Marketing Mix Optimisation. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is the place to make the decisions that will either push a business forward or send it spinning off on some tangent. Armed with corporate objectives, marketers face the daunting task of choosing which tactics and channels to employ for strategic success.
Marketers must take into account complex buyer behaviour as well as constantly changing markets. Essentially, the decision must be made regarding the best mix of product, price, promotion and distribution will best fuel the sales machine. Are you scared yet?
Marketing Mix Optimisation is actually not the behemoth that many think. It’s an academic sounding name for something relatively simple. It’s the method that helps marketers determine the optimal mix of targeted marketing campaigns including the channels and media. Both traditional and digital media can be utilised and measured.
Through Marketing Mix Optimisation, organisations get a comprehensive view of their marketing activities and their impact on profits. This empowers marketers to be cut without adverse effect.
For example, MMO could help a company make an informed decision to send a customer newsletter once a month, rather than once a week, and reallocate that budget to another digital tactic. In this scenario, the company would maintain the same marketing budget but be positioned to increase revenue.
Is Marketing Mix Optimisation for You?
In a word, yes. Who wouldn’t want a more analytical decision-making tactic when it comes to developing and spending a marketing budget appropriately? Marketing Mix Optimisation has been through many iterations since its inception years ago with traditional marketing. Marketing tactics and channels were incorporated into a marketing plan based mostly on gut instinct. Not so with today’s Marketing Mix Optimisation. Today’s marketers need analytics and actionable tools. So, how do you start developing true Marketing Mix Optimisation for your business? There are some guideposts that will help you get started and stay on track. Identify your goals. Before you begin to pull data or start creative, get clear on your campaign goals. Are you just interested in generating some interest or do you have to generate a certain amount of leads? What KPIs will you measure? What is your Customer Acquisition Cost? What ROI will be acceptable? The more specific you can be with these elements, the more focused and successful your campaign.
Use the best data you have. Whether you’re a long-established business or a start up, use the most complete, current data you have and continually update it. The best decisions stem from the best data input.
Attribution is critical. When it comes to campaign measurement, you have to be able to attribute the marketing channels that drove your campaign success. It doesn’t matter if you’re plugged in to advanced tools like machine driven modeling or whether you use a simpler method, attribution is the only way you’ll get true optimisation of your marketing mix.
Don’t discount past experience. Of course, your campaigns will have to be forward thinking and reach your targeted prospects and customers in the channels where they want to get their communications. However, be sure to pay attention to the strengths you know about each channel and capitalise on them appropriately.
Why monitoring matters
No marketing campaign is a set-it-and-forget-it proposition. In fact, in-process campaign analytics will allow marketers to course correct if the initial plan isn’t pulling like it should. Plus you get tons of insight when monitoring past and current campaigns. You’ll get a better understanding of which tactics push actions toward goals and which channels work better than others. This will help with budget allocation of current campaigns and future work as well. You’ll also get a better view of performance in order to create a savvy mix of maximising ROI, forecasting and budget optimisation. Marketing Mix Optimisation is a lot like a Rubik’s Cube where a player can move and manipulate movable blocks of colour on a cube in order to get the correct colours to line up appropriately. It can take some skill and manipulation in order to get everything lined up properly but there’s great satisfaction when the task is completed successfully. Players love that they can choose what cubes to move but also that their decisions can change at any time to better suit their completion of the game. The changing variables of Marketing Mix Optimisation provide powerful tools so that marketers can alter campaigns based on insight, data and experience. Are you ready to play?