A lot of marketing reports look impressive and say very little. Twenty pages of charts, keyword positions going up and down, impressions in the tens of thousands, and no clear answer to the only question you care about: did the marketing bring in business?
This guide explains what a good monthly report should show, in what order, and the warning signs that a report is hiding more than it reveals.
Start with what pays
The first page of any report should answer four questions:
- How many calls came in, and from where? Google Business Profile, website, ads and other sources, counted separately.
- How many forms were sent? Contact and quote requests from your website, with the page they came from.
- How many became booked jobs? This needs your input or a link to your booking or job system, but it’s the number that matters most.
- What did each lead cost? Spend divided by leads, by channel.
If a report can’t answer these, the tracking probably isn’t set up. Fixing that comes before anything else. Our guide to call tracking explains how it works.
Then show the supporting detail
Rankings, traffic and AI mentions are useful, but as explanation, not as the headline. They help answer why calls went up or down.
- Rankings for the searches that bring buyers, like “water heater replacement Oceanside”, not vanity terms nobody buys from.
- Website traffic by source, and which pages turn visitors into calls.
- Google Maps visibility for your main services in the areas you serve.
- AI mentions: whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name you for a fixed set of customer questions.
What was done and what’s next
A good report says in plain English what work happened this month and what’s planned next month. Not a list of tasks with codes, but a few lines like “rebuilt the Carlsbad service page, added 12 new photos to your Google Business Profile, paused two ad keywords that were bringing in job seekers”.
Can you measure your leads today?
The free lead audit checks what your current tracking can and can’t measure, and what it would take to report calls, forms and cost per lead.
Honest about bad months
Leads go down sometimes, because of seasons, competitors, Google changes or things on your side like a missed call. A trustworthy report says so, explains what likely happened and says what’s changing. If every report is good news, be suspicious.
Warning signs in a marketing report
- Impressions as the headline number. Being seen isn’t the same as being called.
- Rankings for long lists of keywords with no connection to leads.
- No call or form numbers at all.
- Leads counted twice across channels so totals look bigger.
- Charts with no explanation of what they mean for your business.
- No mention of cost per lead.
How long should a report be?
Usually a page or two, plus the data behind it if you want to dig in. If you need a meeting to understand your own report, it’s too complicated. Our how we report page shows the format we use.
What to ask your current agency
If your current report doesn’t show calls, forms and cost per lead, ask for them. A reasonable agency can set up tracking and add those numbers within a month or two. If they can’t or won’t, that tells you something. If you decide to move on, here’s how to switch agencies without losing your accounts.
A one-page report template you can ask for
If you want a simple standard to hold any agency to, ask for this layout:
- Leads this month: calls, forms and bookings, by source, with last month for comparison.
- Booked jobs and cost per lead by channel.
- Three lines on what changed and why.
- Work completed this month, in plain English.
- Plan for next month.
- Supporting detail: rankings, traffic, Google Maps visibility and AI mentions.
That’s it. Anything else can live in an appendix for anyone who wants to dig in.
Ask for the numbers in the same order every month, so you can compare one report with the last without hunting. Over a year, that simple consistency tells you more about whether the marketing works than any single chart. It also makes it obvious when something changes, good or bad, because the same line on the same page moves.
If you run more than one channel, ask for cost per lead side by side. Seeing that Google Business Profile calls cost far less per lead than a particular ad campaign, or the other way round, is exactly the kind of insight that should shape next month’s plan.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I get a marketing report?
Monthly is right for most local businesses. Weekly is usually too noisy to be useful, and quarterly is too slow to catch problems.
Why is booked jobs harder to track than calls?
Calls and forms can be counted automatically. Whether they turned into paid work happens in your business, so it needs your input or a connection to your booking or job software.
Are rankings useless?
No. They help explain changes in calls and traffic. They just shouldn’t be the main measure of success, because a ranking that brings no calls isn’t worth much.
What is cost per lead?
It’s what you spent on a channel divided by the number of leads it produced. It lets you compare Google Ads, SEO and other channels on the same terms.
Should my report include AI search?
If your customers use ChatGPT or similar tools to find businesses, yes. Tracking whether you’re named for a fixed set of questions each month is part of AEO.