What a monthly marketing report should include

A lot of marketing reports are built to look thorough. Twenty pages of charts, impressions, click-through rates and platform screenshots. The business owner skims it, and still cannot answer the only question that matters: is this working, and what should we do next?

A useful monthly report is short, and it answers that question first.

Start with the outcome

The first thing on the page should be what the marketing produced for the business:

• Enquiries, by channel
• Sales or booked jobs from those enquiries, by channel, as far as they can be tracked
• Spend, by channel
• Cost per enquiry and cost per sale, by channel

Compared with last month and, once there is enough history, the same month last year.

Then explain the movement

If something moved, say why in plain English. “Enquiries fell because we paused the residential campaign to focus budget on commercial work” is useful. A chart showing a dip, with no explanation, is not.

Then what is next

Every report should end with what will change next month, and why. That turns the report from a record of the past into a plan, and it makes the next report easy to judge: did the change work?

What to leave out

• Vanity metrics on their own, such as impressions or reach, unless they explain a change in results.
• Platform jargon without translation. If the owner has to ask what a metric means, it should either be explained or removed.
• Screenshots in place of numbers. Show the figure and what it means.

How long it should be

If the essentials fit on one page, the report is doing its job. Detail can sit in an appendix for anyone who wants it.

If the reports you receive leave you with more questions than answers, we can help you set up reporting that tells you what you need to know.