Customer Reporting Trends: How to Use Value-Based Metrics

Did you know the average agency spends an hour per client on monthly reporting? This data comes from Wordstream*, and it highlights a big issue in the world of marketing agencies. Agency owners should be concerned if they're spending this much time reporting. They should be very concerned if clients still don't understand the actual value of the agency's marketing services.

Reporting shouldn't take an hour per client. If it does, the reports should at least prove the value of the client's investment in your agency. Too often, however, agencies use the wrong metrics in customer reporting. Traditional marketing metrics fail to capture the agency's value.

WhatConverts fixes this problem. This article will explain how our marketing reports accomplish four things:

Establish expectations for marketing performance

Identify opportunities for better results

Communicate results with metrics the client understands

Prove the value of the agency's marketing

Read on to find out how to fix the broken reporting system that many agencies still use.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts to prove your value.

Use Customer Reporting to Set Marketing Expectations

A good client report connects marketing to sales. Leads are the connection between marketing and sales. Marketing agencies bring in leads, and the client's sales team turns leads into revenue.

Every client understands the potential value of a lead in terms of revenue. Most clients don't understand the potential revenue value of marketing metrics like SEO ranking, CTR, impressions, etc. That's why WhatConverts reports on leads.

The report below is a WhatConverts report called "Leads by Marketing Source." Our agency clients love this simple report because it clearly shows how well each marketing source fills the client's sales pipeline.

When your agency measures marketing success in terms of leads, it puts you and the client on the same page. The agency and the client know that the relationship depends on the agency's ability to produce leads for the client.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts to prove your value.

Identify Opportunities for Better Results

Lead-based reporting can show clients where the marketing opportunities are. Clients are more likely to increase marketing spending when they can see the opportunity to get more leads. A good marketing report answers three questions that every client wants to know:

• Which marketing channels are working?
• Which marketing channels are a waste of money?
• If I spend more, can I get better results?

Your agency should always have an answer when clients ask," "why should we go in this direction" Lead-based reports allow the agency to back up your decisions with data that clients can understand. For example, the report below shows landing pages driving leads from organic search and CPC ads. Marketers can use this report to find opportunities to use new landing pages in CPC ads or target new keywords in paid search based on the number of organic leads from on specific web pages.

Clients may not understand acronyms like CTR and CVR, but they'll always understand what leads mean to their bottom line.

Communicate in a Language the Clients Understand

Lead-based reports show how many leads each marketing campaign delivers. These reports don't get bogged down in SEO, PPC, or website traffic metrics. Instead, they focus on the client's bottom line.

Most marketing reports don't answer the one question clients want to know:" "How much revenue did this marketing bring in."

WhatConverts reports, like the one below, reveal how much your agency's marketing efforts are worth.

Marketing reports often show how well the marketing is working based on SEO ranking, page views, click-through rate, conversion rate, etc. The problem is clients can't easily connect those metrics and sales metrics. That's why agencies lose clients even when the marketing is working; the agency fails to show the client that the marketing is driving leads.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts to prove your value.

Lead-based reports align the agency's goals with the client's goals, ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Agencies live in a world of marketing, but clients live in a world of sales and revenue. Since leads are the metric that connects marketing and sales, it only makes sense to report on leads. If you can communicate with clients like this in terms they understand, you've won the customer reporting game.

Use Customer Reporting to Show The Value of Marketing

Lead-based reports show the agency's value. Your job, as an agency, isn't just to do marketing for a client; you also have to show the client how well your marketing is working. Lead-based reporting help agencies show their value to clients in terms clients can understand: leads, sales, revenue, and marketing ROI.

WhatConverts is unique in that the platform tracks the value of marketing in terms of leads and lead value. The platform captures leads, stores leads, and reports on leads. It's the bridge between marketing and sales.

WhatConverts Helps Agencies Prove Their Value Through Reporting

WhatConverts exists to help agencies prove their value to clients. The platform tracks marketing success by capturing leads, storing leads, and reporting on leads. By focusing on leads, WhatConverts agencies show clients the value of the agency's marketing efforts.

We do this in a few ways.

1. WhatConverts captures the complete lead with all marketing touchpoints.

Which data points do you use to measure marketing success? WhatConverts measures marketing success in leads, and we capture over 70 data points per lead. Our platform can track any conversion action from any marketing source and store the data as a lead. Here's an example of what the detailed lead data looks like inside WhatConverts.

2. WhatConverts stores all the leads in one dashboard

Clients can see how many leads came in from every marketing channel at any time. WhatConverts users can mark leads as quotable or non-quotable and assign a quote value or sales value to leads. Here is what the Leads Dashboard looks like in WhatConverts.

By storing leads, WhatConverts allows the agency and client to separate the good leads from the junk leads and see which marketing channels deliver the best leads.

3. WhatConverts provides lead-based customer reporting

Agencies can create, schedule, and send lead-based marketing reports with a few clicks. These are "live reports," meaning clients can click into the report data at any time to see the leads that make up the report. WhatConverts creates reports that show leads by marketing source, quote value by marketing source, qualified leads by keyword, and more.

Capturing, storing, and reporting leads is entirely different from spitting out marketing metrics. Agencies can cater to clients needs by showing the revenue-related metrics that clients care about.

Leads are your agency's deliverables. Agencies can't control how well the client's sales team turns leads into sales, but the agency is responsible for delivering leads to the client. WhatConverts helps agencies capture, store and show leads; the metric that matters most to clients.

Sign up here for a free 14-day WhatConverts trial or request a 30-minute live demo. We’ll answer your questions and show you how to use WhatConverts to prove your value.

*Reporting data from Wordstream State of the Internet Marketing Report