The vast major­i­ty of com­pa­nies use a mar­ket­ing agency to either com­ple­ment, or sup­ple­ment, their in-house mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties to fill knowl­edge or resource gaps. There are many pos­i­tives (and neg­a­tives) for using a mar­ket­ing agency, but one of the biggest prob­lems can be under­stand­ing and inter­pret­ing tech­ni­cal or ana­lyt­i­cal reports.

Who is read­ing these ana­lyt­i­cal reports? A spe­cial­ist in any field, some­one who works in it day in and day out, can eas­i­ly for­get that:

• Not every­one knows the indus­try ter­mi­nol­o­gy.
• Everyone’s knowl­edge lev­el is dif­fer­ent.
• Some­one may need fur­ther knowl­edge in a com­ple­men­tary field to sup­ple­ment con­clu­sions.

Ask Your Agency Questions

This might sound obvi­ous, but over the years I’ve been in many sit­u­a­tions when I have pre­sumed that clients and oth­er stake­hold­ers have under­stood some­thing, but in fact they have been afraid to ask ques­tions. This is com­mon when mul­ti­ple peo­ple are involved. It’s human nature to not acknowl­edge that you don’t under­stand some­thing.

I always try to wrap up a meet­ing, or call with, “Do you have any ques­tions, would you like me to explain any­thing?”

How­ev­er, more often than not, the answer is no. I find this odd because, were the shoe on the oth­er foot, even if I did under­stand, I would still have ques­tions.

Con­sul­tants, whether SEO, PPC, ana­lyt­ics, or CRO, want to answer your ques­tions. We work in a ser­vices indus­try, and if we aren’t pro­vid­ing you with the best service/advice (which includes answer­ing your ques­tions), then we aren’t doing our job prop­er­ly!

Do You Receive Reports That You Don’t Read?

While work­ing in a large agency envi­ron­ment, I pro­duced reports that I knew that no one would prob­a­bly ever read. I’m not alone. Many oth­er con­sul­tants have shared sim­i­lar sto­ries – my favorite being one con­sul­tant who, at the end of a report, stat­ed in big red let­ters: “If you actu­al­ly read these reports I write I’ll buy you a steak din­ner!”

Obvi­ous­ly this is high­ly unpro­fes­sion­al, but in this case he was right. No one even noticed it.

I’ve been in a posi­tion where I knew the recip­i­ent of the report did­n’t have the time to read and take in the con­tent of a report. I’d much rather add val­ue to a project than waste my time.

It’s essen­tial to have a top line in any report that can be read and digest­ed with­in a short space of time. Prob­a­bly about the same amount of time as it takes to open an email, scan read it, and move on to the next one (sad­ly).

Reports Should Be Easy To Access

With any PDF, Excel, or oth­er data report I (and many agen­cies) always send them from a PMS (Project Man­age­ment Sys­tem) so that they are easy to find lat­er if required. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, one of the biggest prob­lems with this is that attach­ments often aren’t includ­ed with the email. This makes the point of access to the report hard­er for the recip­i­ent.

There are many ways to down­load the report with­out log­ging into the PMS, but any down­load that doesn’t require a login isn’t secure. If you’re com­fort­able with using a PMS and don’t mind have an app on your phone/computer to keep you logged in I would strong­ly rec­om­mend using this method for deliv­ery of report. Fail­ing that, ask your agency to always deliv­er reports by email to make it eas­i­er for you – after all you’re the boss!

Items Your Marketing Agency Should Include With Reports

Your mar­ket­ing agency should:

• Include a glos­sary for indus­try ter­mi­nol­o­gy.
• Sug­gest rel­e­vant links to oth­er con­tent for fur­ther expla­na­tion around a sub­ject.
• Pro­vide a layman’s sum­ma­ry for each sec­tion.
• Pro­vide an exec­u­tive sum­ma­ry at the top of each report with the most impor­tant met­rics and con­clu­sions.
• Pro­vide a con­cise list of action­able items under the exec­u­tive sum­ma­ry, both com­plet­ed and to com­plete.
• Deliv­er reports in a way that encour­ages dis­cus­sion to clar­i­fy points. A project man­age­ment tool is an excel­lent way to keep it orga­nized.
• Try to orga­nize a sched­uled reoc­cur­ring meet­ing, or call to dis­cuss the top line insights.

Conclusion

Ana­lyt­i­cal reports should add insight to your busi­ness and help you make fur­ther strate­gic deci­sions by explain­ing:

• The work that the agency has car­ried out.
• The affect it has had on your busi­ness.
• The dif­fer­ence it has made to your bot­tom line.

And when in doubt, ask ques­tions!