Marketing Performance Forecasting & Budget Optimization

A Business Intelligence project analysing marketing performance, funnel efficiency, advertising ROI and budget allocation using Power BI, Excel and scenario analysis.

Power BI Excel Power Query DAX Forecasting Scenario Analysis

Business Challenge

Marketing teams need to understand whether increasing advertising investment is translating into sustainable revenue growth, stronger conversions and improved return on investment.

The objective of this project was to analyse historical marketing performance, identify trends and seasonality, evaluate funnel efficiency and test whether increasing advertising spend would improve marketing returns.

Analytical Objectives

1. Understand Performance

Analyse revenue, leads, conversions and ROI over time to identify trends and seasonal patterns.

2. Evaluate Funnel Efficiency

Examine website sessions, leads, conversions and lead-to-conversion performance.

3. Measure Spend Efficiency

Compare advertising spend with revenue and evaluate indicators such as CPL and revenue per lead.

4. Test Budget Scenarios

Simulate increased advertising spend and compare the resulting ROI with actual performance.

Key Performance Indicators

The dashboard provides an executive-level view of the key marketing performance indicators.

€1.53M
Total Revenue
66K
Total Leads
10K
Total Conversions
15.55%
Lead-to-Conversion Rate
3.08
ROI
€5.71
Cost per Lead

Power BI Dashboard

The interactive dashboard was structured around executive performance, funnel performance and marketing spend efficiency.

Marketing Performance Power BI Executive Summary Dashboard

Executive Summary — revenue, ROI and marketing performance trends.

Marketing Funnel Performance Power BI Dashboard

Funnel Performance — website sessions, leads and conversions.

Marketing Spend Efficiency Power BI Dashboard

Spend Efficiency — advertising spend, ROI and revenue per lead.

Marketing Budget Simulation Power BI Dashboard

Budget Simulation — actual versus simulated advertising spend and ROI.

Key Findings

Revenue Growth & Seasonality

Revenue demonstrates an overall upward trend across the analysis period, with noticeable seasonal fluctuations and stronger performance toward Q4.

Funnel Performance

Lead and conversion volumes generally trend upward, while the lead-to-conversion rate remains relatively stable at 15.55%.

Spend Efficiency

Increasing advertising spend can generate additional revenue, but the analysis suggests that incremental returns may decline at higher spending levels.

Revenue per Lead

Revenue per lead provides an additional view of acquisition efficiency and helps evaluate whether additional leads are translating into sufficient value.

Budget Scenario Analysis

To test whether increasing advertising investment would improve efficiency, I created a simulated spending scenario that increased advertising spend during selected periods and compared simulated ROI with actual ROI.

Metric Actual Simulated
ROI 3.08 2.93
ROI Uplift — -5.05%

Key insight: The simulated increase in advertising spend produced higher spending but a lower overall ROI. This suggests that simply increasing the total marketing budget may not be the most efficient strategy when incremental returns are diminishing.

Business Recommendations

1. Prioritize Efficient Periods

Concentrate marketing investment on periods and campaigns where additional spend continues to generate attractive returns.

2. Optimize Conversion

Improve conversion efficiency alongside acquisition growth rather than relying solely on increased traffic or advertising spend.

3. Monitor Incremental ROI

Evaluate the incremental return generated by additional advertising investment before scaling campaign budgets.

4. Use Scenario Planning

Incorporate budget simulations into marketing planning to evaluate potential outcomes before making allocation decisions.

Overall recommendation: Rather than increasing total advertising spend indiscriminately, marketing investment should be concentrated on high-efficiency periods and campaigns while simultaneously improving conversion performance.

Tools & Technical Skills

Power BI DAX Power Query Microsoft Excel Data Modelling KPI Development Forecasting Scenario Analysis Data Visualization Business Analysis

Project

This project demonstrates how technical BI capabilities can be combined with business analysis to translate marketing data into actionable recommendations.

Related analysis: This Power BI dashboard builds on the same 24-month marketing dataset used in my Excel forecasting project. The Excel analysis focuses on forecasting, trends and seasonality, while this Power BI analysis extends the work into interactive KPI monitoring, funnel performance, ROI analysis and budget scenario analysis.

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