Communication Is Key: How Yatter Report Back To Their Clients

Gavin Bell

Exceptional communication is one of Yatter’s 4 main values.

We put a huge amount of effort into communicating with our clients and ensuring they’re always happy and in the know. Because nobody wants an agency that leaves them wondering what’s going on…

Our aim is to be as proactive as possible and be an extension of your team!

We’ve created a structured communication cadence, so you have all the info you need on what’s working, what’s lacking and what we’re doing to counteract it.

We’re going to take you through what each of these communications looks like and what you can expect from us:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Quarterly

Why Does Communication With Clients Matter?

A lot of agencies will leave you wondering what’s going on and it’ll feel like a reactive relationship. At Yatter, we try and be proactive, we try and push you and we give you a no-BS approach (we’re Scottish after all).

A good agency (like Yatter) should report frequently to you and keep it transparent. Your PPC agency should be happy to share results with you – it’s your campaign and business!

You need to ensure you’re getting quality communication if:

You want to make better decisions
You’ve spent a lot of money and need to know how it’s working
You want to move quickly and see success fast

If an agency holds information and reports from you, that’s a big red flag! You want clear, useful reports to help improve, not someone who’s keeping you in the dark.

To help you, we’ve created a blog on a whole list of things to look out for when hiring a PPC agency!

We know that regular and concise reporting is essential for our clients, that’s why it’s our top priority. From working with 100’s of clients across 1000’s of campaigns, we saw what clients liked and didn’t like and we adapted our process over the years.

Our communication cadence has been tried and tested from years of experience with clients.

Daily Dashboard

Once your campaigns go live, you’ll get access to a live reporting dashboard (We use a tool called Oviond), which you can access at any time.

This customised dashboard will show you everything you need to know about your ads, and you can check it whenever you like! We also customise the dashboard to include any key metrics or data you want.

The information is presented in a simple, easy-to-read way. Facebook Ads Manager for example can be really complex and messy if you don’t know your way around it – we make it super simple.

We want the daily dashboard to be as accessible as possible. We don’t want to bamboozle our clients or hide behind lots of useless numbers and jargon. If communication is the key, we need to make it as clear as possible.

We’re not here to confuse you!

Weekly Check-ins

Once a week, we will send you updates via email confirming what we’re doing, what’s working and what are the next steps. We use a system called MAA, which stands for metrics, analysis, and action.

Metrics (M) – We share the most important numbers with the client (cost per lead, cost per acquisition, ROAS etc.) and how that’s changed based on previous performance/targets. This gives the client a quick glance at performance.

Analysis (A) – We share the meaning behind the metric. So for example, if the number of leads is down this week by 10%, why is that? This lets the client understand changes in performance and shows authority from us.

Action (A) – We share what we’re going to do next/as a result of the performance. This lets the client know we have a plan whether things are going well or not.

Essentially, the weekly report is an overview of the last seven days. We’ll have been checking in and monitoring your account daily, taking note of everything including cost per result, the reach, the impressions, the overall spend, and what’s working and what’s not.

It’s important that we take this time to analyse and compare the difference from week to week. We’re analysing the current week’s performance in conjunction with how the ads performed previously, and then reporting that to you via email.

For example, if we see an upturn in the cost per result, we can look at the last two weeks or 30 days, see what ads are bombing, and what ads have a lifetime lower cost per result, and then switch on and off ads.

Here’s an example of how a good, weekly report should look:

We are in your accounts on a daily basis, constantly optimising your campaigns by doing things such as: turning off poor-performing ads, rolling out new ads, testing creatives, copy and audiences, trying out new bidding strategies etc.
And then, we report back on all of the things we’ve done during the week and how that’s impacted results.

Monthly Reports

Every month we do a more formal, in-depth monthly report to share results and discuss the next steps. In our monthly reports we:

Share an analysis of performance of the month, looking at what worked, didn’t etc.
Include an in-depth spreadsheet diving into performance of every part of your campaigns.
Give you a top-level summary of performance.
Analyse the best performing audiences and ads.
Plan what we’re going to do next.

Some clients have other reporting preferences which we’re happy to accommodate as well.

So in the reports, we essentially look at performance of the month – what worked, what didn’t, what we tried & tested, overall metrics and then what we’re going to try next.

Included in the monthly report is a spreadsheet of the complete ad account campaigns, including metrics such as amount spent total reach web traffic number of purchases cost per purchase etc.

We collectively take the weekly reports from that month and look at the numbers. Then we look at cost per result, number of results and what changes we’ve made to the account. We want to make a month-on-month comparison.

Then, we look at campaigns individually. We work out which ads were performing best in terms of creative and copy and determine why we think it’s performing better than others.

We ask the questions: Are we driving leads? How are the quality of leads? What’s the conversion like on their side?
Also in the monthly report, we analyse and report on our work in the account of that month. We’ll discuss what kind of testing we have been doing, and anything interesting we have noticed. We also have a short rundown on the total metrics showing off the highlights of the main metrics to the client such as cost per lead total leads etc. Then we tell them what has been our best performing creators for both prospecting and retargeting again using MAA, metrics analysis action from these creatives.

Then, we lay out plans for the next month. We compare with previous months, discuss any adjustments we’ll make, and anything we would like to try i.e new creative or testing out more copy. We may also make recommendations to the client not related to just ads.

For example, if the ads are driving traffic but the conversions aren’t happening. We may suggest to you that you need to make some changes to your landing page. It’s about stepping into ownership of the account and looking at the big picture.
Essentially, we want to give an in-depth, substantial overview of the month that we can use to compare and plan for the future. We break down all the information, so you have an easy-to-read report of what’s happening and can be safe in the knowledge that we are constantly planning ahead.

You’re always in the loop with whats going on.

Quarterly Planning

Each quarter we have an in-depth, internal team meeting to discuss future strategies for your account before presenting our findings to you.

This is an opportunity for us, collectively as a team, to look at your business and see how we can improve it as a whole rather than just from an ads perspective.

This could be things like looking at email marketing or coming up with new offers that we can run on paid social etc. Essentially, we want to help your business move forward in all aspects.

By coming together as a team, we can bounce new ideas off each other and create something great that we might not have thought of separately. This is a great chance to get creative and we want to share that with you!

Client Reporting

Although a lot of the communication comes from us, we need communication from you too.

We call this “closed loop” reporting.

As an example, if we’re running a lead generation campaign for you, we get to see the data on the front-end. That’s things like number of clicks, number of leads and cost per lead. But we don’t always get to see what’s happening on the back-end. That’s things like how many of those leads are converting to customers.

This is especially important when things aren’t going as well as hoped. For example, if we’re generating leads and those leads aren’t converting into customers, we need to know ASAP. And we need to know why they’re not.

Are they not answering the phone?
Are they too price-sensitive?
Do they not like the offer?
Did they not know what they signed up for?

We need to know what’s going on so we can tailor the campaigns accordingly.

A common one we hear is that people aren’t motivated enough or don’t have enough money to sign up. In that case, we then typically ask our clients to create video content to overcome the objection BEFORE they speak to them on the phone.

The same goes for e-commerce clients, we want to know what’s happening AFTER the sale is made. Are those customers purchasing any upsells? Are they repeat customers? What feedback are you getting on the product?

All of this information is important – and we always tell our clients to overshare with us. Even if they think it’s not entirely relevant, we want to see it anyway.

Now – in a lot of instances, we’ll be able to see this information ourselves because we request access to things like client websites, CRM’s etc but it’s always good for us to hear directly from the client.

That way, if there are any issues we can work together on fixing them.

Advertising isn’t a golden-bullet. You can’t just turn ads on and expect huge returns straight away. It’s a partnership between the agency and the client. We create a great ad campaign and launch it. Once things are live, we use the data to optimise and improve both the ad campaigns and what happens in the back-end to ensure sustainable success.