A field guide to honest performance reporting

A marketing report is honest when it would still make sense to the person paying for it if they read every line. Many reports are built to survive a skim. Here is how we try to write the other kind.

Start with the number the business cares about

Impressions, reach, and clicks describe activity. Revenue, qualified leads, and cost per customer describe results. Put the result at the top of the page and the activity underneath it as explanation. If a campaign got a lot of attention and no customers, the first line of the report should say so.

Show the comparison that hurts

Any number looks fine on its own. Always put it next to something:

• the same period last year, to account for seasons;
• the target you agreed on before the campaign started;
• what would probably have happened anyway.

The last one is the hardest and the most important. Brand searches, returning customers, and people who would have bought regardless are easy to count as wins for whatever channel touched them last.

Say how the number was measured

Attribution is a model, not a fact. Last-click, first-click, and platform-reported conversions can give three different answers for the same month. Pick one method, state it on the report, and do not switch methods in the month where switching makes the chart look better.

Report what did not work

Every month some tests fail. A report with no failures in it is leaving something out. We list what we tried, what we stopped, and what it cost, because that is where next month’s budget decisions come from.

A simple structure

1. The result, against the target.
2. What drove it, by channel, with cost.
3. What we tested and what we learned.
4. What we are changing next month, and why.

One page is usually enough. If it takes ten, the report is probably hiding the first line.