Why marketing reports don't always add up, and what you can do about it

Lancashire businesses are judging their marketing spend on figures that can add up to more than 150 per cent of their actual sales, according to Burnley performance marketing agency Door4.

Each advertising platform, from Google to Meta, uses its own rules to decide which sales it takes credit for. Put their reports side by side and the same customer can be counted two or three times. The platforms are each doing what they were built to do, so the fix is a shared way of measuring that sits above all of them.

The problem gets harder to spot as reports grow. Research from media agency PHD found the time spent on marketing reporting has risen 57 per cent over the past ten years, yet many boards still struggle to answer a basic question: what did we get for the spend?

That question gives its name to a free half day seminar Door4 is hosting at Crow Wood Hotel & Spa, Burnley, on Wednesday 7th October. It's the agency's first large event since the start of the year.

Founder Leon Calverley and managing director Sean Dwyer will show attendees how to build a single measurement framework and turn it into a KPI hierarchy a board can use. They will also cover where AI can take the manual work out of reporting.

Leon said: "I've seen reports that run dozens of lines, thousands of cells. Most of those figures get produced and then forgotten. A board needs a hierarchy that makes sense to them, with business outcomes at the top and the marketing numbers underneath explaining why things moved."

Sean said: "There are almost always too many KPIs, and people struggle to see the wood for the trees. AI will be a great tool for reporting, but poor inputs lead to poor outputs, so you have to decide what matters first."

The event will run from 9am to 12pm. Places are nearly full, and the final tickets are on sale until the end of Monday 5th October at door4.com. Don't miss out!