Building Plans
Navigation
Click the Plans tab on the left-hand navigation bar
You’ll be taken to a list of all existing plans, and can “Add a Plan” at the top right
Define the Basics
Name
Starting Point - The default start date for any new plan is after the published model. However, a plan can link to any of your simulated models, or to other plans, a process known as chaining plans.
Date Range - The maximum duration for any single plan is one year, but plans can be chained together up to 3 years of future marketing.
Define your Objective
Optimization Objectives
Optimize a Budget: The most commonly used objective, this plan allows you to enter your total marketing budget and find the most profitable marketing investment plan for your budget.
Hit a Revenue Target: Enter your revenue goal and find the most profitable investment plan to reach your goal.
Hit a Volume Target: Enter your volume target and we'll optimize your plan to reach that goal most efficiently. Volume represents your key sales activity metric (e.g., units sold, leads generated, foot traffic).
Maximize Profits: Find the maximum profit a marketing plan can generate for your business. This objective continues to invest until the mROI = $1.00 across all periods. No further input is needed for this optimization.
Forecasting Objectives (No Optimization Component)
Forecast a Plan: Upload your marketing plan and explore revenue, sales volume, and profit forecasts.
Status Quo: Replicate your most recent marketing execution in a future period. Status Quo plans must rely on a model with a minimum of one year's worth of historical data. Status Quo plans pull in the matching period from the model a year prior to the plan.
Note: When plans are chained together, the status quo is still pulling from the model period, not the chained plan.
Learn more about the use-cases for each Plan Objective.
Define your Constraints
The investment constraints step enables independent settings for each tactic in a plan for both:
Investment Level
Timing
By default, plans will optimize the investment level and timing of all tactics to the highest mROI.
Learn more about Investment Constraints.
Define your Business Environment
Environment factors are variables that you cannot control and can affect the outcome of the sales. These factors can include things like distribution, seasonality, and external events like COVID-19. By default, Keen Platform will automatically calculate the environment factors based on the data you’ve already input. This step allows you to review the calculation and tweak any incorrect assumptions it may have made.
Learn more about setting up your Business Environment.
Run The Plan
Once the above steps are completed, the plan can be simulated. Simulation only takes a few seconds and will generate the Results Brief. Review performance projections, confirm alignment with your expectations, compare the plan to others, or return to any of the previous steps to edit it.
If you would like to dig deeper or leverage any of Keen’s templated reports, do so in Reports.