I’ve talked with tons of of promoting company leaders and specialists prior to now 10 years of main Whatagraph, and one factor is for certain:
It’s extremely troublesome to get shoppers to learn and care about advertising and marketing studies.
But, it’s additionally completely mandatory to clarify the worth you convey to your shoppers.
As a result of and not using a advertising and marketing report, shoppers don’t perceive the worth you convey—and so they’re extra prone to transfer to different companies.
That will help you cut back shopper churn and maintain them inside your company, listed here are 5 greatest practices we advocate to create a well-prepared and holistic cross-channel advertising and marketing report—from the group of promoting consultants and company leaders who’re clients of Whatagraph.
1. Report on KPIs that align with shopper targets
Purchasers care about outcomes that tie again to enterprise outcomes. As an alternative of dumping self-importance metrics in your cross-channel advertising and marketing studies, give attention to KPIs that matter.
As an illustration, if the shopper’s purpose is lead era, spotlight CPA, conversion charges, and lead high quality throughout channels.
Or in the event that they care about model consciousness, monitor attain, engagement, and sentiment.
Pairing natural and paid metrics can be a good way to indicate true channel effectiveness (for instance, pairing Google Advertisements with web optimization to indicate complete SERP affect).
This helps shoppers make smarter funds selections as an alternative of guessing the place to spend subsequent.
2. Inform a transparent story along with your cross-channel information
When you’ve determined which KPIs to make use of in your report, you need to construction your report in a approach that tells a narrative.
The easiest way to do that is to begin with a high-level efficiency overview that exhibits what labored, what didn’t, and what you’re testing subsequent. Then break down efficiency by channel to indicate specifics with out shedding the larger image.
Extra particularly, you are able to do this breaking down your advertising and marketing report into three sections:
- An summary (the massive image)
- Channel efficiency (the specifics)
- Key insights (what’s working and what wants adjusting)
You too can use visuals like pattern traces, comparability charts, and clear shade coding (e.g., inexperienced for enhancements, crimson for drops) to assist shoppers immediately grasp efficiency developments.
One other strategy to help your story of knowledge is to make use of AI to create actionable insights.
We’ve heard from many company leaders that shoppers typically go straight for the insights part, skimming via the remainder of the report.
Nevertheless, digging out useful insights for the precise context takes loads of time.
That will help you, we constructed these two AI options at Whatagraph:
- AI chatbot: Whatagraph’s AI chatbot can reply any questions on all of your linked information or campaigns in pure language—identical to speaking to your private information professional. For instance, “What was the entire advert spend from Google Advertisements and LinkedIn Advertisements in January final 12 months”?
- AI efficiency abstract author: Don’t wish to write efficiency summaries again and again in your studies? Let AI do it for you. You may generate summaries in 18 completely different languages and 4 content material varieties, after which edit them earlier than you add to studies.
With these, you don’t must manually write out summaries or dig via studies to search out actionable insights. You get them in seconds, and robotically.
3. Make the studies visually partaking
By now, you’ve nailed down the KPIs to trace and construct a report construction that helps shoppers see what’s working and what wants consideration.
Subsequent up is making your report visually partaking.
Sure, you may depend on fundamental Excel charts, however there’s much more you are able to do to make studies not simply purposeful however really pleasing to learn.
The most important improve you may make is switching to a dashboard reporting device with clear, fashionable visuals inbuilt—like Whatagraph.
When designing cross-channel dashboards for shoppers, it’s greatest to maintain issues minimalist.
Group associated information visually, use loads of white house to cut back litter, and let charts do the speaking:
- Bar charts for evaluating marketing campaign efficiency month-over-month
- Pie charts for viewers demographics
- Line charts for monitoring developments over time
Including media widgets is one other easy strategy to stage up your studies. Spotlight top-performing social media posts or advert creatives by dropping a media widget into your report. Select the compact or expanded view, choose your metrics, and also you’re set. Purchasers can see thumbnails of posts, evaluate what’s working, and get a transparent view of artistic efficiency at a look.
Lastly, white-labeling your studies is tremendous necessary if you wish to current your company as knowledgeable, trusted associate. Right here’s why:
✅ It exhibits you care sufficient to ship custom-branded studies, not generic exports.
✅ It strengthens your company’s model recognition with each report.
✅ It reassures shoppers that their information is safe inside your ecosystem.
This was the case for Dtch. Digitals, a fast-growing company within the Netherlands. They have been beforehand utilizing a static reporting device, and the studies have been only a data-dump.
However after they switched to Whatagraph, they bought beautiful, white-labeled, and fashionable studies that aligned with their model picture.
And because of these skilled studies, Dtch. Digitals’ shoppers clearly noticed the worth the company was bringing, decreasing shopper churn by 50%.
Stef Oosertik, High quality Supervisor at Dtch. Digitals advised us:
Whatagraph’s studies at the moment are our basis for discussing outcomes with shoppers. Due to enticing visuals, shoppers can see the professionality behind our company—and our churn charge may be very, very low.
With Whatagraph, you may simply add a screenshot of your model e-book or sort in a particular immediate, and it’ll robotically apply the colours to your studies in seconds.
4. Automate studies
Automating your cross-channel advertising and marketing studies saves hours and retains shoppers within the loop with out you lifting a finger every time.
Arrange dwell dashboards so shoppers can monitor efficiency in real-time, alter date ranges, and discover information on their very own. For shoppers who like PDFs, schedule automated sends so that they get contemporary studies after they want them, with out you having to recollect.
However don’t let automation substitute the human layer.
All the time give studies a closing look earlier than they exit. Add a transparent, easy abstract of what’s working, what’s not, and what’s subsequent. You may even use AI to hurry this up whereas protecting studies private and actionable.
While you mix automation with a human check-in, you get the perfect of each worlds: environment friendly, scalable reporting that also feels private to your shoppers.
5. Maintain your studies constant
Consistency makes your studies simpler to learn and builds belief with shoppers over time.
Utilizing the identical format, construction, and naming in each report helps shoppers rapidly discover what they care about with out getting misplaced in a sea of metrics.
It’s additionally necessary to talk your shopper’s language. Totally different platforms typically use completely different names for a similar metrics, however your shoppers might need their very own phrases they like.
On Whatagraph, you may simply rename metrics and dimensions throughout any information supply to match the terminology your shoppers know. This retains studies clear, organized, and straightforward to know—even for non-marketers.
Sticking to a constant report construction is simply as necessary. You would possibly suppose switching up layouts will maintain shoppers engaged, but it surely often simply confuses them. Utilizing the identical construction each time helps shoppers get comfy along with your studies and give attention to the insights you’re sharing.
Whatagraph makes this easy. You need to use pre-made report templates from the library, or save your individual studies as templates to reuse everytime you want. It’s a fast strategy to maintain your studies trying constant whereas saving time to your crew.
When your studies are clear, acquainted, and aligned along with your shopper’s language, shoppers will really sit up for opening them, and belief the insights you ship.
