Your favorite F word just got a facelift: Visualize your forecasting in 2022
Forecasting is tricky. It’s tremendously important to your business’s bottom line but so subjective that it naturally creates friction amongst teams due to the collective “fear of the unknown.”
That’s why Brainlabs took up the challenge and created a forecasting tool that simplifies and standardizes the process. We found that focusing on clear key metrics helped us stay on the same page as our clients and work out the signals that impact their business. So, what does this tool do? Read on for a peek under the hood on how we think about forecasting.
Customize to account for seasonality
Most businesses vary throughout the year. If you’ve noticed a consistent pattern of seasonality over the past few years we can account for this expectation in your revenue and conversion forecast. Even if you haven’t yet nailed down an understanding of your business seasonality, the tool should help you to achieve a more optimal investment distribution throughout the year. The key here is consistency. If you found, for example, that 2020 was a record high or low year we wouldn’t include it as a seasonal factor due to its anomalous nature.
Build in and account for uplift
Similar to seasonality, we can account for a certain percentage of expected uplift. Your business’s marketing plan expands your memorability and audience reach, so it’s reasonable to assume a certain amount of uplift year-over-year.
Create clear visuals
As relevant business data is entered into the prompts, the tool generates charts and graphs to visualize the forecast. This can be tremendously helpful for navigating forecasting conversations as you’ll be able to get a sense of seasonal increases or dips and what factors cause the change.
Plan projects and estimate impact
In the projects section of the tool, we can provide overview information to generate a conversion or revenue forecast for upcoming campaigns. This is a helpful feature for setting goals and expectations for new campaigns so you can have a clear understanding of what success might look like.
If your project is completely new to your business we can use Hippocampus, one of our other custom tools, to navigate benchmarks for similar campaigns in your industry.
Finally, the tool will provide you estimates for the returns you might expect at different levels of annual spend, allowing you to hand-pick the most suitable budget for your upcoming financial year
What doesn’t this tool do?
This tool does not focus on traffic metrics. We keep the forecasting metrics simplified to either revenue or conversions to cut through the variable noise and focus on your key metrics.
No forecasting tool is ever going to be perfect. That’s why we run a sense-check with our analyst team before presenting to your team. The greater Brainlabs team is invested in your business’s growth and continuing to perfect forecasting for all!