Marketing Agency Horror Stories Episode 8: Reporting & Metrics

One of the more consistent frustrations we hear from new clients is that their previous agency simply was not focused on the numbers. Over the last 20 years, we have worked with a significant number of companies who, when we first started working with them, had never reviewed a single report from their prior agency. That is not a reflection on them, but it is a reflection on who they worked with before. 

Marketing is a creative discipline in many respects, but creativity without measurement is not a strategy. You cannot succeed in something you do not measure, and marketing is no different.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA

Every company wants a return on its marketing investment, and the only way to evaluate that return is through consistent, structured reporting. Your marketing partner should be providing reporting on a regular basis, and that cadence should be established early in the relationship. That might look like a real-time dashboard, a monthly report reviewed together, or quarterly summaries depending on your preference. What matters is that the reporting is happening, and that it is tied to your business goals.

The core question is whether the reports your agency is producing are actually connected to the conversion actions that matter most to your company. New revenue, new clients, inbound leads, qualified opportunities in your pipeline – those are the metrics that tell you whether marketing is working. If your reporting is not tied to specific outcomes, it is not giving you what you need to help your company grow.

ESTABLISHING EXPECTATIONS UPFRONT

Reporting expectations and KPIs need to be established before the engagement is underway, not after you have already spent several months wondering whether anything is working. Your marketing partner needs to understand which performance metrics matter most to your business, because that directly shapes the tactical execution of the work. Without that alignment from the start, you run the risk of spending money on marketing that is not generating the results you are looking for, and eventually arriving at the conclusion that marketing is not producing ROI. In most cases, that outcome is entirely avoidable.

WHAT A PROACTIVE MARKETING PARTNER LOOKS LIKE

It is also important to understand that marketing is not a light switch. It is a building process, and meaningful performance takes time to develop. Nevertheless, you should see progress. And the way you track that progress is by reviewing the metrics with your marketing partner on a consistent basis.

A proactive, engaged marketing partner is not waiting for you to ask how things are going. They are reviewing the data before they meet with you, identifying what is performing well and what is not, and coming to you with a plan to improve results. That kind of forward-looking accountability is what separates an agency that drives growth from one that simply reports on activity after the fact.

Results will not follow a straight line. There will be months that outperform others. But the overall trajectory should reflect growth: more inbound leads, more opportunities in your pipeline, and more visibility into what your marketing is actually producing.

ATTRIBUTION AND TRACKING

A separate but related challenge that many companies face is end-to-end attribution. Your marketing partner can report on the metrics within their scope (website traffic, lead form submissions, ad performance, etc.), but if there is no visibility into what happens after a qualified lead enters your sales process, it becomes very difficult to connect marketing activity to actual revenue.

Many companies simply do not have that infrastructure in place. We have helped a number of clients build it out, but this is worth addressing with your marketing partner, regardless of who you work with. Without end-to-end tracking, it is nearly impossible to demonstrate what your marketing is actually producing.

The goal is to be able to say with confidence: this marketing activity generated these opportunities, and those opportunities produced this revenue. Without that capability, you are making decisions based on incomplete information.

WHAT TO ESTABLISH BEFORE YOU START

To summarize everything covered above, here are a few things worth confirming with any marketing partner before the engagement begins:

• What does reporting look like, and how often will it be provided?
• What is the cadence for reviewing results together?
• Which KPIs will the engagement be measured against?
• How will the agency connect marketing activity to the business outcomes that matter most to your company?
• Does your organization have end-to-end attribution in place, and if not, can your marketing partner help address that?

If you have questions about reporting, metrics, or what a well-structured marketing engagement should look like, reach out to us directly. We are happy to help you through it.