How not to report-up marketing metrics with 4 IRL examples

Let's chat about something we've all been guilty of at some point – botching up our reports to senior management. Those times when our well-intentioned metrics presentation to the higher-ups turned into glazed-over-eyes or even straight up conflict. Grab a coffee, and let’s dive into some classic 'how-not-to' moments in marketing metrics reporting – complete with real-life facepalm examples. It's okay, we've all been there.

Example 1: 

'CEO not understanding what conversion rate is and expecting every lead to become a customer' 

Kindly volunteered by Ade Risidore (CMO).

Yikes. Whilst I don't blame Ade for this one at all, there seems to be a bit of context missing here for the CEO. Education is always going to be a part of our job in reporting up but we need to know where our audience is at first. We cover this later in the course.

Example 2: 

'Spending 3 days on an audit and completely failing to get the real issue across.'

This one is mine (Ruta here).

This one really hurts me. I was asked as a consultant to do a full audit on a marketing team and it turned out that it was a sales and leadership issue. The problem was however leadership and sales didn't want to hear any of that. In reflection I should of gone harder on my points about those areas, rather than making them seem like they are 'part' of the issue. Focus here was key.

Example 3: 

'After my monthly report, I was told me entire pipeline was sh*t and that only large deals counted.'

Emma Davies (Head of Demand Gen, at the time of this incident).

Talk about unaligned expectations. This one is a toughie to overcome as leadership had other criteria in their mind but did 0 to communicate it with the marketing team. We will talk about some prevention methods later in the course, like aligning business and marketing goals, which could of helped here, but honestly this was just a bit of a sh*t show.

Example 4: 

'Giving metrics without explaining what they mean for the business or why they happened'

Kiran Mehta (VC Investor)

This is a common one where more context needs to be given. Remember not everyone lives in your thoughts and experience so giving them that additional 30 seconds of context and explanation is important, and if it isn't then why is that metric in there to begin with?

That's that. Would love to read some of your reporting blunders but also the rest of this course should get you in a place where they won't happen.

🧑‍🎓 This blog is part of the 'Marketing Metrics that matter' free online course. Sign up here. 🧑‍🎓