Marketing analytics & reporting

5 Best Client Report Examples [+Templates]

Starting a marketing agency is the dream of many marketers working for others. After all, what’s not to like? You get to pick the amazing clients you work with, you get to hire other people to do the work and of course, you make more money. But no one talks about the agency life that is not so glamorous. The admin work takes up a good chunk of your agency’s work, and the main culprit — client reports.

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool
Mile Zivkovic

Jul 07 2022 7 min read

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Table of Contents

    Client reports are necessary to show your results, and they let you create and maintain great relationships. Do your reports right, and your clients will love you. Do them the wrong way, and you’ll always have to replace good clients with new ones.

    So, what is the secret to creating great client reports? We’ll show you today, with some great examples.

    What is a client report?

    A client report is a document that summarizes essential information about the work that marketing agencies or freelancers do for their clients. The report shows the progress of the client’s marketing campaigns, the metrics and KPIs your agency delivered, and recommendations for the next steps and improvements.

    In essence, a client report shows your clients why you’re the right choice for their digital marketing needs.

    Some types of client reports include:

    • PPC report
    • SEO report
    • Email marketing report
    • E-commerce report
    • Website analytics report
    • Social media report
    • Cross-channel report

    Depending on the work you do, you’ll choose a different type of report. If you’re looking for inspiration, you can take a look at some marketing report templates to get started.

    But first, here’s some real-life data. 

    40 data sources

    Why 42% of businesses are not happy with their client reports

    We recently did some research to find out what businesses generally think about the reports they get from their marketing agencies. Surprisingly enough, 42% of clients are not happy with the reports that agencies send them.

    Here are the most common reasons:

    • Lack of performance breakdown by marketing channel
    • No clear overview of top-level KPIs
    • Not enough insights on market segmentation
    • Not enough comparison against industry benchmarks
    • Not enough recommendations and next steps
    • Not enough explanations for non-marketers

    So, if you want to improve your agency-client relationship, create better reports and improve your bottom line, these are some of the things you should pay attention to. Let’s see what that looks like in practice.

    5 essential client reports

    Now let’s analyze the ins and outs of the most valuable client reports.

    1. Monthly client marketing report

    A monthly marketing report is the most effective way of reporting for most clients. The monthly data span is big enough to give accurate projections while your clients can see trends and changes in context. 

    For example, a multi-channel report can help you present the impact of your marketing initiatives and long-term projects, such as search engine optimization, PR, and content marketing campaigns. 

    Insights your clients can get from a monthly report?

    • Overall website analytics
    • A reminder of goals to pursue
    • The client’s goals completed
    • Overview of campaign performance

    Where to find this data?

    • Google Analytics dashboard (in a monthly time frame)
    • Social media analytics 
    • Ads platforms
    • An SEO tool 

    OR you can simply pick Whatagraph’s Ultimate Cross Channel Analytics Report, connect the client’s sources, and voila — there you have a one-stop client report for presenting your results from SEO to email, to social to PPC with engaging data visualization. 

    cross-channel-report

    By default, our cross-channel marketing report has seven sections:

    • Performance overview: Progress bar chart with time passed, goal completions, as well as widgets for media spend, conversions, and cost per conversion.
    • Acquisition overview: Top channels conversions vs. users (direct, organic, paid, referral).
    • Website overview: A new users vs. user graphs, gauges for bounce rate, average session duration, and page performance.
    • Audience overview: Users per device, demographics, and interests as in-market segments.
    • Google Ads overview: Time passed, impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost.
    • Organic traffic overview: Time passed, users, new users, average rank, goal completions, and conversion rate.
    • Facebook Ads overview: Time passed, impressions, link clicks, pixel leads, conversions, cost per conversion, and total spend.

    As you can see, Whatagraph’s cross-channel report template allows agencies to overview and optimize the performance of individual clients’ channels without digging deep into each channel individually. 

    Instead, you can quickly present your clients with the most important key performance indicators and give an accurate report on your progress. 

    2. SEO client report

    An SEO report is where you can show your clients how their website is performing in terms of SEO metrics, such as organic traffic, backlinks, technical SEO, etc. 

    The most often used is an overall SEO report that summarizes every aspect of your efforts. 

    Insights your clients can get from a monthly report?

    • Changes in website traffic
    • The difference between organic traffic and other sources
    • The ratio of branded vs. non-branded traffic
    • Keywords that are driving most visits
    • Status of organic rankings
    • Overall backlink profile
    • Any technical SEO issues 

    Where to find this data?

    • Google Analytics for traffic-related data
    • Google Search Console
    • Site Audit for SERP features and site health

    However, stitching SEO metrics from different tools in Excel can be challenging even for experts. Luckily, everyone in your agency can connect Whatagraph’s SEO Report Template to your client accounts and start reporting right away. 

    whatagraph seo report template main kpis

    Off the shelf, our template comes pre-loaded with sections like SEO overview, keyword ranking, and backlinks data.

    Keep an eye on your client’s SEO and organic performance, changes in keyword rankings, organic CTR, branded and non-branded search terms, and many more. 

    3. Social media performance client report

    A social media performance report is the best way to keep your clients in the loop as to:

    • What is happening with their follower base?
    • How active is their brand on social media in a given period?
    • Which posts generated the most engagement (why)?
    • How do they stack against main competitors?
    • How many conversions do they get from each social media channel?

    Where to find this data?

    • Google Analytics for referral traffic
    • Social Media Tracker for full analysis and data-driven recommendations

    In the case of social media performance reports, it’s important to organize the data by channel, which is challenging without a dedicated data platform that can both integrate data for joint insights and provide separate performance for each channel. 

    Whatagraph’s Social Media Report Template for Marketing Agencies helps agencies handle social media analytics and evaluate the campaign effectiveness for every client. 

    By default, our social media report template has the following sections:

    • Executive summary: Consolidated social media overview of all followers across social media and insights and key takeaways of what worked and what did not. The best content performer this month by impressions and reach. 
    • Channel’s performance at a glance: Organic and paid performance per channel.
    • Facebook page overview: Progress bar chart with key monthly KPIs, top performing posts, and follower distribution by gender.
    • Facebook page content breakdown: Top performing content by organic impressions, engaged users, negative reactions, and comments.
    • Facebook Ads performance: Monthly impressions, leads, and conversions, total spend, cost per click, and click-through rate. Your client’s social media funnel chart. 
    • Instagram page insights: Monthly reach, impressions, and engagement, followers and engagement rate, as well as audience gender & age distribution. 
    • Conclusion and next steps: Your insights and recommendations for the next month. 

    Of course, if your client reporting process demands, you can easily create similar sections for other social media channels your clients might be using, such as TikTok and YouTube. 

    cross-channel reports

    4. PPC client report

    You should use a PPC report to organize your clients’ paid ads data by tracking and monitoring important KPIs such as:

    • Clicks
    • Cost
    • Impressions 
    • Click-through rate (CTR)
    • Conversion rates
    • Cost-per conversion

    As well as optimize their paid media campaigns by:

    • Removing keywords that aren’t performing
    • Leaving out keywords that aren’t generating traffic
    • Replacing keywords that haven’t got any impressions
    • Stopping using seasonal keywords and those with a low-quality score

    Where to find this data?

    PPC is one of the favorite marketing strategies for many agencies, mainly because the ROI is so easy to track. 

    And no, by tracking, we don't mean tracking all the client data sources separately and combining the metrics manually. 

    whatagraph ppc report template main kpis

    Whatagraph’s PPC Report Template allows you to collect key metrics from different Ads platforms and consolidate the results into four sections:

    • Main KPIs: Monthly status of conversions, clicks, impressions, and cost.
    • Insights: A text box where you can comment on the results or offer clarification to clients.
    • Further actions: An empty field where you can suggest the next steps or recommendations. 
    • Channel split: Traffic, conversions, and cost per conversion per all client’s paid media channels.

    Agencies can use our PPC report template to create captivating paid media reports for clients in minutes and set up automated delivery. 

    5. E-commerce client report

    Through an e-commerce report, you can help your clients launch effective customer loyalty programs and create tailored marketing campaigns based on customer history. Aside from constantly trying to acquire new leads, e-commerce reporting helps clients tap into the existing customer base. 

    Insights your clients can get from an eCommerce report:

    • Total revenue
    • Conversion rate
    • Total number of transactions
    • Bounce rate
    • Pages per sessions 
    • Customer lifetime value

    Where to find this data?

    • Google Analytics
    • Google Ads
    • Social media channels

    The good news is that you don’t have to manually extract, pair, and combine metrics from all those platforms individually.

    Instead, you can fast forward directly to Whatagraph’s E-commerce Report Template. Just connect the account, and the metrics from your client’s revenue sources update automatically every hour. 

    40+ data

    Sourcing data directly from your client’s Shopify account, this report helps agencies track vital client e-commerce metrics and present data in a visually engaging way that is easy to understand and act on. 

    Talking of visual engagement, Whatagraph’s E-commerce Report Template begins with a cover image you can upload to grasp attention right away, followed by 5 sections:

    • Executive summary: Progress bars with monthly KPIs and table with sales data by product.
    • Online store traffic overview: Number of new clients and sessions, demographic activity, website conversion funnel, and traffic sources pie chart. 
    • Sales Insights: Total sales, shipping, and tax, as well as sales performance by product type and top-performing products by product ID. 
    • Customer Insights: Orders in total and average units per transaction. Insights for different customer groups. 
    • Conclusions, monthly results, next steps: Your insights and client recommendations for the next month. 

    Wrapping up

    Creating amazing client reports is not rocket science. If you’re already using reporting software, all it takes is a little bit of effort to make your custom reports stand out from the rest of the boring and bland agencies out there.

    Wondering how to get started? Sign up for Whatagraph and embrace the power of report automation. With 40+ integrations and data points, you can report on literally any marketing discipline out there. Create stunning white-label reports, say goodbye to spreadsheets, save time with an effective client report template for every occasion and see what it’s like to be loved by your clients. Sign up for a free trial today to get started!

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    Published on Jul 07 2022

    Whatagraph marketing reporting tool

    WRITTEN BY

    Mile Zivkovic

    Mile is the head of content at Whatagraph in charge of all content and communications for Whatagraph’s marketing data platform. A marketing heavy with almost a decade of SaaS industry experience, Mile has managed multiple content marketing teams without losing an ounce of his writing passion. The author behind some of the most-read pieces on our blog.