Why your clients struggle with marketing reporting

28% of small business owners have no visibility into how their marketing agency uses their budgeted spending. The last thing your clients want to do is chase down reporting across multiple tools and channels and try and make sense of it themselves.

The biggest value you can provide to your clients as an agency is transparent and actionable reporting. And in this article, we’ll walk through the top pain points small business owners experience and how you can provide the right reporting to enhance trust and retain more clients. 

Problem #1: Your clients lack insight into their most effective marketing campaigns and find it difficult to budget for the next year. 

Usually, a marketing strategy involves multiple channels, such as digital ads, organic and paid search, marketplace listings, offline outreach and so on. But when you multiply that by the number of campaigns an average business runs in a year, reporting can easily get out of hand.

If you or your client lack the right tools to effectively manage and gather this data in one place, you have to pull from different reports from different platforms to piece together a cohesive data story. Therefore, the lack of insight makes it very difficult to properly plan next year’s campaigns based on the successful campaigns of this year.

The solution: Build a report with a tool like CallRail’s Multi-touch Cost Per Lead Report. It ties all of your lead sources’ data together across every channel where your client markets. The report will tie in your inbound calls, texts, live chats, and form submission data to attribute leads to online and offline marketing efforts. From there, you’ll be able to see which campaigns earned the most revenue for your clients, and those campaigns will help inform future campaigns. 

Problem #2: Your clients aren’t clear on where their inbound phone calls are coming from and can’t tie them back to the right marketing campaigns. 

Remember those days when sales reps would make between 50 to 100 calls a day, without proper reporting in place? And think about how easy information can get lost in the process, especially if your client is relying on their reps to ask “How did you hear about us?” 

To understand marketing campaign effectiveness, you need to know where those inbound leads are coming from, whether it was your client’s Instagram ad, email outreach, bus wrap or any other channel. A full timeline of the lead’s journey can be incredibly helpful for understanding campaign success and improving the lead experience, too — turning more leads into customers.

The solution: Build a report that provides insight into the sources and interactions that drive traffic and generate inbound calls, texts and chats. With something like CallRail’s Call Attribution Report, you’ll be able to share the entire customer journey, which campaigns are most successful when it comes to generating new customers and revenue, and which campaigns could use some work in the new year.

Problem #3: Your clients aren’t able to identify which keywords are successful for their marketing program. 

A clear understanding of ROI is crucial for marketers in any size organization. With call tracking and analytics tools, you can help your clients figure out which marketing campaigns and keywords are converting leads and driving new business.

But, it’s challenging — not only for your clients but for you and other agencies as well. You might not have visibility into your client’s interactions with their customers and might not be able to fully understand the common language of that business or industry. So, you can see how this makes reporting on certain keywords and phrases difficult.

The solution: Build a report that provides a full breakdown of targeted key terms and phrases that are used the most during your client’s business calls, such as a tool like CallRail’s Key Terms Spotted Report. From there, you can provide your client with a list of calls containing those key terms that were marked as qualified leads. 

Quick tips when building reports

1. Use the right tools and grow with your client and their needs over time. Keep in mind that your reporting will change as your client grows revenue and expands marketing efforts. 
2. Set the right goals from the beginning and establish a baseline. KPIs will help you and your clients track success and identify areas for improvement. And with a baseline, you can easily show growth and prove your agency’s value. 
3. Make sure that your client’s data tells a story. Numbers are great, but what’s the meaning behind them? How do they tie into the bigger picture? Be clear on your reporting to your clients and actionable steps they can take from those reports. 

Support your clients and grow your revenue with the CallRail Partner Program

Your clients rely on you to provide reporting that’s clear and transparent, actionable and translates to improved ROI. As a CallRail partner, you’ll help your clients succeed with all of the reports and insights we’ve discussed with the bonus of support from the CallRail team and a dedicated account manager. 
Earn a 20% monthly revenue share, become eligible for quarterly cash bonuses, and grow your business — and your clients’ businesses — by becoming a CallRail Partner today.

About The Author

CallRail makes it easy for businesses of all sizes to turn more leads into better customers. Serving more than 200,000 businesses and integrating with leading marketing and sales software, our marketing analytics and business communications solutions deliver real-time insights that help our customers market with confidence.