8 tips to craft clear and impactful client communication

Posted On 29 Nov 2024

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Enhance client engagement with these actionable tips for writing and designing effective agency reports and decks.

In agency life or consulting, writing is more than just words on a page. It’s about telling a story that helps people understand and take action.

Whether you’re creating a client presentation or a monthly update, clarity, precision and thoughtful design make all the difference.

Here’s how to create content that stands out and lets the quality of your work, insights, and recommendations shine through.

1. Build the story and structure

The foundation of any great deck or document is a solid outline.

Think of creating a pyramid, much like you would think of setting up a great website hierarchy.

Your main punchline is supported by a few themes, each of which are supported by a few additional themes or data points.

Draft in a Word document

Before building slides, map out your story in a Google or Word doc. Use bullets to outline your ideas and structure.

It’s faster to move items around when they are in bullet form. This helps ensure a good flow for your presentation before you start making slides.

Collaborate

Share your outline with a peer or manager for feedback. Even seasoned professionals, like CEOs, use this process when preparing high-stakes presentations.

You don’t want to waste time making slides that you will throw away, so now is a good time to get feedback. This will help you find what is missing or not needed.

Refine your narrative

Once the storyline feels strong, move to slides to visualize your points.

Group information for clarity

Priority order: Lead with the most critical or substantial points.
Time order: Chronological sequencing.
Class order: Similar types (for example, in SEO – grouping by on-page, off-page, technical).

Dig deeper: How to keep your SEO clients engaged: 8 communication touchpoints

2. Choose the right template

The design and layout of your slides can matter as much as the content.

Many marketers are visual. So, presenting information clearly is key to ensuring your information and ideas are understood.

Template choices

Use a template that aligns with your message. Minimalistic, clean designs often work best for agencies.

Your agency may already have a PowerPoint template or theme, but you may be able to choose which layout you get to use. Consider where you want the reader’s eyes to go when they look at your content.

Visual clarity

Choose layouts that best illustrate your points, such as charts, timelines or side-by-side comparisons.

3. Focus each slide on one core idea

Don’t overwhelm your audience by trying to communicate too much on one slide. Simplicity leads to understanding.

One idea per slide

Each slide should convey a single core concept. Things get confusing when you try to cover too much on one slide.

If your slide has too much on it, people won’t know where to focus their attention, and they may tune out when you are speaking.

Balance things appropriately when slides will only be emailed over vs. presented live.

Titles should include a punchline

Titles should reflect the key takeaway, not just the topic. For example, instead of “SEO Findings,” use “Technical Fixes to Drive SEO Performance.”

In addition to setting the stage for the slide, this also makes it much easier to present the information – especially when there is a big time gap between creating the deck and presenting it.

Use full sentences

Write complete thoughts rather than fragments. Ensure your readers aren’t left guessing what you mean to say.

4. Use a strong sequence to tell a story

A well-built deck or report has a story that engages readers and ensures the quality of your work and ideas shine.

Priority order applies not only to information on a slide but also to the deck or report itself.

Lead with impact

Put the most important insights first. This ensures even if someone stops reading early, they have reviewed the critical points.

This is most important for presentations that will be seen by busy executives or CMOs – they may just read the executive summary or a few pages and leave the details to their team.

Logical flow

Organize slides and bullets in a clear, intuitive sequence. For example:

Start with actionable findings or recommendations.
Place technical details later unless speaking to a specialized audience.
- For example, if you’re presenting an SEO strategy to a broad group, you may want to lead with content related information since it’s easier to grasp than weedy technical details. If you’re presenting to developers, it’s fine to lead with technical SEO information.

Visual storytelling

Use graphics and annotations (like highlights, circles, bold or shading) to emphasize key points and draw the reader’s attention to a specific spot on a slide.

5. Be concise and precise

Respect your audience’s time by keeping your content tight and impactful. Fewer words can let your ideas shine through.

Readers don’t know what you know

Use storytelling to explain both data and its implications. For example:

Instead of writing, “40% of your spend has a quality score of 7 or below.”
Add the reason that they should care: “Improving quality score can lower CPCs and boost CTRs.”

Cut the fluff and jargon

You can lose people because they are focused on understanding terminology or trying to understand what you really mean. For example:

Instead of: “The core theme is one from the Shopify theme store and we’ve made some light customizations to it to reflect a similar look and feel to your website’s existing theme.”
Use: “We’ve made some light edits to provide a look and feel similar to your existing site.”

Edit ruthlessly

Tools like Hemingway and Grammarly can help simplify and refine your writing.

Whenever an important deck is ready to go out, we do peer reviews. This helps us remove filler words and make the content clear.

Avoid redundancy

Say things once and say them well. This excludes references to things on summary slides like executive summaries or scorecards.

Dig deeper: How to build lasting relationships with SEO clients

6. Build confidence with clear recommendations

Your clients depend on your knowledge. Most of the time, you give them advice they can choose to follow or ignore

State it directly

Avoid hedging with phrases like “we recommend.”

Say, “Implement X to achieve Y.” Unless it has already been completed, the client sees it as a recommendation.

Propose tests if needed

If you’re unsure, suggest testing or phased implementation.

This will come across better than using “we recommend” everywhere and shows that you are trying to improve their programs and results!

7. Keep language simple to allow your ideas and results to shine through

When you use larger or more complex words, it’s easy for the quality of your work to be lost.

Consultants from top companies are often taught to write at a 6th to 8th-grade reading level. This is true even when they create content for executives. Make your work accessible to everyone.

Simplify language

Avoid “big words” unless it’s how you typically speak or write. My team knows that I’m not a fan of the word “utilize.”

Use active voice

Keep sentences engaging and direct (e.g., “We identified opportunities” instead of “Opportunities were identified by us”).

8. Executive summaries should tell a story

Your summary sets the tone for the rest of your document.

However, creating the executive summary after everything else is done is usually easy.

My trick: Go back through the deck or report and tag anything that seems really important. I then use that to create the executive summary.

There may be too many great things to highlight, but you’ll quickly realize which of the things you’ve tagged are less exciting or important.

If you’ve done a good job writing slide titles, those can also help you create an executive summary.

Meaningful insights

An executive summary should not be a table of contents. Instead, use it to summarize key findings, recommendations and impact.

Hard-hitting statements

Use data or compelling facts to grab attention.

Keep them reading

A great executive summary is like a catalog cover. Its goal is to keep the reader interested and looking through your materials.

Ideally, you want them to feel that they’ve got a great agency partner and are being well taken care of.

Dig deeper: 12 tips for better SEO client meetings

Creating client presentations that engage

From outlining your thoughts to building hard-hitting slides, effective client communication balances structure, clarity, and design.

Start with a strong foundation, refine your story, and let your visuals and language work together to engage and inform.

Whether you’re building a weekly report or a quarterly business review (QBR), these principles will help you deliver impactful and memorable content.

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