Friday, and the report is due
The campaign ended two weeks ago. The client's marketing director wants a report for their board on Monday: total reach, engagement, views, clicks, code sales, cost per result, best creators and what to do next time. Your account manager has a spreadsheet of creator results, a separate export of discount code sales from the client's Shopify, link click data from a URL shortener, and the budget in another sheet.
The "total reach" figure adds up creators' reach, counting people who saw several posts more than once, and nobody writes that down. Engagement rate is calculated one way for Instagram and another for TikTok. Cost per click uses creator fees but not the agency fee in one place and both in another. The report looks good. The client's analyst takes it apart on Monday afternoon.
Why reports are hard to trust
Influencer results come from different platforms, different sources and different definitions, and the report is assembled in slides each time.
- Metrics mean different things on each platform, and are combined without saying so.
- Definitions such as engagement rate or cost per result change between reports.
- Sales data sits in the client's store or affiliate platform, not with the creator results.
- Costs in the report may or may not include agency fees, product and paid media.
- Each report is built from a copy of the last one.
What a shaky report costs
The report is often the main thing the client's leadership sees of your work. If the numbers do not hold up, the budget for the next campaign is at risk, whatever the creators actually achieved. Clients who cannot compare campaigns cannot see improvement, so the agency's best work is hard to prove. And account managers spend days building slides instead of thinking about what the results mean.
A report built from the campaign records
- Every deliverable's results, from creator screenshots or connected accounts, sit on the campaign record with the date captured.
- Sales and clicks are imported from the client's store, affiliate platform or link tracking, and linked to creators by code or link.
- Costs are recorded per creator and per campaign: creator fee, product, usage, agency fee and any paid media.
- Definitions are fixed in one place and printed in the report: what counts as reach, how engagement rate is calculated per platform, what cost per result includes.
- The report template, per client if needed, lays out totals, per-platform results, creator comparison and cost per result.
- Your account team writes the interpretation and recommendations in the report itself, next to the figures.
- Reports are exported as PDF or shared as a web page, and the client can drill into a creator's figures if you allow it.
| Measure | Defined as | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | Sum of per-post reach, stated as not unique people | Creator results |
| Engagement rate | Per platform formula, printed in the report | Creator results |
| Code sales | Orders using the creator's code | Client store or affiliate platform |
| Cost per result | Stated costs divided by result | Campaign costs |
Influencer results depend on many things outside the agency's control. The report states what happened and how it was measured; it does not claim causes it cannot show.
A report that survives the board meeting
Two days after the last results are in, the account manager opens a first draft with every figure in place and definitions on the page. They spend their time on what the results mean: which creators and formats worked, what to change. On Monday, the client's analyst asks how reach was counted; the answer is on page two. The next campaign's report uses the same definitions, so the board can see the trend.
Over several campaigns, the same records also show which creators, platforms and formats deliver the best cost per result for each client.
Is your reporting like this?
- Reports are built in slides from several spreadsheets.
- Definitions change between reports.
- Sales data and creator results are combined by hand.
- Costs in the report are not clearly stated.
- Clients have questioned your totals.