The Marketing Mix Modelling Revolution: Why Flexible Scenario Planning is the Key to Unlocking Growth

While many brands have a marketing mix model (MMM) in place, the real power lies not just in understanding what happened, but in having the tools to confidently plan for what's next. This is where the Linea Analytics platform delivers a truly competitive advantage.

Our platform is purpose-built to put marketing, growth and data teams in control of their media budget allocation. We believe that effective marketing scenarios are not rigid allocations, but a scenario tool that is tailored to your needs.

In this article, we explore how our platform achieves this by allowing you to define your objective, time period, and a wide array of "what-if" factors.

1. Define Your Objective: From Efficiency to Growth

A one-size-fits-all approach to budget allocation simply doesn't work. Your marketing objectives change, and your measurement tools should be agile enough to change with them. Our scenario tool offers three core objectives to support any business goal:

• A Set Budget: Ideal for initial planning, this mode allows you to input a fixed budget and see the predicted return. It's the perfect way to draft an initial media budget allocation and forecast the level of returns your investment will deliver.
• A Target Uplift: When your focus is on aggressive growth, this option is your go-to. Instead of starting with a budget, you set a target for new customers or revenue. The tool then calculates the optimal spend and channel mix to hit or exceed your growth targets. This is crucial for answering questions like, "What extra customers can my marketing drive?"
• A Desired ROI Level: This feature is for brands focused on sustainable, profitable growth. You can optimize your media plan against a target ROI or CPA, ensuring every customer is acquired within a profitable range. It helps you identify exactly how much more you can spend while staying profitable.

2. Time Period: Aligning Scenarios with Business Cycles

The simplest element to understand! Our tool allows you to run scenarios for any time horizon, be it the next month, quarter, six months, or year.

This flexibility is critical for both short-term tactical upweights or adjustments and longer-term annual planning.

3. What-If Factors: The True Power of Flexible Scenario Planning

This is where the Linea Analytics platform truly stands out. Our tool goes far beyond simple budget sliders, giving you granular control over the variables that matter most to your business.

a) Channels and Campaigns to Include Not all campaigns are created equal. You have the flexibility to select which channels or even specific campaigns to include or exclude from a scenario. This is vital for:

• Long-Term vs. Short-Term Goals: Select the channels to optimise. You can focus your allocation on brand-building channels that drive long-term impact or on performance channels for immediate results. Or select all and let past performance decide.

b) Pre-Allocated Budgets Most MMM solutions assume a blank slate, but the reality is that many budgets are already partially set. Our platform allows you to account for pre-allocated budgets. This answers some of the most pressing questions for marketers:

• "What's the best way to allocate an extra £1m budget to maximise our returns?"
• "How do we most efficiently drive an extra 10,000 new customers with the funds we have already?"

This capability transforms our platform from a planning tool to a real-time decision-making engine.

c) Impact of Future Changes: Predicting the future is impossible, but with our scenario tool, you can prepare for it.

You can model the impact of:

• Changes to the market, economy or product might impact your marketing effort
• Overlay how cost inflation might impact channel allocation
• How creative changes could increase performance

By running multiple scenarios with different assumptions, you can build a comprehensive understanding of potential outcomes, mitigating risk and presenting a range of options to wider teams.

4. Marketing Goals & Comparing Scenarios

The final stage is where all your inputs come together. Whether you've set a target budget, a desired acquisition number, or a specific ROI, the Linea Analytics platform instantly provides an optimised media mix recommendation.

You can now save your scenarios and compare the impact of how changing scenarios impact your:

1️⃣Outcome metrics: Revenue/ customers

2️⃣Channel/ Campaign allocation: How would we allocate the spend between different channels/ campaigns

2️⃣Budget Laydown: What weeks/ months would we recommend spend

Our always-on MMM approach means these insights are not a one-time report but a living, breathing tool that adapts as your business evolves.