Measuring (and reporting) your agency’s results for clients

A question recently popped up in the Spin Sucks Community for an organization looking to implement a communications measurement program for the first time.

Chip and Gini took the opportunity to explore how to set up useful reporting for client work, as well has how your agency can communicate those results most effectively to your clients.

Measurement isn’t easy, but it doesn’t need to be hard either. There are lots of great resources available. This episode will help you to build or improve your own framework for reporting that should lead to better results, happier clients, and improved retention.

Key takeaways

Chip Griffin: “It is so important that you provide context to your report, that you provide understanding to your report, because a pile of data, even if they understand it on the other side, is not nearly as meaningful as if you are able to tell that story and distill down the key points.”

Gini Dietrich : “When you’re thinking about how you can measure the results of a communications program, probably about 50% of it cannot be measured. So you have to have the confidence to be able to say to a client, you’re gonna invest this 50%, and we’re not gonna be able to tell you that it was directly correlated to X number of customers or X amount of revenue.”

Resources

* Christopher Penn* Spin Sucks Community

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And we’re gonna get out our measuring tape today and do something with it right after this.

All right. So let’s see. How do we…

Gini Dietrich: oh, you actually have one!

Chip Griffin: How do we measure the success of our efforts for clients?

Gini Dietrich: So bad, so bad. How do you have a measuring tape sitting right there? By the way your background looks very nice. I just noticed.

Chip Griffin: Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I, I made a few upgrades to it over the holiday week, so.

Gini Dietrich: I like it. Looks great.

Chip Griffin: Tried to brighten it up a little bit, you know? Yeah. The brick is nice, but a little, little white bead board.

Gini Dietrich: Got some green plants in there. You have some action figures.

Chip Griffin: They’re fake. Of course.

Gini Dietrich: Well sure. That way they don’t die. It’s great.

Chip Griffin: Correct. Yeah. I mean, you don’t want me to have to take care of plants. That’s just, that’s not gonna end well. You know, but no, I have a, in, I have a measuring tape in my desk and so. Right after I, I started playing the bumper. It occurred to me that, that I had a measuring tape in my desk.

Gini Dietrich: You actually had one.

Chip Griffin: So I spun around quickly grabbed it out and had it in hand by the time the graphic came off the screen. For those of you who were watching in video.