How To Buy Time at a Marketing Agency

At some point in our careers, we’ve all heard a saying along the lines of “You can buy a clock, but you can’t buy time.” As fun as that might be to say, in some ways that’s not entirely true. Yes, at a marketing agency, time is money… and there never seems to be enough of either. 

Between juggling client meetings, managing campaigns, and keeping up with constant revisions, the day disappears all too quickly. Reporting, while essential, tends to be the ultimate time suck. Hours lost compiling data, formatting reports, and delivering them just in time to collect dust in someone’s inbox. At a busy agency, where efficiency should be king, tedious manual tasks like client reporting shouldn’t be running the show.

So, what if you could get some of that time back–without compromising quality? AgencyAnalytics customers have bought back over 500,000 hours each month. What would you do with some of that time? 

How Quickly Two Hours Per Client Adds Up

Sure, two or three (sometimes four) hours spent on a single client report might not sound like much… until you’re doing it across 20 or more clients. Now you’re talking about over 40 hours per month. That’s an entire workweek lost to manual data crunching. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have that back in your hands without pulling an all-nighter or double-checking another data set?

Time is a valuable and costly commodity. The less time we spend creating and generating reports, the more time we can invest in the client's marketing campaigns. 

Mark Jamieson, Managing Partner, WSI eStrategies

It’s not just hypothetical–over 6,500 marketing agencies using AgencyAnalytics already see the results. Our customers generate over 250,000 reports each month, collectively saving over 500,000 hours in the process. That’s real time being handed back to their teams, who would otherwise be drowning in data wrangling and formatting.

Imagine the difference this makes. Agencies that once spent hours pulling together reports now get that time back for higher-value tasks–like strategizing campaigns, winning new clients, or even just grabbing a fresh cup of coffee. And who doesn’t love coffee??? 

It’s like having 250 extra full-time employees focused solely on reporting without the added cost or stress of managing more staff. 

What would you prioritize with all that extra time saved? Campaign strategy, new clients, or maybe even a tropical vacation–nobody will judge! 

Saving Time for Your Clients, Too

It’s not just you and your team that benefit from automated client reporting–your clients feel the love, too. Faster reports mean quicker insights in their inboxes, leading to faster decisions and more responsive campaigns. Instead of waiting days for updates, clients get the data they need when they need it, allowing them to pivot or double down on strategies with confidence.

Reporting only exists to provide insight into what should happen next. If you spend all your time on report synthesis, you don't have much time to spend on analysis. This synthesis vs. analysis equation makes the difference between great agencies and ones that just report on outcomes. 

If the reporting is built correctly, our focus can be on analysis, next steps, and strategy. We'd rather spend our time there than on building the reports.

Ryan Burch, Owner, Tobie Group

Automated reporting also increases transparency. Clients easily access clear, consistent reports without the usual back-and-forth. They won't have to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes–it’s all laid out in a professional report or live analytics dashboard, giving them more control and peace of mind. When clients feel informed and in the loop, you’re building trust and stronger relationships.

Stress Relief for Your Team

Let’s face it–when asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” not a single person enthusiastically replied, “Manually create client reports all day, please!” 

Grinding through data and formatting reports isn’t anyone’s idea of a productive day. Yet somehow, that’s where a lot of time goes at a growing marketing agency. 

Being an agency, we have a lot of accounts under ours, and we would have to have 40 tabs open with the different accounts and attempt to explain the information in simple terms so as not to lose them. Clients felt like we were under-communicating and the team felt like it was too much effort to do so.

Gabriela Paiva, Marketing Manager, Digilatics

However, with automated marketing reports, those repetitive tasks are eliminated. Instead of spending hours pulling numbers and trying to make things look presentable, your team just hits a button, and boom–done.

The best part? Less stress. No more frantic scrambling to fix last-minute formatting disasters, no more double-checking every data point. Automation consistently takes care of it all without human error creeping in. And with that extra time, your team might actually have a shot at clearing their inbox.  It probably won’t happen, but it’s worth a shot! 

How AgencyAnalytics Helps You Buy Time

So, where does AgencyAnalytics come into play? It lands right at the sweet spot between automation and quality. This is the go-to solution for agencies looking to streamline reporting without sacrificing precision. 

Whether pulling in data from multiple platforms or creating fully branded report templates, AgencyAnalytics makes it easy to deliver polished, detailed reports every time—minimal manual effort is required. Plus, with real-time data tracking, built-in AI reporting tools, and integration across 80 marketing platforms, your reports stay current, keeping you and your clients ahead of the curve.

The best part? You’re not just saving time–you’re elevating your agency’s performance. Automated reports let you focus on high-impact tasks, leaving behind the days of scrambling over spreadsheets and late-night formatting fixes.

Our agency only grows when we focus on the things that matter, and AgencyAnalytics helps us achieve this twofold. Firstly, we're not wasting time collating data, which gives us more time to action the insights we gain from our agency analytics data.

Next, actioning those insights helps to improve client performance or even manage additional clients.

Andrew Logan, Managing Director, Floww Digital

Plus, there’s something undeniably satisfying about sending off a detailed, polished report that took minutes instead of hours to create. 

What Would You Do With 500,000 Extra Hours?

Let’s put this in perspective–500,000 hours saved every single month. That’s what AgencyAnalytics customers are collectively banking with automated reporting. If you’re wondering, that’s roughly 57 years, or enough to binge-watch every episode of every TV show ever made... some of them twice. 

Or you could, you know, use that time for something a bit more productive. If you’re not too busy watching old episodes of Friends or checking out funny marketing memes, you could streamline your client onboarding process, revamp your client retention strategy, optimize 100 campaigns, or finally fix that process bottleneck everyone’s been talking about.

And let's not forget business growth. With all that extra time, you could focus on new strategies, take on more clients, or have space to think beyond the day-to-day. 

We are able to have more clients with the same amount of team members. That is huge. More revenue, more profits, and more happy employees doing what they are here to do, and not just focusing on reporting all the time.

Gabriela Paiva, Marketing Manager, Digilatics

So, whether you’re building stronger client relationships or just getting around to reorganizing the junk drawer that everyone’s been avoiding, those saved hours add up in ways you’ve probably only dreamed of.

Time Is Money… And  Now, You Can Have Both

The equation is simple: time saved equals money earned. Automated reporting doesn’t just free up a few hours here and there–it transforms how your team works. With less time spent on manual data pulling, formatting, and data visualization, your agency has more space to focus on strategies that move the needle for your clients and your agency.

Report automation is the not-so-secret weapon for agencies ready to scale efficiently while reducing stress. It removes the tedious work, ensures consistent, accurate reports every time, and gives you the freedom to focus on what matters most–growing your agency and strengthening client relationships.

We used to create a fully custom report for clients, but even still, our clients prefer AgencyAnalytics. It has a much better UI, turnkey reports, and setting up new integrations is a breeze.

We have much more free time to focus on our business and client communication now that reporting is clean & automated.

Matthew Regenie, CEO, Prospect Future

Ready to see how much time you’ll reclaim for growth? Start automating your reports today and discover how much time you can “buy” back for your team.