A big mistake

Hey, it’s Myles.

Because of me, a client missed out on probably $30k - $40k in revenue in December…

And I only found out 3 days ago whilst planning our strategy for Q1.

We’d been scaling throughout November and into December, and things looked great.

These are their two biggest months of the year, and so I was frequently logging into their account purely to raise the budget.

In the end we spent $35,859 on Google and Microsoft Ads combined (both of which I manage) and generated $318,423 in revenue.

However, come January, I realised that we could have probably scaled much more aggressively…

My mistake was not checking the previous year’s sales data in Google & Shopify.

If I had seen the numbers we’d done for the last 4-5 years, I would have had a better forecast to work with.

But I had forgotten to do this.

And so my client might have missed out on $30 - $40k in revenue.

However, I don’t think they actually did, because we’d been struggling to scale shopping and search past a certain threshold while maintaining KPIs.

Hence we’re going to be focusing on YouTube ad creatives this Q1 to try scale further.

But, if I did own a time machine and could go back 2 months, here’s what I’d do.

1. Look at data from 4-5 previous years and note down the percentage increase or decrease in revenue month-over-month (MoM).

2. Average the MoM percentage change across 4–5 years. E.g. December - January revenue change is -27% averaged across 5 years.

3. Use those averages to forecast future trends. For example, if January typically brings 40% less revenue than December, use December’s revenue to estimate your January target.

4. With that target in hand, use your MER goal to calculate the advertising budget you have. E.g. If you want a 7 MER, you have Revenue Target / 7 to work with as budget.

You can take this even further, but remember that relying on past data isn’t accurate at a granular level.

You should really only use it for ballpark targets.

A little time spent on forecasting can make a huge difference in your bottom line.

I hope this email was useful.

Talk soon,

Myles

PS - If you’re running an eCommerce brand doing $30k/month or more and want me to build out your Google Ads account in the next 30-days, book a free call with me here »