Be suspicious of a separate reporting fee
If an agency charges to tell you how their own work is going, ask why that is a separate product. Reporting is how the work is accountable; unbundling it puts the accountability behind a paywall.
There are legitimate exceptions — an independent audit of someone else's work, or a consolidated report across several vendors. But a monthly report on the retainer you are already paying should be part of the retainer.
What a monthly report should look like
One or two pages. Ideally a short conversation with a page attached.
Enquiries this month, by source. Calls and forms, separately, because they behave differently.
What closed. Supplied by you, and the reason the whole thing has meaning.
Cost per booked job by source. The number that decides where next month's money goes.
What was done. Plainly — the pages built, the changes made, the fixes.
What is next, and why. One or two things, with the reasoning.
If a report needs a legend to interpret, it was written to impress rather than inform.
The screenshot dump
A common format: eight pages of platform screenshots with no commentary. It looks thorough and is close to worthless, because the interpretation — which is the expensive part — has been left to you.
The honest version of that report is one page with the same numbers and three sentences saying what they mean.
Frequency
Monthly is right for most. Weekly is too frequent for channels that move over months — you end up reacting to noise, and reacting to noise is how good campaigns get killed.
Quarterly is right for strategy and wrong for spend, because a failing paid campaign left for three months is expensive.
The month-one problem
Early reports look bad. Rankings have not moved, campaigns are still learning, and the work that will matter is not visible yet.
An honest provider says so in advance rather than filling month one with impressions charts to make the page look busy. Agree up front what months one to three will realistically show.
What to ask for
If your current report does not tell you cost per booked job by source, ask for it. If the answer is that the data does not exist, that is the real finding — and it is fixable.
Reviewing yours
Bring your last report to a call and we will go through what it does and does not tell you.
Frequently asked questions
Should I pay extra for a monthly report?
Generally no. Reporting is how the work is held accountable, and unbundling it puts that behind a paywall. Independent audits of someone else's work are a fair exception.
How long should a marketing report be?
One or two pages, ideally with a short conversation attached. If it needs a legend to interpret, it was written to impress rather than inform.
How often should I get reports?
Monthly for most businesses. Weekly makes you react to noise on channels that move over months, and quarterly is too slow to catch a paid campaign that is failing.
Why do the first reports look bad?
Because rankings have not moved and campaigns are still learning. An honest provider agrees with you in advance what months one to three will realistically show.