Template P6 · Paid & Lead Generation · useful to every role
Campaign Diagnosis Worksheet.
Performance dropped. Here is what to check, in what order, and what each answer rules out. The order exists so that you diagnose rather than tinker.
The decision this template protects
What actually caused this, before we change anything.
Paid & Lead Generation · useful to every role
Main Course Module 6 · Performance diagnosis and optimisation
Version 1.0 · 19 August 2026
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Before you start, you need
What has to be true first.
- The account, with change history visible.
- A baseline you trust.
- Thirty uninterrupted minutes. Diagnosis done in a panic is not diagnosis.
What this template will not do for you
Its stated limits.
- It will not fix the campaign. It tells you what to fix, which is the harder part.
- Some declines have no single cause. Several small things together is a common and unsatisfying answer.
- It assumes a change history exists. If nobody logs changes, layer two is unavailable and that is the first thing to fix.
What is in it
6 sections, and what each one makes you write down.
01
Layer zero · Is it real?
- Check
- Finding
- Rules out
02
Layer one · Where in the funnel
- Step
- Before
- Moved?
03
Layer two · What we changed
- Date
- Change
- Could it explain this?
04
Layer three · What changed around us
- External factor
- Evidence
- Likely contribution
05
Layer four · The diagnosis
- Most likely cause, and the evidence for it
- What we ruled out, and how
- Confidence in this diagnosis
06
Layer five · The response
- Action
- Why this first
- Expected effect
- Review date
Judgment prompts
Questions the template makes you answer.
- Did you diagnose, or did you start changing settings within ten minutes?
- What is the second most likely cause, and how would you distinguish it from the first?
- If the diagnosis is external, what does that mean for what you promised the client?
- Is the pressure to act coming from the data or from the meeting tomorrow?
The defensible output
What you are left holding.
A written diagnosis with a confidence level and a stated ruled-out list, and one change with a review date.
Published open. Copy it, adapt it, use it on client work. If you pass it on, keep the attribution line on it.
More from the library
Sixty-five instruments, eighteen published open.
Each one names the decision it protects, states what it will not do, and ends in something you could defend six months later.