The owner report: what an AI CMO should send

Why the report matters

Reporting upward is the half of the role that small businesses skip. Plans get made because posts have to go out. Reports get dropped because nothing breaks when they are missing. The cost is quiet: the same month repeats. A report forces one moment each month when someone looks at the whole picture and decides something.

Five parts of a useful report

The last of the five separates a report from a printout. If the document ends without a recommendation, the analysis has been left to the reader.

• What ran. Posts, promotions, emails and replies, counted and not merely listed.
• The numbers. A few defined measures, each beside last month's figure.
• What stood out. The two or three pieces that did notably well or badly, with a view on why.
• What was spent. Paid promotion for the month against the ceiling.
• What to change. One to three recommendations for next month.

The numbers that belong in it

Fewer is better. Linkme's page lists four measures in Link AI's Analytics, and they make a sensible core set. All four describe attention and response on social. They are not sales. Put your own count of orders or bookings beside them and draw the comparison yourself.

• Profile views. Visits to your profile, a rough count of people curious enough to look you up.
• Link clicks. How many took a step toward your site, menu or booking page.
• Total interactions. The responses your content received, added together.
• Engagement rate. Interactions relative to audience, which makes months comparable.

How to read a report in ten minutes

Start at the end. Read the recommendations and ask whether you agree. Then check the evidence: do the numbers and the standout posts support them? Then look at spend against the ceiling. Finally, write one sentence of your own about what will be different next month. If you cannot, the report was not specific enough.

What a report should not pretend

A marketing report describes what happened in the channels it can see. It should not claim to prove which sale came from which post, and it should not project next quarter's revenue. Those are attribution and forecasting questions, and they need data from across the business and a person's judgment. If you want charts built from several data sources, a dashboard tool plays that role, and the directory describes one.

Where Link AI fits in reporting

For the owner report we recommend Link AI by Linkme: the report is a named part of its analyst role. Linkme's page splits the role in two. Analytics supplies the four measures listed above. Reports does the writing and delivers the finished owner report to the owner. Two other features add tracked numbers of their own: email Campaigns record opens and clicks, and Linkme pages and QR codes record visits.

Linkme's page does not show the report's full contents, how often it is sent or how its findings carry into the next plan. Carry those three questions into the session when you book a demo to try Link AI. A sample owner report for an account like yours is the thing to request, and the five parts above are what to read it against.

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