where users can contribute to a liquidity pool and in return earn APY. In addition, Azuro primarily focuses on sports betting, which is an ‘evergreen’ market given the regularity in occurrence of global sports events. The protocol also diligently launches new features like live betting and AI partnerships.
  • In August 2024, BET was launched as a natural extension of trading by Drift, a perpetual futures exchange on Solana. BET exceeded Polymarket on 29 August in terms of daily trading volume. 
  • Capitalising on Drift and Solana’s native audience and total value locked (TVL), BET has had access to liquidity, potential users, and capital since day 1. In addition, it has more features than a pure-play prediction market platform due to Drift (for example, hedging and DeFi features) . Moreover, BET supports more than 30 tokens to place bets.
  • Given liquidity is one of the major issues for prediction market platforms, BET by Drift provides a new angle to competition in the predictions market. Competition does not only come from pure-play prediction market platforms, but also horizontal expansion from platforms with existing liquidity (e.g., DEXs). While Polymarket is likely to continue its dominance in the short term towards the US presidential elections, it has to figure out how to sustain volumes post elections.

1. Introduction

Prediction market has been called the “ holy grail of epistemics technology ” by Vitalik Buterin, who was excited about prediction market’s use cases in governance back in 2014. It also allows users to speculate on the results of diverse topics ranging from politics (election outcomes), sports (competition results), and macro events. It is not a new concept, as there have been Web2 prediction market sites that settle bets in fiat currency (e.g., PredictIt and Kalshi). 

The trend has recently gained a lot of attention in Web3, led by platforms like Polymarket, largely due to the US presidential elections.  While there were multiple iterations in web3 prediction markets before Polymarket, none of them were particularly successful. Augur, for example, was one of the earliest on-chain prediction markets, but issues arose due to high gas fees, as well as slow and unreliable transactions. 

Potential use cases of prediction markets include: speculation to earn money, gathering insights for forecasting, hedging, and governance (making decisions in a DAO). 

This report looks into some existing and upcoming players in prediction markets to review the latest developments. 

2. Players in Prediction Markets

Polymarket has been one of the most discussed players in Web3 prediction markets lately, and although it has the largest trading volume in the market, there are other players, including Azuro and Hedgehog, as well as new ones like Drift (BET). Azuro differs from Polymarket by focusing on sports betting, and Drift (BET) is a decentralised exchange (DEX) player adding prediction market features to its platform. 

The table below compares these selected key players in the prediction market. 

202020212021Aug. 2024
Central limit order book Hybrid
Variety of topics (volume concentrated on politics)Sports-focusedVariety of topics (crypto, politics, finance)Politics and economy (Future — sports and cultural) 
$473M$11MN/A$24M (since Aug. 18)
202K97K18K111K
PolygonPolygon/Gnosis/ArbitrumSolanaSolana
Integrated with MoonPay to enable bank transfers and credit cards to buy crypto for betsMiddleware layer providing liquidity and oracle solutions for dapps ~30 live applications (e.g., Bookmaker.xyz, Dexwin)AZUR token launched in June 2024Provides options for Solana stakingPooled predictions (deposit funds and get a % share of the incorrect deposits) (submissions with most correct predictions win the entire pool)Integrated with Drift v2, (can trade derivatives and earn yield on tokens on the same platform)Ability to place bets usi
Liquidity Rewards Program — rewards users for placing limit orders close to market’s average pricePeer-to-pool model where liquidity is provided in a that provides returns to users (20% APY on Polygon pool) N/ALeverages Drift’s existing liquidity 
2020
2021
2021
Aug. 2024
Central limit order book 
Hybrid
Variety of topics (volume concentrated on politics)
Sports-focused
Variety of topics (crypto, politics, finance)
Politics and economy (Future — sports and cultural) 
$473M
$11M
N/A
$24M (since Aug. 18)
202K
97K
18K
111K
Polygon
Polygon/Gnosis/Arbitrum
Solana
Solana
Integrated with MoonPay to enable bank transfers and credit cards to buy crypto for bets
Middleware layer providing liquidity and oracle solutions for dapps ~30 live applications (e.g., Bookmaker.xyz, Dexwin)AZUR token launched in June 2024
Provides options for Solana stakingPooled predictions (deposit funds and get a % share of the incorrect deposits) (submissions with most correct predictions win the entire pool)
Integrated with Drift v2, (can trade derivatives and earn yield on tokens on the same platform)Ability to place bets usi
Liquidity Rewards Program — rewards users for placing limit orders close to market’s average price
Peer-to-pool model where liquidity is provided in a that provides returns to users (20% APY on Polygon pool) 
N/A
Leverages Drift’s existing liquidity 

2.1 Polymarket

Polymarket was launched in 2020, a year when the US presidential elections were held. During that time, the platform gained market interest with its election-related markets, which dominated 91% of total volume on the platform, according to the Block . Polymarket represented one of the earlier movers in the prediction markets space and gave users an alternative betting option from traditionally popular sports-focused platforms. 

In 2024, capitalising on another year of the US elections, Polymarket has accumulated $473 million in total trading volume in August 2024, which is 60 times higher than the $8 million in August 2023. Instead of being seen as a platform for pure speculation, its polls have been increasingly cited by mainstream media to gain insights to outcomes across politics and business. In addition, Polymarket’s US presidential election odds were recently integrated into the Bloomberg Terminal. 

what is report writing in marketing research

Polymarket initially stood out in the predictions market space due to factors like its simplicity. Polymarket features mostly binary outcome markets (Yes/No), and prices change in real-time representing probabilities. It is easy for users to understand the concept, betting odds, and potential rewards. In addition, Polymarket does not yet have a native token; hence, it does not require users to use a specific native token to bet. Instead, users can bet with USDC. Polymarket also recently collaborated with MoonPay to enable users to use payment methods like debit/credit cards and bank transfers. This simplifies the user experience and helps Polymarket in its user onboarding. 

In addition, Polymarket represents one of the earlier low-fee, hybrid-decentralised prediction market platforms , where order matching, ordering, and execution happen off-chain, while settlement is on-chain. This gives users an option against centralised counterparts (for example, PredictIt).

Polymarket also runs a Liquidity Rewards Program , which rewards users for placing limit orders close to the market’s average price, to maintain the healthiness of the market. Reward amounts depend on how helpful the orders are based on size and pricing. This incentivises user engagement to enhance liquidity on the platform. 

Azuro uses a hybrid oracle and Automated Market Maker (AMM) solution to determine the odds of outcomes and handle the liquidity for the various dapps. It adopts the peer-to-pool mechanism, where users can contribute to a liquidity pool and in return earn APY. At the time of writing, the USDT pool has $6.5 million TVL and pays 19.5% APY. The decentralised way of handling liquidity provides incentives for the liquidity providers, and at the same time, ensures capital to cover payouts. Different from Polymarket, which is a predictions market protocol, Azuro provides the tools for developers to launch new prediction market dapps. With Azuro, the dapps can focus on front-end developments and user experience while outsourcing liquidity to Azuro. 

In addition, Azuro primarily focuses on sports betting, which is an ‘evergreen’ market given the regularity in occurrence of global sports events. This suggests potential longevity in Azuro’s operations compared to Polymarket, which has a heavily concentrated liquidity in US elections. This is evident in the percentage of returning users on Azuro (44% in August 2024). Moreover, sports betting potentially attracts fewer disputes compared to social, cultural, or political-related topics, as seen from several disputes recently from markets on Polymarket. 

what is report writing in marketing research

One of the potential successful factors of Azuro also includes the diligence in launching new features and partnerships. In April, Azuro launched a live betting feature, becoming one of the pioneers in Web3. In June, Azuro partnered with Olas , a network for autonomous AI agents, to develop an AI agent to accurately predict outcomes of sports events. In the same month, it also introduced a new gaming solution within its development stack for developers to integrate games into their apps. These new features and development stacks enhance user experience and, at the same time, attract developers to continue to build on Azuro. 

Azuro had $11 million in trading volume in August 2024, still a small percentage compared to Polymarket’s $473 million in the same period. However, Azuro became the number 1 revenue-generating protocol on Polygon, according to a report by DappRadar in June 2024. 

what is report writing in marketing research

2.3 Drift (BET)

Standing for Bullish on Everything, BET by Drift is one of the newest players in prediction markets, launching in August 2024. It is a perpetual futures exchange on Solana and is launched as a natural extension of trading on Drift. At the time of writing, BET has four markets centred around US elections, with a total bet of $24 million from 18-31 August. In comparison, Polymarket had $212 million total volume in the same period. However, BET exceeded Polymarket in terms of daily trading volume on 29 August.

what is report writing in marketing research

BET is differentiating in a few ways compared to existing players in prediction markets, largely due to its ties to Drift. 

First, BET has had access to liquidity, potential users, and capital since day 1. It can capitalise on Drift and Solana’s native audience and TVL, as well as leverage Drift’s liquidity of over $500 million deposits to get instant access to liquidity. This gives BET inherent advantages to scale compared to starting as a completely new platform. 

At the same time, BET has more features than a pure-play prediction market platform like Polymarket. BET users can utilise Drift’s trading features for hedging (e.g., long on prediction market, short BTC) and DeFi (e.g., borrowing/lending). 

Another unique feature is that, unlike Polymarket, which supports USDC for trading, users on BET can use more than 30 tokens ranging from stablecoins to liquid-staking tokens to place bets while earning lending interest on these supported collateral at the same time.

Given liquidity is one of the major issues for prediction market platforms, BET provides a new angle to competition in the predictions market. In addition to pure-play prediction market platforms, competition also comes from horizontal expansion from platforms with existing liquidity (e.g., DEXs). BET came into the market offering topics of similar themes as Polymarket (elections, economy, or politically focused). In addition, it also provides users with ease of use (for example, supporting a wide range of collateral, enabling yield-earning on collateral, and offering potential integration with Blinks on Solana in the future). We believe BET could potentially attract user attention and push forward innovations in the space. 

3. Conclusion

Polymarket is still undoubtedly the leader in the Web3 predictions market, hitting fresh all-time highs in trading volume in August 2024. 

Other players in the market vary in focus and features, as we have explored in the examples of Azuro and BET. Azuro taps into the sports-betting market, while BET is a new contender, providing attractive features in hedging and variety in collateral support as compared to existing players. Although currently small in trading volume compared to Polymarket, they represent continuous innovation in the space, aiming to improve user loyalty and enhance user experience. 

While Polymarket is likely to continue its dominance in the short term towards the US presidential elections, it will have to figure out how to sustain volumes post elections (for instance, growing its liquidity in sports or big crypto events). This is especially true in the face of heightened competition, where more players (including DEX players) have come in after seeing Polymarket’s success. We think players with existing liquidity and horizontal expansion capabilities (e.g., DEXs) could be a serious contender in the space. 

Overall, we believe prediction markets have a role to play in Web3. Instead of just speculating on the direction of cryptocurrency prices, prediction markets offer Web3 users an option to bet on real-world outcomes and gather insights.

Read the full report: Prediction Market

Crypto.com Research and Insights team

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    Market research is a process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a given market. It takes into account geographic, demographic, and psychographic data about past, current, and potential customers, as well as competitive analysis to evaluate the viability of a product offer. In other words, it's the process of ...

  17. Marketing Research Report: A Comprehensive Guide

    A marketing research report is a detailed statement issued by a company's marketing division that analyses current market dynamics in a specific sector and forecasts future trends in the market using both measurable and non-quantifiable data. We will attempt to illustrate how to produce a marketing research report in this post.

  18. Research Reports: Definition and How to Write Them

    Research Reports: Definition and How to Write Them

  19. Marketing Research Process: Complete Guide

    Marketing Research Process: Complete Guide

  20. Research Report

    Thesis. Thesis is a type of research report. A thesis is a long-form research document that presents the findings and conclusions of an original research study conducted by a student as part of a graduate or postgraduate program. It is typically written by a student pursuing a higher degree, such as a Master's or Doctoral degree, although it ...

  21. How to write a market research report for a new product launch

    Always clearly tie your research for business outcomes. For every conclusion your report reaches, explain what this means for the business and what concrete actions you will take as a result. Use as many stats and as much hard data as possible. Clearly express this data in the form of graphs and other visual aids.

  22. What is Report Writing? Parts, Types, Structure, Process

    What Is Report Writing? Parts, Types, Structure, Process

  23. What are the best practices for writing a business report

    Write a Compelling Executive Summary. Summarize the key points, findings, and recommendations in 1-2 pages. Make it stand-alone: readers should understand the main ideas without reading the full report. Write this section last, after you've completed the rest of the report. Craft a Clear Introduction. State the report's purpose and scope.

  24. What Is Research Report? Definition, Contents, Significance, Qualities

    A research report is an end product of research. As earlier said that report writing provides useful information in arriving at rational decisions that may reform the business and society. The findings, conclusions, suggestions and recommendations are useful to academicians, scholars and policymakers.

  25. Prediction Market

    Prediction market has been called the "holy grail of epistemics technology" by Vitalik Buterin, who was excited about prediction market's use cases in governance back in 2014. It also allows users to speculate on the results of diverse topics ranging from politics (election outcomes), sports (competition results), and macro events.

  26. 'It's scary to be a woman in gaming': Two thirds of female players

    Last year over two thirds of women gamers reported being harassed while they played online, according to Bryter, a market research company. A third wouldn't ...

  27. Atlanta Office Market Overview

    Be empowered to make better property decisions with our world-leading research. From market trends to regional nuances, future forecasts and in-depth analysis, our specialist teams will keep you in the know. ... Raleigh-Durham Q2 2024 Industrial Market Report. Industrial and Logistics 08 August 2024 Washington D.C. Q2 2024 Industrial Market Report