What Should a Marketing Agency Report Show?
A marketing agency report should show how many leads came in, where each one came from, and what each one cost. Everything else is decoration. If your report is mostly impressions, clicks and rankings, it’s telling you what the agency did, not what your customers did.
I hear the same story from Metro Detroit owners: they read the report twice, looking for the part about customers, and it isn’t there.
The five numbers a real report has
- Calls, tracked. How many came in, from which campaign or page, and how long they lasted.
- Form leads. How many, and from where.
- Cost per lead, by channel. What you spent divided by the leads it produced. This is the number the job runs on.
- Booked jobs or sales, from your side. The agency can’t know this alone. You tell them which leads turned into customers, and they match it back.
- What changed this month. One short list: what got built, what got paused, what moves next.
If your agency can’t say what changed this month, you’re paying for a PDF.
What gets in the way
Impressions are easy to grow. They go up when you spend more, and they go up when you add keywords nobody buys from. Clicks are close behind. Neither one tells you whether a single person picked up the phone. Reports that lead with reach, engagement and a rising line are the ones I trust the least, because those are the numbers an agency can always make look good.
Here’s the month most owners know. The report lands and says reach is up. The invoice shows up on time at the same number as last month. The phone is just as quiet. Then someone says “it takes time,” and they said that in March.
A note on rankings
Rankings aren’t useless. They’re an early signal. But an “average position” across hundreds of keywords nobody buys from tells you nothing. A ranking number only counts when it names the exact search, the city and the device, and when you can run the search yourself. That’s why I publish screenshots, like Rêve Medical Spa in the Troy map pack for “med spa troy,” 5.0 stars from 111 reviews. If your agency reports rank, ask for the search and the screenshot.
The one-question test
Email your agency this, word for word: “Can you show me which campaigns produced which leads last month, and what each lead cost?” Then watch what comes back. You’ll get one of four things:
- The answer. A screen-share of cost per lead by campaign, from call and form tracking, with the leads on screen.
- The deck. Slides about brand awareness and reach, and nothing about who called.
- The chart. Impressions up, engagement up, a line heading the right way, and no leads on it anywhere.
- The dodge. “Attribution is complicated.” If nobody wired tracking into the account, it isn’t complicated. It’s missing.
Only the first one is an agency doing the job. The full test, with a 30-day evidence window, is on marketing agency not delivering, and the warning signs are on marketing agency red flags.
Check it yourself in five minutes
Call the phone number on your own website and see whether that call shows up anywhere in your reporting. Then submit your own form and see whether anyone follows up. If neither one appears, every report you’ve received was missing the part that matters, and it isn’t your fault. The foundation was never built.
While you’re checking, ask one more thing: whose name is on the ad account, the analytics and the Google Business Profile? If it’s the agency’s, the history walks out the door with them when you leave. Everything should stay in your name, from day one.
What this looks like by county
The pattern doesn’t change with the zip code, but the markets do. In Oakland County you’re up against Troy, Royal Oak and Birmingham competitors on the same searches. Wayne County and Macomb County are different markets again, and each has its own page. In every one of them, the right report is the same five numbers.
If you’re deciding whether to stay or leave, how to choose a marketing agency in Michigan covers what to ask the next one.
Want a second set of eyes on your report?
Bring your last report to the free 30-minute audit. I’ll mark which numbers are real, which are decoration, and what the tracking should look like. If the answer is to keep your current team, that’s what you’ll hear.
I’ve built websites since 2006 and started AlbaTech in 2016. I’m the person owners call after an agency couldn’t say what changed. You work directly with me, no account manager, nothing outsourced, no closer.