What our quarterly review actually looks like
Most agencies treat quarterly reviews as a status update. We treat them as the most important hour of the quarter. Here's what's on the slide deck — and what isn't.
Every quarter, we sit down with each client for a 60-minute review. It is, in our experience, the single highest-leverage hour of the quarter — and it's also the meeting most agencies turn into a status report and ruin.
Here's what we put on the deck, and what we deliberately leave off.
What goes on the slide deck
- Three numbers we promised to move, and where they actually moved
- One thing that worked better than expected, with our hypothesis on why
- One thing that worked worse than expected, with our hypothesis on why
- The single biggest change we'd make to the program for next quarter
- A risk register: what could break our progress, and our mitigation plan
What we deliberately leave off
- Vanity metrics that don't tie to the three promised numbers
- Activity reports — number of posts, hours spent, blog count. Nobody cares.
- Hedging language. If something failed, we say it failed.
- Recommendations that involve more spend without a tied-back hypothesis
Why it matters
The quarterly review is the only time most clients have to step back and ask: is this actually working? If we can't answer that question in 60 minutes — clearly, with numbers, including the parts that didn't work — we're failing at the core of the relationship.
If you're getting quarterly reviews from your current agency that look more like activity reports than performance reviews, ask for the format above. If you can't get it, that's a signal.