A marketing simulation for paid media, in four minutes.

Is a marketing simulation useful for paid media?

Useful for one specific thing: the moment between reading the situation and sending the reply. Running a campaign teaches you the tools. Nothing in the tools teaches you what to send back when the plan’s own minimums say the targets cannot hold at the new budget, or which number to lead the report with the week the conversion definition changed. Those moments arrive with a deadline and no rehearsal. A simulation is the rehearsal.

Two kinds exist. Market simulations run over rounds: you set prices and spend, a model responds, you read the results and go again. They are good for feeling how a market moves. The exercise here is the other kind, a single decision with the facts a practitioner would have had, written in advance, with the reasoning written in advance too. It is closer to a case than to a game, and it takes minutes rather than a term.

How the exercise runs

1. The situation. A client email, the approved plan, the numbers that are in front of you and the ones that are not. Your role and what you can change without asking.
2. Your call. Four options. Each is something an experienced person might do; none is a trick. You choose one and commit it. A committed call stands, which is the point: the feeling of deciding with incomplete information is the thing being practised.
3. The reasoning. Only after the commit. Why the strongest call is strongest under these facts, what each of the others costs, and what would change the answer. Where two calls are close, it says so.
4. What you keep. One rule, and the reply you would send, ready to copy.

The free one

Tuesday, 09:14. The launch plan was approved last week: four markets, six weeks, $120,000, a lead target per market. The client writes: a 30% budget reduction, please revise the plan before noon, simplest is to trim everything evenly, markets and targets and launch date all stay as agreed. The table in front of you shows what each market needs to reach its target at the planned cost per lead. It is 09:20. What do you change first?

About four minutes. No signup. The reasoning opens after you commit.

How long does it take?

About four minutes to the reasoning. The optional parts after it, a deeper question and one more situation, add a minute or two if you open them. In the paid edition a case is three to five minutes to the reasoning, and the 38 together take a few hours at whatever pace you like.

Can a team use it?

Yes, and it works better that way. Everyone commits on their own before anybody speaks, then the team compares calls. The spread is the useful part: three people choosing three different defensible calls is a conversation about what the team actually believes, and the reasoning gives it a reference point that is not the loudest person in the room. Each person needs their own copy of the paid edition; the free case needs nothing.

What the paid edition adds

Media, 2027 Edition is 38 of these across Brief, Plan, Build, Run and Prove: the dashboard that is green while sales are furious, the conversions that jumped the week the definition changed, the approval that turns out not to have been one, the wrong landing page that has spent $4,300 and the client who does not know yet. Every call you make is kept in your Callbook beside the strongest one, with your own note, and a Playbook file is built from them. Finish all 38 and a certificate of completion issues in your name. The free case is not among the 38, so nothing is spoiled by trying it first.

Related

• How a case works, state by state, from the message to the thing you keep.
• Budget reallocation without breaking the plan: the method behind the free case’s situation, on a different example.
• A media plan example, every calculation shown, if you would rather see a whole plan before deciding anything.