How to read an agency report without being managed by it

A monthly marketing report is a genre with conventions. Green arrows. Impressions. A chart that goes up. A section called "wins". None of it is dishonest, and almost none of it helps you decide anything.

These six questions change that. They work on any vendor, and they work on us.

1. What decision does this report help me make?

If the honest answer is "none", the report is a status update wearing a suit. A report should end with a recommendation that has a cost and a consequence.

2. Which of these numbers ends at revenue?

Impressions, clicks, sessions, rankings and engagement are all inputs. They can all improve while revenue falls. Ask which line on the page is money, and how it was derived.

3. What is the denominator?

A 40% improvement in conversion rate means one thing on 1,000 visits and nothing at all on 12. Any percentage without a denominator should be treated as decoration.

4. What did you stop doing?

A team that never stops anything is not optimising; it is accumulating. The list of things stopped is a better signal of judgement than the list of things launched.

5. What went badly, and what did it cost?

Every month contains something that did not work. A report with no failures in it is either very young or not telling you everything. You want the failure, the cost, and what changed as a result.

6. If I gave you 20% more budget, where would it go, and what would you expect?

This is the question that separates a partner from a supplier. A supplier says "more of the same". A partner names the stage, explains why it is the constraint now, and tells you what they expect — including how confident they are and how you would know if they were wrong.

The meta-point

Reports are built for the audience that reads them. If you accept reassurance, you will be sent reassurance. Ask these six questions twice and the shape of the report will change permanently, because the people writing it will start preparing for them.