Trend reports are an invaluable tool for lead generation, positioning you as an expert in your field and allowing you to identify patterns, or ‘trends’, over a period of time.

Having just finished the annual report for Alzheimer’s Society, we’re busy producing a big state-of-the-industry report for cell therapy innovators CellRev, which will be just as visually attractive and full of data as reports we’ve worked on for Jones Lang LaSalle and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Trend reports can reveal all kinds of information about your industry and audience, and help you track the metrics you’re interested in - often over multiple years, painting a vivid picture of changes in consumer activity and the environment in which your business operates. This will position you as a thought leader in your industry and allow you to offer content which is highly valuable to your target audience.

Trend reports, surveys, and whitepapers are often used to:

• understand key challenges in your sector

• identify opportunities for growth

• predict how changing market conditions will shape your industry

• outline how to seize the opportunities you’ve identified

• build your email marketing list, putting you closer to key prospects.

But how do you create one? Read on for our winning formula…

7 steps to trend report success:

1. How to choose an audience for your trend report

The audience of your trend report is the crucial starting point. Decide who you want to target with this piece of content:

• Are you educating and informing your established audience?

• Perhaps you’re trying to reach new markets - and this content will help?

• Do you need to create multiple reports for different audiences?

When you’ve decided who you’re writing for, it will make the rest of the process much more intuitive, as you can either draw on your existing knowledge of your audience needs, or you can conduct market research and develop content ideas that serve your goals.

Top tip: Let your report showcase who and what you know best. For brands like Hilton, their yearly report on Emerging Travel Trends helps to solidify their reputation for excellence in accommodation and customer service. This helps attract both new and returning customers. Demonstrating the Hilton team truly know their customer base also keeps the brand aspirational, providing a benchmark for other travel brands to aspire to.

2. How to choose a topic for your trend report

This is an essential next step, which will help determine everything that comes next. What topic do you want to explore, and why? With an almost limitless array of potential topics out there spanning every industry, narrowing it down can get a little complicated!

Start with your purpose. Is this report designed to bring in leads? Perhaps you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field? Maybe you want to survey some core metrics which you can revisit in the years ahead?

To help you pick a topic, think about…

• any pressing questions you’d like answered about your industry

• problems your product or service can fix for your target market

• key trends you’re intrigued by, and think others will be, too.

Some of the best trend reports are inspired by a combination of all three factors, ensuring the content has both industry relevance and relevance to the business creating the report.

When you’ve decided on your topic, start thinking about what you can realistically accomplish. What timeline are you working within? What resources can you dedicate to the project?

Understandably, a report with a data-gathering window of a year and six months of writing time will be much more in-depth than a report where data is gathered in a month and results are written up in a fortnight.

Yet both approaches have equal merits - it’s all about having grounded ambitions and a solid plan in place.

Top tip: Read reports of varying lengths, such as the Good Food Institute’s paper on The State of the Industry: Cultured Meat & Seafood. This report shows how detailed and extensive a trend report can be, whilst a shorter trend report such as Instagram’s 2023 report on cultural and social change takes a more condensed approach to a broad subject.

3. How to find trend report inspiration

Get inspired by checking out trend reports by brands you love. The topics covered don’t have to be the same as your own.

Cast your eyes over as many reports as you can and think about what you love (or hate) about their approach. There are lots of innovative ways to rework this tried and tested format, and arming yourself with knowledge will fuel your own approach.

Top tip: Search for interesting, clear ways of presenting your findings. Take a look Deloitte’s report on the Top 10 Media & Entertainment Trends, which offers actionable insights that its readers can implement in their own strategies.

4. How to gather data for your report

Data gathering will probably be one of the lengthier aspects of creating your trend report. Depending on your chosen approach, you could be sourcing industry data from outside of your organisation (or within it), distributing a survey (or multiple surveys), organising focus groups (and finding people to participate), and/or interviewing subject matter experts to collate their opinions.

Some organisations favour qualitative methods that show clear changes in core metrics over time. Others prefer a quantitative approach, which prioritises the thoughts and feelings of those surveyed. Many reports use a combination of the two to great effect, backing up hard data with quotations and statements that support the findings.

Top tip: Some of the most interesting trend reports get creative with how they present their methodology. This annual trend report from WeTransfer, self-described as “the be all and end-all of creative reports”, finds exciting ways to explain who took part in their research.

5. How to analyse data for your report

Data analysis can be a daunting task, but this is where you’ll find all those wonderful insights to share with the world.

As you search through your data, look for clear commonalities that indicate a pattern. Do the same themes crop up again and again? These can be identified as the early beginnings of the trends you’ve identified.

Top tip: Jones Lang LaSalle’s (JLL) annual Global Hotel Investment Outlook report provides a yearly snapshot of the core metrics their customer base wants to track. The company’s market intelligence and strategic advice keep JLL at the forefront of their industry.

6. How to format your trend report

There are lots of different ways of developing a superb trend report. There’s no set formula you need to stick to, though there are a few fundamentals that will help increase readability and relevance:

• Write a compelling introduction that outlines what you set out to discover (and why). This will help draw people in to find out more. You could even take the opportunity to introduce your company within this introductory section, giving readers insight into why the topic you’ve chosen is so important to your organisation and its audience.

• Develop a concise summary of your findings. This gives journalists a ‘hook’ for their stories and ensures skim-readers can get a general overview of the report without needing to read your full findings.

• Use eyecatching design elements. Pie charts, graphs and charts are superb ways of breaking up big blocks of text and showing off any quantitative data. If you have a little more time and the design chops, then some branded icons or imagery could help bring your findings to life. You can also use typography to great effect if you prefer a more minimalist approach.

• Explain your methodology. This doesn’t need to be a lengthy part of your report, but readers will be interested to find out more about how you gathered data, who you spoke to, and why you chose that approach.

Top tip: Working with a designer will give your trend report a professional look and feel. They’ll not only be able to ensure the report has plenty of polish, but they can advise on creative ways to present your data without losing the narrative thread or confusing the reader.

Examine how Snapchat’s designer cleverly incorporated brand identity into the company’s report on user priorities, The Snapchat Generation:

7. How to promote your trend report or whitepaper

The promotional plan is part of what will make your trend report sink or swim, so it’s worth taking seriously and planning ahead:

• Where will people find your report digitally?

• Do you need to incorporate a new landing page to your website?

• Will the report have a physical copy as well as a digital one?

• Which key findings could you highlight in your promotional materials?

• Which digital channels can you use to spread the word?

A well-timed press release and some sophisticated posts on your social media channels can go a long way. If you plan on making a big splash, then consider also investing in some paid digital advertising to give the content that extra push.

Top tip: Follow the lead of Rubber Cheese and their annual Visitor Attraction Website Report. The visuals promoting the report (and its data-collecting survey) are always striking and stand out impressively when promoting on social media. The company is also great at repurposing content and sharing it in a condensed form to provoke interest (think big stats, audiograms and interview snippets).

Make your trend report an annual event

Our friends at The Wow Company are a great example of how to turn your trend report into an annual event. Starting small in 2012, their yearly Benchpress Report has since grown to become part of the agency calendar for their clients, with a launch event where attendees eagerly await to hear the latest data.

Not only that, but the report also helps draw in new customers as it has solidified their reputation as a trusted business with a keen understanding of the challenges their audience faces.

Putting it all together…

• Know your audience

• Understand your report’s purpose

• Get inspired by reading other reports

• Decide on a clear data-gathering strategy

• Analyse your data to identify trends

• Format your report to spark reader interest

• Develop a winning promotional plan

• Make it annual for greater impact

Need a copywriter for your trend report?

Get in touch with Sookio. Our copywriting for trend reports and whitepaper copywriting services will help create a report you can’t wait to share!