Earned Media Report Template

Why Your Agency Needs an Earned Media Report Template

Your marketing agency needs tools that streamline work and improve outcomes to stay ahead. An earned media report template makes it easier to turn complex data into clear, useful insights. 

With an earned media report template, quickly highlight your clients' media metrics, most important data, and notable trends. This means your team spends more time developing effective strategies and less time digging through data. Your clients will see the difference, too. They’ll get reports that are easy to understand and clearly demonstrate campaign value, making them more likely to stick with your agency.

This tool also helps elevate your team’s strategic appeal for clients, showing you’re committed to delivering and effectively explaining results.

Using an earned media report template equips your agency to serve clients better and establishes you as a trusted advisor they rely on. This isn’t just good for client relationships; it’s essential for growing your business.

10 Sections To Include in an Earned Media Report Template

1. Cover Page

A professional-looking and branded report cover page sets the tone. It’s your first impression, offering an immediate sense of credibility and attention to detail. 

By customizing your cover page, you align it visually with your brand, strengthening your identity and making every report instantly recognizable. This enhances the presentation and reinforces your professional image, making every report an ambassador of your brand’s quality and consistency.

Indicating the reporting period and specific date range (e.g., Monthly, Quarterly, or Campaign-Specific) on the cover helps set clear expectations and guides the reader's understanding from the outset. 

Finally, being able to save uniquely designed cover pages as custom templates is a game-changer. This means you maintain consistency across reports for all clients, which streamlines your process and ensures a high standard of presentation every time. 

2. Executive Summary 

An executive summary provides a concise overview of the main findings and recommendations. This section quickly informs busy stakeholders and decision-makers about the most critical aspects of the report, enabling them to grasp the essential points without delving into the full document.

An effective earned media report summary distills key information, making it immediately useful for decision-makers. Here are three best practices for crafting your summary:

• Highlight Key Metrics: Focus on the most impactful data like reach, engagement, and media value.

• Summarize Insights: Present insights on campaign performance and audience reactions.

• Recommend Actions: Suggest clear, actionable steps based on the report's findings to guide future strategies.

3. Audience Growth

The primary focus of an earned media report is audience growth, which reflects the increase in your client's following across various social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and indicates an expanding reach and influence.

By tracking audience growth, agencies highlight their ability to enhance brand visibility and engage with a broader target audience segment.  This data provides concrete evidence that the agency's work—whether through an influencer marketing strategy, consistent press coverage, or paid media efforts—generates tangible results. 

Here are other key audience growth metrics, their level of importance, and practical use cases for agencies:

4. Shares

Social media shares complement audience growth by acting as a pulse check on how resonant and engaging the content is. They reflect the extent to which users spread content through their own networks, amplifying reach beyond the initial posting.

When clients see their content being shared widely, it validates the agency’s efforts and highlights the success of a social media marketing campaign. This metric captures the breadth of campaign reach and enhances the understanding of how shared content drives engagement and builds community around a client’s brand.

5. Comments

Comments on social media posts are direct indicators of audience engagement and interaction. They offer insights into the public's perceptions and reactions to a client’s content, providing a deeper layer of engagement than shares alone.

Comments reveal the audience's feelings and discussions around the client’s brand, which are crucial for refining influencer marketing campaigns and tailoring content to meet the target audience's interests. Including comments in a report showcases the agency’s ability to generate dialogue and highlights its capacity to foster a community that actively participates in and supports the brand.

6. Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are a goldmine of credibility and engagement. They serve as firsthand testimonials of customer experiences and satisfaction. They bridge the gap between simple interactions and meaningful connections with the target audience.

Reviews (whether gathered via Facebook or Google Business Profile) reflect customer sentiment and amplify positive earned media. They provide concrete examples of how the public interacts with and perceives the brand’s reputation, offering invaluable insights for refining influencer marketing strategies and social media campaigns. 

Accurately presenting this information also helps clients understand the monetary value of positive interactions and the direct benefits of their investment in earned media campaigns.

7. Organic Search (SEO)

Organic search traffic is the number of people who find your client’s content through search engines without paid advertising. It clearly shows how well the content connects with what people are searching for.

Organic search traffic data pulled from Google Analytics 4 shows how well content aligns with the target audience. This directly impacts the visibility of a client’s owned media (e.g., press releases, blog posts, websites, or social media content). Reporting on SEO performance proves how the agency’s strategies enhance owned media discoverability. 

Other SEO data highlights how an agency’s work helps to increase web traffic, improve search engine rankings, and boost earned media value:

8. Social Traffic

Social traffic refers to users who visit your client’s content directly from social media platforms and measures the effectiveness of the social media campaign.

Social traffic, pulled using Google Analytics 4, allows agencies to demonstrate how well they convert social media interest into actual visits to the brand's online content. Seeing social traffic numbers helps clients understand how their social media marketing efforts attract viewers.

9. Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites that lead to your client’s content. They highlight content credibility and authority as perceived by search engines.

Backlinks reflect the trust other site owners have in your client’s content. They boost SEO performance, making content more visible in search results. Understanding the number and quality of backlinks with Semrush data helps clients see the tangible effects of their marketing campaigns: more backlinks mean more recognition and better search engine rankings. 

On a more granular level, backlinks are analyzed using the following key metrics.

10. Referring Domains

Referral data is another set of Semrush metrics that tracks visitors who arrive at a website from links placed on other sites, such as social media, blogs, or other web pages.

Analyzing referring domains provides valuable insights into how external collaborations and mentions impact clients' overall media strategy—i.e., top TLDs (top-level domains), the total number of referring domains, and top referring countries. This data helps pinpoint successful targeting tactics, areas for improvement, and future marketing campaign strategies.

How To Create a Custom Earned Media Report Template To Meet Client Needs

AgencyAnalytics’ new 11-Second Smart Reports allow agencies to automate the creation of comprehensive, visually engaging reports in a flash, dramatically reducing the time spent on manual data compilation. This means more time for strategic analysis, presentation preparation, and deepening client engagement, enhancing the overall service quality and client satisfaction.

To begin using Smart Reports, first connect the relevant integrations. Each integration, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or SEO tools, will automatically populate its own dedicated page within the report. All critical data points are captured and organized systematically to form the backbone of the report.

Next, add an overview page to your report. This page serves as the executive summary of your client’s data story. Drag and drop custom widgets to highlight key results and metrics specific to your agency’s impact.

For metrics not covered by the existing integrations, the Google Sheets integration comes in handy. This allows you to import additional data directly into your report, ensuring no key performance indicator is left behind.

Smart Reports eliminate tedious manual data entry and empower agencies to focus on what really matters: delivering insights and strategies that drive client success.

The platform is incredibly user-friendly and offers a wide range of reporting features that have helped us streamline our reporting process and provide more value to our clients. We highly recommend it to other marketing agencies looking to improve their reporting process and drive better results.

Daniel Dye