Why Your Agency Should Provide Marketing Reporting

When we started providing reports to clients (back in the Stone Age), the process often proved to be very cumbersome. We could generate reports, but they weren’t customizable, and they were huge. Each month, clients received a 15-page document that no one had the time to read, much less understand. Now, we’ve got the hang of producing accurate, consolidated, and actionable reporting for our clients that we can use to continue generating great results.

How Marketing Reporting Works

Producing a report is more than just a fancy way of saying you’re gathering numbers. Reporting is an organized process that provides insight to data and helps a business see what their next course of action should be. When you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), it helps clients know when they need to shift a strategy that’s currently in place.

Reporting numbers are usually generated by looking at things like customer behavior, ROI, product sales, click-through rates, website traffic, and anything else a client has set goals around. Based on the data found, the reports are presented as scorecards and graphs, giving everyone a good visual that helps them understand the data.

Within a marketing reporting system, the data is completely customizable for each client. This means tailoring the system to show the sets of data the client wants to see. Some clients may be more data-driven and want a full breakdown of the numbers and what they mean, while others may just want to see a simplified version of whether they are progressing or not. These reports are tracked over a specific time period and can also be broken down on a campaign-by-campaign basis when necessary.

Reports are also a great resource to have on hand in case someone other than the client needs to see the data. For example, if the client wants a more in-depth explanation about how their ROI or product sales are looking, the accounts team can be roped in and use the data report to help break down what’s happening and why.

5 Benefits of Accurate Marketing Reporting

Here at Roger West, we understand how important reporting is to our clients and how it contributes to the overall success of marketing efforts. It’s vital for understanding what’s working and what’s not, learning the most effective ways to spend a marketing budget, and gaining awareness about customers to ultimately make the best business decisions.

1. It provides visibility

Without reporting, there is no clear indication of how your marketing strategy is doing as a whole! Alongside tracking each client individually, consistently looking at the big-picture growth and improvements over time gives a team visibility into all marketing efforts. It also shows the impact those efforts have on sales over days, weeks, months, and years.

2. It allows you to communicate more effectively

Another perk of reporting is that it allows you to share results with key stakeholders. Each client may have a different idea of the types of data they want to see in order to evaluate performance. By using reporting, quantitative information can be laid out clearly to communicate which strategies are going well and which ones might need adjustment.

3. It eliminates excuses

Not every marketing strategy is about generating hard metrics. In most cases, however, there will be an established KPI that indicates whether the strategies being deployed are actually working. As the old saying goes, numbers don’t lie. If reporting shows that a lead gen strategy is failing to produce leads, there’s no opportunity for excuses.

4. It validates your team

Reporting also makes it easier to give credit where credit is due! If several members of your team have been working on a campaign over the course of a few months and it proves to be successful through reporting, everyone is able to see just how much their hard work paid off. By establishing a clear line of cause and effect between marketing efforts and performance, your team will become better at deploying proven strategies that get consistent results.

5. It keeps campaigns on track

If there is no reporting at all (amazingly, we still see many sites that don’t), or if the reporting is inaccurate, the marketing plan and budget can go off the rails, fast. It may be hard to keep track of how much of the budget has been spent, or if a brand’s ROI has increased or decreased. For that reason, it’s important to ensure your results tracking is correctly in place (e.g that you’re tracking the correct conversion metrics).

Our Marketing Reporting Experts

Roger West’s digital team uses a combination of automated and manually generated reports to monitor performance, make data-based decisions, and ensure that all channels are being tracked based on client needs and business goals. Based on those reports, we can adjust marketing strategies, campaigns, and channel usage to optimize performance and provide clients with the biggest bang for their buck.

We work with both Data Studio and Agency Analytics to develop customized, visual dashboards for select clients, which allows them to see their reporting in real-time. Users can then drill down for a greater level of detail and view historic data for comparison. We also create custom manual reports which cover a range of metrics – both online and offline – and include helpful analytics on spending pace, number of inquiries, cost per quality lead, conversion rates, and more. Whenever possible, this information is boiled down to a single page for easy reference.

“We understand that reporting is not a 'one-size fits all' commodity,” says Tim Peyton, Roger West’s Director of Digital Strategy. “We work with each client individually to understand their goals and build custom reports to ensure that the information being delivered helps them monitor their progress and ultimately achieve those goals.”

Get in on the Action

The marketing report itself is not what makes the direct impact, but the actions you take based on the data you receive is the key to success, and Roger West can help you with both!

Looking for someone who knows metrics and is better than your current agency? Let’s Talk.