5 Forces: How to Use 5 Forces AI for Scale, Chill, and Kill Decisions (Strategic Analysis)

On This Page:

• Introduction

• Strategic Analysis Steps

  1. Start with Kill Campaigns

  2. Move to Scale Campaigns

  3. Review Chill Campaigns

• FAQs

 

Introduction

This document explains how to use the 5 Forces Analysis report to make accurate Scale, Chill, and Kill decisions each day. Once your campaigns have Intentions assigned and KPI Zones configured, 5 Forces AI automatically analyzes your data daily and classifies every campaign into one of four categories so you always know what actions to take next.

Who This Doc Is For

• Media buyers who want a clear daily plan for budget decisions

• Strategists who want AI guidance aligned with campaign intentions

• Teams who want to reduce manual analysis time and take action faster

How Scale, Chill, and Kill Works

5 Forces AI evaluates each campaign using:

• The campaign's assigned Intention in FunnelVision

• Your Scale, Chill, and Kill KPI Zones

Based on these elements, campaigns fall into four categories:

• Scale: Performing above your KPI boundaries

• Chill: Performing within your target range

• Kill: Underperforming and likely wasting budget

• Observing: Newly launched or recently changed campaigns that need stability before decisions are made

Why This Is Valuable

Most marketers look at metrics like ROAS or CAC in isolation, without considering the purpose of the campaign. That is where the 5 Forces Methodology makes a major difference.

By first setting the Intention of each campaign (for example, Cold Traffic Prospecting or Immediate Sales) and defining your Scale, Chill, and Kill KPI Zones, you give Wicked Reports the strategic context it needs to deliver more meaningful insights.

The Strategic Analysis does not just show you what is happening. It tells you what to do about it based on:

• The correct attribution model and date range for the intention

• Your defined performance goals

• Trends across Traffic, Creative plus Offer, and Budget

This gives you a daily strategic playbook, automatically sorted by channel, that helps you:

• Scale campaigns that are trending toward success

• Spot early signs of weakness before they cost you

• Understand whether poor performance is caused by traffic, creative, or budget

Before You Start

Before following the workflow below, confirm that you have completed the setup steps from the previous article:

• Each campaign has an Intention assigned in FunnelVision

• Each Intention has a Chill Zone set in 5 Forces Analysis

Once these items are in place, you are ready to use the Daily Scale, Chill, Kill workflow below.

Strategic Analysis Steps

1. Start with Kill Campaigns

2. Move to Scale Campaigns

3. Review Chill Campaigns

How to Read Each Campaign in the Analysis
The report is grouped by channel, with each campaign showing:

• The assigned Intention

• An AI Summary Recommendation

• An expandable section for Strategic Insights that explains how the recommendation was generated, broken into:

  • Traffic

  • Budget

  • Creative + Offer

Traffic:

• Description: Traffic reflects the flow of visitors, leads, and customers your brand attracts. It shows how effectively you are engaging both new and returning audiences based on the campaign’s intention.

• KPI: New vs Repeat Visitors, New vs Repeat Customers, and New vs Repeat Leads

• Insight Example:

  • Focus: Traffic Accuracy

  • Evidence: Campaign shows 18.33 new customers vs 4.61 repeat customers, which aligns with the acquisition goal. New visits at 418 indicate strong reach to new audiences.

  • Recommendation: Continue your current targeting strategy because it is effectively reaching new customers.
    

Budget:

• Description: Budget refers to how much you’re investing in a campaign and helps determine if you need to make a change
• KPI: ROAS or nCAC
• Insight Example:

• • Focus: Intention KPI is in the Kill Zone

  • Evidence: Average cost per new customer at $121.31 is above the profitable range of 50 to 120, with an upward trend of 100.1 percent.

  • Recommendation: Immediate action required: Kill or reduce budget due to costs exceeding your maximum threshold and showing significant deterioration.

Creative + Offer:

• Description: Creative + Offer reflects the strength of your messaging and value proposition. It evaluates how effectively your ads and landing pages convert traffic into customers.
• KPI: Clicks to New Customer Conversion Rate or Clicks to All Customer Conversion Rate, depending on your intention
• Insight Example:

  • Focus: Low Conversion Rate

  • Evidence: Click to customer conversion rate is 0.8 percent with a declining trend of 46.3 percent. nCAC trend is increasing by 110.8 percent.

  • Recommendation: Before killing this campaign, test new creative variations or a stronger offer to improve conversion rates.

These insights allow you to quickly understand why a campaign falls into Scale, Chill, or Kill and what to do next. You will use them throughout the steps below to guide your decisions with confidence.

1. Start with Kill Campaigns

Kill zone campaigns are losing money and need to be diagnosed and improved.

1. Filter to the Kill bucket
   This isolates only campaigns that are underperforming.

2. Review the AI Summary Recommendation
   The summary highlights the campaigns losing the most money and explains at a high level why they are in the Kill Zone.

3. Open Strategic Insights to see the tactical issues to solve
   Insights are broken into Traffic, Budget, and Creative + Offer so you can see the exact areas causing the decline.

4. Use AI’s deeper analysis to determine if the campaign can recover
   The AI evaluates trends, conversion rates, AOV, traffic segmentation, and more.
   If the AI believes the trend might reverse, it will tell you. Otherwise, determine whether the data reveals a tactical move that can save the campaign.

   • Example issues you may see:

     • Traffic segmentation is not driving the right visits.

     • CAC and CPC are rising.

     • Conversion rate is low.

5. Decide whether to improve or remove budget:

   • If campaign improvements are possible, assign the appropriate tasks.
     Using the examples above, that would mean improving audience segmentation, revising the landing page, and/or testing new creative.

   • If you have already tried optimizations and it is still in the Kill Zone, turn the campaign off.

   • If this campaign was previously scaled up, lower spend back to the last successful budget. Otherwise, turn this campaign off.

6. Repeat this process for each Kill  zone campaign

2. Move to Scale Campaigns

Scale zone campaigns are making money according to your KPI Zones and are ready for more budget.

1. Filter to the Scale bucket
   This shows only campaigns that are outperforming.

2. Confirm why the campaign is winning
   Use the same Traffic, Budget, and Creative + Offer insights to validate what is driving success.

3. Increase the budget
   When a campaign is in the Scale Zone, increase the budget enough to bring the KPI back toward the Chill Zone. Most teams adjust budgets by 10 to 20 percent to avoid destabilizing performance.

4. If trends turn negative, optimize before scaling further
   Even if a campaign is in Scale, a negative trend means you should improve Traffic or Creative first to prevent a severe drop-off.

5. Repeat this process for each Scale zone campaign

3. Review Chill Campaigns (optional)

Chill zone campaigns are performing within your acceptable KPI zones and do not require immediate action. However, since 5 Forces AI is saving you so much time, you could allot a small amount of that time toward reviewing the Chill zone for areas of optimization.

1. Filter to the Chill bucket
   This shows campaigns performing inside your KPI boundaries.

2. Look for optional improvements
   These may include:

   • Improving repeat customer acquisition

   • Testing stronger offers

   • Refining landing pages

   • Refreshing creative

3. Repeat this process for each Chill zone campaign

These smaller optimizations can push a Chill zone campaign into the Scale zone when implemented thoughtfully. So, it's often worth a quick analysis. 

Closing Note
The 5 Forces Analysis automatically updates every morning to give you a fresh, clean starting point for your day. Any time you adjust Intentions, KPI Zones, or your Sales Cycle length, you can rerun the analysis to see those changes immediately. If not, your next daily run will update everything for you.

By letting 5 Forces AI handle the heavy lifting in the background, you get a simple, reliable daily plan. You can trust the recommendations, follow the steps above, and focus your energy on the actions that matter most for performance.

FAQs

• Why does each campaign show Last 7 Day Ad Spend even when the analysis uses 14 or 30 days?
  The Last 7 Day Ad Spend is shown to help you quickly understand which campaigns have had the highest impact on your account in the recent week. Even though each campaign may use a different analysis window based on its intention, we always sort campaigns by the last 7 days of spend. This keeps the report focused on the campaigns that matter most right now.
• What if I disagree with a campaign's zone?
  Update the Intention or adjust your KPI Zones to better reflect your real business context. Then rerun the analysis so the recommendations reflect your new boundaries.
• How do I compare the results in the 5 Forces Analysis to my FunnelVision data?
  Each Intention uses a specific attribution model and date range that depends on both the Intention settings and your Sales Cycle length. Because of this, there is no single FunnelVision view that matches all 5 Forces Analysis results. Instead, use these guidelines:
  • For Facebook campaign analysis, 5 Forces always includes 50 percent view through conversions
  • Each Intention's tooltip tells you how many days back to use for the Within Last filter in FunnelVision. The tooltip also tells you which attribution model to select, and it updates automatically when your Sales Cycle changes
    • "Multi-Touch Full Impact" means Full Funnel and Full Impact
    • "Multi-Touch Linear" means Full Funnel and Linear
    • "Last Click" means Last Click attribution
    • MOF and BOF windows adjust for intentions using Full Impact:
      
      • MOF time window: roughly 1/2 the length of the sales cycle round to the nearest 7 days
      • BOF time window: roughly 1/4 the length of the sales cycle round to the nearest 7 days
  
  

  5 Forces Intention Tooltip	FunnelVision Within Last and Compare to	FunnelVision Attribution