Taking Apart the Black Box of your Marketing Communication Budget

“Black Box” Marketing

If you’re like every other Marketer on the planet, you’ve wrestled over the task of planning your Marketing Communications budget. Questions like “Well, what’s actually working?” and “Where would I get the most ‘bang for my buck’ in my budget?” start to creep in your mind. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The good news is that Marketers are starting to figure out a way to “take apart the black box”. Let’s take a look at how you can do the same.

Return on Marketing Investment Analysis

To accurately correlate the specific impact on marketing efforts, Marketers often use a technique called Return on Marketing Investment Analysis (ROMI Analysis). A ROMI Analysis uses data mining and modeling processes to identify correlations in the data. In other words, this process shows you the reality of your marketing initiatives, good or bad. Sometimes this is a very sobering process.

Preparing for the Future

This information becomes your building blocks as you begin to formulate your Marketing Communications budget for this upcoming year. As you begin to plan your budget around insights from your marketing analysis (backed by data), you’ll begin to improve the effectiveness of your marketing, year after year. This process is one that needs to be repeated on an annual basis (at least). The more accurate information you have about your marketing, the smarter decisions you can make.

Overcoming the Unknown

In reality, taking apart the “black box” of your marketing can be a scary idea. Sometimes we’d rather not travel into the unknown. As marketers, we must be reminded of the old adage “Knowledge is power”. In other words, the more you know about your marketing, the more successful you can be.