Marketing reporting

Marketing reports prove impact. Without reporting, you can't demonstrate ROI, optimise campaigns, or justify budget. With proper reporting, you show exactly which activities drive revenue.

This chapter builds reports for traffic sources and attribution, tracks new leads and contact growth, measures marketing funnel progression, and analyses campaign performance and ROI. You'll create dashboards that answer the questions leadership actually cares about: What's working? What's not? Where should we invest more?

Let's build reporting that demonstrates marketing's value.

Track where your website traffic comes from and which sources generate the most valuable leads.

Traffic overview report:

Navigate to Reports > Create custom report > Website analytics.

Select metrics:

• Sessions (total website visits)
• New sessions (first-time visitors)
• Bounce rate (% who leave after one page)
• Session duration (how long visitors stay)

Segment by:

• Source (Organic search, Paid search, Social media, Direct, Referral, Email)
• Landing page (which pages attract traffic)
• Device type (Desktop, Mobile, Tablet)
• Country

Visualisation: Bar chart showing sessions by source over time.

Time period: Last 30 days, with comparison to previous 30 days.

This report shows where traffic is coming from and whether it's growing or declining.

Attribution reporting:

Attribution shows which sources generate leads and customers, not just traffic.

Navigate to Reports > Analytics Tools > Attribution report.

Configure attribution model:

• First touch: Credits the first interaction that brought someone to your website
• Last touch: Credits the final interaction before conversion
• Linear: Credits all touchpoints equally
• Time decay: Credits recent touchpoints more heavily
• Custom: Weight touchpoints however you prefer

For most B2B companies, use "First touch" to understand what initially attracts leads, and "Last touch" to understand what finally converts them.

Set conversion events:

• Lead creation (lifecycle stage became Lead)
• MQL creation (lifecycle stage became MQL)
• Opportunity creation (deal created)
• Customer creation (deal closed-won)

Run report showing:

• Which sources generate the most leads
• Which sources generate the highest-value opportunities
• Which sources have the best lead-to-customer conversion rate
• Cost per lead by source (if you've connected ad platforms)

Visualisation: Funnel showing how each source performs at each stage.

This report answers:

• Should we invest more in paid search or content marketing?
• Which channel has the best ROI?
• Are expensive channels worth the cost?

Traffic source segmentation:

Don't treat all "Organic search" or "Paid search" traffic as homogeneous. Segment further:

Organic search:

• Brand searches (people searching your company name) vs non-brand searches
• Blog traffic vs product page traffic
• Top-performing keywords

Paid search:

• Campaign performance
• Ad group performance
• Keyword-level ROI

Social media:

• Organic social vs paid social
• Platform breakdown (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
• Content type performance (video, image, text posts)

Create separate reports for each channel with appropriate segmentation.

Landing page performance:

Not all traffic is equal. Some landing pages convert visitors at 20%, others at 2%.

Navigate to Reports > Create custom report > Landing page performance.

Metrics:

• Sessions
• Bounce rate
• Form submission rate
• New contact creation rate
• Average session duration

Sort by form submission rate to identify your best-performing pages.

Analyse poor-performing pages: Why do they have high bounce rates? Is the content unclear? Is the call-to-action weak? Is the page loading slowly?

Optimise top-of-funnel pages that get high traffic but low conversions. Small conversion rate improvements on high-traffic pages generate significant lead volume increases.

Track lead generation volume, quality, and trends.

New contacts report:

Navigate to Reports > Create custom report > Contacts.

Metrics:

• New contacts created
• Contacts by lifecycle stage
• Contacts by source
• Contacts by campaign

Date range: Last 90 days with monthly breakdown.

Visualisation: Line chart showing new contact creation over time, segmented by source.

This report shows whether lead generation is growing, stable, or declining.

Lead quality metrics:

Volume alone doesn't demonstrate value. Track quality signals:

Create custom report: "Lead quality by source."

Metrics:

• Total leads by source
• Average lead score by source
• MQL rate by source (% of leads that become MQL)
• Opportunity rate by source (% of leads that become Opportunity)
• Customer rate by source (% of leads that become Customer)

This report shows which sources generate not just leads, but qualified leads that sales can actually work.

Example insight: "Webinar leads have 40% MQL rate and 15% customer rate. Content download leads have 10% MQL rate and 2% customer rate. We should invest more in webinars."

Contact growth by segment:

Track growth in specific segments that matter to your business.

Create custom report: "Enterprise lead growth."

Filters:

• Number of employees >= 500
• Created date within selected period

Metrics:

• New contacts created
• Percentage of total leads
• Lead score distribution

This shows whether you're attracting the right types of leads (enterprise vs SMB) and whether that mix is changing over time.

Lead generation velocity:

How quickly are you generating leads? Is velocity increasing or decreasing?

Create custom report: "Weekly lead generation velocity."

Date range: Last 12 weeks.

Metrics:

• New leads per week
• MQLs per week
• Opportunities per week

Visualisation: Line chart showing each metric over time.

Identify trends: Is velocity accelerating (good - campaigns are working)? Stable (fine - predictable volume)? Declining (concerning - campaigns losing effectiveness)?

If declining, investigate: Did a successful campaign end? Did organic rankings drop? Did ad spend decrease?

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Track how contacts move through the funnel from lead to customer.

Funnel overview report:

Navigate to Reports > Create custom report > Funnel.

Stages:

1. Lead
2. MQL
3. SQL
4. Opportunity
5. Customer

Metrics:

• Count at each stage
• Conversion rate between stages
• Average time to progress between stages

Date range: Last 90 days.

This shows your complete funnel and where contacts drop off.

Conversion rate analysis:

Calculate conversion rates between each stage:

• Lead → MQL conversion rate: What % of leads become MQL?
• MQL → SQL conversion rate: What % of MQLs are qualified by sales?
• SQL → Opportunity conversion rate: What % of SQLs create deals?
• Opportunity → Customer conversion rate: What % of deals close?

Industry benchmarks (B2B SaaS):

• Lead → MQL: 10-20%
• MQL → SQL: 40-60%
• SQL → Opportunity: 60-80%
• Opportunity → Customer: 20-30%

If your rates are significantly lower, identify the weak point. Low MQL conversion? Marketing is generating unqualified leads. Low SQL conversion? Sales isn't following up properly or leads genuinely aren't qualified. Low opportunity conversion? Deal quality is poor or sales process needs improvement.

Time to progress metrics:

How long does it take contacts to move between stages?

Create custom report: "Average days in stage."

Metrics:

• Average days from Lead to MQL
• Average days from MQL to SQL
• Average days from SQL to Opportunity
• Average days from Opportunity to Customer
• Total average sales cycle length

Segment by:

• Lead source (do webinar leads convert faster than content download leads?)
• Company size (do enterprise deals take longer?)
• Industry (do certain industries have longer sales cycles?)

This identifies bottlenecks. If leads sit in MQL stage for 45 days on average, sales isn't following up quickly enough. If opportunities sit in pipeline for 6 months, deals are stalling in negotiation.

Drop-off analysis:

Where do contacts leave the funnel entirely?

Create custom report: "Contacts marked unqualified."

Filters:

• Lead status changed to "Unqualified" within selected period

Segment by:

• Original source
• Lifecycle stage when marked unqualified
• Unqualified reason (create custom "Unqualified reason" property to track this)

This shows which sources generate the most unqualified leads and at which stage leads are typically disqualified.

Example insight: "60% of LinkedIn ad leads are marked unqualified at MQL stage. Reason: Company too small. We need to improve LinkedIn targeting to exclude small companies."

Measure individual campaign effectiveness and return on investment.

Campaign attribution report:

Navigate to Reports > Create custom report > Campaign performance.

Metrics:

• Contacts created per campaign
• MQLs per campaign
• Opportunities per campaign
• Customers per campaign
• Revenue per campaign

Include cost data:

• Campaign spend (manually entered or pulled from ad platforms)
• Cost per lead
• Cost per MQL
• Cost per customer
• Return on ad spend (revenue / spend)

Sort by ROI to identify your most profitable campaigns.

Email campaign performance:

For email campaigns specifically:

Navigate to Marketing > Email > Analyse.

Select campaign or individual email. View metrics:

• Sent
• Delivered
• Opened (open rate)
• Clicked (click-through rate)
• Replied
• Bounced
• Unsubscribed

Benchmark your performance:

• Open rate: 15-25% is typical for B2B
• Click-through rate: 2-5% is typical for B2B
• Unsubscribe rate: Under 0.5% is healthy

If rates are below benchmarks, test:

• Subject lines (does changing subject line improve opens?)
• Send time (do morning emails perform better than afternoon?)
• Sender name (do emails from CEO perform better than marketing@?)
• Content personalisation (do personalised emails perform better?)
• Segment targeting (does emailing smaller, more targeted segments improve performance?)

Landing page and form performance:

Track which landing pages convert best.

Navigate to Reports > Create custom report > Landing page analytics.

Metrics per landing page:

• Visitors
• Form views
• Form submissions
• Submission rate (% of visitors who submit)

Segment by:

• Traffic source (which sources send high-converting traffic to this page?)
• Device type (do mobile visitors convert differently than desktop?)

Identify pages with high traffic but low conversion rates. These are optimisation opportunities. Small improvements (clearer headline, better CTA, simplified form) can significantly increase lead volume.

Content performance:

For content marketing (blog posts, ebooks, webinars):

Create custom report: "Content engagement and conversion."

Metrics per content piece:

• Page views
• Average time on page
• Scroll depth (if tracked via custom events)
• Download rate (for gated content)
• Leads generated
• MQLs generated
• Opportunities influenced (if contact engaged with content before becoming opportunity)

Sort by "MQLs generated" to identify your most valuable content.

Example insight: "The '10 Strategies to Reduce Churn' blog post generated 150 MQLs this quarter. The 'Guide to Pricing Strategies' ebook generated 12 MQLs. We should create more churn-focused content."

ROI dashboard:

Create a master dashboard combining all key metrics.

Navigate to Reports > Dashboards > Create dashboard. Name it: "Marketing ROI Dashboard."

Add reports:

• Traffic by source (Section 1)
• New leads this month (Section 2)
• Marketing funnel conversion rates (Section 3)
• Campaign ROI table (Section 4)
• Cost per MQL trend
• Revenue influenced by marketing

Share this dashboard with leadership. Update it monthly. Use it to justify marketing budget and demonstrate impact.

Review and adjust strategy:

Use reporting to make data-driven decisions about where to invest.

Monthly review process:

1. Review all reports
2. Identify what's working (high ROI, strong conversion rates, growing traffic)
3. Identify what's not working (negative ROI, poor conversion rates, declining traffic)
4. Make decisions: Double down on what's working. Cut or fix what's not working.
5. Test new approaches in areas with poor performance
6. Re-measure next month

This creates a continuous improvement cycle where marketing investments become more efficient over time.

Your marketing reporting infrastructure is complete. You track traffic sources and attribution, monitor new lead generation and quality, measure funnel progression and conversion rates, and analyse individual campaign performance and ROI.

These reports transform marketing from a cost centre into a revenue driver. You can demonstrate which campaigns generate customers, calculate cost per acquisition, prove ROI, and make data-driven decisions about budget allocation.

Next, we'll configure your brand kit and visual identity in HubSpot to ensure consistent, professional branding across all marketing assets.