Most agencies send a polished slide at the end of the month: reach grew by this much, impressions by that much, followers by so much. The founder reads it, shakes their head, and asks a single question — which of these turned into money? There's no answer.
A report isn't for bragging. It exists to answer one question: where did the money we spent go, and what did it bring back. Only 7 numbers answer that question — budget, MQL, CPL, CAC, conversion, pipeline, ROI. Drop any one of them and it's not a report, it's a presentation.
Budget and MQL: the input and the honest result
The first two numbers are the frame of the report. Budget: exactly how much we spent on advertising this month. Not rounded, not approximate — down to the dollar. Over 2 years we've managed more than $1 000 000 in budget, and the first line of every report is always the same: how much money there was.
The second is MQL, that is, the Marketing Qualified Lead. It's not a follower and not reach — it's a sales-ready lead that meets the agreed criteria. That's exactly why we write our reports in MQLs and booked meetings, not in impressions. If a lead's quality falls short of the criteria, we fix it at our own expense. More than 10 000 MQLs over 2 years — that's the main currency of our reports.
CPL: how much each lead cost
The third number is Cost Per Lead. Divide the budget by the number of MQLs and you get it. But CPL on its own means nothing — it has to be read only in context. Is a low CPL good? Not necessarily.
At Turon Telecom we tested two funnels in parallel: a simple form at $0.40 and a full address form at $4.00. A tenfold difference. At Parking24, by contrast, CPL was deliberately pushed to ~$10 — above the market average, because the 10-question filter let only sales-ready people through. As a result, 90% of the leads were sales-ready. That's why CPL can't stand alone in a report — it's always read together with the numbers that follow.
CAC and conversion: did the lead become a customer
The fourth number is Customer Acquisition Cost. How much we spent in total to acquire one customer. CPL measures the road to the lead, CAC measures the road to the customer — and that's exactly where the truth comes out. At Tuzuk AI, CAC came to ~$7; before us, the client had spent $6 000 and gotten not a single lead.
The fifth is conversion. What percentage of leads became customers. This number shows the bridge between marketing and sales: if there are many leads but conversion is low, the problem isn't the lead — it's the system that receives it. That's why conversion can't be left out of the report. Without it, you'll never know who's to blame for a poor result.
The gap between CPL and CAC often says the most. If leads are cheap but CAC is expensive, it means leads are coming in but not turning into customers. That's a sign not of marketing, but of sales or lead quality. That's exactly why these two numbers are read side by side: one says "how many leads," the other says "how many of them turned into real money."
Pipeline and ROI: the final word
The sixth number is pipeline. The sum of real deals in the CRM that are awaiting an answer, not yet closed but real. It's a picture of the future. At Parking24, in the very first month, more than $1 000 000 in pipeline accumulated in the CRM — not yet closed, but there.
The seventh and most important is ROI. How much each dollar spent returned. At Parking24, a $1 000 budget turned into $150 000 in sales in the first month. At DeepVision, $1 124 produced more than $200 000 in nine months — 178 times over. ROI is the report's bottom line; the other six numbers exist precisely to explain that line.
Conclusion
You don't have to memorize these 7 numbers — a single logic ties them together: money went in (budget), leads came out (MQL), how much each cost (CPL), how much it took to turn them into customers (CAC), how many converted (conversion), how much is still waiting (pipeline), and how much came back in the end (ROI). Take one away and the chain breaks, and the report stops answering the question.
Reach, impressions, and followers can be decoration on a report, but not its foundation. If you can't find these 7 numbers on the slide sent to you at the end of the month, you've been sent a presentation, not a report. Know the difference.