Plan for the average month or the bad one?
The same three channels and the same $60,000 as the free media split, run again with the conversion curves uncertain. Optimizing the mean lands almost exactly where the free tool did. Optimizing the cautious case does not, and that is the point.
Words on this sheet
- Weighting: How much this item counts against the others.
Marketing Advanced Optimization under Uncertainty Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
How to Split Spend When Conversion Is a Guess
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
The same budget, optimized for two different questions:
- Optimizing the mean
- $32.3K / $16.4K / $11.3K about 2,840 orders
- Optimizing the cautious case
- $26.3K / $19.4K / $14.3K about 2,826 orders
- Search share
- 54% to 44% of the budget
- Search uncertainty
- 9x the next channel
Total orders are a straight line in each coefficient, so maximizing the average is nearly the same problem as pinning each coefficient at its own average: if that is your question, the free optimizer already answered it. Ask the other one and the money moves, because the variance on Search is about nine times that of the second channel and thirty-eight times the third, so spreading buys a narrower outcome. The trade is small and specific: about 14 orders a month given up on average to gain about 20 in the bad case. Widen the Search range to what entering a new auction looks like and the shift gets much larger. The search is evolutionary, so read the shape of the answer rather than the last dollar of it.
The model
Orders grow with the square root of spend on each channel. The three conversion coefficients are entered as the confidence intervals out of the curve fit rather than as the three figures everybody types as certainties.
| Channels | 3 |
| Budget | $60,000 a month |
| Response curve | orders grow with the square root of spend |
| Coefficients | ranges from the fit, not point estimates |
| Split and orders | optimized under uncertainty |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- When does a new hire start paying for themselves?Is the Next Hire Worth It?
- A product launch risk register pricing five ways a launch goes wrong against mitigation cost, from a calendar invite to production fixes. Free template.What Could Go Wrong With This Launch?
- The pipeline says you beat target. Will you?Will the New Business Pipeline Deliver?
- Can you hold the cost per customer you promised?Will the Campaign Hit the Cost Per Acquisition?
- What would have to change for this channel to pay?What Conversion Rate Makes This Channel Work?
- The winner got more opens. Did it get more clicks?Which Subject Line Won?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Optimization under uncertainty.