are you in the dark?

Is your marketing or PR provider leaving you in the dark?

Marketing budgets and ROI are under scrutiny in every business in every sector right now and you may well be asking what does our marketing and PR provider actually do every month for their retainer? Frankly, if you’re not asking - you should be! How do you know where your spend is going and the ROI? Without the data you need how can you plan?

There’s margin in mystery. Not any more there’s not.

Have you ever heard that phrase? I heard it at digital marketing conferences when speakers were teaching agencies how to sell their services to clients. There’s no reason for the mystery anymore. Not in the current climate. Every aspect of your digital marketing spend can now be accounted for and can be reported on. There’s no mystery!

Speaking from experience of running my own business for 8 years, I insisted on monthly reports from every one of the marketing providers I worked with. I expected reporting with analysis and insight. This formed the basis of all my decision making.

I talk to so many businesses now who simply have no idea what their provider is doing despite handing over £100’s every month for services like SEO, PPC,PR, Social Media Management and content creation. They have handed over responsibility for these vital areas of their business and they trust their provider is doing a good job. That’s great and finding a provider you can trust is a brilliant outcome.

But…. not all providers are made equal. Business owners do not know what they can expect because they don’t understand what it is they do. There’s the margin for that provider when they create the mystery.

What reporting should I expect?

Every marketing tool a provider will use has a reporting function. If you’re not getting regular reporting you need to ask for it – there is no excuse in 2020 for lack of reporting.

Has your website got Google Analytics on it? If not…get it on there now! You need to understand what’s going on with visitors to your site and the journey they’re taking. How else can you tell how your marketing is performing? With the focus on budgets and ROI in the current climate how can important decisions be made without the relevant data to hand?

Holding your marketing provider accountable for the work they do sounds obvious but how many people reading this are guilty of not worrying about what is happening until they see the monthly spend on a spreadsheet?

For example, do you know your:

Website visitor numbers

Percentage of organic and paid visitors.

Keyword ranking performance.

Conversion tracking.

Social Media channels engagement and referrals.

Merely reporting the data as endless lists of metrics and tables is not where it ends. You should be provided with analysis so you can understand:

What progress has been made?

Which activities are working or not as effective?

Identify trends and areas the need attention.

Recommendations for future direction.

I believe that marketing and PR should be a collaborative experience and that clients should never be left in the dark.

Get in touch with me to see what I can do for you and your business….