The dealership marketing report that fits on one page

Most dealership marketing reports run between fourteen and forty pages. They arrive monthly. They contain impressions, reach, engagement rate, and a chart of sessions by device.

Almost nobody reads past page two, and they are right not to. The report is not written for them.

What a dealer principal needs to know

Four things, and they fit on one page.

• Units influenced — leads that became appointments that became deliveries, by source. Attribution will never be perfect. Directionally correct and consistently measured beats precise and unreadable.
• Cost per delivered unit, by channel — the number that decides next month's budget.
• What changed — one paragraph, not a chart. "Conquest spend moved to used trucks on the 8th; cost per appointment went from $180 to $140."
• What happens next — three lines, each with a name and a date on it.

Impressions do not hit a forecast. If a metric cannot change a decision, it does not belong in a report to the person who signs the cheques.

What to stop reporting

Reach, impressions, engagement rate, follower count, sessions, bounce rate, ad recall lift. Every one of them is real and not one of them is a decision. Keep them in the working file where the person doing the work needs them. They do not go upstairs.

Closing the loop

This is the part that takes work, and it is the only part that matters. Somebody has to connect the CRM's sold records back to the source that produced the lead. Monthly, by hand if that is what it takes, matched on name and phone number.

It will be messy. Some deals will have three touch sources and no clean answer. Assign those consistently — the same rule every month — and the trend line stays honest even when individual rows are arguable.

What good looks like after six months

You can say, in one sentence, which channels produced your last twenty units and what each one cost.

If you cannot, the reporting is decorative, no matter how many pages it runs to.