This guide is designed to help you understand what agency reports are, why they are important, and what to include in an agency report.
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January 12, 2022
It’s common for agencies to create reports to improve communication with their clients, help them identify and achieve their goals, and attract new business. By learning how to create effective agency reports, you can build a better relationship with your clients and scale your agency by attracting new prospects. This guide is designed to help you understand what agency reports are, why they are important, and what to include in an agency report.
Agency reports are detailed reports showing data that’s been collected from reporting and monitoring tools. This lets agencies see what’s working and what’s not working and take actionable steps to improve their business. A common purpose of creating agency reports is to show investors and clients how well an agency’s strategy is working.
A report conducted by HubSpot indicates that 23% of agencies fail to meet client expectations and goals. One way to solve this is through effective reporting. It’s important to create reports that use data to tell a story to communicate opportunities, strengths, and your agency’s value. It should give you an overview of what you’ve done over the past week, month, or year.
Agency reports help you evaluate and optimize your own strategies, but they also help you sell your agency’s services. By achieving and demonstrating results through an agency report, you can show them off to scale your agency and attract new clients. It can also facilitate transparent communication with existing clients by showing them exactly what results you’re getting for them.
An agency report should include sections for goals, key metrics, and value added.
Start by working with your client to identify your shared goals. Set both short-term and long-term goals and be specific. Goals should be clear and achievable, and they should always include trackable metrics. In this section, you can also include which digital agency tools you’ll be using to achieve these goals. If you need more information on goals-based reporting, check out this helpful article.
When adding key metrics to your agency report, consider which statistics your client values most. If your metrics aren’t important to your client, it’s unnecessary to include them. You should also add metrics that align with your set goals. For example, include statistics relevant to customer engagement if your goal is to get the client’s audience more involved.
Examples of important metrics you can include are listed below.
It can also help to include non-qualitative metrics like social media reviews and customer feedback.
In addition to key metrics, make sure to include the value provided for your client. This is your chance to demonstrate how you positively impacted your client, and you should include everything you think is relevant. Show how your actions led to the desired outcome and how you will continue getting results for clients going forward.
For example, if you helped a client run a successful online virtual event, demonstrate how you helped them prepare, manage, and achieve their desired outcome. You could mention how you helped them prepare a virtual events script, advertise their event on social media, and convert viewers during the live event.
By sharing these details, your current clients will see the value you provide and will be more likely to continue working with you. It also allows you to scale your agency by attracting new clients once they see the impact you’re having on other clients.
Once you’ve included goals, key metrics, and value added on your report, consider the following tips for better agency reporting.
If you only provide your clients with an agency report once or twice per year, you’re missing the point. By publishing weekly reports, you’ll keep your client informed with the most up-to-date information. This gives you the opportunity to collaborate more often as new challenges arise, and it can make each client meeting shorter and less stressful.
If you have multiple clients to generate reports for, use agency reporting templates to make the process more streamlined. Templates can be customized for each client, but they eliminate the need to recreate reports from scratch. This lets you focus on the important aspects of reporting while saving time on tedious tasks.
Trying to include all reporting metrics on one document can create a tangled mess. Instead of cramming all your data, create multiple reports that categorize data by channel. While this step isn’t mandatory, it can make complex reports more readable, and it can prevent your clients from becoming overwhelmed.
By including a section for next steps, you can show your clients how you plan to improve results in the future. This section is important because it allows you to connect the dots between previous results and future outcomes. This is especially true if your previous results fall short and you want to demonstrate how you can turn them around going forward.
Before you focus on generating reports for your clients, you need to make sure you can deliver them results. Arena has software tools that will allow you to satisfy your clients and scale your agency.
Arena Live Chat can be added to a website or live stream to improve engagement through surveys, polls, Q&As, and instant messages. Agencies can personalize live chats with GIFs, reactions, and emojis and add conversion cards to sell products and services.
To post quick updates as a live event unfolds, agencies can download Arena Live Blog. This tool can share images, videos, text, and social media to viewers, and it comes with more than 15 customization options.
Finally, Arena Customer Data Platform (CDP) can be paired with the Live Chat and Live Blog tools to collect user data from multiple touchpoints. With it, you can build unique customer profiles to understand their brand preferences, purchase history, interests, and live events engagement activity.
Agency reports are a great way to keep clients informed and to attract new business. If you need help creating one for your agency, consider implementing the steps covered in this guide. Always include goals, key metrics, and value added in your reports.
It’s also important to build reports frequently, use reporting templates, break up reports, and include next steps. If you need help getting results for your clients, consider adding one of Arena’s software tools. To learn more about Arena, click the link below to speak with an expert.
