From your client’s perspective, most of what goes on with their digital marketing happens behind the scenes. This is why they are working with an agency—they themselves don’t know every detail that goes into the work being done, but they understand it needs to be done to achieve their business goals. For an agency, reporting is an opportunity to explain to the client not necessarily what is being done, but what results the work is achieving. It’s your chance to show your client why you are doing what you are doing and how it’s going. 

Understanding your Client’s Goals

The most essential part of reporting data to a client is understanding from the get go what your client’s goals are. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your client’s goals, you won’t know what results to look for or what to measure them against. It is your responsibility as an agency to speak openly and honestly with your clients about what they’re looking to achieve and whether or not their goals are realistic for their budgets and timelines. You need to make sure you and your client are on the same page indisputably and your expectations are completely aligned. 

On the other side of the coin, it’s also your clients responsibility to have a really solid understanding of the metrics that fit their business when it comes to lead generation, acquisition, and retention. Knowing these numbers is going to have a massive effect on how they view your results and feel about a campaign’s success, which is why understanding the reporting metrics and what defines success from the beginning of a campaign is incredibly important. 

When an agency and client both have a clear understanding of their goals and they are able to achieve this understanding when reporting results, a strong relationship between the two is formed and this strong relationship can foster peace of mind and trust. 

Reporting always needs to be transparent. Your client needs to hear about the bad as well as the good for many different reasons. One being is that when the news is good, it’s going to feel amazing and you will both be able to fully enjoy the success, the other reason is that honesty and transparency is the best way to foster a great working relationship. Delivering bad news is always easier when you’re delivering it to someone who trusts that behind the scenes you’re still working hard and you’re going to dedicate effort into pivoting the campaign to get better results in the future. 

When you have a good working relationship with your clients they will trust that you’re on their side, and if something’s not working it’s not because you’re not working hard or you don’t know what you’re doing— it’s just a part of advertising online.

Paralysis by Analysis

When you report data to your clients, one of the things you will want to avoid is creating paralysis by analysis. There is so much data and analytics that can be gathered and extrapolated during a marketing campaign that it can be overwhelming for someone who is not used to it. For marketing agencies a lot of this data can be quite interesting, but for the average client who doesn’t have an expansive knowledge of marketing metrics and lingo, it can be way too much. You can spend so much time looking at different numbers that it creates a situation where your client doesn’t know what numbers to focus on and how to interpret them and move forward. You can get stuck. 

Every client is of course different. Some may want to see a more expansive report, or they may want to have the data presented to them in a format that you’re not used to. Making decisions regarding how much and what data to show a client comes from understanding their expectations of you as an agency and may likely change over time as your relationship grows. Deciding how much time to take customizing your reporting methods for each individual client should be guided again by your working relationships; however, your goal should always be to provide customized insight so that your clients understand how useful your services truly are. 

The Importance of Progress Meetings

Your reporting is the proof of the work you’ve done, and the way you present this is a direct reflection of your professional identity. The way you work with your clients to understand how your work affects their business is what will help you develop and foster a mutually beneficial long-term working relationship. This is the most important reason why you should always speak to your clients about your reporting and never just send them a cold set of numbers. 

You can never expect someone working outside the marketing sphere to understand your data to the level you do. You are the expert and this is your time to reinforce that. You don’t want your client to misinterpret the information and have their perspective of your agency change unintentionally. You can never assume someone is on the same page as you, and this is especially true when it comes to such specific data.

Discussing the data with your clients also allows you to give the data context and explain transparently how it’s showing goals being met or discovering areas that need to be adjusted. The interpretation needs to come from you, especially if your client is new to digital marketing. Your client is the expert in their own business, not yours. It’s up to you to deliver the numbers, but also the “so what” that needs to come after.

If you’re struggling with reporting for your clients, google will give you a list of things you can change to make it better (you may be looking at the wrong time frame, not using clear graphics, pulling reports too frequently or infrequently, ignoring the impact of offline activity, etc., etc.). The list is exhaustive. None of these things will make your reporting more meaningful though. 

If you want your reports to be meaningful to your clients, always focus on your relationship. Focus on what you know your clients goals are and always make sure you’re being open and honest with them. Take reporting seriously and use it as an opportunity to strengthen your working relationship.

If you focus on your relationship first, the meaningfulness will follow.