What should a monthly marketing report actually show?

Why not reach and impressions?

Reach and impressions describe activity, not results. They tell you the marketing happened, the way a courier receipt tells you a parcel was sent. They do not tell you whether anyone bought anything, and — more to the point — they cannot be checked against anything you already hold. A report built on them asks you to take the agency's word for it.

A useful report is one you can audit yourself. Every line on it should correspond to something in your own systems: your inbox, your call log, your order book, your bank statement. If the report says forty enquiries and your inbox says eleven, you have learned something important about your agency — and that is exactly why most reports are not built this way.

The six lines

This is the report Black Clover Media sends every client, every month, in this order:

• 1Enquiries receivedcheck your inbox
• 2Quotes sent after those enquiriescheck your CRM
• 3Calls that came from searchcheck your call log
• 4Orders placedcheck your order book
• 5Dormant accounts reactivatedcheck your ledger
• 6Revenue attributed to marketingcheck your books

Same order, good month or bad

The order never changes, because a report that reshuffles itself is a report hiding something. When a month is bad, the bad number sits in the same place it sat when it was good, and the commentary has to explain it rather than bury it. Consistency is what makes a report a measurement instead of a performance.

What to ask your current agency

Three questions, in writing: Which lines on this report can I verify from my own records? Why is this month's report structured differently from last month's? And if we removed every impression and reach figure, what would be left? The last one is the quickest tell there is. This report is built into how we work from day one — the sequence is on our about page, and how we charge for it is public too.