In our experience, most marketing agency reporting tools generate reports that are too overwhelming for clients. They include too many metrics that distract from the main question clients have:
Is this marketing spend generating leads?
For example, a PPC report may include click-through-rate, click costs, impressions, and so on.
If your agency is running a dozen campaigns across Google Ads, Facebook, and other platforms, including every metric for every campaign means the client has to scroll through several pages of numbers trying to make sense of what’s working and what’s not.
When they have pages of information to dig through, it’s hard for them to answer the most important question in their minds:
Is your agency getting good results (aka leads) for them?
Giving clients a report that’s easy to understand allows them to instantly see your value. Plus, they’ll be more likely to stay on as a long-term client.
Prior to building WhatConverts, we ran a marketing agency for many years. We were frustrated with overcomplicated marketing reports.
It was essential to us that our tool generate simple reports where clients can see the key metrics that matter.
Most notably: leads.
In this post, we’ll start by describing how we designed WhatConverts to send clients lead-driven, easy to understand reports that they appreciate. Then, we’ll discuss other marketing agency reporting tools that could be a good fit for your business.
Table of Contents
WhatConverts produces clear, concise reports on which marketing campaigns are generating leads (and how much) due to the quality of the data captured.
Watch the video below to see how one agency uses WhatConverts reporting to communicate with clients and improve PPC campaigns.
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, for example:
Then we have very thoughtfully designed 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 most sense for your agency:
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As we touched on earlier, the majority of marketing agency reports have two key problems:
One of the best ways agencies can prove the value of their marketing strategy and impress clients is with our Monthly 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:
First and foremost, at the top of the report, 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 where 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 (aka qualified) leads for the month.
In this example, it was a 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.
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 (i.e. 120 form conversions down to 10 form conversions), there may be a technical issue with the form tracking, 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, 191 leads came from Google/organic, 90 leads from Google/CPC, 82 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, alongside the Source/Medium tied to those keywords.
For example, in the above screenshot, seven leads that originated from Google/CPC came from keyword ‘X’, six leads that originated from Bing/Organic came from keyword ‘Y’, and so on (keywords blurred out due to personal information).
In addition, you can see whether leads from a certain keyword and Source/Medium 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.
Tip: 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.
The final part of the report shows you the landing pages (URLs) that contributed to the most conversions.
In the example above, 110 leads converted on one URL, 20 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 archives.
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 transaction, 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:
In the above example, there are 3 selected 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.
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.
While AgencyAnalytics doesn't track marketing data on its own, it can pull in data from other platforms like WhatConverts. AgencyAnalytics then allows you to create a custom reporting dashboard by dragging and dropping relevant marketing widgets onto a blank dashboard.
Alternatively, you can create a new reporting dashboard using their preset templates, some of which include:
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).
We dive into more detail on the AgencyAnalytics integration here.
Visit their site to start your trial, and see the demo below which walks you through the main features of their platform:
With DashThis, instead of analyzing the results from all your marketing platforms separately, you can gather them into the same report/dashboard.
Or, similar to AgencyAnalytics, you can choose among dozens of preset templates, including:
DashThis has several white label add-on options. In addition, they have designers internally who can create custom-designed reports that match your brand.
Visit their site to start your free trial, and see the demo below which walks you through the main features of their platform:
TapClicks lets you create custom, branded reports for your agency (which you can then schedule for automatic delivery to clients).
One of TapClicks’ strengths are its easy-to-build widgets, which help provide insights on the key metrics that are most important to your clients.
For example, in the screenshot above, the data source is “Facebook”, and the metrics you can select for are “Engaged Users”, “Likes”, “Unlikes”, “Total Likes”, and “Total Reach”.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. To learn about TapClicks’ other features, visit their site and sign up for a trial.
In addition, see the 5 minute video below which shows you how to set up a reporting dashboard from a template, or build your own:
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.
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.
Visit their site to start your free trial.
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 lets you create beautiful, on-brand marketing reports where you can change everything from the colors to the logo and ultimately, the domain where the report is hosted. For the ultimate customization, you can white label the reports and have your own agency logo placed in them.
Starting takes just a few minutes as the tool comes packed with useful report and dashboard templates for different platforms and use cases. Try it for free, 30 days money back guarantee.
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.
Visit their site to start your free trial, and see the webinar below which walks you through how to get started with their platform:
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. What's more? You can integrate all your third party marketing and analytics integrations into the digital marketing reporting software, choosing from an ever-increasing list. You can also get accurate white label reporting quickly and in real time!
Interested in Learning More About How DashClicks’ Marketing Analytics Software Works?
Visit their site to try the platform for free and see this 3 minute video on using the Analytics App.
Note: Would you like to learn more about WhatConverts? 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.
Michael Cooney is a co-founder of WhatConverts. Connect with him on Twitter or via email at [email protected].
One of our marketing experts will give you a full presentation of how WhatConverts can help you grow your business.
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