Reporting is the best way to ensure you are keeping your client up to date with their account’s performance. Not only is it a crucial way of keeping them up to date on performance, it shows your client that you are being active within the account and you are dedicated to improving, making changes and identifying areas of growth, strength and weakness. Reporting is a great way to ensure you are communicating regularly with your client, giving them all the information they want and more! Having a dedicated day where you can go though the account and look at everything that has happened ensures you are always on top of things, the more you look into the account the more confident and informed you feel.
Reporting best practice
Knowing your client
The most crucial thing to remember when you are reporting is knowing exactly what your client wants and acres about and tailoring your report to fit those needs. Getting to know your client will make reporting easier for you to write and your client to read.
Focus on:
- What do they care about? there is no point in spending time deep diving and writing about CTR if your client doesn’t care about it and is more interested in conversion rate. Focus on the metrics they want to know about (even if you think it’s pointless)
- Find out how they like to digest information. They could prefer charts and graphs over chunks of text or they may prefer short bullet brief bullet points instead of detailed explanations.
- The tone of voice and language you use must resonate with the client. Find out how much or how little they know about PPC and tailor the wording towards that. Some clients may have no idea what search impression share is whereas some may already have robust knowledge of abbreviations and metrics that you’re looking at.
- How often do you need to be sending reports? Some clients love and need a lot of communication and want to be kept in a constant loop. On the other hand, If your client only has one campaign and not a lot of data, sending a report every week may not be useful.
What should you be including in your reports?
Aside from the client specific content, the best things to include in your reports are:
- Top level statistics. Reports should cover the top-level information about the accounts performance, this would include the overall cost, conversions and CPA or ROAS. Including a screenshot of the overview or your dashboard from interface is a great way to visually summarise the important areas of performance.
- Comparisons. Really there is no point in looking at a week of performance on its own without comparing it to the previous week or previous period. This gives context to the statistics and helps you to tell the story of the account and the performance journey. This also helps you to identify where the strengths and weaknesses are as you compare the data to the previous week. Highlighting percentage or amount changes to further give context to the changes that have happened.
- An overall account overview and segmented overviews of specific areas. This could look like starting your report with a few bullet points on the overall account and then going into more detail on the different key areas within the account. For example, brand campaign performance, generic campaigns and PMAX.
- The main changes you have made. Looking at the changes that have been made in the account gives you references and context as to why certain areas of performance have changed.
- What? why? what next? These are the main things you should be covering when discussing areas of performance. Firstly, look at what has changed, for example an increase in CPA. Next explain why that has happened, could there have been an increase in competition? Make sure you explain this as well using an auction insights graph! Lastly you need to address it, highlight your next steps you are going to take to tackle the problem, for example, increasing bids to combat aggressive competitors.
- Your actions for the week. Let your client know what your plans are for the next week, you can use this as a to do list and come back to it when you write the next report to see if you have achieved what you set out to do and if the changes you made have been effective.
Overall, reports are a great tool for you and your client. Starting off the week with a clear insight into the account and knowing your next steps will make your week feel a lot more organised. Your client will feel like they are in the loop and can ask you questions and give you suggestions to keep communication flowing and make sure everything is being optimised for the best possible performance.
