Inbound Marketing Agency Blog

Results Reporting: How To Prove Your Innovative Marketing Worth

Written by Mark Parent | September 9, 2014 5:40:00 PM Z

The upside of web marketing is that it’s truly and almost infinitely measurable – but that’s also the downside when our innovative marketing efforts occasionally fall flat. 

If you’re not measuring your efforts, not only are you not being accountable to yourself, you’re not being accountable to your clients. 

There are all sorts of analytics tools like HubSpot, Google Analytics, URL tracking, insights from social media, CRM integrations and more to help us measure these efforts in real time, and adjust things when they aren’t working. 

A Results Snapshot Is Worth A Thousand Words

Set your innovative marketing agency up for success when you effectively and efficiently execute these 5 core services of inbound marketing:  

  1. Generating more qualified traffic to their websites.
  2. Generating leads by capitalizing on that traffic and providing great content that matters to them.
  3. Generating customers from those leads with nurturing campaigns that draw them through the sales funnel, allowing the sales team to convert them.
  4. Turning customers into promoters by providing them with great content and loyalty campaigns that prompt them to advocate for you. 
  5. Measuring, analyzing and reporting the results of all of your innovative marketing efforts – and repeating successes, fine-tuning underperforming campaigns and tossing ones that show no hope of succeeding in the future. 

When you show reports that show a direct connection between your marketing efforts and their goals – to see more leads, traffic, customers and REVENUES, you’re proving your worth. 

Land Long-Term Retainer Deals: Close The Loop

If you’re looking for long-term retainer deals – and what marketer isn’t? – you have to practice what’s called “closed loop marketing”. 

Simply put, closed loop marketing is a systematic way of tracking leads from their source (generated by your efforts) and first conversation all the way through the funnel to a sale.  

Be Judicious In Your Reporting

With so many results and numbers and statistics available to you to report, the key is to be ARTFUL and DISCIPLINED in your revealing of insights. Confidently connect the dots between your client’s goals and your tactics and you’ll blatantly demonstrate your expertise, while earning your client’s trust, respect and loyalty. 

Tell your results in a way that tells a story of your client’s successes – how their brand has evolved over the course of a reporting period in real and tangible ways that matter to them against their goals. Link progress to goals and always make sure the client knows the their pain points are your main focus. Finally, if you must report on the smaller bits of data, make sure your story flows from the top down. 

Make Time To Explain Everything

Don’t just send a PowerPoint or Excel with the latest results, either. Take the time to walk your client through what’s been accomplished and what’s left to achieve. Use your innovative marketing skills to get that client excited about your efforts and successes thus far and it will go miles to earning long-term client relationships.