You can create a Plan by uploading your existing marketing budget, or by Using Recast’s ‘Basic Budget’ tools to get a starting budget, or by Creating an Optimization. Once you fill in the time period of your Plan, the KPIs you want to forecast, and spikes during the period, you can start Forecasting your Plan.
Creating a Plan from an Optimization
Once you run an optimization and reach a budget you are ready to execute on, you can use the “Create Plan from Optimization” button and Recast will save your Optimization as a Plan with the recommended budget and contextual settings.
This allows you to:
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Save your optimized budget and track the forecasted outcome of your optimization as you execute on your optimal budget.
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Stay on top of incremental improvements to your optimized budget using the Recast automatic recommendations provided in your Plan which give updated suggested on how to further improve your optimized outcome.
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Build an up-to-date home for your current optimized marketing budget in Recast.
Creating a Plan from Scratch
To create a Plan from scratch, navigate to the Plans homepage and find the “Create New Plan” button on the top right hand corner of the Plans index. Within this button you will find dropdown options to Create a Basic Plan or to Upload a Budget.
Creating a Basic Plan
A Basic Plan is a Plan that is created using Recast’s budget prediction tools. These include the option to:
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Have Recast predict a baseline budget - When a Plan is created using this option, Recast uses our budget prediction functionality to create a budget for the selected time period. The budget prediction functionality looks at your historical spend and channel mix and uses this to predict your budget in the future. This is not an optimized budget or a recommendation of how you should spend but simply an extrapolation of past spend patterns.
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Provide a total spend number - If you have a certain amount of money allocated to your total budget but have not broken this spend down by channel or day, then select this option. When a Plan is created using this option, you will be prompted to enter a value for the total amount you wish to Plan to spend. Then the budget builder sets a spend limit constraint when projecting your expected spend per channel. Similar to the option “Have Recast predict a Baseline Budget”, the budget builder uses the pattern of your historical spend to project the spend per channel. This gives you a budget that is in line with your past spending patterns that is capped to the amount specified.
If your request is too different from the previous time period (say <50% or >200% past spend) the algorithm used to forecast your spend may not be able to find a budget that spends exactly the number you asked for. In this case, please use "Upload a Budget" to provide more details about how exactly you're planning to cut or increase spend. -
Re-use past spend - When a Plan is created using this option, Recast will take the past x days of spend (based on the number of days in your Plan) starting from the most recent date of available data and apply this to the Plan period indexed so that the most recent data is applied to the earliest dates in the Plan period. If some channels have missing actuals, Recast will apply the Recast predicted budget from the Default Plan to fill in the missing spend.
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Re-use spend from a previous year - When a Plan is created using this option, Recast will apply your actual spend from the previous year of available data to each date in the Plan period. The previous year is determined relative to the Plan period. If the previous year does not have data for all the channels across all dates in your Plan, Recast will continue searching for spend to apply to your Plan by going back another year. Channels without historical data will be set to $0 spend. It is possible that the spend in your Plan will be taken from different consecutive years based on the previous year of data available for each date in your Plan period.
A Basic Plan is useful when you do not yet have a planned budget but still want to create a rough Plan to get started.
Creating a Plan using an uploaded budget
If you have a budget already planned for your target time period, select this option to create a Plan from an uploaded budget. When you get to the budget upload step, you will have the option to select a CSV file from your computer to upload either by clicking and selecting your file or using drag and drop. Recast provides a template budget you can download and edit available in the upload box.
You can either upload a budget by including start_date and end_date columns in your upload file with the spend you want to allocate to each channel in the period in each channel column. Recast’s spend prediction functionality will spread your specified spend out over the date range provided to create a daily budget. If you have channels that are missing from your budget these will be assumed to be 0.
If you have extra channels in your budget that are not in your model, Recast will take you to the budget mapping tool which will allow you to specify how the extra channels map to the channels in your model. To use the mapping functionality:
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Select an existing mapping or create a new one in the modal
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Drag and drop the channels in your model to map to the channels in your budget upload. The spend specified in your uploaded file will be applied to the mapped channels. You can map more than one channel from your model to a channel in your budget. Recast will figure out the split between the channels based on your historical mix.
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“Save and use” the mapping to reuse the same column mapping for other budgets in the future.
When spend is missing for certain dates in your Plan period, you should see an error message. The Plan requires an upload that specifies the spend across all that channels you want to plan for across all the dates in your Plan period.
You will have the option to switch between these options later on in the creation flow.
Step 1: Select KPIs to Plan for
Firstly you will be prompted to select the KPIs for which to Plan. The options displayed will include all the KPIs set up by your Recast support team. A KPI can either be defined by a single model or an aggregation of multiple models. Talk to your Recast team to set up additional KPIs.
Step 2: Select your date range
Next you will be prompted to select the date range to Plan for. You will be able to select any date in the past beginning at your model start date and any date in the future 2 years from the last date of data in your model. Recast also has semantic date options including:
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Current week, month, quarter, year: These are defined as the calendar week, month, quarter, or year
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Next 7, 30, 90, 375 days: Beginning from the current calendar date.
Step 3a: Select your budget
Next input your budget either by selecting from one of the Recast created basic budget options or by uploading a file. Use the file template download button to give you a starting point.
Step 3b: Set your contextual variables (optional)
If your want to override the contextual variables provided alongside your budget, you have the option to explicitly set the value of your contextual variables in your Plan.
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Default: Carry forward the last historical value of the contextual variable and apply that for all dates. This matches what a forecast would use if you supplied no values
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Repeat Yearly: Re-use the value from the most recent matching calendar date in the historical data. This options is useful for seasonal context variables. If no historical data exists for the plan's date range, the option is greyed out
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Provide a single value: The value provided is applied to all dates in the Plan
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Upload: The value provided in each row is applied to all dates between the start date and end date
Step 4: Input your spikes
Finally select how you want to provide spikes for your Plan. You have the option between selecting the spikes used in the model and custom spikes. If you select the spikes used in the model, you will not be able to edit the spikes. If you select custom spikes you will be able to add any spike group defined in your model to any date in your Plan period.
Step 5: Submit your Plan
Finally click the “Finish” button to save your Plan. This will take you to a loading page and redirect you to the Plan once it is created. Before you save your Plan you can rename it using the “rename” button at the top of the form page.