A marketing report has one job: show you what you spent, and what that spending produced in calls, quotes and booked work. Everything else is supporting detail. Many owners we meet have a year of colourful reports and no clear idea whether the money paid off. This guide gives you five checks that answer that question using your own records. They work on any report, including the ones we send.
Why reports can look good while the phone is quiet
Reports usually lead with what's easy to count: impressions, clicks, visits, rankings. Those numbers can rise steadily while booked work doesn't move.
There are innocent reasons for that. Traffic might come from people outside your service area, from searches for jobs or how-to tips, or from visitors who never needed a contractor. None of that shows up in a traffic chart. The fix isn't to distrust every report. It's to anchor the report to the one source you control: your job records.
Check 1: Does the report count calls and texts?
The first test is whether the report counts conversations at all. For most trades, calls and texts are the lead. A report without a call count is incomplete.
Ask:
- Are calls tracked from the website, the Google listing and the ads separately?
- Are short calls (under 30 seconds or so) separated from real conversations?
- Are texts and quote requests included?
Then do a spot check. Pick a week, pull your phone log, and see whether the call count roughly matches. It won't be exact, because some calls come from referrals and repeat customers, but it shouldn't be wildly different.
Check 2: Can calls be matched to booked jobs?
Calls are leads; jobs are revenue. The second check is whether anyone connects the two.
You can do this yourself with a simple habit. When a new customer books, ask "how did you find us?" and note the answer in your job software or a notebook. After 90 days, count the jobs by source. If paid search shows 60 calls but you can only find 8 booked jobs from it, you have a conversion problem worth investigating: phone handling, pricing, or the wrong kind of searches.
Check 3: What does each booked job cost?
This is the number that decides whether marketing pays. Divide your total monthly marketing cost (fees plus ad spend) by the booked jobs it produced.
A worked example:
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Monthly management fee | $1,500 |
| Monthly ad spend | $2,000 |
| Total monthly cost | $3,500 |
| Booked jobs traced to marketing | 7 |
| Cost per booked job | $500 |
Now compare that with your gross profit per job. If an average job leaves you $900 after materials and labour, a $500 acquisition cost works. If it leaves you $400, you're losing money on every marketing job, however busy the report looks. The same arithmetic is on our pricing page for judging any plan.
Check 4: What are people actually searching for?
For paid search, ask to see the search terms report: the exact words people typed before clicking your ad. It's the most revealing page in any ad account.
Look for:
- Job seekers: "plumber jobs", "apprentice electrician hiring".
- DIY searches: "how to fix a leaking tap", "replace breaker myself".
- Wrong places: towns you don't serve.
- Wrong services: jobs you don't do, or don't want.
Every irrelevant search you find is money that bought nothing. A well-run account excludes these with negative keywords. If you can't see the search terms because you don't have access to the account, that's an ownership problem; the who owns your marketing guide explains why it matters.
Check 5: Is there a fair baseline?
Growth only means something against a starting point. "Calls up 40%" from a month when your listing was suspended isn't the same as 40% from a normal month.
Ask what the baseline is and when it was measured. Compare like with like: this January against last January, not January against a busy July. Seasonal trades especially need year-on-year comparisons, because a furnace company's winter and a landscaper's spring would make any month-to-month chart misleading.
Questions to ask at your next report meeting
You don't need to be technical. These five questions cover most of what matters:
- How many calls and texts did each channel produce, and how many were longer than 30 seconds?
- What did each booked job cost us, all-in?
- Which search terms did we pay for that we shouldn't have?
- What changed this month, and why?
- If we stopped tomorrow, which accounts and data would we keep?
Good providers welcome these questions. If the answers are vague, or if the fifth question makes the room go quiet, take it seriously.
Google listing numbers worth watching
If your Google Business Profile drives much of your work, its own performance data is worth a look each month. It shows calls from the listing, requests for directions and website clicks. Those figures come straight from Google, so they're a useful cross-check on any report. If the report says listing calls doubled but the profile's own numbers are flat, ask why.
Keep your own one-page scorecard
You don't need software for this. A single sheet with four columns works: month, total marketing cost, booked jobs from marketing, and cost per booked job. Fill it in on the first of each month, from your own records. After two quarters, the trend tells you more than any report.
A fair word on what reports can't show
Some value is real but hard to measure: a customer who saw your listing, then called after a neighbour mentioned you; brand searches that grew because of reviews. Don't dismiss marketing just because a single report can't trace every job.
The goal isn't perfect attribution. It's being confident, over a quarter, that the money produces more profit than it costs.
How we report
Our monthly reports lead with cost per tracked call and booked jobs from your own records, and every figure links to an account you own. The clean restart explains how we set baselines. If you'd like us to apply these five checks to the reports you're getting now, a rescue audit does exactly that, or contact us to talk it through first.
Frequently asked questions
Are impressions and clicks useless?
No, they're useful context. They just aren't results. A report that leads with them, without connecting them to calls and booked work, is telling you about activity rather than outcomes.
What's a reasonable cost per lead for a trade?
It depends entirely on your job value and margins. The useful number is your break-even: what you can afford to pay per booked job and still profit. Work that out first, then judge the report against it.
How often should I check the report?
Read it monthly, and do the full five-check review every quarter. Marketing results are noisy week to week, so quarterly trends tell you more.