Everyone agrees that capturing key metrics is important in today’s ROI-focused marketing environment. But capturing marketing metrics isn’t enough: metrics tell a story, and how effectively they are communicated is as important as the measurements themselves. Too often, busy marketers fail to effectively communicate their metrics to one of the toughest audiences they need to influence: the busy executive stakeholders within their organization. To wit, they fail to effectively cover what journalists commonly refer to as the “5 w’s”: the who, what, when, where and why of their metrics.

Every good news story has the 5 w’s, and usually you’ll find them in the first sentence. Why is that? Because busy newspaper readers scan stories just like busy managers, directors and executives scan their emails. If it’s a compelling story, they’ll read more.

Below is a good example of applying the principles of journalism to communicating key metrics. Count the 5 w’s. They are all there.

“Last quarter, our online lead generation campaign increased qualified sales leads of our key target audience of IT procurement professionals by 50%, contributing to an overall increase of sales of our new software by 10% over the previous quarter, according to an analysis of our Web analytics software and sales data.”

That’s a sentence that can fit into the smallest email window. You can say that entire sentence in the time it takes for an elevator to go up one floor or while your CEO pours a cup of coffee. Can you summarize your key metrics in one sentence? If you can’t, then you either haven’t captured the metrics necessary to tell your story, or you aren’t distilling your information concisely enough to communicate metrics to your busy internal stakeholders. Either way, you have to be able to cover your 5 w’s, or you don’t have the complete story.

Just as reporters have “beats,” like sports, politics or business, marketers report on their metrics. Grab your notebook and pencil, because here are some tips for covering the metrics beat:

• Who is your audience? All marketing metrics begin with an awareness of a single person you are trying to influence. Who is this person?
• What are you trying to measure? No, you aren’t trying to measure page views, impressions or hits. You are trying to measure things like service inquiries, qualified leads or sales of products. You are measuring the effectiveness of your call to action.
• When were the metrics captured, and what time period do they cover? Do they relate to previous metrics, and if so, how? All marketing metrics span a timeframe. Knowing not just when they were captured, but relating them to previous efforts puts the metrics in a big-picture context.
• Where did these metrics come from? What methods, techniques or organization created and analyzed them? The first question a skeptical audience asks is “Where did you get these numbers?” Anticipate it and be prepared!
• Why are these metrics important? How are they relevant to your business? Connect the dots for your internal audience. How did this investment in marketing pay off?

In today’s complex and fast-paced business environment, it’s not enough to capture and interpret the metrics for your marketing initiatives. Metrics tell a story. By applying the time-proven techniques of journalists, you can make sure that your audience understands your message before turning the page.