These days, the CMO’s job is more challenging than ever. With the explosion of marketing channels and the rise of the empowered consumers, marketers are under more pressure than ever to spend their budgets optimally and track ROI across the entire marketing mix. The wealth of data available for digital media has also raised accountability expectations for all marketing channels to a point where CEOs and CFOs now expect all marketing investments (not just in digital) to be measurable and accountable.

How can senior marketers navigate this complex landscape and embrace a data-driven approach to investment decision-making and measurement? 

Powerful tools — like marketing mix modeling — are now available to help marketers harness the power of data to concretely tie marketing to business outcomes. The field of marketing mix modeling vendors is rapidly maturing to help give marketers powerful tools to protect their budgets and reestablish the credibility and power that marketing has on the bottom line.

But how do marketers successfully build and implement a mix model? It’s not enough to merely hire a vendor; marketing mix modeling requires a dramatic internal shift in decision-making processes, measurement frameworks, and cross-functional collaboration. How should marketers engage their IT, finance, and analytics teams to make them partners in the success marketing mix modeling can unlock, as opposed to detractors and obstacles?

On October 26th, I will be delivering a track session on this topic at theForrester Forum For eBusiness And Channel Strategy Professionals in Chicago. We’ll look at why marketers need to embrace marketing mix modeling as a tool, what the forces of innovation are that are driving the vendor marketplace, and what kind of strategic plan marketers should adopt to ensure they effect sweeping changes within their organization. 

Are you a marketer struggling to spend budgets more effectively and prove it quantitatively? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback below in the comments or in our The Forrester Community For CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals. Otherwise, I look forward to chatting with you more in Chicago!