The Ultimate Guide to Reporting Formats and Types for Lean Market Research

In brief

The final report of a lean market research endeavor can take different formats. This depends mainly on the targeted final usage as well as on the researcher himself. The researcher should choose the format wisely since the different formats have all advantages and limitations. This post is about The Ultimate Guide to Reporting Formats and Types for Lean Market Research.

This post aims at listing practically the different report formats so that the researcher can choose correctly the right report format for the right situation.

Written / Text reports

Let’s start The Guide to Reporting Formats and Types for Lean Market Research with the most classic and obvious one.

That is written and text reports.

Written or text reports come in the format of A paper or numerical (PDF) report containing the full  research content.

A written report contains Generally between 30 and 200 pages.

It’s the most classical and common market research delivery format.

Written or text reports can be accompanied by data files archiving the used data, detailed primary research results etc.

Pros tips

Let’s take a look now at some pros tips when it comes to text or written report of a lean market research work.

• The report format and design is almost as important as the report content
• Indeed, credibility is key for any market intelligence product and the format contributes to build this credibility
• It’s important to have a clear DNA into the delivered contents in general and the reports in particular
• If English or the used writing language is not your native language then you can hire very good freelance writers in the online platforms for enhancing the global writing standards of the report
• Never stop improving the skills for generating high quality reports though: gathering feedback, reading high standard reports from PwC, McKinsey, EY, Gartner etc 

Slides and presentations

The slides are a reduced version of the written report.

They are often graphics oriented and much less textual.

They aim at presenting the main outcomes of the research in an easy to read way.

The general structure is often the same as the written report.

Pros tips

Let’s take a look now at some pros tips regarding the preparation of reports in the formats of slides or presentations:

• It’s often better to start with the slides before the text report
• This aims at structuring the ideas and preparing good graphics that will make the text report more straightforward to write
• Use the text area under the slides in order to make notes whether for the speech or as starting content for igniting the text report
• The main advantage is the default storage on the cloud + free
• You can use paid software like MS-PPT or paid Canva
• The advantage is the access to more features and possibilities
• Infographics oriented solutions like Canva are increasingly used

Videos

• The videos are the most used media content online since few years and the trend can only increase during the upcoming decades
• Adding a video format is a high added value to the consumer since it corresponds to a more digestible content format
• It’s also a clear differentiator wrt the classic competition 

Pros tips

Let’s take a look now at some pros tips when it comes to preparing a lean market research report in a video format:

• There are many tools for making and editing videos that can be free or paid
• The recommended one is Camtasia
• You an have for less than $300 a premium and complete tool for preparing high quality video content
• The slides can be used as main support for the video
• The speaker can use it for recording the whole presentation
• This guarantees a nice user experience to the audience wrt reading text or slides

Audio reports

Audio reports can take the shape of An MP3 or WAV format of the conducted research.

It Can be considered as the audiobook version of the deliverables.

Audiobooks are gaining big momentum during the past few years thanks to the value that they offer.

Like videos, audio reports aim at enhancing the user experience when consuming the conducted research.

Pros tips

Let’s cite the following pros tips when it comes to preparing an audio report:

• The audio reports can be generated directly from the same resource as the video content with no additional cost
• An ideal workflow is to prepare the slides then the video then the audiobook
• A shortened version of the  audiobooks can be used for creating a podcast

Dashboards

They are often online deployment of the data figures and charts used during the research.

Dashboards are usually interactive and allow the user to explore the data in his own way.

They should be well designed with a smooth user experience.

Usually they also allow downloading the data and taking screenshots of the generated charts.

Pros tips

Here are some pros tips when it comes to generating lean market research deliverables in the format of dashboards:

• A clean and insightful dashboard is a big differentiator for the conducted research
• Dashboards are a great tool for gaining more credibility regarding the researcher branding and performed work
• Low cost yet high quality tools like Tableau and MS-PowerBI allow the creation and online deployment of premium dashboards in few clicks