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MSP Marketing Performance Evidence Checklist
A five-day reality check for MSP owners who want to know what their marketing engagement actually produced.
The question that ends the argument: Did we get new business from this engagement?
Why this exists
Marketing can look like magic because the machinery is hidden. Search indexing, page quality, technical checks, local results, citations, competitive movement, analytics, lead quality and sales attribution all have to be inspected separately. Reproducing that work takes time. Most MSP owners do not have spare hours to audit every claim in a marketing report.
That is exactly why vanity metrics survive. Impressions can look impressive until you ask where the clicks went. Traffic can look healthy until you ask who filled out a form. A form fill means very little if the lead is not a target-customer-profile fit. A pile of leads means very little if none becomes a sales opportunity. The engagement earns its keep when it produces profitable new business.
For organic search: nothing downstream matters if the page is not indexed by Google.
Engagement snapshot
- Company
- ________________________________
- Marketing provider
- ________________________________
- Evaluation period
- ________________________________
- Total spend in period
- ________________________________
- New customers attributed to engagement
- ________________________________
- Attributed revenue
- ________________________________
1. Gate One: Can Google Use the Page?
Start here. Do not spend an hour debating impressions, traffic or rankings for a page Google cannot index. Record one or more revenue-producing pages and prove their status first.
| Check | What you found | Evidence attached? |
|---|---|---|
| URL is on Google / indexed | ________________ | Yes / No |
| Crawl allowed | ________________ | Yes / No |
| Page fetch successful | ________________ | Yes / No |
| Indexing allowed | ________________ | Yes / No |
| Canonical points where expected | ________________ | Yes / No |
Stop condition: If the page is not indexed and you expect it to rank organically, stop the downstream SEO analysis and resolve the indexing problem first.
2. Does the Page Deserve the Search?
| Question | Your result |
|---|---|
| Would the buyer who searched this phrase recognize the page as an answer to their problem? | Good / Bad / Unsure |
| Does the page contain decisions, tradeoffs, consequences, proof or practitioner judgment? | Good / Bad / Unsure |
| Could most of the copy be swapped onto another MSP website without changing much? | Yes / No |
| Does the page give an AI answer engine something specific enough to quote or cite? | Yes / No |
3. Is the Website Technically Getting in Its Own Way?
| Evidence | Result | Question for the person responsible |
|---|---|---|
| PageSpeed / Lighthouse | Good / Review | What failed on this exact URL, what will you change, and what will the retest show? |
| Screaming Frog internal crawl | Good / Review | Why is this important URL redirected, non-indexable, canonicalized elsewhere or poorly linked internally? |
| Maps vs. organic separated | Yes / No | When you say visibility improved, which search surface moved? |
4. Who Gets Chosen Instead?
Record who repeatedly appears for the terms you care about. One flattering screenshot is not a strategy. Look for the monthly pattern and the pages that keep earning visibility. If you use competitive intelligence software, document its methodology and the keyword set.
- Tracked terms
- ________________________________
- Your share of voice / visibility measure
- ________________________________
- Top recurring competitors
- ________________________________
- What they are winning with
- ________________________________
5. Destroy the Vanity Metrics
Every metric gets one question: what happened next? A number deserves attention only when it helps explain the path to qualified pipeline and new business.
| Metric | What it can tell you | The question that matters | Your number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indexed pages | Google can use the page in organic search. | Is the revenue page indexed? | ______ |
| Impressions | Your result was shown. | Where are the clicks? | ______ |
| Clicks | Someone chose the result. | Did the right people reach the site? | ______ |
| Site visits / sessions | Traffic arrived. | Who took a meaningful action? | ______ |
| Form fills | Someone submitted a form. | Was it a real prospect and a TCP fit? | ______ |
| Qualified leads | Sales accepted the lead as worth pursuing. | Did it become an opportunity? | ______ |
| Opportunities | There is a real sales conversation and potential deal. | What closed? | ______ |
| Closed-won customers | The engagement produced new business. | How much revenue and gross profit came from it? | ______ |
Lead quality check
| Count | Number | What to remove before you call it a lead |
|---|---|---|
| Total form fills | _______ | Spam, vendors, job seekers, existing clients, unrelated requests. |
| Actual prospects | _______ | People or companies with a plausible buying need. |
| TCP-fit prospects | _______ | Prospects matching your target-customer profile. |
| Sales opportunities | _______ | Qualified conversations your sales process accepted as real pipeline. |
| Closed-won | _______ | New customers attributed to this engagement. |
If a report stops at impressions, traffic or form fills, it stops before the business question is answered.
6. Calculate the Business Result
Use the measure your finance team trusts. Revenue is easy to see; gross profit is usually a better test when delivery costs vary materially.
- Total marketing cost for the evaluation period
- ________________________________
- Attributed closed-won revenue
- ________________________________
- Attributed gross profit, if known
- ________________________________
Simple campaign ROI: (Attributed revenue - campaign cost) / campaign cost × 100
Margin-aware campaign ROI: (Attributed gross profit - campaign cost) / campaign cost × 100
- Our chosen ROI measure
- ________________________________
- Result percentage
- ________________________________
7. Put the Marketing Report on Trial
Take the report you received and compare every important claim with evidence you can reproduce. Activity is not proof of business value. A completed task should leave a trail: the page, the problem, the change, the retest, and the downstream result where one should reasonably exist.
| Provider claim | Evidence required | What I found | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ________________ | ________________ | ________________ | Supported / Partial / No proof |
| ________________ | ________________ | ________________ | Supported / Partial / No proof |
| ________________ | ________________ | ________________ | Supported / Partial / No proof |
| ________________ | ________________ | ________________ | Supported / Partial / No proof |
Questions your provider should be able to answer without theater
- Which exact pages and queries produced the improvement you are reporting?
- What changed because of your work, and what evidence existed before and after?
- How many impressions became clicks? How many visits became real prospects?
- How many form fills were TCP-fit prospects rather than noise?
- How many qualified prospects became opportunities and closed-won customers?
- What did this engagement cost us, and what new revenue or gross profit can we reasonably attribute to it?
8. Shareable Assessment Summary
Complete this page after the audit. Send it with the screenshots or exports that support your conclusions.
| Area | Verdict | Evidence / note |
|---|---|---|
| Google indexing | Good / Fail / Unknown | ________________ |
| Content / search intent | Good / Fail / Unknown | ________________ |
| Technical website health | Good / Fail / Unknown | ________________ |
| Local vs. organic reporting separated | Yes / No / Unknown | ________________ |
| Competitive visibility | Gaining / Flat / Losing | ________________ |
| Traffic quality | Good / Poor / Unknown | ________________ |
| TCP-fit lead quality | Good / Poor / Unknown | ________________ |
| Qualified pipeline | Good / Poor / Unknown | ________________ |
| Closed-won new business | Yes / No / Unknown | ________________ |
| Campaign ROI | Positive / Negative / Unknown | ________________ |
Decision
- Keep
- The engagement is producing measurable business value. Continue and watch the same evidence over time.
- Change
- Some work is useful, but the evidence shows specific failures, weak lead quality or reporting gaps that need correction.
- Stop / Review
- The engagement cannot connect its work to qualified pipeline, new business or an acceptable economic result. Review the scope, spend and next decision.
- Our decision: Keep, Change, or Stop / Review
- ________________________________
- Provider question 1
- ________________________________
- Provider question 2
- ________________________________
- Provider question 3
- ________________________________
- Next review date
- ________________________________
The final test: Did we get profitable new business from this engagement? If the answer is no, unknown or impossible to prove, the reporting has not finished the job.