Quarterly Marketing Review

What this is

A sixteen-slide presentation template for quarterly marketing reviews (QBRs) with executive teams. It has the slide structure, presenter notes, chart placeholders and real example data you can swap for your own.

I use this exact format when I present to founders and C-suite stakeholders. It’s built around the questions executives ask, which are rarely the metrics marketers want to show.

Slide structure

Section 1: Context (Slides 1–3)

Slide 1: Title & framing Quarter, date range, who’s presenting. One sentence on what this quarter was about: the initiative, the constraint or the strategic bet.

Slide 2: Executive summary Four metrics in large type: revenue impact, lead volume, CAC trend and one channel-specific KPI, with green/red arrows. No charts here, only the four numbers the CFO cares about.

Slide 3: What we said we’d do Bullet list of last quarter’s commitments. Each one marked: done, in progress, or deprioritised (with a one-line reason).

Section 2: Performance (Slides 4–9)

Slide 4: Revenue attribution Chart showing marketing-influenced revenue vs. total revenue, broken down by channel. This slide has to show that marketing spend connects to revenue as well as to leads.

Slide 5: Channel performance Table with one row per channel: spend, leads, customers, CAC, LTV:CAC ratio. Colour-coded by performance vs. target.

Slide 6: Organic / SEO Traffic trend, keyword rankings movement, top-performing content. One callout: what’s working and what’s stalled.

Slide 7: Paid media ROAS by platform, creative performance, audience insights. One callout: what we’re scaling and what we’re cutting.

Slide 8: Content & lifecycle Blog traffic, email metrics (open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate), conversion rates by content type. One callout: content that converted vs. content that just got traffic.

Slide 9: Experiments What we tested this quarter, what we learned, what we’re rolling out vs. killing. Format: hypothesis > test > result > decision.

Section 3: Diagnosis (Slides 10–12)

Slide 10: What worked Three things. For each: what we did, why it worked, and whether it’s repeatable.

Slide 11: What didn’t work Three things. For each: what we expected, what happened, and what we learned. Don’t spin it. In my experience executives respect honesty more than optimism.

Slide 12: External factors Google algorithm updates, competitor moves, market shifts, seasonality: things that affected performance but weren’t in our control. Executives need this slide to separate the quality of execution from market conditions.

Section 4: Next quarter (Slides 13–16)

Slide 13: Strategic priorities Three priorities at most, each tied to a business objective rather than a marketing metric. “Reduce CAC by 20% to improve margins before fundraise” works; “increase organic traffic” doesn’t.

Slide 14: Tactical plan The specific initiatives mapped to each priority. Owner, timeline, success metric, resource needs.

Slide 15: Budget request What you need, why, and the expected return. Show the math. If you’re asking for more budget, show the LTV:CAC ratio by channel and where the marginal return is highest.

Slide 16: Questions & discussion Leave this slide up during Q&A. Include a QR code or link to a shared doc where detailed data lives for anyone who wants to dig deeper after the meeting.

Presenter notes included

Every slide has:

• A talk track: what to say, in what order, in plain language
• Anticipated questions: the pushback executives usually give on that slide, and how to respond
• Data sources: where to pull the numbers from (GA4, Search Console, ad platforms, CRM)

How to use it

1. Download the template (Keynote or PowerPoint).
2. Replace the sample data with your actual numbers. Every chart has labelled data cells.
3. Read the presenter notes before the meeting. They work as a rehearsal script.
4. Time yourself. The deck fits a 45-minute slot (30 min presentation + 15 min Q&A).
5. Send the deck 24 hours before the meeting so executives can read it first. They’ll ask better questions.

Design principles behind this template

• Numbers before narratives. Lead with the data, then explain it. Executives lose trust when you open with a story and trickle the numbers in later.
• Three, not ten. Three priorities, three wins, three losses. People remember about three things from a meeting.
• Honest about what failed. Slide 11 is there because hiding failures erodes trust faster than any bad quarter.
• Connected to business outcomes. Every metric ties to revenue, margin or growth, so there’s no room for vanity metrics.

Version history

Version	Date	Notes
3.0	April 2026	Redesigned for 16:9, added presenter notes, experiment slide
2.0	January 2026	Added budget request slide, channel deep-dives
1.0	August 2025	Initial release