Inside the department · Chapter six of six · Not sold on its own
Reporting on what matters

Marketing reporting on one page a month. Read it in two minutes.

Page one of our marketing reporting says: here is the outcome we agreed, here is what we did towards it, here is what worked, here is what did not, here is what happens next month. That is it. Fifteen more pages of analysis sit behind it, and they are mostly for us.

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Aziz MusaPage one, the fifteen pages behind it, and the test that happens at year end.

You should hold us to account. We hold ourselves to a higher standard than most clients would think to ask for, because we know where the real test happens: at year end, when you look at the budget, see the line that says Cush Digital, and decide whether it was worth it.

If it was not, you will have heard it from us long before then. A report that only carries good news is not a report.

How it works inside the department

The outcome on top. What we can see, reported. First five days.

Step one

The outcome on top

The single objective agreed at onboarding is the first line of every report. Everything beneath it is judged by whether it moved that line. Reach and impressions appear in the appendix, where they belong.

Step two

What we can see, reported honestly

Unless you sell online, we rarely see your sales ledger, and we will never pretend to. We report everything we can see and everything we agreed to measure, and we label each figure by who measured it.

Step three

First five days of the month

The report lands in the first five working days for the month before. It is being written all month, so nothing in it is a surprise to your account manager, and nothing bad waits for the report to be said.

Page one

The only page you have to read.

The outcome we agreedand where it stands this month, in one line What we did towards it What workedand stays What did notand goes What happens next month Pages two to sixteen: the analysis behind each block, for anyone who wants it.
The structure of page one on every account. The order is deliberate: the outcome first, activity second, so nobody can mistake being busy for making progress.
The year-end test

The line nobody cuts.

Every November and December, someone in your finance team will look at the operating costs and ask whether the agency line is value for money. They are right to. Our job through the other ten months is to make that question easy to answer, by solving the problem you actually hired us for. That is why the average client has stayed two and a half years, and why some leave because we built the team that replaced us.

What lands each month

Page one

The outcome, what we did, what worked, what did not, what changes. Two minutes to read.

The fifteen pages

Channel by channel, with sources and dates under every figure. Written for our own team first, open to yours.

The conversation

One call to walk through it, and one decision: what the department does differently next month.

Part of the department

Reporting comes with the department. It is not sold without it.

If your current agency's report takes longer to read than the work took to do, that is the first thing we will change.