In SEO, base forecasts usually aren't enough. That's because whenever you forecast, it tends to be at an intervention point. That could be anything from new budgets, new objectives, to new clients.
Say for example you're an SEO agency pitching to win new business, a forecast built on the changing environment of the past won't be entirely reflective. That's because as an agency, you'd want to exceed where the client would have otherwise been without you.
Or let's say you're a business that has just received a significant volume of marketing investment. A base forecast wouldn't capture that. When new information emerges as a result of an intervention, base forecasts should be adjusted to improve forecast accuracy.
That’s why in FutureThought, we’ve provided some additional inputs in the interactive report to model various performance scenarios.
The base forecast tells you ‘based on your historical data you should achieve X’ and the interactive inputs are there as a layer of judgmental forecasting based on your domain expertise and any new information you have. They tell you ‘if you focus on Y, or if Z happens, you will achieve X.’
There are three different categories of inputs in the interactive report:
The two sessions inputs allow you to forecast sessions growth on top of your base forecast.
Input the % growth you’d expect to see on top of the base forecast. The report then adds the expected growth exponentially on your base forecast for the remainder of the forecast period.
This is useful for example if you’ve decided to target a group of keywords and have estimated the volume of additional organic sessions you’ll attract over the forecast period.
The inputs, as shown in the gif below, allow you to define confidence intervals ie. 30-50% so that you can add uncertainty to your forecasts.