Build a weekly budget review instead of alerts
Thirty minutes a week beats any alerting scheme. The agenda, the four numbers it needs, and the single rule that stops it becoming a status meeting.
By Joris van Huët, Founder & CEOUpdated 2 min read
A thirty-minute recurring review beats any alerting scheme, because the constraint was never speed of notification. It was that nobody had a standing time to decide.
The agenda
| Minutes | Item | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 5 | Pacing against plan | Nothing, unless off |
| 5 to 15 | The four numbers per channel | Shared understanding |
| 15 to 25 | One decision | A decision |
| 25 to 30 | What we will know next week | A named check |
The one decision rule
Exactly one decision per review. Not zero, which turns it into a status meeting, and not five, which means none of them get thought about. If nothing needs deciding, cancel the meeting for that week and say why.
The habit of cancelling is what keeps the meeting valuable. A review that always happens regardless of whether there is anything to review is a meeting people learn to attend without preparing.
The named check
End by naming what you will know next week that you do not know now. Usually it is the result of a change made a fortnight ago finally appearing in a full lookback window. Writing it down turns the review into a chain rather than a series of disconnected sessions.
Why this outperforms alerting
An alert notifies you of a change. A review makes a decision. Those are different things, and most teams have plenty of the first and none of the second. Adding notification capacity to a team with no decision capacity produces noise.
The full argument against alerting on inferential numbers is in why real-time attribution alerts mislead.
What to automate
The assembly, not the judgement.
The build order is in automating attribution reporting in one afternoon.
The first four weeks
Run it manually. If after four weeks the decisions are real, automate the assembly. If they are not, the problem was never the reporting.
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
What should a weekly marketing budget review cover?
Pacing against plan, exactly one decision, and a named check for what you will know next week. Thirty minutes, and cancel it in weeks with nothing to decide.Why is a review better than an alerting system?
An alert notifies you of a change; a review makes a decision. Most teams have plenty of notification and no standing decision capacity, so adding more notification produces noise rather than better allocation.Should I automate the weekly review?
Automate the assembly of the numbers, never the judgement. Run it manually for four weeks first. If the decisions coming out of it are real, the assembly is worth automating. If they are not, reporting was never the constraint.
Go deeper: Causal attribution, explained.
Sixty-second versions of these ideas: Causality Engine on YouTube Shorts.
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Terms in this article
- AttributionAttribution identifies user actions that contribute to a desired outcome and assigns value to each. It reveals which marketing touchpoints drive conversions.
- Attribution ReportAttribution Report shows which touchpoints or channels receive credit for a conversion. It identifies which campaigns drive desired actions.
- SessionA Session is a group of user interactions with your website within a given timeframe. It can include multiple page views, events, and transactions.