Understanding how to match client goals to your agency's reporting back to them will not only make you more successful in your strategy but will also get you more referrals.

1. KEEP
YOUR
CLIENTS[ ]
Boost profit by matching agency reporting
to the client’s bottom line.

2. Why are we talking about this?[ ]
Better reporting keeps you from being unknowningly at odds with clients
Get more client referrals because you achieved real, measurable goals
Keep clients longer because you haven’t missed larger organizational goals

3. Let’s talk about…
Figuring out what the real goals are
Setting up reporting to match them
Appropriate benchmarks & baselines

4. Figuring
out the
REAL
GOALS

5. Clients may not always be up front
about their real goals.
They don’t trust you yet.
(Hurts to hear, doesn’t it? You’ve been nothing but nice to them.)
They think certain things have “nothing to do with PR.”
(This one is due to decades of misunderstanding about what PR actually is.)
I’m sure you’re shocked.
Why would they do something this crazy and destructive?
They don’t actually know what their own organizational goals are.
(Whoops… This one is usually the scariest.)

6. What now?
You need a plan of action going into your
initial client conversations.
Have
SPECIFIC
&
MEASURABLE
questions
about
goals & KPIs
And demand
SPECIFIC
&
MEASURABLE
answers
even if they have to come
back with them later

7. Details you need
➡ What is your client being measured on?
➡ What constitutes success to their boss? To their
executive team?
(does it track back to your client’s goals? if not - time to start asking questions.)
➡ What does their internal reporting include?
(is it the same as what you’re reporting on - if not - why?)
You have to know this. If you’re working with someone that
doesn’t know and won’t find out, or knows and won’t tell you
- RUN AWAY.

8. Real goals for real people
➡ Increase revenue from $3M to $4.5M YoY
➡ Increase conversion by 12% in Q3
➡ Increase website traffic from 100,000 new
visits per month to 125,000.
Goals need to be measurable with a numeric value.
No matter what.
Even if you have to assign a numeric measurement to happiness and
sentiment - it’s doable, I’ve done it.

9. Some NOT-a-goal goals I’ve seen
➡ Increase brand awareness
➡ Generate positive sentiment about our brand
➡ Get more followers / fans / likes
My response to all of these non-goals is usually one of the following:
- By how much? 10%? 50,000? I’m gonna need a number.
- With who exactly? Do you have a super specific target? You need one.
- How do we know when we’ve accomplished it?
- Do we stop when people are aware/happy/the best?
- Why do you want to do this? I’m gonna bet it’s revenue - which is a
measurable goal - so let’s tie it to that.

10. Goals
Micro-goals / KPIs
Deliverables
The end game, such as $10M in revenue
or 100,000 sign-ups.
The smaller goals you need to
meet to make sure you get to the
end game.
The things you’re going to
do / create to get the KPIs
met.
The Goalden Pyramid
see what I did there?

11. SETTING UP REPORTING
MIRROR THE GOALSTO

12. Discusswith the client*
For each deliverable
your agency is
responsible for to
help meet goals, ask:
How does each deliverable track
back to a specific goal or KPI?
[ ]
What does success look like?
What are appropriate
benchmarks and baselines?
*and leadership team if possible

13. How does each deliverable track back to a
specific goal?
For each deliverable, make sure there is a way to map it back to the goals
of the client and, ultimately, the organization. If you can’t (or they won’t)
track it back to goals - don’t agree to it until you can.
Example: If the goal is to increase revenue, you need to know
how getting an editorial placement is going to contribute to that.
$
GOAL:
REVENUE
INCREASE
EDITORIAL
PLACEMENT
10,000
VIEWS
800
CLICKS
50
BUYS

14. Increase revenue 20% this quarter
‣ Increase new users from 500/month to
800/month
‣ Generate 15,000 pageviews this month
on campaign content
‣ Receive 1200 clicks through to content
✓Editorial placement in tier 1 publication
✓Sponsored content on 3 blogs
✓Interview with industry pundit
✓Speaking opp at XConf
Goal
Micro-goals / KPIs
Deliverables
Look, we can put it on the pyramid!

15. Appropriate
BENCHMARKS
&
BASELINES

16. Common KPIs
‣ Views / pageviews / visits (also broken out by new v. returning visits)
‣ Clicks through to other content / website (clicks per content and
aggregate clicks)
‣ Shares / mentions (broken out by channel w/ specific metrics for each)
‣ New users /signups / customers (if there’s a difference between
customer or user types - be sure to distinguish how many of each type)
‣ Conversions to [XYZ] (form fills, reads, purchases, signups, etc.)
‣ % positive sentiment change over time*
(last quarter 10% of mentions were positive and this quarter 18% were positive)
For the record: I think current attempts at sentiment analysis are crap.
][

17. Create a spreadsheet of each deliverable and its associated KPI,
with high and low benchmarks on each side. KPIs should be set
based on:
- Current performance of client’s similar content already in
market (other press releases, editorial contributions, etc.)
- Benchmarks from similar types of content around the industry
(general baselines from other clients that can help set expectations)
- Additional campaign / resource support that will be given to
help meet the KPI (advertising budget, retargeting, additional resources)
- What numbers must be met to meet the overall goal / KPIs (be
sure to set KPIs to a threshold capable of meeting the main goals - these can
be estimates early on and honed over time)
Measure those KPIs ][

18. But what about when they’re all,
“I wanna be in Forbes.”
“Forbes, and only Forbes - or maybe, The New York Times, will
satisfy me and reaffirm me as the consumate badass
businessperson that I am. Wave your PR wand!”

19. It’s time to bring out the matrix.
Not the Keanu one… This one:
Name of every
publication they
want to be in
Tier (1-3) Tier Score
Did it happen? If
yes, add score
below.
NYT 1 10 NO
Forbes 1 10 10
Entrepreneuer 2 5 5
Inc. 2 5 NO
Social Media Examiner 3 2 NO
Content Weekly 3 2 2
TOTAL 17
The matrix gives a numerical value to coverage and can be
measured multiple ways.

20. HOW IT WORKS
Each publication gets a tier (that the client and agency agree on together), and each tier has a
numeric value, for example:
‣ Tier 1 (10 pts) - New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes
‣ Tier 2 (5 pts) - Inc., Entrepreneur, Huffington Post
‣ Tier 3 (2 pts) - Content Weekly, Marketing Profs, Social Media Examiner
‣ Tier 4 (1 pt) - Other pickups - local / niche / not listed
Discuss the total score needed to make the client happy - ask them to be specific. If they say 30
points - is it okay if it comes from one Tier 3 and 28 Tier 4’s, or is there a minimum of at least one
Tier 1 and one Tier 2 expected?
Name of every
publication they
want to be in
Tier (1-3) Tier Score
Did it happen? If
yes, add score
below.
NYT 1 10 NO
Forbes 1 10 10
Entrepreneuer 2 5 5
Inc. 2 5 NO
Social Media Examiner 3 2 NO
Content Weekly 3 2 2
TOTAL 17

21. REMEMBER
It’s all about setting expectations and baselines that map deliverables
back to client and overall company goals.
This ensures your contributions can be attributed to the metrics and
reports that matter at the highest levels.
Baselines and KPIs can be adjusted, and will likely need fine tuning after
your first few deliverables together - that’s to be expected and means
you’re increasing accuracy for future campaigns.
][

22. In conclusion…

23. If you can’t measure it,
DON’T
DO
IT[ ]

24. GinzaMetrics.com
erin@ginzametrics.com
Twitter @ginzametrics[ ]