What to Include in a Quarterly Marketing Performance Review for a PI Firm

Monthly reports capture what happened. Quarterly reviews answer the harder question: are your marketing decisions actually working? The 90-day window is the minimum time horizon to separate signal from noise — to know whether a vendor change produced real results or just a good month.

The quarterly marketing performance review is the most important reporting cadence for PI firms. Not because it has more data, but because it has enough runway to validate decisions made three months ago. It's where vendor changes get confirmed, budget shifts get justified, and the next quarter takes shape.

Done well, a quarterly review runs 45 to 60 minutes and ends with concrete decisions. Done poorly, it's a two-hour meeting where everyone agrees the numbers look interesting and nothing changes.

Here's what to include — and how to run it.

The Five Sections of an Effective Quarterly Review

Section 1: Quarterly Scorecard Against Goals

Open with the headline metrics. This is not the place for nuance — it's the place for clarity. Did the quarter hit its goals?

• Signed cases vs. quarterly target: 142 signed cases vs. a 150-case target — 94.7% of goal.
• Cost per case vs. prior quarter: $3,920 this quarter vs. $4,310 last quarter — a 9% improvement.
• Total marketing spend vs. budget: $573,000 spent vs. a $600,000 quarterly budget — 4.5% under budget.
• Intake conversion rate: 22% this quarter vs. 20% last quarter — a meaningful improvement.

These four numbers tell the story of the quarter. Everything else is context. If your managing partner is a “bottom line first” thinker — and most attorneys are — this scorecard should occupy the first two minutes of the review.

Section 2: Vendor Portfolio Assessment

The quarterly review is the right moment for a thorough vendor assessment. Monthly reporting tracks trends. The quarterly view gives enough data to make confident portfolio decisions.

For each active vendor, present:

• Total quarterly spend
• Total leads delivered
• Signed cases (90 days)
• Cost per case (90 days)
• Trend vs. prior quarter (improving, stable, declining)
• Recommended status for next quarter

The quarterly view often surfaces patterns that monthly data obscures. A vendor whose monthly cost per case swung between $3,800 and $5,200 might show a quarterly average of $4,400 — a meaningfully different picture than any single month tells.

Vendors with three consecutive months of underperformance need a decision at this review: renegotiate, reduce, or remove. Don't carry problem vendors into another quarter without a specific intervention plan.

Section 3: What Worked and What Didn't

This is where most quarterly reviews go soft. Push for specificity. For each marketing decision made last quarter, report the actual result:

• “We increased Vendor A's budget by $20,000/month in Q1. Their quarterly cost per case came in at $2,900 — their best performance in 12 months. The increase paid off.”
• “We launched a new TV campaign in February at $45,000/month. Q1 generated 18 signed cases from TV — a cost per case of $7,500. Above our $5,000 threshold. Recommend a reduced test budget in Q2 with a 90-day improvement window.”
• “We cut Vendor F entirely in January. No meaningful disruption to lead volume — other vendors absorbed the demand. Confirms the attribution model was correct.”

This is how PI marketing programs compound. Budget decisions are hypotheses. Quarterly results are data. Building a record of what worked — and why — is what separates firms that improve year over year from those that keep guessing.

Section 4: Intake Performance Review

Marketing and intake are not separate functions when you're measuring cost per case. A marketing program that delivers 450 leads is only as good as the intake team that converts them. The quarterly review needs an intake performance section:

• Overall conversion rate: What percentage of leads became signed cases this quarter?
• Conversion rate by lead source: Which sources are converting at or above average? Which are below?
• Rejection and withdrawal rates: Are we turning away cases we should sign? Are signed cases being withdrawn early at a rate that suggests intake quality issues?
• Response time performance: What is average time from lead receipt to first contact? Are we within best-practice windows?

If intake conversion moved from 20% to 24% in one quarter, that deserves the same attention as a vendor performing below threshold. A 4-point gain on 450 leads produces 18 additional signed cases. At $45,000 average case value, that's $810,000 in additional case value — from a process improvement, not more marketing spend.

Section 5: Q2 Budget Recommendations

End the review with concrete budget recommendations for the next quarter. Not directional guidance — specific numbers.

• Vendor A: increase from $55,000/month to $70,000/month. Three quarters of below-threshold cost per case. Track whether performance holds with higher volume.
• Vendor C: maintain at $40,000/month with a formal 60-day improvement window. Cost per case of $5,800 is above threshold but trending down.
• Vendor D: reduce from $45,000/month to $25,000/month. Three months above $6,500 cost per case with no improvement. Reallocate savings to Vendor A and trial budget.
• New vendor trial: $25,000/month for 90-day evaluation. Minimum 50 leads required for meaningful cost per case assessment.

Budget recommendations this specific move through managing partner approval faster. There's nothing to interpret — just a decision to make.

How Long the Review Should Take

A well-structured quarterly review should run no more than 60 minutes. That requires data distributed at least 48 hours before the meeting. Managing partners who arrive having already reviewed the report spend the session making decisions — not absorbing information.

Agenda that works:

• Minutes 0–10: Scorecard review (everyone confirms they've read it)
• Minutes 10–25: Vendor portfolio decisions
• Minutes 25–40: Intake performance discussion
• Minutes 40–55: Q2 budget approval
• Minutes 55–60: Open questions and next review date

The Data Infrastructure That Makes This Possible

A quarterly review with this level of detail — cost per case by vendor, intake conversion by lead source, budget vs. actual by channel — requires connected data. Not three spreadsheets and a CRM export. A system where marketing spend, lead attribution, and case outcomes live in one place.

Without that infrastructure, quarterly review prep takes 15 to 20 hours. With a revenue intelligence platform, the same prep takes 30 to 45 minutes — and the review produces real decisions instead of agreements to gather more data next quarter.

Firms that run quarterly reviews this way consistently see 15 to 20% marketing ROI improvements within 90 days. Every quarter produces specific, data-backed optimizations. They compound.

RevenueScale's quarterly performance view structures the data your quarterly review needs — showing what the most effective PI firms track every 90 days, without 20 hours of prep work.