Marketing reports: what to check

Marketing reports should answer one question for a business owner: did the money and effort spent last month bring customers, and at what cost? The lines worth looking at are spend, leads, cost per lead, customers won, revenue from those customers and what changed compared with the previous period. Impressions, reach, followers, clicks and "engagement" are supporting details at best. If a report leads with those and buries the leads and sales, it is describing activity, not results.

This guide is for owners who receive a report from an agency, a freelancer or their own staff and are not sure what to make of it. It complements my guide to the 7 marketing numbers to check every month, which is about choosing your own metrics; here the focus is reading someone else's report critically.

The six lines that matter

A useful report for a small business fits on one page and covers:

1. Spend: total ad spend plus fees, by channel.
2. Leads: enquiries by type (forms, calls, messages, bookings) and by channel.
3. Cost per lead: spend divided by leads, by channel.
4. Customers: how many leads became paying customers, ideally from your CRM.
5. Revenue or value: what those customers paid or are expected to pay.
6. Change and next steps: what moved compared with last month and the same month last year, why, and what will be done next.

If lines 4 and 5 are missing, it is often because nobody connected your sales data to the marketing. That is fixable, and worth fixing: without it, every report stops at the enquiry and never reaches the money. See UTM tracking and call tracking for how sources reach your CRM.

Numbers that look good but rarely matter

These metrics have their place. Click-through rate helps judge an ad's message; sessions help spot technical issues. They become a problem when they replace leads and customers as the headline.

Seven red flags in a marketing report

1. Conversions that are not defined. Ask exactly which actions are counted. A "conversion" that includes visiting the contact page is not an enquiry.

2. Leads in the report that do not match your inbox. If the report says 60 and you remember 25, check for duplicates, spam or micro-actions being counted.

3. Only good news. Every month has something that did not work. A report with no problems is a report written to reassure, not inform.

4. No comparison period. Numbers on their own mean little. Compare with last month and the same month last year, especially in seasonal businesses.

5. Different metrics every month. If last month the headline was clicks and this month it is impressions, someone may be choosing whatever looks best.

6. No next steps. A report should end with what changes next month. Otherwise it is a history lesson.

7. No access to the accounts. If you cannot log in to your own ad accounts and analytics, you cannot verify anything.

Questions to ask your marketer every month

• How many real enquiries did we get, and how do you know?
• Which channel brought the cheapest customers, not just the cheapest leads?
• What did you test this month, and what did you learn?
• What are you stopping, and why?
• What do you need from me (photos, answers, faster replies to leads)?

A good marketer welcomes these questions. Many problems in reports are not dishonesty but a lack of connection between marketing data and sales data, and the questions expose exactly where.

Reading trends without overreacting

One month is noise; three months is a pattern. A drop in leads in December may be the holidays, not a broken campaign. A jump in March may be spring demand, not a brilliant new ad. That is why the same month last year is the most useful comparison for seasonal Canadian businesses: snow removal, landscaping, HVAC, tax services and tourism all swing strongly through the year.

Small numbers also need care. If you went from 8 leads to 5, that is a change worth watching, not a crisis. If you went from 80 to 50, look closer right away. When in doubt, ask whether the change shows up in your CRM and your bank account too, not only in the report.

Your side of the report

Reports often stall on information only the business has. Help them by:

• Recording the source of every customer in your CRM, even roughly.
• Marking leads as won or lost, with a short reason.
• Sharing seasonal changes, price changes or staff shortages that affect results.
• Telling your marketer when leads are poor quality, with examples.

With that feedback, the next month's report becomes more accurate and the campaigns better targeted.

What my reports look like

I send a monthly report, and for ads I review performance every two weeks. Each report starts with spend, leads, cost per lead and, where your CRM allows, customers and revenue by channel, followed by what I changed, what I am testing and what I need from you. The numbers come from your own accounts, which are registered in your name. If you prefer a live dashboard instead of a PDF, I build simple ones; see a simple Looker Studio dashboard for your business and my Looker Studio reporting service.

If your current reports leave you unsure whether marketing is paying off, a one-off review helps. An audit with a walkthrough call is a good format for that.