New Guide: 5 Solutions to Reporting’s Most Irritating Problems

New Guide: 5 Solutions to Reporting’s Most Irritating Problems:from B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify by Jennifer Wong
Clients want results. Having a formalized process to share your success and convey the results of your digital marketing efforts is the best way to build a long-term relationship with your clients. But reporting can be huge headache and a drain on precious agency resources.
This new guide “5 Solutions to Reporting’s Most Irritating Problems” reveals some of reporting’s most some irritating problems and offers simple solutions to help you streamline your process and deliver more insightful reports.
I know you’re a busy marketer, helping all of your clients win more customers, so I’ve captured the highlights of the guide for you quickly read and share. Click to download the guide now to read the full guide later!

Problem 1: Misaligned Expectations

A client’s view of a success may be very different from yours and may even differ client-to-client. Is success defined as delivering 50k new visits a month or 30 new sales opportunities? Both are valid goals, but ones that require a different approach, tracking mechanisms and reports.
Solution – Agree on success metrics from the beginning
These questions should be answered at the earliest stages of your engagement. That way you can make great campaign recommendations, work with them to agree on realistic performance expectations and put in place the systems you need to report success. Asking these questions also gives you the opportunity to show your consulting ‘chops’ and raise your profile with your client.

Problem 2: Time and Money Wasted on Juggling Too Many Tools

How many tools does your agency use to compile your client reports – 3, 5, 7, 10+?
Agencies use more tools across all categories than in-house marketers. This isn’t that surprising given that many agencies run a broader range of digital campaigns than in-house marketers and in some cases are stuck using the platforms that their clients are already using.

Solution – Consolidate tools to make reporting more efficient
Look for a solution that can report on key metrics like visits, leads, conversion rate and sales opportunities across digital channels as well as provide KPIs like keyword rank, inbound links and social media shares.

Problem 3: Reporting Ties Up Expensive Agency Resources

For many agencies producing the in-depth reports is an ongoing drain on key agency resources.
Solution – Find a reporting platform that anyone in your agency can use
Look for a digital marketing solution designed with ease of use in mind so that even junior team members can pull consistent, meaningful reports in minutes.
What makes a platform easy to use?

• An easy-to-understand menu and button descriptions
• Drop-down dialogs to make choosing easy
• Being to drill down to get more detailed information when needed
• Ability to quickly change reporting timeframe and other parameters
• Having the option to export reports with one click

Problem 4: Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

What kind of feedback do you get when you deliver a report to your clients? Hopefully you get smiles and a pat on the back. But if you get blank looks, a barrage of questions or worse still no feedback at all, you need to do a better job of telling the story behind the numbers.
Solution – Make sure clients understand what’s going on
Add insight to your charts and reports to help your clients understand what you are presenting – also use graphics!

Problem 5: One Off Reports

You’re doing a great job of sharing meaningful data with your clients on a regular basis, but random requests for data spun a hundred different ways is difficult to manage and a drain on resources.
Solution – Provide clients with dashboards and real-time reporting
Look for a solution that allows you to setup a custom dashboard for each client, so they can see at a glance the data points that interest them and drill down to get more details. While this real-time access won’t eliminate all ad hoc reporting requests, it should satisfy the majority of needs of your most demanding clients.
Download the full guide here. Enjoy!