Leah Daly

Digital PR Manager · fatjoe

4 years in PR · 1.5 years as Digital PR Manager

“Most clients do not disengage because the results were bad. They disengage because they never fully understood what they were looking at.”

Leah on LinkedIn fatjoe.com

Key takeaways

The real churn driver

Confusion, not bad results, loses clients

The headline stat

Lead with ROI, not link counts

The translation

Show paid media equivalent value

Reporting = retention

Context is part of the service

Introduction

With four years in digital PR and a year and a half as Digital PR Manager at fatjoe — one of the leading white-label SEO and PR platforms — Leah Daly has seen what actually determines whether a client stays or goes.

Her answer might surprise you: it's rarely the results. It's the reporting. Here, she shares the framework she uses to make the value of digital PR impossible for clients to miss — and why great reporting is not an admin task, but the service itself.

Clients Leave Because of Confusion, Not Bad Results

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“Most clients do not disengage because the results were bad. They disengage because they never fully understood what they were looking at.”
— Leah Daly

After four years in digital PR, the pattern is clear: client churn is rarely a results problem. It is a communication problem. A list of links and DR scores means very little to a founder or marketing manager who has never worked in PR before.

Your job is not just to deliver results. It is to make the value of those results impossible to miss. The gap between what a PR team achieves and what a client perceives is almost always a reporting gap — and closing it is one of the highest-leverage things you can do.

The clients who renew, who increase budgets, and who become advocates are almost always the ones who genuinely understand what they have earned. That understanding does not happen by accident. It has to be built into how you report.

Lead With the Number That Actually Lands

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“A 4.3x return is compelling. "We secured 12 links" is not.”
— Leah Daly

Before you build any report, ask yourself one question: what is the single most impressive figure, and have I put it front and centre? Raw link counts and domain metrics are internal benchmarks. They are not the language of a client who answers to a board or a budget holder.

Translate your outputs into the metric that cuts through. A return on investment figure — even an estimated one — lands in a way that a backlink tally never will. A 4.3x return is a number a client will repeat to their boss, their board, or the person who controls next quarter's budget.

Start there. Everything else in the report supports that headline. If your most impressive number is buried on page three, most clients will never find it.

Translate Into Terms They Already Understand

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“When clients see that a single editorial feature in Better Homes and Gardens would cost more than £4,000 to buy, the value of earned coverage clicks in a way that DR scores never will.”
— Leah Daly

Every placement you earn has an equivalent sponsored content rate. Introducing estimated paid media value alongside your link metrics gives clients an immediate, intuitive sense of what they have actually received.

Most clients understand advertising spend. They have bought a display ad, a sponsored post, or a paid placement at some point. The moment you show them that the editorial coverage you secured would have cost thousands to replicate through paid channels, earned media stops feeling abstract.

This is not spin. It is context. And context is what turns a report from an admin task into a compelling business case for continued investment.

Context Is Part of the Service

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“Great reporting is not an admin task. It is part of the service.”
— Leah Daly

A DR score means nothing without context. Take the time to explain what it represents, why it matters, and what it tells the client about the audience their brand just reached. Not every client wants a deep dive — but every client deserves to understand what they have paid for.

Clients who understand the metrics are the ones who value them. And clients who value what they have earned are the ones who come back. The reporting conversation is not a formality you complete after the work is done. It is an active part of delivering the service.

Build that context in from the start — not as a footnote, but as a core part of how you present results. That shift alone changes the relationship.

About the contributor

Leah Daly

Digital PR Manager · fatjoe

Leah Daly is Digital PR Manager at fatjoe, a leading white-label SEO and digital PR platform used by thousands of agencies worldwide. With four years in the industry, she specialises in digital PR campaign delivery and client reporting — helping agencies communicate the commercial value of earned coverage in terms that resonate with founders, marketing managers, and budget holders.

Leah on LinkedIn fatjoe.com

Put these tips into practice

Find the journalists behind your next big placement

Leah's framework starts with earning coverage worth reporting on. PressReacher gives you a searchable database of 2M+ journalists, filterable by beat, publication, and more — so you can land the placements that make your reports impossible to ignore.