From Reports to Roadmaps: Turning Your Data Into a Plan

With festival season wrapping up across North America, it’s officially reporting season. The crowds are gone, the stages are packed away, and what’s left behind is a mountain of data waiting to be turned into insight.

Earlier this year, we shared a few tips on turning reports into storytelling tools. Ways to move beyond spreadsheets and communicate insights in a way that everyone can understand. You can check out that blog HERE.

This time, we’re taking it a step further: how to turn those reports into roadmaps for next season. We know one of the hardest parts of reporting is figuring out how to translate your recap into a clear, actionable plan. So we chatted with our Digital Strategy team to get some of their advice on turning end-of-season reports from static documents into next season's blueprints:

Tip 1. Define what success really means

Before diving into your report, get clear on exactly what you’re trying to learn from the data. What story do you want it to tell, and how will that story guide next year’s strategy? Instead of reporting on surface-level metrics like attendance or impressions, connect those numbers to your broader goals, such as audience growth, spend per fan, or year-over-year retention.

Once you’ve established that connection, it’s equally important to prioritize; not every insight deserves the same weight, and focusing on too many areas can dilute their impact. Highlight only the actions that will have the biggest impact next year to prevent your roadmap from becoming overwhelming, and to give your team a clear starting point.

Tip 2. Highlight opportunities for growth

Your roadmap should do more than recreate last year’s successes; it should also reveal areas for growth. Those 'negative' numbers aren’t failures, they’re indicators of untapped potential.

For instance, if VIP tickets underperformed this year, that doesn’t mean VIP is a lost cause. It may be worth experimenting with new perks, like bundling in meet-and-greets or early-bird incentives, to see if that moves the needle. Or if Instagram engagement dipped, that's a perfect opportunity to test out new content formats or shift some of your spend to another platform like TikTok.  

Approaching reporting this way turns challenges into opportunities, helping your team plan proactively and identify where growth is possible before next season begins. 

Tip  3. Find the "why" behind your numbers

Data alone can be misleading if it's not connected to the story behind it. A spike in ticket sales or engagement is interesting, but the real value comes from asking "why?"

If ticket sales increased right after you segmented fans by genre, that indicates this strategy is worth repeating (or scaling up) for next year. On the flip side, if sales were low during your main announcement window, you might find the timing conflicted with another big event in the industry, or that the messaging didn’t resonate with fans.

The goal here is to move past surface-level reporting and uncover the cause-and-effect relationships that explain performance. When you can point to not just what happened but why it happened, your roadmap becomes the guide for making smarter, evidence-based decisions next season.

Tip  4. Translate insights into clear next steps

A good roadmap ties each insight to a concrete action. The formula we like to use is simple:  Metric → Insight  → Next Year’s Plan. Think of each piece of data as a jumping-off point to an insight, and each insight leading to a specific, actionable plan. Here are a few examples:

• Metric - 35% of merch buyers were out-of-town fans
• Insight - Travelling fans show propensity for high-value spending
• Plan - Create travel packages with merch + targeted out-of-market ads

• Metric - 23% of ticket buyers engaged with pre-sale SMS
• Insight - SMS drove measurable urgency
• Plan - Expand SMS strategy across all cities next tour

Ultimately, clarity is everything. Executives should be able to look at your plan and immediately understand what’s coming next. No reading between the lines required.

Tip 5. Make it easy to share and act on

How you present the roadmap matters just as much as the data itself. Even the best insights lose power if they're buried in a 50-page PDF. The goal is to make your report easy to absorb, share, and act on, and that starts with clear, consistent formatting that makes key information effortless to find.

That often means leading with visuals. Like heat maps of where ticket buyers are coming from, charts that map spend against sales over time, or side-by-side comparisons of campaign performance by platform. Visuals can tell a story much faster than paragraphs of text, and are far easier to send to those you need to share the information with.

And don’t underestimate the power of consistency. Using the same structure each year helps stakeholders quickly understand the flow of information and spot year-over-year trends. Over time, your reporting format itself becomes a trusted roadmap; something they can count on for information and direction.

Final Thoughts

Too often, reports get brushed off as a formality, something you “have” to do at the end of a season. But when treated as a roadmap, they become one of the most valuable planning tools available. They give you the evidence you need to back up bold ideas, the confidence to shift resources where they’ll have the most impact, and the clarity to align your team and partners around shared goals.

This approach also changes how your stakeholders view reports. Instead of seeing a static document full of stats, they start to see a story of progress, opportunities, and future potential. That shift builds trust: sponsors feel reassured their investment is being maximized, leadership can easily see the value of your work, and your team gets a clear direction for what to do next.

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