What a Dealership GM Should Require in a Monthly Marketing Report

A monthly report should tell leadership what happened, what it affected and what changes next. If it cannot do that, it is a collection of dashboards.

Most dealership reports are assembled by channel. Google reports Google. Meta reports Meta. The website vendor reports traffic. The CRM reports leads. Each system can be technically accurate while the total story is wrong.

A GM needs one operating view built around the dealership, not the vendors. These are the seven sections I would require.

1. Spend against plan

Start with the money. Show planned budget, actual spend and variance by rooftop, department, campaign purpose and funding source. Separate OEM-funded activity from dealer-led activity. A percentage without the dollars is not enough, and a total without the reason for the variance is not management information.

2. Corrected leads by true source

Report Google, Meta, organic search, OEM portals, direct, referral, event, phone, chat and walk-in separately. Before the meeting, review source and sub-source mappings. Google Analytics recommends consistent campaign parameters such as source, medium and campaign so traffic can be classified, but those parameters are only the beginning. The CRM still has to preserve or reconcile what entered.

In one five-rooftop group, unattributed leads ranged from under 1% at one store to more than 13% at another. Rolling those rooftops into one total would have created a clean-looking group report with unreliable inputs.

3. Lead handling and appointment movement

Show response time, contact rate, appointment set rate, appointment show rate and the leads that received no meaningful follow-up. Break it out by source, rooftop and shift when possible. A campaign can generate a lead efficiently and still fail commercially because the opportunity sat overnight.

Pied Piper's 2026 study found that only 47% of powersports dealers answered the question submitted through the website by email or text. Reporting lead volume without reporting what happened next protects the channel and hides the operating problem.

4. Cost per lead and cost per sold unit

Cost per lead helps compare acquisition. It does not settle the budget by itself. Leadership should also see sold-unit matchback by source where the CRM and DMS data support it. Keep the methodology visible: date window, source rules, duplicates removed, organic demand separated and the number of records that could not be matched.

If sold-unit attribution is not available yet, say that plainly. Do not fill the gap with platform-reported purchases or modelled conversions and call them sales.

5. Inventory and department alignment

Show where the spend went compared with current inventory, aging pressure, seasonal demand and department priorities. A media plan can hit its lead target while pushing the wrong category. The report should make that mismatch obvious before another month of budget is allocated.

6. Co-op, website and system health

Include the operational items that can invalidate the rest of the report:

• eligible, submitted, approved and paid co-op or MDF amounts
• feed failures and disapprovals
• form, phone and chat test results
• conversion-tag or call-tracking failures
• landing pages with high exit or broken mobile paths
• vendor items waiting on implementation

These do not belong in a separate technical appendix nobody reads. If a broken form affected leads, it belongs beside the lead number.

7. Decisions, owners and deadlines

End with a short issue list. What changed? What is blocked? Who owns the fix? When will leadership see proof that it deployed? A useful report creates the next operating cycle.

How EPC can train the team you already have

The marketing manager does not need another agency PDF. EPC can build the report around the dealership's actual accounts, teach the team how to validate the inputs, establish the meeting cadence and stay involved as reviewer and escalation point. The dealership keeps the operating knowledge.

For teams without enough capacity, EPC can run the report and the underlying systems. For stronger internal teams, we can audit, train and move to quarterly oversight. The format should make leadership less dependent on any one vendor, including us.

Leadership checklist

• Does actual spend reconcile to the plan and funding source?
• Were CRM sources reviewed before totals were reported?
• Can the team show response, appointment and follow-up performance?
• Are platform conversions separated from CRM leads and sold units?
• Does the media mix reflect current inventory and department priorities?
• Are co-op, feed, form and tracking issues visible?
• Does every open item have one owner and one deadline?