By Yeimy Garcia Smith, SVP, Global Measurement
You’ve just completed your marketing mix modeling (MMM) analysis. Now what?
MMM is a must-have marketing measurement tool that can answer business questions about creative, audience, reach and frequency, brand equity, marketing channels, trade, and retail spend. But even the best recommendations and simulations need an execution plan supported by a strong marketing mix vendor.
With fast, collaborative, and purposeful execution, your brand can achieve its MMM investment’s true potential. There is a strong correlation between disciplined teams implementing MMM results well and the ROI they achieve. On average, successful execution of insights can improve ROI as much as 45 times.
To help you make better MMM decisions, we asked Circana’s own marketing mix experts what you should do to set your brand up for success.
Expert insight #1: Choose the right executive sponsor to support MMM improvements
A MMM study drives no value until change is implemented, making it critical to have the right people to support change. The most successful projects have executive support, ideally the chief marketing officer and a hands-on champion from the client and marketing mix vendor. If asking for additional funding, retaining current funding, or preventing additional funding cuts, you need a voice resonating across senior-level leaders, finance, and individuals executing the vision.
Success is only achieved when you make changes and develop a go-forward strategy coming out of the MMM. When and if internal team members doubt the results or want to make their own marketing plans without proper analytics and insights, then the MMM value and impact will be limited.
Jonathan Dizney, mix director, Circana
Expert insight #2: Identify the most pressing business questions
Cross-functional engagement shows you how each function’s needs map to business goals. This helps marketing mix vendors deliver the most relevant insights and actions for each function. Teams involved in MMM programs are insights, brand, sales, marketing, finance, supply chain, and agency partners. These different teams care about KPIs such as share, transactions, reach versus frequency, and ROI. Each group’s understanding of the most pressing questions and KPIs is critical to a successful marketing mix.
Joseph Sakach, solution design principal, Circana
Expert insight #3: Partner with your MMM vendor to implement a change management process
On average, MMM programs can have up to 30 different people across seven different teams. This makes it critical to have a process and team that can quickly integrate MMM insights and recommendations. Having an established change management process and team is also important, as is delegating key decision-makers to oversee adoption. Because MMM recommendations have tremendous ROI potential for your brand, you should establish a central process to track execution, ensure change management happens, and see best practices scaled throughout your organization.
Kimberly Keating, senior measurement director, Circana
A critical part of ensuring a successful change management process is gaining buy-in from agency partners willing to apply results. We recommend you involve your agency partners in the planning and execution process. Organizations doing this throughout the process, from project kick-off through to final results reporting, tend to see greater value from their marketing mix investment.
Patricia Belczynski, senior measurement director, Circana
Because MMM recommendations affect a variety of teams such as marketing, sales, finance, and agencies, the recommendations can often change the process and approach to making significant marketing investment decisions. We recommend tracking future marketing investment decisions informed from MMM results to quantify the ROI impact. MMM often provides the foundation for optimizing current spend levels and justifying how incremental investments help deliver revenue and profit goals to the organization.
Steve Tobias, media sales executive, Circana
Expert insight #4: Measure relevant KPIs incrementally, assess benchmarks, and adjust
Successful teams implement analytics-based planning across creative development and execution and can quickly measure results and adjust executions. We recommend using MMMs in conjunction with lift studies to measure incrementality. MMMs provide recommendations and scenario planning, whereas lift studies can help calibrate those recommendations to fully realize the campaign’s potential. For example, using a lift solution to measure offline sales lift helps you cascade the identified recommendations into actionable and measurable learning plans.
Susan Kelly, solutions design senior director, Circana
MMM is an invaluable tool for answering many business questions and optimizing marketing strategies. But the true value of MMM lies in the execution of its recommendations. Change management and actionability through organizational alignment can help you maximize your MMM investment and achieve significant ROI. Remember, the key to success is not just in the analysis but also in the swift and collaborative implementation of the insights gained.
For more insights on the future of marketing measurement, be sure to check out the Marketing Measurement Industry Shifts for 2025 report. Do you have any questions for Circana? Email GrowthInsights@circana.com.
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