How to build a marketing report someone will actually read

Aug 18
3 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Introduction

Most marketing reports are records rather than reports. They list what happened, at length, and produce no decision. They get filed and the next one is produced anyway.

A report that earns its production time answers three questions: what moved, why, and what we are doing about it.

1. How to build a marketing report: four sections, in this order

Headline. Two or three sentences. What changed and what it means. Written last, read first.

The numbers. The same small set every time, each with a comparison against the previous period.

Explanations. Beside each number that moved, the reason — what you changed, or what changed externally.

Actions. What is being done next, with a name against each.

Anything not in one of those four sections is probably not worth including.

2. Keep the number set fixed

Consistency is what makes a report useful. The same figures, in the same order, every period.

For most businesses: new customers, cost per customer, average order value, repeat purchase rate, and one number reflecting the current constraint.

Resist adding metrics because something interesting happened. Investigate that separately and mention it in the explanation. A changing metric set makes periods incomparable, which removes the report's only real advantage.

3. Always include a comparison

A number on its own supports no decision. Cost per customer of $48 is neither good nor bad.

Compare against the previous period and, where you have it, the same period last year. Also compare against your own target where one exists — for acquisition cost that means your ceiling, derived from customer lifetime value.

The comparison is the content. The number is just the input.

4. The explanation is the most valuable part

This is what separates a report from a spreadsheet, and it is the part most often omitted.

Recording that acquisition cost rose 15% is data. Recording that it rose because creative was refreshed mid-month, or a competitor entered, or the season turned, is knowledge you can use later.

Six months on, those written reasons are what let you interpret a pattern. Nobody keeps them, which is why most businesses cannot explain their own results.

5. Leave out the activity measures

Impressions, reach, followers, engagement rate and total traffic do not belong in a decision report. They can improve while the business does not.

They are useful for diagnosis, so keep them accessible in the platforms. But including them in the report crowds out what matters and creates a comforting impression of progress that survives a bad quarter.

6. Make it short enough to read

A one-page report gets read. A twelve-page report gets skimmed for the chart that looks best.

If producing it takes more than half an hour, it will be skipped in a busy period and then abandoned. Connect your data sources to something that refreshes automatically so the time goes on interpretation rather than assembly.

7. End with actions and check them next time

A report that finishes with observations achieves nothing. Every one should produce at least one specific action with a name attached.

Then open the following report by checking those actions. That single habit is what converts reporting from a ritual into management, and it is the difference between a report that is produced and one that is used.

8. Decide who it is for before writing it

A report for an owner deciding where to spend is a different document from one for a team tracking their own work, and trying to serve both produces something that serves neither.

If it is for a decision-maker, lead with the recommendation and keep the detail in an appendix nobody has to read. If it is for a team, the numbers can be more granular because the audience already has the context.

Write down who the reader is at the top of your template. It resolves most arguments about what to include, and it is the reason most inherited report formats do not fit the business using them.

Conclusion

Four sections: headline, a fixed set of numbers with comparisons, the reason beside each movement, and named actions — written for one identified reader.

Keep the metric set stable, always compare, write down why, leave activity measures out, keep it to one page produced in under half an hour, and start the next report by checking the last one's actions.