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Gather around my fellow Internet marketers, I’m about to reveal a BIG secret of mine…

Your clients don’t know as much about Internet marketing as you do.

Shocking, eh? Apparently this comes as a surprise to many marketers in our industry. I’ve had the privilege of reading many monthly reports that Internet marketing professionals send their clients, and I have to say…it’s embarrassing. I’ve seen everything from reports filled with nothing but ranking reports to a printout of each page of their client’s Google Analytics.

Listen up, folks: there is a reason your clients hired you for this job – it’s because they aren’t experts or don’t have time to become one. So when you report to them weekly, monthly, or both, keep that in mind. To be blunt, you need to dumb it down.

I often refer to this as professional blindness. It occurs when you assume a client is an expert or very knowledgeable in your field. While I’m sure they are flattered that you give them so much credit, they would be even more appreciative of a report they can actually understand.

So what’s the magic formula when it comes to reporting? Well it really depends on what type of reporting you’ll be doing. This guide will focus on weekly/monthly project progress reports. We can detail the others at a later time.

When writing the report, remember to include:

1. Current project status. How far along are we with the project, and how well are we doing? You’ll need to include some analytics data, but keep it short and sweet. I usually give my results as (and yes, I do explain what I mean by “organic searches”):

During January, we had XXXX organic searches that ended in visits to the site, not including [company name]. (We never include [company name] in those numbers because we don’t feel like we get credit for those. You would get those searchers anyway.) In February we saw a XX% increased in unbranded searches (XXXX organic searches total in February).

2. Conversions. Did you see an increase or decrease in conversions, why? This should be even more important to the client. Don’t go into too much detail, but demonstrate to them that you know why it happened.
3. Goals for the next month. Some clients are more hands off than others, and because of that, I make an effort to describe what our goals are for the upcoming month. What mini projects we hope to complete and the expected result.

You should also keep the following guidelines in mind:

Keep it short. This is especially true when reporting to high executives. Many clients prefer to be on a ‘need to know’ basis. I shoot for a one page monthly report, or two pages at the longest. I also like to break the report into two sections. The first section is non-detailed important information outlined above. The second section is titled: “Below are the details on the SEO work we completed for you, in case you are interested.” It lets them know that if they don’t have time (or if they don’t care) to read on, they don’t have to. It is just the details.

Avoid industry jargon. Make sure to explain any industry terms if you need to include them. When mentioning an idea for link bait, explain is exactly what link bait is and how it will benefit their site. Remember to also spell out any acronyms.

Anyone without any Internet marketing experience should be able to understand your report. I’ve often heard it described as keeping it at a “high executive level.” You can always compile a more detailed report at their request, but this will keep them from sitting back in there chair and mumbling, “WTF?”

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 1:03 pm in Client Management.