What should a monthly marketing report actually tell me?
Five things: how many enquiries you got, where they came from, what was done, what it produced, and what changes next month because of it. If your report cannot answer those in plain English on one page, ask for one that can – clarity is a reasonable thing to expect.
Many owners arrive at this question with a year’s worth of reports – graphs, impressions, click-through rates – and cannot say whether their marketing is working. Here is what a report should give you instead.
The five questions a good report answers
1. How many enquiries did we get? Genuine phone calls, form fills, emails, bookings – counted, not estimated, and not padded with spam and wrong numbers. This is the only number that pays wages, so it goes first, not on page nine.
2. Where did they come from? Split by channel: Google search, Google Ads, social, email, referrals. Without this you cannot tell which part of the spend earns its keep and which part is dead money.
3. What was actually done? A list of real work: pages written, ads changed, posts published. “Ongoing optimisation” is not work, it is a label. You should be able to look at the list and see what your money bought this month.
4. What did it produce? The honest connection between the work and the enquiries. Some months the link is direct – a new page brings its first enquiries. Some months it is groundwork. Both are fine, as long as the report says which is which.
5. What changes next month? A report that ends with data is a history lesson. A useful one ends with a decision: more of what worked, less of what did not, and one thing being tested next.
The numbers that matter – and the ones that do not
| Number | What it tells you | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries by channel | Which spend is earning | Report leads with impressions or reach |
| Cost per enquiry | Whether each channel is affordable | Cost hidden behind clicks and CPCs |
| Work completed | What you paid for | “Ongoing optimisation” with no list |
| Trend over 3-6 months | Whether things are improving | Every month presented in isolation |
| Next month’s actions | Someone is steering | No actions, or the same actions every month |
Impressions, reach, followers and click-through rate are not useless – they are diagnostic numbers for the marketer. But they are inputs, not results. A report aimed at you should lead with results and keep the diagnostics in an appendix for anyone who wants them.
How to use the report properly
Give it fifteen minutes a month, ideally on a call with whoever does the work. Ask three questions: What worked? What did not? What are we doing differently? If the answers are clear, the marketing is being managed. If the answers are fog, that fog is your answer.
One more habit worth building: ask every new customer how they found you, and keep a tally. Your own count is a useful cross-check for any report. If the report says Google Ads brought forty leads and your tally says three people mentioned it, that gap is worth reconciling – attribution windows, customer recall and multi-touch journeys all differ, so ask how the report counts a lead and compare the two definitions before judging either.
The red flags worth acting on
- It arrives late or only when asked. Monthly means monthly.
- It leads with graphs, not answers. Design is not a substitute for “here is what happened”.
- Bad months are missing. A channel quietly dropped from the report is a question worth asking out loud.
- Nothing ever changes. If the actions section reads the same in March as in January, nobody is steering.
- You still cannot answer “is it working?” after reading it. That is the whole point of the exercise.
What Bamsh can do
If your report does not answer the five questions clearly, Bamsh can look at it with you. Bring it to a 15-minute call and we will explain what it is really saying, and give you a straight view on whether the spend behind it looks well used – whether or not you go any further with us.
Frequently asked questions
Should a marketing report be monthly?
Monthly is a sensible default for a small business. Weekly can invite knee-jerk changes on thin data; quarterly lets problems run too long. Monthly gives enough data to judge and a natural rhythm for deciding what happens next.
What is a good cost per enquiry?
It depends on what a customer is worth to you. Work backwards: say one in five enquiries becomes a customer, and each customer brings in £400 of contribution – the money left after the direct cost of the work, before marketing and overheads. Then £80 per enquiry is the break-even point, and the figure you can actually afford sits below that, leaving room for overheads and profit. Get the unit right too: a qualified enquiry – someone who could actually buy – is not the same as a sale, and a click is not an enquiry. Any channel consistently above your affordable figure needs fixing or stopping.
My agency sends a dashboard link instead of a report – is that enough?
A dashboard shows numbers; a report explains them and says what happens next. A live dashboard is a nice extra, but it is not a report unless someone is also telling you what it means and what they are doing about it.
How do I know if the enquiries in the report are real?
Match them against your own records: calls received, forms that arrived, bookings made. Ask how an “enquiry” is defined – a click is not an enquiry, and not every phone call is one either; what matters is the qualified enquiry from someone who could buy, so ask for clicks, calls and qualified enquiries to be shown separately. And keep your own “how did you find us?” tally as the cross-check.
What if the numbers are bad?
Bad numbers in a clear report are progress: they tell you where to stop spending. The problem is never the bad month, it is the report that disguises it. A marketer who shows you a bad month plainly, with the fix attached, is one to keep.
Sources and checks
- Bamsh Knowledge Centre: How do I know if my marketing is actually working? (bamsh.co.uk)
- Bamsh Knowledge Centre: What is a good cost per lead from Google Ads? (bamsh.co.uk)
Sources checked 27 October 2026. The five questions work for any channel; the maths only works with your own real numbers.
