How can we make MMM more forward facing?
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half – John Wanamaker”
This quote from John Wanamaker, highlights a key frustration for marketeers – the (in)ability to evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign. Without knowing how well previous campaigns performed you can’t plan future ones. Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) is considered to be a solution to this problem however there are some bug bears.
The process is slow and its insights do not reach wide enough through the business. A standard MMM project takes a team at least 3 months to collect and format data, model and then finally build and deliver a presentation; and usually by this time media buying deadlines have passed. There is also the issue that sudden shocks or changes to the market (for example, Huawei being excluded from Android), meaning that marketeers can’t react to this market change until they have full visibility 3 months hence.
Brightblue have developed the REACT solution. REACT has three core elements – API Connectivity, Monthly Modelling and Dashboarding. API connectivity allows us to securely connect to a client’s database to directly extract data, this bypasses the need for the client to extract and send over the data themselves – saving time and resource. The Monthly Modelling uses advanced modelling techniques where we’re able to take our previous knowledge of the performance of channel to inform how we evaluate their performance now – allowing for much quicker model updates. We’re then able to share our insights on our bespoke secure dashboards which can be accessed by as many people as needed at any time.
A unique benefit of REACT is the ability to run optimisations by channel, campaign and time of year. As we model on a monthly basis, we’re able to construct monthly response curves for each of our channels, which can be used to build optimisations. Take the example of a marketeer working in a NPD heavy sector, during NPD launches the cost per click for Generic Search shoots up and so investing in the channel during this period may not always be wise, with REACT we can factor these monthly changes in channel effectiveness that would otherwise be averaged out at the annual level.
Planning for the future in marketing is difficult, with so many channels available and a rapidly changing landscape its paramount marketeers are able to spot and respond to changes quickly. Marketeers can do this with REACT.
Brightblue Consulting are a London based consultancy which help businesses drive incremental profit from their data. We provide predictive analytics that enable clients to make informed decisions based on data and industry knowledge. Through Market Mix Modelling, a strand of Econometrics, Brightblue has a proven track record showing a 30% improvement in marketing Return on Investment for clients’ spend. If you are interested to find out more please contact us through email by clicking here and one of our consultants will get back to you shortly.