Introduction
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, where brands invest significant resources in online advertising, it’s absolutely essential that businesses are able to accurately measure and attribute the impact of their marketing elements on their bottom line. But how does a business choose a Marketing Mix Modeling company to partner with?
And while there are many types of attribution models brands and agencies can use to analyze this impact, Media Mix Modeling, or MMM, is becoming more & more relevant with current privacy changes and cookie depreciation.
What is Media Mix Modeling?
If you’re unfamiliar, MMM is a statistical analysis technique empowering businesses to make informed decisions regarding their marketing strategies, budget allocations, resource utilization, and more. We’ve put together a handy Media Mix Modeling 101 guide if you want to get up to speed.
By quantifying the impact of diverse marketing inputs such as advertising, promotions, pricing, and distribution channels, MMM enables organizations to gain valuable insights into their overall sales performance or key performance indicators. And, because MMM leverages larger consumer trends rather than individual users’ data, it doesn’t depend on cookies in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of your marketing effectiveness.
Why would a business need a MMM partner?
Most brands that use digital marketing can optimie using in-platform metrics or may have built their own multi-touch attribution models to make decisions and optimisations on the day-to-day.
However, Media Mix modelling requires, more time, specialised expertise and media mix modeling software to run & analyze. As a result many brands and agencies rely on external measurement partners to build and apply the key takeaways on how you choose a partner that’s right for you.
What media modeling tools are available for business to use?
What are some of the best media mix modeling companies?
And what type of media mix modeling vendor should you be using?
Let's have a look at 3 different types of partner you can choose from:
The Major Partner
For your media mix modeling needs, you may opt to utilize a large, world-renowned agency – and there are a few that you can pick from.
Nielsen – a global information, data and measurement company that specializes in providing insights and analytics on various aspects of consumer behavior and media consumption. Since 1923, Nielsen has become a trusted and widely recognized name in market research, audience measurement, and data analytics. With its long-established reputation, there’s an obvious layer of credibility and trust that is brought to the data and insight they provide.
Using a larger, well-known partner has other benefits:
- Nielsen offers one of the most comprehensive and robust data sets on the market, which allows businesses to gain invaluable insights into their consumer’s behavior, media consumption, and market trends. Additionally, this data spans a large range of media channels, including television, radio, and digital platforms so that brands can understand their audience reach and engagement across all touchpoints.
- Larger partners collect so much data, you also have greater insight into how you’re benchmarking against the masses. This type of comparative analysis helps brands identify areas they’re excelling in vs areas for improvement.
But, there are also downsides to using major partners. The most obvious? Cost.
- Nielsen’s longevity in the industry paired with their extremely comprehensive data and insights offering, brands will pay a more premium price if they want to partner.
- For large corporations, this may be in the budget, but for small and mid-sized businesses, this could present a financial challenge. With that said, there’s no need to sacrifice quality for price; there are still options out there that produce holistic and actionable learnings without breaking the bank.
If cost isn’t an issue, you’ll still want to consider some of the other challenges you could face with a large agency, such as potential lack of customization and tailored support. Typically with larger measurement companies, there will be limitations as to how much say you’ll get in how you work with your partner – whether that be frequency or method of communication, reporting, selecting an account manager, etc.
If a major player doesn’t sound right for you – don’t worry. Let’s review some other types of partners.
The Software Partner
Software partners have a massive amount of technology expertise, including developing measurement tools and analytics platforms. They can provide advanced software solutions that leverage cutting-edge tools, enabling efficient data collection, analysis, and visualization.
Take Sellforte for example – a Marketing Mix Modelling platform that helps marketers to measure online & offline marketing ROI, and use results to plan upcoming media investments. Sellforte not only offers the basics of digital MMM, but also specializes in more complex enterprise MMM as well.
- Customers receive 24/7 access to live reporting – a huge advantage over traditional agencies using external modeling software.
- Sellforte already has a lot of data in-platform that you would otherwise need to manually input, such as weather data, COVID-19 implications, consumer confidence as a result of economic trends, and more.
But, using a software company as your MMM partner can also come with challenges.
Of course, if your team will be managing the software yourselves rather than working with an agency who manages it, you’ll need to learn the product. This could pose a learning curve for users who are unfamiliar with the platform, and training and onboarding efforts may be necessary to ensure effective utilization of the software’s features and functionalities.
Cost is also a factor to consider; like major players, software companies can also come with a hefty price tag when factoring in licensing and maintenance fees, as well as any
The Challenger Partner
Whilst smaller in size, challenger partners are often more flexible and nimble, fostering a much closer working relationship with their clients; for instance, at Realtime, we often boast our ‘plug-in’ capabilities – meaning that we operate as a unit that feels natural and organic to the structure of your own team.
Bespoke Service
We tailor mode of communication, frequency of reporting, deliverables, and more based on the specific needs of each of our clients. This close collaboration leads to a much deeper understanding of their business and better alignment of measurement efforts.
Cost Effective
Additionally, the cost of using a challenger agency is often attractive to brands looking for measurement partners. Realtime, has a media mix modeling pod, built of analysts who are proficient in the world of statistics, and stay up-to-date on the best measurement software so we can ensure our clients are getting what they need at the most efficient price.
Expert Team
This team – acts as a top media mix modeling provider. The team creates complex statistical models that find correlation between marketing spend and business goals, allowing businesses to make better decisions around where to allocate their budgets, based on statistics. We are pros at data collection for modeling, can build your marketing mix models and extract learnings, and can run on any subsequent tests needed to quantify the accuracy of the model and prove causality.
Performance Focussed
An additional benefit of working with Realtime Agency is that we are first-and foremost a performance marketing agency. Instead of using a partner that only offers a measurement service, we are deeply engaged with your results and understand the digital advertising environment – so support our clients in making the best possible decisions to drive results for their brand.
How to choose a Media Mix Modeling Provider?
When making a decision, you’ll want to be sure to shop around; smaller agencies can’t boast the same long, historical track record that major players can – so it’s important to assess media mix modeling providers for, expertise, client testimonials, and their ability to meet your specific measurement needs. Check out our measurement service page for more details.
Additionally, if a challenger agency sounds like the right move for you – try us out! Just fill in the form below for consultations, case study materials, and audits/workshops.
