Media mix models will save you time and increase confidence in marketing’s contribution to the business
Media Mix Models (MMMs) are head and shoulders above attribution models for many reasons. If attribution is nice. MMM is twice as nice. Attribution models tell you which channels and campaigns got credit. The problem? They require a sophisticated CRM implementation, they are typically rules based, they don’t include all marketing efforts, they completely ignore other revenue operations efforts, and they require manual joins to spend data for any ROI calculations. And worst, they are just a descriptive statistic. They don’t give you an optimal budget recommendation or allow for what-if scenario planning.
At Align BI, we think a better approach is to skip attribution, or at least save it for ABM and campaign insights, and instead use a MMM. MMMs look at the macro relationship between marketing channel spends, sales efforts, customer experience programs, and your sales funnel stages.
We collect this data directly from their platforms and then build the MMM, which is made up of two steps: (1) a regression model to identify the effect of each variable on your sales funnel stages and (2) an optimization model to identify the optimal mix that maximizes the outcome. It allows companies to run “what-if” scenarios. “What-if” scenarios are an important capability for planning and decision making.
Imagine being able to tell your stakeholders where you are spending your money, why, and the expected results!