Marketing Report Audit Checklist
Run this against your current marketing report — internal or agency-produced. Eighteen checks; every “no” is a place a budget decision can go wrong. From The Honest Math of Enrollment Marketing.
Cost math
- CPL divides spend by paid-source leads only (organic, referral, and walk-in volume excluded from the denominator)
- Cost per enrollment is reported — not just cost per lead
- Costs are broken out per channel, not blended across paid sources
- Gross and net spend are both labeled, with agency fee markup explicit
- Year-over-year comparisons use the same gross/net basis on both sides
Funnel coverage
- The report reaches enrollment — not just inquiries or applications
- Stage-to-stage conversion (lead→app, app→enroll) is shown by channel
- Lead-to-enrollment percentage (LTE%) is computed and trended
- Program-level breakdown exists alongside the institutional total
Lenses
- It's clear whether numbers are period-based (what happened in a range) or cohort-based (leads acquired in a range, tracked forward)
- Recent campaigns are evaluated with cohort logic, not raw period totals
- Young cohorts are compared against prior cohorts at the same age
Pacing & decisions
- Spend is compared against budget AND cycle progress, not budget alone
- Each channel has a goal, and ahead/behind status is visible
- The report names at least one decision it supports — not just status
Freshness & trust
- The data's as-of date is printed on the report
- The gap between data date and meeting date is days, not weeks
- Someone would be alerted if a data source silently broke
Scoring, roughly
15–18 checks: your reporting is in rare shape. 10–14: solid bones, but decisions are leaking through the gaps. Under 10: the report is describing the past, not steering the budget — which is fixable, and faster than you'd think.
Pennant answers all eighteen out of the box. See it on your funnel or explore the sample dashboard.