One of the biggest parts of your job is keeping your clients in the loop on their marketing programs. Sharing key digital marketing metrics week over week is (hopefully) not just an excuse to boast about the program, but instead, a way to educate clients about the drivers of success, and encourage a healthy interest in their marketing strategy.
You’ll always be the expert—that’s why they hired ya—but don’t miss out on sharing these key metrics with your clients. Simply put: it’s good for business.
1. Receiving love through traffic matters.
Driving more conversions starts with driving greater traffic to your client’s website. Traffic matters.
Your clients are going to want to see an increase in site visitors if they are paying you to manage their PPC campaigns. And, it’s important to look at traffic by channel and by campaign—not simply a lump sum. This will provide greater insights into how people are reaching your website. For example, is it by brand or non-brand keywords?
2. Conversions over roses.
The truth is, you can provide your clients with all sorts of flowery stats, but what’s going to matter most at the end of the day are conversions. Your clients want to see what website visitors are transforming into leads. You may be driving a TON of traffic to the website, but if only a handful of visitors is converting, something is going awry.
Conversions are your opportunity to say, without a doubt, that you’re making a difference.
Conversion tracking can be based on who has filled out a contact form on your client’s website. But it can also mean you need to check call tracking stats. Mobile phones are king now. So, we need to see who is using them, who is clicking ads to call, and how many leads were generated.
3. Be aware of your Valentine—in this case, your callers.
We may sound like a broken record, but we believe in the benefits of call tracking.
In today’s day and age, it’s a big deal if people pick up the phone to call their best friend—so yes, it’s critical to know who is calling, and what ad prompted them to do so.
This metric alone can uncover all sorts of awesome tidbits about what your clients can do to improve their business, from the ad to operations.
4. How much is your Valentine costing you?
Leads are a beautiful thing, but what are they costing you? Show your clients where their dollars are going. And of course, hopefully the cost per lead is relatively low.
5. Are they reciprocating (ROI)?
This is a term everyone drops, but return on investment (ROI) may be the MacDaddy of all metrics. It’s the end game.
The question is: do your efforts, and your strategy, result in revenue for your clients? This is a sign of the success of the hand-off from your campaign leads to your clients (and their ability to close the deal!).
5. Should you open up completely?
Demonstrating ROI secures your relationship with them—it’s your chance to prove real value.
Your clients want to know what they spend on PPC compared to what revenue they have brought in in order to gauge profit. Deciding whether to Include your management fee into the total is a personal choice.
Do you show just media spend, or do you show the total cost, which includes what it takes to have you run the campaigns? Sure, including your fee will bring down the profit, but keep in mind, it’s a more transparent way to communicate with your clients.
While you’re watching campaigns at the nitty gritty level, including important factors such as pacing, these key metrics are a smart way to keep your clients in the loop on what’s happening with their ads. And frankly, communicating with clients is also a great way to maintain accountability yourself. You’re going to want to work hard to report metrics that you’re proud of.