Marketing Reporting

Set up first — all free

Search Console is the one you can't skip. It's the only place that shows you your real average ranking position across everyone who searched, rather than the personalized result you see when you google yourself. As I mentioned on the call, your own search results are skewed by your location and history — you'll almost always see yourself ranking higher than you do.

Weekly review — 15 minutes, Monday morning

Five numbers. That's it.

Also do this weekly for the first month of ads: open the Google Ads search terms report and add negative keywords. Fifteen minutes, and it's the highest-ROI thing in the account.

Keep a simple log

Week of: ___________

Leads: ____ (Google Ads ___ | Organic ___ | Instagram ___ | Referral ___ | Direct ___)
Bookings: ____
Ad spend: $____   Cost per lead: $____
Search Console: ____ impressions, ____ clicks, ____ avg position
New reviews: ____
Notes / what changed:

Four weeks of this and patterns appear that no dashboard will show you.

Monthly review — 45 minutes

1. Ranking movement

In Search Console: Performance → Queries, filter to the last 28 days, compare to the previous period.

Track this list month over month:

yellowstone snowmobile tours
yellowstone snowmobile tour
snowmobile tours jackson hole
old faithful snowmobile tour
yellowstone winter tours
guided snowmobile tour yellowstone
3 day yellowstone snowmobile tour
private yellowstone snowmobile tour
what to wear snowmobiling yellowstone
yellowstone snowmobile tour cost
do you need a guide to snowmobile in yellowstone
snowmobiling in yellowstone with kids

What "good" looks like in year one: moving from position 40+ to position 15–25 on the head terms is a genuinely good first season. Page one on "yellowstone snowmobile tours" against operators with a decade of history and thousands of reviews is a 12–24 month project — don't judge yourself against it in month three. The long-tail terms are where you should expect to see real movement fast.

2. Which pages are working

GA4 → Reports → Engagement → Pages. Look at:

• Which pages get organic traffic (that's what's ranking)
• Which pages people leave from (that's what's broken)
• Which pages precede a form submission (that's what's selling)

3. Which ads and keywords converted

Google Ads → Campaigns, segment by conversion. Pause anything that has spent $150+ with zero conversions. Move budget toward what works. Give every change two weeks before judging it.

4. The number that actually matters

Cost per booking. Total marketing spend ÷ bookings from marketing. If a booking averages $1,000 and you're spending $400 to get one, that's a business. If it's $1,200, something's wrong upstream — usually the landing page or the follow-up speed, not the ads.

5. Decide three things

Write them down:

• One thing to start
• One thing to stop
• One thing to double down on

That's the whole monthly meeting. Don't over-engineer it.

Reading Search Console properly

Impressions up, clicks flat → you're ranking but your title and description aren't compelling. Rewrite them. This is the easiest win in SEO.

Clicks up, leads flat → the traffic is arriving but the page isn't converting. Usually a missing price, a missing date, or a buried CTA.

Position improving, impressions flat → you're ranking better for terms nobody searches. Target different keywords.

A query showing impressions but position 15–30 → you're close. One good article or a title rewrite can move it to page one. These are your best opportunities and most people never look for them.

Attribution — a warning

Multi-touch attribution will lie to you at your scale. Someone sees an Instagram Reel, googles you three days later, clicks an ad, then calls from their phone the next morning. GA4 credits the ad. Instagram gets nothing.

This is why your "How did you hear about us?" form field matters more than the analytics. It's imperfect — people misremember — but it's the only signal that captures the first touch. Log it on every lead, and when the form data and the analytics disagree, trust the form data about awareness and the analytics about the last click.

Ask the same question on every phone call and write down the answer.

Paid tools — worth it, but not yet

Skip all of these for now. Search Console, GA4 and your lead log will tell you 90% of what you need in season one.

The one-page season scorecard

At the end of the season, fill this in. It's what makes year two planning real instead of guesswork.

SEASON 2026-2027

Total leads: ____
Total bookings: ____        Lead-to-booking rate: ____%
Total revenue: $____        Average booking value: $____

Marketing spend: $____      Cost per booking: $____
Return on ad spend: ____x

Leads by source:
  Google Ads      ____ (____%)  →  ____ bookings
  Organic search  ____ (____%)  →  ____ bookings
  Google Business ____ (____%)  →  ____ bookings
  Instagram       ____ (____%)  →  ____ bookings
  Referral        ____ (____%)  →  ____ bookings
  Direct          ____ (____%)  →  ____ bookings

Reviews collected: ____      Average rating: ____
Email list size: ____

Best performing tour: ____
Worst performing tour: ____
Highest converting landing page: ____
Best month: ____             Worst month: ____

Three things to do differently next season:
1.
2.
3.