Over the past few years, the rise of the always addressable customer combined with a challenging economic environment and stagnant markets has created a perfect storm — challenging marketers' ingrained assumptions about how to best invest their budgets. And with that comes one major recurring question that senior marketers must face. While simple, it still proves daunting for marketers: How can I make sure that I have best allocated my marketing and communication investments to support my brand in the marketplace and clearly drive positive outcomes? We at Forrester have created a brand-new research framework — called playbooks — designed to effectively answer this crucial question, not only helping marketers figure out where to start but also providing a practical step-by-step guide to help achieve mastery in a given area.

Today I'm pleased to introduce you to the marketing mix optimization playbook to help you master the art of multichannel planning and the science of marketing mix modeling. With this playbook, we will help you to:

  1. Discover: Chart a new course for marketing planning to drive effectiveness. Marketers will learn to better orchestrate their programs across platforms by mixing art and science and adopting the RaDaR framework. 
  2. Plan: Build a link between marketing investments and business outcomes. Marketers will learn how to assess their maturity and competencies for a modern marketing mix modeling initiative. 
  3. Act: Activate and socialize the mix model insights to positively affect investment decisions. Marketers will learn what new skills and iterative processes to adopt for a successful marketing mix optimization initiative. 
  4. Optimize: Get the most out of your agencies and mix modeling vendors. Forrester will provide a collection of practical advice on how to effectively manage vendors and partners that are helping in deploying the mix optimization solution.

If this sounds a bit too daunting, don't worry, you can start to get a taste of how mixing marketing art with modeling science can be extremely beneficial for your marketing investments by reading the executive overview.

And if you have any feedback, please let us know. We’ll be continuously updating the playbook, and your feedback will be crucial in helping us write research that best serves your needs.