Monthly Marketing Report
Monthly marketing report distributed first business day of new month. 30-minute leadership review held. Decisions captured and circulated.
Before you start
- Marketing dashboard with key metrics
- Goal targets per channel and per quarter
- Distribution list and review cadence
- Channel performance (organic, paid, email, content, partner)
- Lead and pipeline contribution
- Spend vs budget
The steps
- Pull standard metrics across channels — Compile: organic traffic, organic conversion, paid spend + leads + CPA, email open + click + conversion, content performance, partner-driven leads, pipeline contribution, MQL to SQL rate. Pull both this month and last for delta.
- Compute deltas and flag movements — Calculate month-over-month changes. Flag: any metric >20% off plan, any channel running over budget, any pipeline contribution under target. Distinguish trends from one-month noise.
- Identify the 3 stories worth telling — Pick: a positive (something worked), a problem (something missed), a pattern (something to watch). The report leads with stories, not data dumps.
- Tie metrics to revenue — Marketing reports without revenue attribution are vanity. Pull: pipeline created, opportunities, closed-won attributed to marketing. CFOs read this section first.
- Add experiments and learnings — Document: which experiments ran, which won, which lost, what we learned. Marketing without experimentation is execution; with experimentation, it's a learning function.
- Compile the report — Format: 1 page summary (3 stories + revenue), 1 page channel detail (table with deltas), 1 page experiments + learnings, 1 page next-month plan. Distribute to: CEO, CFO, head of marketing, key cross-functional partners.
- Run a 30-minute review meeting — Walk through with leadership. Focus on the 3 stories and the revenue contribution. Decisions live: do we double down, redirect, or kill any channel? Reports without decisions are theater.
If it goes wrong
Report becomes routine and reads the same every month
Vary the lead story format. Sometimes channel performance, sometimes a deeper experiment, sometimes a customer insight. Routine kills reading.
Revenue attribution is unclear or contested
Work with sales ops to align attribution methodology before the next report. Disputed attribution kills credibility.
Leadership skips the review meeting
If the meeting isn't valuable, change the format. Async report with 1 leadership response per channel may be better than a meeting nobody attends.
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