Digital advertising
Five things a local advertising report should explain
Clicks and impressions are useful context, but a business owner needs to understand spend, customer actions, lead quality, response, and the next decision.
A long advertising report can still avoid the question that matters: did the campaign help the business reach useful customers at a reasonable cost?
1. What was spent?
Separate platform advertising spend from management, creative, landing-page, and tracking costs. The business should know where each dollar went.
2. What useful actions occurred?
Define the actions before launch: calls, forms, bookings, directions, purchases, or qualified conversations. Impressions and clicks describe delivery; they do not prove a business result.
3. What did each action cost?
Cost per action helps compare campaigns and periods, but only when tracking is dependable and the actions are genuinely useful.
4. Were the inquiries a good fit?
The advertising platform cannot always know whether a caller was in the service area, needed the offered service, or became a customer. Staff feedback is part of accurate reporting.
5. What should change next?
A useful report ends with a decision: continue, adjust targeting, improve the page, change the message, fix the response process, reduce spending, or pause the campaign.