Somewhere in your inbox there is a forty-page marketing report. It arrived on the fifth of the month. It has charts for impressions, clicks, reach, sessions, engagement rate and followers, each with a green or red arrow. You opened it, scrolled to the end, and closed it.
You aren’t the lazy one in this picture. The report is.
A report that describes is not a report that explains
Most monthly reports answer one question, which is “what happened?” Impressions went up eight per cent. Click-through rate went down slightly. Here is a chart.
They don’t answer the three questions a business owner actually has: is this working, why, and what should we do about it? Answering those takes judgement, and judgement can be wrong, so it gets left out. What remains is a long, accurate, automated description of activity that commits nobody to anything.
I understand the appeal. A report that only describes can never be argued with.
Signs you are getting a receipt
- No targets. Numbers are compared with last month, never with what was supposed to happen.
- Everything is included. Thirty measures with equal weight, so the two that matter are on page nineteen.
- Activity stands in for results. Posts published, emails sent and ads launched, with nothing about sales or enquiries.
- Bad months have no explanation. Or the explanation is always seasonality.
- No recommendation. It ends when the charts run out.
- It looks the same every month. Because nobody has thought about it since the template was made.
What a good one looks like
It fits on a page or two, and it reads in this order.
- The headline. Are we on track against the target, yes or no, in one sentence.
- The few numbers the business runs on. Enquiries, sales, revenue, cost per customer. Against target and against the same period last year.
- Why. What moved those numbers, said plainly, including the parts that didn’t work.
- What we’re changing. Two or three specific actions for next month, with a reason for each.
- What I need from you. A decision, a budget, an approval or some information.
Everything else can live in a dashboard for anyone who wants to dig. The report is for deciding.
The uncomfortable bit
A report like this is harder to write and riskier to send. It says “this campaign didn’t work and I’d stop it.” It says “we missed the target, and here is why.” A supplier who sends that is trusting you not to shoot the messenger.
That works both ways. If the only reports that get a warm reception are the ones with green arrows, you will be sent green arrows, and the truth will turn up later and cost more.
What I’d do
Ask for the next report to open with one sentence: are we on track, and what should we change? If that sentence is hard to write, the problem is upstream of the report. There may be no agreed target, or no trustworthy measure of it. That is worth finding out.
Then delete two-thirds of the charts. Nobody will ask where they went.