As the new year begins, evaluating your performance for 2023 is essential to understanding how 2024 will shape up. Whether you are an agency, a brand, or an entrepreneur, crafting your digital media report will unearth functional insights and also help to align expectations for the coming year.

Here are some points to consider while writing your report:

• Data collection: The first step is to ensure that there was ample and programmatic data collection throughout the year. If it’s too late to do so, then try to salvage whatever data is available. The goal is to collect and present data on a monthly basis to understand how you are progressing.
• Highlight the pattern: There’s always a pattern when annual data is analyzed. Examine the performance lows and highs based on product changes, major calendar events, content theme/quality, campaigns, and consumer sentiments. Use the patterns to structure an improved digital strategy.
• Analyze platform performance: Not every platform works for every brand and for every message. Analysis of which objective and which communication works on specific platforms is key to understanding “platform priority” for 2024.
• Examine challenges: Assess your digital communication challenges for the year. Understanding these will lead to solutions in 2024. Use historical data to reveal evergreen, new and situational challenges.
• Celebrate and elevate: Use this opportunity to reinforce what worked in 2023. It’s important to celebrate wins to ingrain what works into the culture of the organization. It elevates the team’s performance and the overall communication strategy.

Share the report with stakeholders (both internal and external) and gather feedback and input. Crafting a strategic year-end digital media report enables reflection on achievements and challenges, guiding strategic decisions for the digital journey ahead.

(Digital Digest is a continuing series provided courtesy of the MPE Caribbean Report, which offers travel and tourism news weekly. It is published by US-based integrated marketing agency Marketplace Excellence, which has an office in Richmond Hill, Ont. www.marketplaceexcellence.com)