A 2023 report found three major reasons why marketing agencies lose clients:
Though they look distinct at first, each is actually a symptom of the same problem—are you proving your value?
Costs after all don’t mean a thing if the ROI is right. Relationships thrive if everyone’s seeing the value. And no data access is just another way of saying “I want to see if what I’m paying for is actually working.”
Great marketing reporting software solves all three of these issues for clients (proves value) while giving marketers impactful optimization insights.
Today we’re looking at how to find the best marketing reporting software, breaking down the top nine platforms, and showing who can benefit from each.
Before we get into what to look for in a marketing reporting tool, here are the top platforms as rated by 1850+ views from G2—the world's leading software review company.
Data Capturer + Aggregator (report on first AND third party data)
Interactive Reporting (drill down into individual leads)
Numerous Report Templates + Custom Report Builder
Lead Capture, Qualification, Valuing, & Reporting (all in one)
Lead Tracking & Reporting Software for Agencies – Best Tool for Proving & Growing Your Marketing Value
Other tools worth exploring:
Marketing reporting communicates the performance of your marketing channels and allows you to optimize your campaigns based on data.
For example, one agency achieved 38% annual growth for the last 8 years because they used marketing report data to optimize based on which channels were performing.
Read More: Case Study: 27X ROI & 38% Yearly Growth Using WhatConverts
Great digital marketing reporting can mean two different things for marketers and clients.
On the client side, reporting needs to communicate the value of your client’s investment using the language they speak.
For example, if you’re doing marketing for:
Presenting your results in this context means more to your clients than simply showing total leads generated.
Client reporting also needs to be able to answer questions your clients may have, like:
Finally, client reporting needs to be easily digestible (not cluttered with unneeded metrics).
Marketing professionals need more robust data to optimize their campaigns.
They need reporting that lets them:
One of the most valuable conversations you can have with a client is the “needs discovery” talk. What’s important to them? What are the success metrics they’re judging your marketing by? What are the success metrics they’re being judged by?
When you understand what’s important to each client, you can build informative reporting that matters to them. The trick is having the right tools to capture those important metrics so you can include them in your reporting.
Below are some examples to illustrate how reporting tools and KPIs may differ across clients.
This client only cares about the bottom line—how much revenue did your marketing team generate for them last month?
This client is only concerned with achieving results according to the KPIs their boss set for them (impressions, clicks, and traffic).
This client is relentlessly focused on beating out their competitors. They care about driving leads and climbing SEO rankings, but they also want to squash the competition.
What’s considered a good performance metric depends on which stage of the buyer’s journey you’re reporting on. Marketers need access to the right data at each stage before they can understand what’s working.
Read More: How Does Customer Journey Marketing Work?
Clients will inevitably have questions about the quality of your leads.
Questions like:
Reporting that’s interactive rather than static lets you interrogate your data (drill down into individual leads to prove each is qualified) right from your reports and answer client questions on the spot.
Being able to interrogate your data also means you can prove your data is correct before making decisions based on it.
Say you’re evaluating campaign performance across three different platforms: Google Analytics, Google Ads, and your form builder. In Google Analytics, you see your campaign brought in 250 conversions last month. In Google Ads, it shows 235. And in your form builder, 275.
Which is the right number?
Without the ability to interrogate your data and see individual leads, you can’t verify which is correct. And that means you can’t optimize confidently based on it.
There are two types of marketing reporting platforms:
Remember: Data Aggregators and Data Capturers can be used together to create visually appealing client reporting that still speaks the language of your client. For instance, you can use AgencyAnalytics to combine WhatConverts lead data, traffic KPIs from Google Analytics, and ad spend KPIs from Google Ads into a single, beautiful client report.
To help you decide which marketing reporting tool (or tool combination) is right for you, think about what your goal is when using these platforms.
Now that we understand the what, why, and how of marketing reporting, let’s look at the top recommendations for marketing agency reporting software.
Each reporting tool will also have a score provided by G2, one of the most widely used software review platforms.
Lead Tracking & Reporting Software for Agencies – Best Tool for Proving & Growing Your Marketing Value
WhatConverts is a powerful lead tracking, management, and reporting tool.
Some core differences between WhatConverts and other marketing reporting tools are:
WhatConverts is able to produce clear, concise reports on which marketing campaigns are generating leads (and how many) due to the quality of the data captured.
Instead of just pulling basic ad campaign stats from Google Ads or Facebook, WhatConverts captures user behavior on your site, namely: calls, form fills, and what marketing activities brought them to the site.
This creates a rich dataset around leads that your website is generating, including data like:
You can also tie revenue generated (Sales Value) or quotable value (Quote Value) back to those individual leads your marketing generated.
Then you can build beautiful reports to summarize that data in ways that are:
Specifically, let’s look at 3 types of reports that you can send to clients using WhatConverts.
Most of our customers use a combination of them, and we’ll discuss each report type in detail below, so you can see what makes the most sense for your agency.
Skip to:
As we touched on earlier, the majority of marketing agency reporting has two key problems:
One of the best ways agencies can prove the value of their marketing strategy and impress clients is with our Summary Marketing Report.
It solves the problems listed above by being (1) fully based around leads as the KPI and (2) digestible and easy to understand.
As you can see in the screenshot above, our Monthly Summary Marketing Report is composed of several parts:
This lets clients quickly identify:
Let’s look at each part in detail.
The part of this report that catches the eye most is the main summary. Here, clients can easily see how many leads your digital marketing campaigns generated, which is the main KPI clients care about.
In this example, it’s 405 total leads for the month.
Per #2 in the screenshot above, you can easily see the growth in leads compared to the previous month.
In this example, it was a 56% increase from 260.
But what if there was a decrease in leads? In our experience (and those of our customers), it still makes sense to include that in this report, because those are the times when you can earn the most trust from your clients.
This clearly communicates with them that you’ve (1) identified the problem that caused a decrease in leads, and (2) are taking the necessary action steps to solve it.
Per #3, you can also see the number of quotable (a.k.a. qualified) leads for the month.
In this example, it was 117 quotable leads — a 39% increase.
Going the extra mile and showing clients their highest-value leads is a differentiator in itself, and can be a selling point for your agency.
Note: Click here for information on how you (or your clients) can qualify leads and then pull that data into WhatConverts. You can also use Lead Intelligence to automatically qualify leads. For more on this powerful feature, take a look at this guide.
Client Reporting Tips: Click “View All Leads”
Most marketing agencies have been asked, “How do I know these are actually good leads?”
WhatConverts makes it easy to drill down into the specifics of each lead generated, right from your reports (a.k.a. Interactive Reporting). Then you can quickly see if leads are new or repeat, spam, have a high intent to buy, and more—all in a few clicks.
That way, you can answer client questions and prove lead quality without having to say, “I’ll get back to you.”
The next part of the report shows the number of leads by conversion type.
In this example, there were 405 total leads, and at a glance, your clients can see how many of them came from calls vs. forms vs. transactions vs. chats.
In addition, this section of the report shows if there was an increase or decrease in leads by conversion type compared to the previous month. This is valuable because if, for example, the number of form conversions dropped drastically compared to the previous month (e.g., 120 form conversions down to 10 form conversions), there may be a technical issue with your form setup, so it gives you a chance to identify and troubleshoot the problem.
Note: Beyond reporting, WhatConverts lets agencies capture and track each lead that comes in from forms, calls, chat, or transaction. This article is focused on reporting, but you can read more about our lead tracking features here.
In the next section of the report, you can see the Source and Medium that contributed to the most leads.
In this example, out of the 405 total leads for the month, 174 leads came from Google/organic, 138 leads from Google/CPC, 71 leads came from direct, and so on.
In addition, you can see whether a particular Source/Medium had an increase or drop in total leads compared to the previous month.
So, as an example, if your client is paying you to run Google and Facebook Ads, and you see a decline in total leads from Facebook, it could be because the CPC for Facebook Ads was higher than the previous month.
If that’s indeed the case, and the higher CPC on Facebook now makes that marketing channel less profitable, then perhaps it’s worth shifting more spend towards Google Ads.
This is all viewable instantly in our report — without the need to export data from Facebook and Google Ads separately and spend hours consolidating it to the same format and typing it up into a PowerPoint presentation (as many agencies do every month).
In the next section of the report, you can see the keywords that contributed to the most leads.
For example, in the above screenshot, 52 leads originated from keyword “LA plumbing”, 78 leads came from keyword “plumbing contractors near me”, and so on.
In addition, you can see whether leads from a certain keyword increased or decreased compared to the previous month, and get ahead of any potential problems.
Again, to present this data to clients, most agencies have to download keyword lists from Google Ads and Search Console for SEO, and manually assemble them into tables, spreadsheets, or Google Data Studio.
Client Reporting Tip: SEO/PPC Gap Analysis Strategy
If you discover high ROI keywords from Google Ads, you can approach your client with the idea of targeting those same keywords via SEO. They’d be likely to agree since it would lower their customer acquisition cost, and it could be an additional source of revenue for your agency.
WhatConverts makes it easy to spot these opportunities right within your reporting. To learn more about how to do it, check out The SEO vs. PPC Gap Analysis Playbook.
The final part of the report shows you the landing pages (URLs) that contributed to the most conversions.
In the example above, 84 leads converted on one URL, 46 leads converted on another, and so on.
Again, you can see an increase/decrease in total leads month-to-month, and build trust with clients by communicating potential issues ahead of time (and how you plan to solve them).
Note: Seeing leads by landing page is especially valuable for agencies who do SEO, since you can use blog page URLs as an indicator of what organic keywords resulted in conversions (measuring conversions and ROI from Google/organic is notoriously challenging).
As we’ve discussed, most clients want an easy-to-scan report on the leads you generate for them, and that’s exactly what the Monthly Summary Marketing Report displays.
Because of that, it’s the most useful reporting feature that WhatConverts offers (and we hear that feedback time and time again from agencies).
That being said, depending on your agency’s workings, you could also send clients some of our lead-driven report templates below:
Note: These are just a few of our lead-driven report templates that you can send to clients. Click here to see a more expansive list, as well as get more info on the reports mentioned above.
As we touched on earlier, unlike other marketing reporting tools on this list, WhatConverts does more than just reporting. It also captures and tracks each lead that comes in from forms, calls, chat, or transactions, along with relevant marketing details such as:
You can then use our Report Builder to create custom reports — using a combination of up to 5 data points that are most relevant to your client(s).
For example, say you have a client who is a Chicago area dental office and they want to know which ads, keywords, and landing page combinations are working well. In WhatConverts, you could generate a report to show leads from the top ad/keyword/landing page combinations in seconds, with just a few clicks:
Start by selecting three data points:
Once you select those data points, the report is instantly built, showing you (and clients) the combination of Keyword + Ad + Landing Page that drives the most leads.
Per the screenshot below, you can even add another dimension to the report: Quote Value. This allows you to see the Keyword + Ad + Landing Page combination that drove the most revenue (which is a more accurate indicator of success than number of leads).
These are just two examples. You can create as many custom reports as you’d like using the relevant data points for each client, save them, and then schedule them to be sent via email. Your clients can also log in and view the reports via our dashboard.
Notably, these custom reports require no coding, no database queries, no hours spent reading help files or watching videos. They are all a few intuitive clicks away from our default reports and built so marketers can easily generate them on their own.
In addition, if you white label WhatConverts, you can create a custom domain name for your clients to view the marketing results, and your branded logo will be included in the (1) dashboard and (2) all reporting emails.
Client Reporting Tip: Use Dimension Grouping
One of the best ways to keep your clients happy is by putting your reporting into terms they will understand. Dimension Grouping in WhatConverts lets you do just that.
For example, say you’re running marketing for a dentist and you want clients to easily spot which product landing pages are working best. You can use Dimension Grouping to group any landing page with a URL containing “implant” into a “Dental Implant” landing page group.
So rather than seeing results for 15 different implant URLs, your clients will see the total results for all those pages in one group.
Agencies love doing their client reporting and lead capturing with WhatConverts.
It’s why 36,000+ marketers use it every day. But don’t just take our word for it.
Here are a few WhatConverts reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial Available: YES
WhatConverts pricing packages are divided into two groups: one for individual businesses and one for marketing agencies.
For Individual Businesses (single account)
For Marketing Agencies (unlimited accounts)
Be sure to visit the pricing page to learn more about what’s included in each package.
Visit our site and create a free trial account or see WhatConverts in action via a live demo. We’ll answer questions and guide you through how to best leverage our tool to create lead-driven, easy-to-understand reports that your clients appreciate.
Automated Dashboard Reporting Tool Specifically for Agencies (w/ Report Templates)
As a data aggregator, AgencyAnalytics doesn't track marketing data on its own. However, it can pull in data from platforms like WhatConverts to create beautiful, customizable reports that show lead, quote, and sales value of your marketing.
Using it is as easy as dragging and dropping data source widgets onto a blank digital marketing reporting dashboard.
It offers plenty of customization options for client reporting, including:
Beyond from-scratch reporting, you can also create a new reporting dashboard using their preset client reports templates, some of which include:
What makes AgencyAnalytics unique from other third-party reporting software is that it has features that larger marketing agencies may find useful.
Features like:
It also offers 75+ integrations for every plan, including the most basic.
AgencyAnalytics also integrates with WhatConverts, so that clients can get more enhanced data on their lead generation campaigns (i.e., total number of leads by phone/form/chat, repeat and unique leads, and so on).
Get more detail on the AgencyAnalytics integration here.
Here are a few AgencyAnalytics reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
AgencyAnalytics has three plans to choose from.
If you want to learn more about AgencyAnalytics pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Google Reporting Great for Combining Google Ads, Analytics, & WhatConverts Data
Formerly Google Data Studio, Looker Studio is Google’s own marketing reporting platform.
Since it was developed by Google, Looker Studio has powerful integrations with other Google products (Google Ads, Google Analytics, etc.).
Looker Studio offers plenty of white label options to remove references to Looker in your reporting, like:
However, you’ll need to unlock Private Label (must contact sales for pricing).
With Looker Studio, you can choose to start from scratch with a blank report or select from their library of marketing report templates.
The library contains marketing report templates like:
Looker Studio is unique in that it is reporting software that’s owned and developed by Google.
As a result, it offers strong integrations with Google platforms like Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.
Other native Google data sources include:
Looker Studio also integrates with other products using 850+ different connectors, including WhatConverts.
As a result, it’s one of the best marketing reporting tools for combining Google Ads, Google Analytics, and WhatConverts data.
Looker Studio does integrate with WhatConverts via a connector. As a result, you can combine metrics from Google Ads and Analytics with lead tracking data from WhatConverts (qualified leads, qualified leads by campaign, lead value, sales value, etc.) in your Looker Studio reporting.
Get more detail on the Looker Studio integration here.
Here are a few Looker Studio reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: N/A (free to use)
Looker Studio is completely free to use and view reports from. All you need is:
To Create Reports:
To View Reports:
Looker Studio Pro is the paid version, which offers enterprise features like access management tools and additional scheduled reporting. To learn more about Looker Studio Pro pricing, contact Google Sales below.
User-Friendly Dashboard Reporting + Custom Designed Reports (w/ Report Templates)
With DashThis, instead of analyzing the results from all your marketing platforms separately, you can gather them into the same report/dashboard, similar to AgencyAnalytics.
DashThis has several white-label options for client reporting, including:
DashThis also lets you choose among dozens of preset marketing report templates rather than starting from scratch. These reports make it easy to quickly organize your digital marketing reporting dashboards for clients.
DashThis marketing report templates include:
DashThis has designers who can create custom-designed reports that match your brand.
Their interface is also a bit easier to navigate and use than other options, making it a good choice for smaller agencies. It also doesn’t require a lot of technical expertise in order to create great-looking reports.
There is no native DashThis integration with WhatConverts. However, WhatConverts is able to integrate with many tools using Zapier.
If you’d like to see if DashThis can integrate with WhatConverts in this way, please reach out to our dedicated support team.
Here are a few DashThis reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
DashThis has four plans to choose from.
If you want to learn more about DashThis pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Enterprise-Level Marketing Operations Platform with Reporting
TapClicks lets you create custom, branded reports for your agency (which you can then schedule for automatic delivery to clients).
One of TapClicks’ strengths is its easy-to-build widgets, which help provide insights on the key metrics that are most important to your clients.
For example, you could use “Facebook” as the data source, and the metrics you can select are “Engaged Users”, “Likes”, “Unlikes”, “Total Likes”, and “Total Reach”.
They also offer client report white labeling features like:
TapClicks includes a lot more than just marketing reporting.
It also offers features like:
For some agencies, these features might be more than what’s needed, making onboarding and setup more complicated than expected.
WhatConverts does have a native integration with TapClicks. With it, you can enhance your reporting with much more detail on which of your marketing is generating valuable leads.
You can get more detail on the TapClicks integration with WhatConverts here.
Here are a few TapClicks reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
TapClicks has three plans to choose from.
If you want to learn more about TapClicks pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Plenty of White Label Features (Including Client Proposals)
ReportGarden is a sophisticated platform that allows you to automate your PPC reports, social media reports, and SEO reports. They offer multi-channel reporting with a wide range of widgets and templates for you to choose from.
In addition, ReportGarden lets you manage client PPC budgets across all platforms, audit your client’s keywords, backlinks, and on-page SEO — all in one place.
They also include white-label features for branded client reporting, including:
Something that’s unique about ReportGarden is that you can create custom client proposals using pre-made marketing templates (i.e., SEO proposal, social media proposal, etc.) within their platform.
They also have a client portal where clients can log in and see their campaign performance on their own (similar to WhatConverts).
WhatConverts does have a native integration with ReportGarden. With it, you can enhance your reporting with much more detail on which of your marketing is generating valuable leads.
You can get more detail on the ReportGarden integration with WhatConverts here.
Here are a few ReportGarden reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
ReportGarden has four plans to choose from.
If you want to learn more about ReportGarden pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Good for Agencies w/ At Least 40+ Data Sources
Whatagraph is a marketing reporting tool that can help marketers create compelling reports in minutes rather than hours. Built by marketers for marketers, you can use it to connect 40+ data sources and have the data go straight to your reports, with no extra work.
Whatagraph also offers white-label client reporting features like:
However, some users report a lack of customization with white-label features in Whatagraph.
One of Whatagraph’s main differentiators is that it’s designed to make it easy to incorporate data from a lot of sources right off the bat.
For example, its starter plan lets you connect 25-50 sources to your reporting (most other tools start with 10 sources). However, this comes with a pricing tradeoff as basic plans start at $223/mo.
Whatagraph also doesn’t use connectors. That means it gets its data directly from your sources, ensuring the best data integrity possible.
There is no native Whatagraph integration with WhatConverts. However, WhatConverts is able to integrate with many tools using Zapier.
If you’d like to see if Whatagraph can integrate with WhatConverts in this way, please reach out to our dedicated support team.
Here are a few Whatagraph reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
AgencyAnalytics has three plans to choose from.
If you want to learn more about Whatagraph pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Useful for Freelancers & Small-Scale Agencies
Reportz lets you build clean, concise reports whenever you need them, without having to put information together manually. In just a few minutes, you can see whatever you need across your paid campaigns, SEO KPIs, social media, link building, and so on.
It integrates with many popular platforms like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Google Ads, Rank Ranger, and more.
In addition, Reportz is available as a white-label solution for client reporting.
It offers:
Reportz is a solid option for freelancers and small agencies because of its custom pricing model.
Rather than force users to pay for more digital marketing reporting dashboards than they need, Reportz lets you select how many dashboards you want and only pay for what you use.
The reports you can build with this tool are also highly customizable since there’s no limit to the number of widgets you can use.
There is no native Reportz integration with WhatConverts. However, WhatConverts is able to integrate with many tools using Zapier.
If you’d like to see if Reportz can integrate with WhatConverts in this way, please reach out to our dedicated support team.
Here are a few Reportz reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
Reportz has four plans to choose from.
If you want to learn more about Reportz pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Reporting + Marketing Fulfillment Software
DashClicks’ Marketing Analytics Software helps you monitor and report on all of your digital marketing campaigns in a single place.
The best thing about the software is you can view granular data insights fetched from various metrics. This helps you make smarter, well-informed decisions and drive better conversions.
DashClicks also makes white labeling your reporting simple.
One thing that’s unique about DashClicks is that it comes with a lot of other features that some agencies may find useful.
Features like:
However, these features come pre-built into the only plan the tool offers. You can’t pick and choose which features your agency wants to lower the plan price. On top of that, the many tools can make the platform hard to navigate.
Plus, reviews on the usefulness of these extra features are mixed.
There is no native DashClicks integration with WhatConverts. However, WhatConverts is able to integrate with many tools using Zapier.
If you’d like to see if DashClicks can integrate with WhatConverts in this way, please reach out to our dedicated support team.
Here are a few DashClicks reviews from the top third-party software review site, G2.
Free Trial: YES
DashClicks has just one plan to choose from.
If you want to learn more about DashClicks pricing, check out their pricing page below.
Marketing reporting lets agencies spot optimization insights and show clients the value of their marketing efforts.
And with the right tool, you can both prove and grow your marketing ROI.
The only question is, which marketing reporting software is right for you?
Try the powerful call tracking and lead tracking of WhatConverts by starting your free 14-day trial today!
Michael Cooney is a co-founder of WhatConverts. Connect with him on Twitter or via email at michael.cooney@whatconverts.com.
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