Monthly reporting is the most time-consuming and least valued work in an agency. It is also the easiest to automate: the structure does not change from one month to the next, only the data moves. Here is how to bring it down to a conversation.
What the client really wants to know
Most reports answer the question “what happened”. Clients, for their part, ask three other questions, and those are the ones they judge your work on.
| The question asked | The real question |
|---|---|
| How many visitors? | Is it growing, and thanks to what? |
| How much did it cost? | Is it worth continuing? |
| What are the results? | What do we do next month? |
A report that answers the three questions in the right-hand column fits in two pages. A report that answers the ones on the left runs to fifteen, and nobody reads it.
The five-block outline
- The essentials, three figures, and how they moved. Nothing else.
- What worked, two or three facts, with numbers, with the cause.
- What did not work, same standard: facts with numbers, no euphemism.
- What we fixed, the actions carried out during the month. This is what justifies your fees.
- Next month, three priorities, in order, with the expected effect.
The sequence of questions
Ask them in this order, in a single conversation: each answer feeds the next.
For the [CLIENT] account, compare the past month to the previous month AND to the same month last year: sessions, conversions, ad spend, cost per conversion. Give me a short table and flag any gap above 15%.
Break down the traffic change by channel. For the two channels that moved the most, in either direction, give me your explanatory hypothesis based on the available data.
In Search Console over the same month: the 10 queries that gained the most and the 10 that lost the most clicks. Flag the pages losing positions on high-volume queries.
Per campaign: cost, conversions, cost per conversion and change versus the previous month. Identify the most and the least profitable campaign, and tell me what you would do with the second one.
From everything above, write the report for a non-technical executive. Five blocks: the essentials, what worked, what did not work, what we fixed, the three priorities for next month. No jargon, no tool names, short sentences. Every statement backed by a number.
Deliver something other than a wall of text
Once the report is written, it still needs to be made presentable. The simplest option: a shareable spreadsheet. Create the spreadsheet “[CLIENT], Report” once in your Drive and keep its ID handy (the long string in its address).
In my Google Sheet [spreadsheet ID], fill a summary tab with the report's key figures, and one tab per data source with the details.
The template to reuse
Once you have found the rhythm, everything fits in a single message. Replace the two placeholders in brackets and keep it for every account.
Prepare the monthly report for the [CLIENT] account for [MONTH]. Steps: 1) compare the month to the previous one and to the same month last year on sessions, conversions, cost and cost per conversion; 2) break down by acquisition channel and explain the two biggest gaps; 3) in Search Console, the 10 rising queries and the 10 falling ones; 4) per advertising campaign, cost, conversions and change; 5) write the summary for a non-technical executive in five blocks, the essentials, what worked, what did not work, what we fixed, the three priorities for next month. Short sentences, no jargon, every statement backed by a number.