What is MMM and What’s the Renewed Interest in it?

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) provides transparency to each marketing activity. Applying a market mix model makes use of analytics to fully understand the impact of each marketing input on your sales. No matter what industry you’re in or what kind of business we’re talking about, understanding this relationship is important for successful marketing campaigns. 

If your business is considering using a marketing mix model, we will dive into the topic a bit deeper, and explain some of the main advantages that businesses can gain from MMM.

What is Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM)?

Marketing mix modeling is a type of analysis that looks into the direct impact of different marketing inputs on sales. The approach helps to quantify the impact of various marketing activities to understand how to optimize your marketing spending and efforts.

MMM helps businesses forecast what the impact of future sales tactics could look like. You can use MMM to optimize your revenue potential and generate a greater ROI.

The term Marketing Mix Modeling was coined by Neil Borden in 1949. He came up with the idea of carefully measuring all of your marketing variables and adapting them as needed. Today, the idea behind MMM stays the same, although we have many new digital tools and channels to enhance the process. 

The current market conditions are playing a major role around MMM and its rising popularity. New privacy laws and regulations have changed the way businesses can access consumer data. With firmer data regulations in place, marketers need to look towards other sources, like MMM, to gain the metrics they need. Google and Apple have also implemented changes that are crippling app tracking. This is also driving a new interest in MMM as a means to help marketers better understand their efforts.

Get more MMM insights from Alex Gaski, former U.S. Army Military Intelligence expert turned .

Why is There a Renewed Interest in MMM?

There are many advantages of applying marketing mix modeling to a business. Here are a couple of reasons why businesses have gained a renewed interest in MMM. 

Predictive Capability

Marketing mix modeling allows businesses to predict what future sales and marketing results could look like. The process can be used to inform key business decisions for better outcomes.

This is because marketing mix modeling offers an advanced set of data that reflects accurate and reliable results. By using MMM, you get real insights into the data that matters, which you can use to drive strategic decisions for your business. 

Instead of building marketing campaigns around guesswork, MMM gives you real insights into which channels and marketing investments are producing which outcomes for your sales. This provides a solid framework that can support strategic business decisions. 

By using marketing mix modeling, companies will be able to make decisions faster and with greater accuracy. Not only does this improve efficiency, but it helps to make every decision achieve better results due to these decisions being backed by data. 

This predictive capability is one of the main advantages of using MMM in today's world.

Start our School of Analytics series to learn more about . 

Portfolio Management

Portfolio managers need to make key investment decisions about a business's programs and projects. MMM allows portfolio managers to gain better performance insights to help them make more informed strategic decisions. 

MMM looks at all of your marketing activities to understand their effectiveness. With this information, businesses can optimize each marketing channel, and every marketing dollar spent to ensure they achieve maximum impact.

MMM removes the guesswork and ensures that each marketing activity is performing at its best, and contributing as much as possible towards the end goal - sales. 

MMM allows portfolio managers to justify their budget decisions, and understand exactly how and why a marketing budget is allocated. With MMM, you are able to enjoy fast-paced decision-making, enhanced ROI with each marketing investment, and a greater understanding of the exact impact that each marketing activity has on your sales. 

This all adds together to create a more effective marketing and sales strategy that delivers stronger results. 

Better ROI

One of the major advantages of applying marketing mix modeling is that businesses are able to achieve a far greater return on investment with each marketing decision. The aim of marketing mix modeling is to understand how each marketing activity is working towards your sales. Doing this allows businesses to clearly assess and understand the effectiveness of each marketing channel and the kind of ROI that it offers. 

Basically, you will be able to discover which marketing activities and channels have a high ROI, and which ones have a low ROI. This allows you to gain a far better understanding of where budget allocation and marketing actions are most effective in terms of your sales. 

Instead of looking at metrics that don’t really matter, marketing mix modeling gives you direct insights into the ROI of each marketing activity. 

Read more about . 

Protects from Data Fatigue

Data fatigue happens when a business collects more data than it can use to draw insights from. Either too much data is collected, which can be overwhelming, or the data is collected messily or incorrectly which prevents businesses from drawing accurate insights from it. 

A major advantage of marketing mix modeling is that it avoids data fatigue. With MMM, only the relevant and important data is collected, and direct insights are drawn from it. While MMM makes use of a wide range of data, the data is also very granular. 

This means it's easier to understand the impact of your data, which allows you to make faster, smarter actions based on the data.

Conclusion

MMM helps marketers understand how different marketing activities all contribute together to influence sales. Understanding this is the best way to optimize marketing spend, and achieve a better ROI with each marketing investment. 

If you want to learn more about marketing mix modeling, watch the webinar replay where Proof CEO discussed MMM and its importance in detail.