Reporting on your campaign success isn’t just about showing clients charts and data. You need to be able to present reports in a way that your clients can connect to their business objectives. Showing them that they rank highly for a keyword or their Facebook Ads are generating thousands of impressions isn’t enough. How does this affect foot traffic, inquiries, or in-store sales? You have to show what it means to their business, and glean insights that they can use to guide their next steps.
Each Digital Marketing tool has its respective metrics. And these metrics can mean different things to different businesses. Present your clients with insight they can use by understanding the key metrics for each and matching it with their type of business.
Attract and Nurture Leads with Local SEO
Since the goal of SEO is to bring clients to the top of a Search Engine Results Page, the key metrics to report to clients are always keyword search volume and rankings. When reporting these metrics, it’s important to emphasize to your clients that ranking for keywords helps customers find them. In general, this means helping business be found by customers who are already looking for products and services like theirs.
But for Local SEO, it also means helping customers visit, inquire, or set appointments with clients. This is especially true for on-the-go searches from mobile devices: a study by Google shows that 3 in 4 who find local information in search results are more likely to visit a store. When presenting a Local SEO report, explain why making directions, contact information, operating hours, and other pertinent information available and consistent across online listings is crucial to the success of their campaign.
It’s also important to highlight how your SEO efforts are informing potential customers’ purchasing decisions. The information that has a direct effect on your clients’ customers decisions will depend on the type of business. 87% of retail shoppers often look for information before visiting a store, and 75% check item availability and price. If your client owns a restaurant focus on their reviews, as studies have proven these directly influence whether customers dine there or not.
Lastly, Local SEO doesn’t end when the customer enters your clients’ establishment or office. 79% of customers are still looking for information even when they’re in the store, and 35% after their visit. Most of these customers use search engines or the retailer’s own website. Advise your clients to optimize theirs to ensure they’re providing important shopping information. For clients that own restaurants, recommend that they ask for reviews from customers to improve their visibility and reputation.
Encouraging Customer Action with PPC
Relating PPC reports to your client’s business can be tricky. On the one hand, it can be fairly straightforward, as the key metrics are easy to relate to their business. On the other hand, it can be difficult to separate the signal from the noise. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of rattling off numbers your clients won’t be able to process.
The challenge is to put all this data into context and pick the right metrics to focus on. To do so, you have to be knowledgeable about your client’s business goals and the industry they’re in.
Impressions, Conversions, Click-Through-Rate, and Cost-Per-Conversion are the metrics that always need to be mentioned in any PPC report. To avoid overwhelming your clients with too much information, focus on the conversion actions first–the action your clients want their customers to take after seeing the ad. These are more meaningful to your clients and have a direct relationship to standard Brick-and-Mortar KPI’s like store traffic.
The appropriate conversion action will differ from business to business. But in general, professional services like law or accountancy firms may want customers to set up an appointment, so recommend using a sitelink extension to contact form landing page. This can also be used for Hotels so customers can immediately book accommodations, while clients promoting a product can use promo codes to track the sales generated from PPC.
The next step is to put this data into context. If there are spikes or dips in performance, relate it to seasonal trends typical to their business or industry that might explain it. If a certain ad is converting well, they can revise their ads on other channels to something similar. You don’t necessarily have to be knowledgeable in your client’s business to find ways PPC can augment other marketing efforts. But you do need to process the information in a report into something they can use.
Customer Awareness, Engagement, and Insight with Social Media
According to a recent study by Deloitte, 78% of customers say word-of-mouth influences their purchasing decisions, more than any other outside factor. The difficulty for businesses is that traditional word-of-mouth can’t be measured accurately.
With social media, however, customers have taken to voicing their opinions and recommendations online. social media networks like Facebook enable your clients to gauge brand awareness, sentiment, and engagement with metrics such as Likes, Comments, and Shares. And more importantly, it allows your clients to gain insight about what their customers respond to.
But social media networks have branched out from simply being a vehicle for word-of-mouth to advertising as well. When reporting on the performance of Facebook Local Awareness Ads, focus on the reach of your posts and how many clicks they get. Reach is important because 99% of people who saw a Facebook ad, and then bought a product in the store, didn’t click on the ad. Measuring engagement with clicks is still important, since they tell you if your ads are compelling enough to get people to act right away. while clicks tell you how much engagement your ads are getting. Your clients can stay top-of-mind to audiences for longer, until they’re ready to become actual customers.
Overall, social media reports should be about people, your client’s current and potential customers. Give them more than just a tally of Page Likes. Give them insight into their audiences.
Presenting campaign reports is an opportunity to highlight success. But it’s also more than that. What starts out as a simple progress update can uncover opportunities your clients weren’t aware of, and a way for them–and your agency–to generate more business.
Ask our Project Managers about the SEOReseller dashboard’s reporting capabilities. Schedule a walkthrough, or call our toll-free number at 1-800-250-6106.
