I’ve talked with lots of of promoting agency leaders and specialists prior to now 10 years of leading Whatagraph, and one thing is for certain:
It’s incredibly difficult to get clients to read and care about marketing reports.
Yet, it’s also absolutely crucial to explain the worth you bring to your clients.
Because with no marketing report, clients don’t understand the worth you bring—and so they’re more likely to move to other agencies.
To show you how to reduce client churn and keep them inside your agency, listed here are 5 best practices we recommend to create a well-prepared and holistic cross-channel marketing report—from the community of promoting experts and agency leaders who’re customers of Whatagraph.
1. Report on KPIs that align with client goals
Clients care about results that tie back to business outcomes. Instead of dumping vanity metrics in your cross-channel marketing reports, concentrate on KPIs that matter.
For instance, if the client’s goal is lead generation, highlight CPA, conversion rates, and lead quality across channels.
Or in the event that they care about brand awareness, track reach, engagement, and sentiment.
Pairing organic and paid metrics can also be an ideal way to show true channel effectiveness (for example, pairing Google Ads with search engine marketing to show total SERP impact).
This helps clients make smarter budget decisions as an alternative of guessing where to spend next.
2. Tell a transparent story together with your cross-channel data
Once you’ve decided which KPIs to use in your report, you must structure your report in a way that tells a story.
The best way to do that is to start with a high-level performance overview that shows what worked, what didn’t, and what you’re testing next. Then break down performance by channel to show specifics without losing the larger picture.
More specifically, you possibly can do that breaking down your marketing report into three sections:
- An overview (the massive picture)
- Channel performance (the specifics)
- Key insights (what’s working and what needs adjusting)
You can even use visuals like trend lines, comparison charts, and clear color coding (e.g., green for improvements, red for drops) to help clients immediately grasp performance trends.
Another way to support your story of information is to use AI to create actionable insights.
We’ve heard from many agency leaders that clients often go straight for the insights section, skimming through the remainder of the report.
However, digging out beneficial insights for the precise context takes a whole lot of time.
To show you how to, we built these two AI features at Whatagraph:
- AI chatbot: Whatagraph’s AI chatbot can answer any questions on all of your connected data or campaigns in natural language—similar to talking to your personal data expert. For example, “What was the entire ad spend from Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads in January last 12 months”?
- AI performance summary author: Don’t want to write performance summaries over and once more in your reports? Let AI do it for you. You can generate summaries in 18 different languages and 4 content types, after which edit them before you add to reports.
With these, you don’t have to manually write out summaries or dig through reports to find actionable insights. You get them in seconds, and robotically.
(*5*)3. Make the reports visually engaging
By now, you’ve nailed down the KPIs to track and construct a report structure that helps clients see what’s working and what needs attention.
Next up is making your report visually engaging.
Yes, you possibly can depend on basic Excel charts, but there’s lots more you possibly can do to make reports not only functional but actually enjoyable to read.
The biggest upgrade you possibly can make is switching to a dashboard reporting tool with clean, modern visuals inbuilt—like Whatagraph.
When designing cross-channel dashboards for clients, it’s best to keep things minimalist.
Group related data visually, use loads of white space to reduce clutter, and let charts do the talking:
- Bar charts for comparing campaign performance month-over-month
- Pie charts for audience demographics
- Line charts for tracking trends over time
Adding media widgets is one other easy way to level up your reports. Highlight top-performing social media posts or ad creatives by dropping a media widget into your report. Choose the compact or expanded view, select your metrics, and also you’re set. Clients can see thumbnails of posts, review what’s working, and get a transparent view of creative performance at a look.
Finally, white-labeling your reports is super vital in case you want to present your agency as knowledgeable, trusted partner. Here’s why:
✅ It shows you care enough to deliver custom-branded reports, not generic exports.
✅ It strengthens your agency’s brand recognition with every report.
✅ It reassures clients that their data is secure inside your ecosystem.
This was the case for Dtch. Digitals, a fast-growing agency within the Netherlands. They were previously using a static reporting tool, and the reports were only a data-dump.
But once they switched to Whatagraph, they got stunning, white-labeled, and modern reports that aligned with their brand image.
And thanks to these skilled reports, Dtch. Digitals’ clients clearly saw the worth the agency was bringing, reducing client churn by 50%.
Stef Oosertik, Quality Manager at Dtch. Digitals told us:
Whatagraph’s reports at the moment are our foundation for discussing results with clients. Thanks to attractive visuals, clients can see the professionality behind our agency—and our churn rate could be very, very low.
With Whatagraph, you possibly can just upload a screenshot of your brand book or type in a selected prompt, and it’ll robotically apply the colours to your reports in seconds.
4. Automate reports
Automating your cross-channel marketing reports saves hours and keeps clients within the loop without you lifting a finger every time.
Set up live dashboards so clients can track performance in real-time, adjust date ranges, and explore data on their very own. For clients who like PDFs, schedule automated sends in order that they get fresh reports once they need them, without you having to remember.
But don’t let automation replace the human layer.
Always give reports a final look before they exit. Add a transparent, easy summary of what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next. You may even use AI to speed this up while keeping reports personal and actionable.
When you mix automation with a human check-in, you get one of the best of each worlds: efficient, scalable reporting that also feels personal to your clients.
5. Keep your reports consistent
Consistency makes your reports easier to read and builds trust with clients over time.
Using the identical format, structure, and naming in every report helps clients quickly find what they care about without getting lost in a sea of metrics.
It’s also vital to speak your client’s language. Different platforms often use different names for the identical metrics, but your clients might need their very own terms they like.
On Whatagraph, you possibly can easily rename metrics and dimensions across any data source to match the terminology your clients know. This keeps reports clean, organized, and straightforward to understand—even for non-marketers.
Sticking to a consistent report structure is just as vital. You might think switching up layouts will keep clients engaged, however it normally just confuses them. Using the identical structure each time helps clients get comfortable together with your reports and concentrate on the insights you’re sharing.
Whatagraph makes this straightforward. You can use pre-made report templates from the library, or save your individual reports as templates to reuse at any time when you would like. It’s a fast way to keep your reports looking consistent while saving time for your team.
When your reports are clear, familiar, and aligned together with your client’s language, clients will actually look forward to opening them, and trust the insights you deliver.
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