MMM is for enterprises of all sizes.
Of late I came across a lot of posts proclaiming that MMM is not ideal for SMBs.
I want to dispel some myths on this.
📌Small Marketing Spends
Small marketing spends is not a show stopper. Not statistically and not marketing wise either. There are various statistical techniques that can accurately compute the effect size no matter the small marketing spends.
📌The Learning Curve
The other major reason cited by people to dissuade SMBs from adopting MMM is the steep learning curve.
Granted there is some learning curve in MMM but it is not steep. Many ask us, “why we keep sharing posts and important tips on MMM for free?”
Well we have been writing posts on MMM for 5 years. Our goal is to inform the prospective clients and give them adequate amount of information to make informed decisions.
From my experience I can say that the average statistical literacy level among the C-levels has increased a lot in the recent years. Believe it or not, I recently had an hour long conversation with a CMO on adstock tuning.
📌Cost Factor
Gone are the days when there were few MMM vendors and MMMs used to cost anywhere north of USD 50K per model.
The sudden mushrooming of MMM vendors has lowered the cost of MMM overall. As they say, when competition increases the customer benefits.
📌Open Source Libraries:
Open source libraries like Robyn, lightweight MMM etc. have made it easier to get started on MMM. One still needs an experienced hand to get the maximum out of these tools but the larger point is that these libraries are a good starting point. Overall the cost and time of MMM has been lowered.
📌MMMs are more accurate:
There have been many instances where clients unknowingly fall for quick fix reports which show overinflated ROIs and revenue numbers. These are generally generated through first touch and last touch attributions or through some crude guesstimates.
The detailed data driven MMM approach is far more superior as it shows true incrementality.
MMM is able to segregate the organic sales which the brand will get anyhow without any marketing efforts and will not overattribute to marketing efforts.
📌Is the juice worth the squeeze ?
So, is MMM really worth the effort for SMBs? I would say a huge Yes. The scale of spends might be small for SMBs but even that small amount of marketing spends matters.
How do we know this? We have worked with many small SMBs too and we ourselves are a lean and agile startup. We know the value of every dollar and are always exploring to maximize our ROI.
📌Bottomline:
Don’t let someone dissuade you from adopting MMM. As they say what gets measured , gets improved. The earlier your start measuring your marketing ROI the sooner you can start improving it.
If you have doubt whether your marketing spends are adequate for MMM, feel free to reach out to us.
