20% the proportion of a company’s investors who actually read its company report
If your latest report has been given only a cursory glance by shareholders – and has been missed entirely by potential investors – it may be suffering from a number of issues, including:
- Uninspiring content and design: no one wants to read it
- Only produced in paper: not accessible to the right people online
- Not in the right languages: the right people cannot read it
- Little or no communication around launch: no one knows about it
Take a fresh approach
In the UK, producing an annual report has been a mandatory requirement for limited companies for many years. New regulations now mean that companies listed on the Dubai Stock Exchange must produce annual reports too. Whether you’re in the UK or the UEA, creating innovative and eye-catching corporate reports is a must if you wish to stand apart as a company with vision and ambition.
As corporate reporting specialists, Blackwood works with clients in both these jurisdictions (and many others) to produce eye-catching reports for print and online. We take a three-step approach that builds upon the lessons of previous projects to create innovative and impactful results. Here’s how it works.
Understand your audience
There’s no such thing as starting a reporting project too early. Start by finding out what your stakeholders want to know – this will form the majority of your content. If you don’t know what they’re interested in, do some research. It will be time and money well spent. And remember, your stakeholders are more than shareholders and potential donors: they’re employees, local communities, suppliers and customers.
There’s no such thing as starting a reporting project too early. Start by first finding out what your stakeholders want to know.
Three steps to reporting success
At the start of every project we audit and assess the latest report. How did the creative and production process go last time? What worked and what are you keen to improve upon? What do you want to achieve this year? Who are you communicating with? Do you want to extend your audience? We’ll be keen to see the metrics that show how your last report performed.
Once we understand your drives, aims and challenges, we work with you to create a brief: a plan of action to design and deliver the work. With the brief fully scoped out and agreed, our expert team of designers, writers and web developers then get to work to produce the beautifully designed and rigorously thought through work for your project.
And when your report is safely launched into the world, we analyse its performance. This is the third and final phase of our working model: review and refine. This shows the return on your investment, and gives us insights that we can put to good use on your next reporting project.
Capturing robust data
When we create a report in digital format – hosting it on a microsite or in an app – we’re able to capture detailed information about your audience. We use online surveys and the latest analytics and measurement software to learn more about who is reading your report and what they think of it, where they’re located, which information they’re most interested in, and which languages they speak. With this information we can tailor content to their needs more precisely next time – positively influencing how they respond, engage and invest with you.
Is it time for your corporate report to get the attention it deserves? Get in touch to start the ball rolling.