Companies and brands know they need marketing. That may include Branding Campaigns, Outdoor Billboards, Social Media Management, Paid Search, SEO, and many other advertising avenues to keep their brand top of mind for their customers, and their services discoverable. But clients often overlook a part of marketing that can be just as important as these campaigns – Reporting. And even the clients who know they need reporting on the performance of their marketing efforts rarely have a strong sense of what to expect from their advertising agency or department.
Marketing Reporting should be where the client and the agency come together and both review the performance of past and current efforts, as well as strategize together on future planning. But what’s needed in a marketing report to make this happen? Let’s review what brands should look for in the marketing reporting coming from their advertising partners.
Accuracy
The number one thing all marketing reporting needs is Accuracy. This may go without saying, but without accuracy, nothing can be learned from any reporting. But funnily enough, something as objective seeming as “accuracy” can be rather subjective in nature. Take reporting on website traffic and leads generated, for example. Pulling accurate traffic metrics like Users and Sessions from a client’s Google Analytics account is simple enough, but properly calculating the Leads Generated by this traffic can be a bit more tricky. Often Lead counting requires removing duplicates, spam, and tests form fills and phone calls from your lead pools, allowing you to arrive at the truer, more accurate value for how many contacts your traffic was responsible for. This and other similar methods should be utilized by your advertising agency to provide you with the most accurate reporting possible.
Transparency
After accuracy, the next most important factor of marketing reporting is Transparency. If your agency’s reporting isn’t transparent, then can it be trusted? What do we mean by transparency when it comes to reporting? Put simply, reporting should show both the good and the bad. Even the most successfully marketing agency in the world will run a campaign that underperforms on expectations – its just a part of doing business. And marketing reporting should show this poor performance just as clearly as it would show strong performance when a campaign is successful. Only through understanding both what works and what doesn’t can marketing efforts improve, and that’s only possible with transparent, honest reporting.
Client Specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
What’s important for one client isn’t always important for another. One brand may know that their Social Media accounts generate the most buzz for their services, while another relies on Opportunities and Sales recorded in Salesforce or another CRM to meet quarterly goals. Quality marketing reporting should take into consideration these client specific KPIs and focus on showing the results that matter the most.
Analysis – More than Just Numbers
Too often marketing reporting can look like “just a lot of numbers” to busy clients. And while providing them with accurate and transparent data on the metrics that matter most is any reporting teams job, this alone isn’t enough. Taking reporting from numbers to Analysis is what separates a top advertising agency from the pack. Reviewing the results of campaigns, comparing them to past performance, industry standards, and competitive benchmarks, as well as client specified goals, is just the first step of quality analysis. Diving into why, not just what, campaigns did or didn’t work is how marketing reporting truly brings value to a client.
Strategy – Taking the Next Step Together
The final piece of reporting that brands should look for from their agencies is how to use this information in determining a marketing Strategy. The best relationships between clients and agencies are partnerships with a unified goal. To achieve these goals, both parties should strategize together to determine the best paths forward with the insight of their particular areas of expertise. Reporting is where agency and client can sit together, reflect on results and analysis, and formulate their plan for future projects. And this is only possible with strong, accurate, and transparent analytical reports.
Marketing reporting is more than just an Excel or PowerPoint file. It’s an integral tool for reaching a client’s goals. If your advertising agency isn’t providing you with this tool, look for one that does.