🥅 Goals

If Insights are where you see the current state of your marketing, Goals is where you can apply that knowledge. Think of it as the "so what?" that guides what you do with your model.

❓ What goals are used for

• Track progress against your goals (current and future)

• Understand the probability of achieving your target

• Receive tailored reallocation suggestions based on where your model see the most opportunity

💁 How to create a goal

To create a Goal, navigate to the "Goals" tab featured in the top banner of your recast dashboard. From there, click "Add Goal", and input the following:

Step 1: KPIs to target

If you have multiple models with Recast, you can set your goals so that you are targeting an aggregate outcome across multiple models. Select which models to track in your goal by checking the box next to the model name.

Next you can assign a weight multiplier to each model. You can learn more by visiting Plan across multiple models.

Step 2: Set Goal Parameters

Input the following fields to specify the goal you want to track.

• Goal Name

• Date Range

• Budget - this should be the planned spend during the goal period. Additionally, if your goal start date is in the future, you can add dates between the end of your modeled data and the start date to start getting forecasts immediately. Alternatively, if your start date is in the past, you do not need to provide planned spend for historical dates because that data is already available in your model.

  • The dates in the budget file must align with the date range. For more details on creating and uploading budgets, view "Create a Budget"

• KPI goal (e.g. $20M revenue; 50k units, 15k new subscribers)

• Advanced/Optional: Selections for spikes and lower funnel channels (Visit the FAQ for more information on lower funnel channels)

Setting goals that start in the future:

You can set a goal to start in the future to see how you are forecasted to perform against your goal before your goal period starts. Simply make sure that the budget you upload is inclusive of the dates in your goal period. You will be able to see how you are expected to perform (expected revenue, expected difference between your goal and your outcome) as well as the predicted probability that you will reach your goal. As long as your budget contains dates in the goal period, you will be able to see automatic recommendations for spend changes that will help you optimize your budget.

🗓️ When goals are updated

Goals - including forecasts, the probability of hitting your goal, and recommendations- are updated every week along with your model.

📤 Goal Outputs

Probability of hitting your goal

The goals tab provides a probabilistic target and a visual reference to how you are tracking towards your goal. This is calculated based on a projection of your spend and ROI/CPA across all your channels.

60% probability does not mean you will hit 60% of your goal. It means you are 60% likely to meet 100% of your goal.

Details

This table shows values for spend, your dependent variable, and marketing performance.

These values shown are:

“so far” — meaning for the period that we have data for

“forecasted” — meaning for the period that is being forecasted by the model between the model’s data and the end of the goal period

“projected” — which is a combination of the “so far” and “forecasted” data.

Expected performance against plan

This plot shows your goal as a straight line to your goal value over the goal period. Actual performance will be plotted between the goal’s start date and the last modeled date. Forecasted performance (and its associated uncertainty interval) will be plotted from the last modeled date plus one until the goal’s end date.

💡 Recommendations

Recast has the capability to provide recommendations to improve your progress towards your goals. These recommendations are computed automatically whenever your goal is edited or the model is updated. To see these recommendations:

1. Scroll down to the “Recommendations” section.

2. Select your Setting tab. The Conservative option will adhere most closely to your original budget, while the aggressive option will make large departures from your original budget.

3. View the proposed budget changes via the graphs.

4. (Optionally) Download optimized budget.

How to read the graphs.

These are the automatic recommendations Recast provides as a result of your goals and current budget. The Recast model forecasts how your current budget will perform against your goals and provides suggestions as to how you can modify your budget to improve your performance.

• The graph on the left compares your current budget against the Recast recommended budget. Here you can see which channels Recast proposes you increase or decrease spend in. You can also read how close to optimal your spend is in each channel.

• The graph on the right shows the current budget vs. the optimal recommended budget. Using this graph you can see the channels in which you are under and over spending, compare budgets and see which channels Recast recommends you change spend in most.

• The graph below shows Recast’s proposed spend over time in each of your channels. In visualizing it in this way, you can see how to improve your spending over time in each of your channels to further realize your goal.

• The table at the bottom shows the difference between the current and optimized budget. Use this to determine the necessary adjustments in spending for each channel.

Constraints used by Automatic Recommendations

The automatic recommendations tool has some constraints that are useful to be aware of.

• The total spend on every day needs to be the same

• The spend in every cell day over day (channel x day) can’t change more than +/-0.8x of the original spend for the conservative setting, +/-2x for the moderate setting and +/-10x for the aggressive setting.

• The optimization is for total impact, not total impact in the time period, so it may be that you can optimize for total impact, but less of it will be realized in the time window.

Learn how to set up a goal in this video: