Do you find yourself spending hours each week manually updating your client’s KPI reports? If so, then it may be time to automate the process. In this blog post, we will discuss how to automate your client KPI reporting process with the 11 steps below. Follow these steps and you’ll never have to worry about manually updating a report again!
1. Identify clients’ most important marketing tools.
Most marketers have a lot of different tools at their disposal, but you’ll need to make sure you’re using the right ones. What are your clients’ most important digital marketing services? For example, do they use HubSpot Marketing or Facebook Ads for inbound marketing and Adwords for pay-per-click ads? Make a list of all the data that’s crucial for your agency’s success as well as what is necessary to keep track of each account across every client.
2. Make sure to thoroughly define the KPIs of your project with your client.
In-depth conversations with clients are key to understanding what information is most important for their business. By starting out by talking about revenue goals, it will be more interesting and helpful in the long run since they’ll always look forward to seeing your reporting results.
3. Don’t use a reporting tool that doesn’t integrate deeply with your key services.
A reporting tool is a must-have for any digital agency. There are several to choose from, but not all of them will meet your needs and requirements. When choosing the best one for you, consider what metrics you need be able to report on that aren’t available in other systems within your organization or with another service provider – this may include website traffic data or conversion rates which can both be found through Google Analytics as an example. Of course, these examples might change depending on if it’s retail site analytics instead of those more typical aforementioned business models so don’t limit yourself! The point is: know who provides services where because this could save time while engaging in self-analysis (and potentially saving money!).
4. Understand your client’s goals and align them with your metrics.
Now, think about if your chosen reporting tool can pull all the metrics needed to help you make informed decisions on digital marketing campaigns. The client may not be an expert in this field so it’s important that you determine what data points are most necessary for them and then list out their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Once these have been identified, form a hypothesis around which services might provide those specific metrics before reaching back out with any questions or requests for assistance. If there is no service that offers certain information by default within its reports – such as Google Analytics providing attribution windows automatically without requiring manual input from the user- consider supplementing other tools like Hootsuite Social Media Management Software with more robust analytics offerings.
5. It’s important to have a standardized report that you can use for all your clients.
You can keep reporting simple and streamlined by grouping your clients based on their needs. By creating a template that is customized for each group, you will only need to build the one while reusing it as many times as needed!
6. Design dashboards that are tailored to your audience.
It’s crucial to choose the best way to visualize your data. Reporting tools offer a vast selection of charts and graphs, so it can be overwhelming at first! You should also think about how you want to categorize specific bits of information- for example, on one dashboard you could group together Google Analytics’ organic search traffic with SEMrush keywords in a line chart or table format; while another might display follower counts from different social services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube side by side.
7. After you’ve collected all the data, roll out your reports internally so everyone can see the big picture.
Agencies must show their marketing reports to clients before they are rolled out. This is important because each client report will need some customization, and the account managers know what information your specific client wants to see in a report. With this knowledge, you can demonstrate that you have taken time for individualized attention on behalf of the company’s clients rather than making one-size fits all type changes which would not be beneficial at all when rolling them out with other agencies who haven’t customized it for any particular person or business needs.
8. Automated reporting is another way for you to distinguish yourself from your competitors.
Automated reporting saves you time, which might be the primary reason why your clients are implementing it. Your ability to reallocate saved time towards analyzing and improving their numbers benefits them just as much as saving yourself some work helps out with securing more customers in future business cycles. You shouldn’t position its value proposition this way though: tell potential new companies how automated reports benefit them directly rather than describing how automation will also indirectly help expand your clientele base too!
9. The best way to share results is through regular updates.
Your reporting strategy can vary depending on your client’s needs. If they have a large amount of traffic, leads, or ad budget then you may want to do a daily review. But if their marketing assets are limited and the monthly review is fine for them right now it might be best not to overwhelm them with too much information all at once as that could result in an overwhelming experience which will only make things more difficult for both parties down the road.
Your reporting strategy should aim to update your clients without inundating them by providing detailed updates about every little thing happening over the course of each month (unless this level of detail makes sense given their current stage).
10. Check each client’s devices to see if they can open the reports.
You’re going to have some clients who are more excited about automated reporting than others. If they’re very data-driven, you can show their reports on an office TV so that it’s always in view of the room at all times or allow them to monitor stats from your company on smartphones wherever they go.
11. It’s important to get your clients on the same page as you in order for them to succeed.
In order to understand your progress, try setting goals in the reporting software. This way you can compare how well you are performing against wherever that goal may be so it will make meeting monthly reviews much easier and more productive for both parties involved.
Goals are an important component of measuring performance. Every month, you should be able to see how well your goals align with the work that you’ve done and if they’re being achieved regularly or not so much. If there is a clear correlation between what’s been accomplished and what was intended, it will make selling more services easier because people can clearly identify where their strengths lie in relation to other projects within this company. However-if these achievements aren’t outlined as easily then customers may lose interest quickly since they have no frame of reference for why this person deserves additional business opportunities over others on staff who haven’t even made any progress at all!
