Do not lie to yourself, not every penny you invest in marketing and promotion is an actual investment. What’s the difference? It is easy, if you spend your precious money in a marketing campaign and this provokes profit betterment, then that is well invested money.
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half
John Wanamaker (1838 – 1922)
So, let’s consider the equation for marketing spent in marketing and promotion is 50% expense and 50% investment. What happened if I told you operational research (OR) is capable of estimating which is the 50% that works? Furthermore, what if I told you that OR might even enlighten about which marketing campaigns and channels are better suited for improving sales, reducing operational costs, leverage up-selling and cross-selling practices or, alternatively, which ones have a better ROIM (Return on Investment of Marketing)?
There are multiple techniques that make good use of your sales data, connecting the dots between your core (financial) results and the several campaigns and marketing channels your company might have been using, even social media (i.e. does an increase in your Twitter followers or Facebook fans relate to your sales increase?).
Interested in knowing how much money from your marketing budget is being wasted? Would you like to disentangle the equation and find out how to increase your results by just relocating funds from expense to investment?