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SOP — Draft the report

Who: Account Manager · When: after reconciling the numbers Time: 15–20 minutes per client

What this is for

The report is the thing that decides renewal. A client who understands what happened, why, and what comes next stays. A client who receives numbers without narrative finds their own narrative, and it is usually worse.

Steps

  1. Lead with the outcome, not the activity. The client cares about cost per result or return on ad spend, not impressions. State the conversion metric the account reports — the portal's outcome model tells you whether this is a lead or a purchase account. Do not switch metrics between reports.
  2. Name what carried. Which creative, angle, or audience produced the best results at the lowest cost? The media buying board and the trend charts both answer this. A report that says "we ran ads" says nothing the invoice did not already say.
  3. Name what did not work. A report that only states wins is a report the client stops trusting. If a creative was paused or an audience exhausted, say so and say what replaced it.
  4. State the plan. What will Atlas make or change in the next cycle? This is where the strategy readout feeds the report — the bottleneck identified there becomes the focus stated here.
  5. Use the purpose breakdown. If the client runs both acquisition and retargeting, show the cost per result for each separately. A blended number hides the direction of both.
  6. Include the reconciliation note. One line: "Reconciled against Ads Manager" or "Gap of X in spend, reporting the portal figure because [reason]."

Judgment calls that stay yours

What level of detail the client needs. Some clients want the funnel; others want a paragraph. Match the client, not a template. The content of the report is fixed by the data; the depth is a relationship call.

Whether to flag a concern. If cost per result has risen for two consecutive cycles, say so even if the absolute number is still within target. A trend the client discovers themselves feels like it was hidden.

What good looks like

A report the founder can review in under five minutes, the client can read without a call, and that would hold up if the client compared it against their own Ads Manager. No number without a source, no claim without a direction.