Acquisio SEARCH reporting saves 90% of month-end reporting time.
A typical agency analyst creates their reports using:
- The search engines’ interfaces, like Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Baidu
- Other traffic sources such as Facebook Social Ads
- Web analytics platforms such as Google Analytics or Omniture Site Catalyst
- Third-party ad servers like DoubleClick DART, or Bluestreak for example
- Then they pull all this data into Excel and try to standardize/normalize the information so they can report intelligently
- And of course, they start it all over again every single month, and every analyst has their own way to get things done Hence the reports your agency generates vary wildly from person to person, and from month to month
While these tools may be useful for the analyst, they are not specifically targeted for agencies or agency type customers who have to report to upper or different levels of management with different needs. In an agency setting, you are mainly reporting to your clients. You need to keep them up to date with how you managed their campaigns, how well you performed against what your promised, and what your next steps would be.
When communicating to clients, there are numerous points that need to be addressed:
- how different campaigns are performing
- what the budget is being allocated to
- how the content network is performing
- and how you are measuring up against KPIs
Imagine you had set some KPIs with your client at the launch of their campaign and promised to have 3.5 sales per day. Are you reaching those goals? How close are you?
As an analyst, you will need to add in your comments and insights, interpret the data, analyze and synthesize it. In recognizing that client reports are different from the analyst reports you create to help you do your job better, you are delivering to your client the business information they need to build confidence and show value in the work you deliver.
