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  When Harry Met Sally (Part 1 – A Primer on Financial Analysis)   Let us go down the memory lane and recall the classic rom-com, “When Harry Met Sally”, from the late 1980s featuring Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan). The arguments between Harry and Sally provide an interesting backdrop for explaining the interplay between different thought processes while constructing your financial envelope. Allow me to borrow two fictional characters from the movie. Sally and Harry represent the marketer and the finance guy respectively. The graphic below personifies the inherent tension between marketing which fosters creative thinking and free play and the finance function that is numbers-based, and metrics-driven. Sally would like to expand reach, create awareness, generate leads and conversion. But Harry erects roadblocks along the way to make sure the campaigns are cost-effective and optimally executed.   Although Harry’s position appears rational due to i...

Ad Campaigns A 101 guide for digital marketers Running a marketing campaign is jargon-laden and chock-full of metrics. Are you genuinely confused? Do not worry. We will unpack the terms and put you at ease in this introductory document for running a simple ad campaign. The information is written generically that the principles contained here are applicable across all major ad networks. Additionally, we will also discuss social media posts and how to use them synchronously with ads. Broadly speaking, there are four steps as shown in the graphic below (Figure 1):  Figure 1: Four-step process for running ad campaigns Step 1: Objective Setting Imagine you have a chunk of funds, say $2 million, from a family inheritance and you would like to retire early and utilize the funds to make a living. Firstly, you would have to figure out your expenses including your mortgage, etc, and then back work to compute how much financial return you would need on the funds to live within your means. Set...