Marketing analytics skills are among the most important capabilities in the marketing organization, yet it remains difficult to recruit, hire and retain people with strong skills to support in-house teams. Most marketing teams still struggle with a skills gap in this domain. As a result, marketers seek to augment internal teams by using advanced analytics service providers that offer third-party expert resources, proprietary methodologies and models, and even managed technology to help marketers tackle some of their toughest challenges. Vendors in this market specialize in advanced analytics, including sophisticated methods such as mapping the customer journey, attributing marketing spend to measured outcomes, simulating and measuring business impact of marketing and advertising campaigns, and implementing predictive models. Engagements may be project-based or part of an ongoing partnership, and may include the use of proprietary technology.
Gartner defines marketing mix modeling (MMM) solutions as services and software that help chief marketing officers (CMOs) plan future spend and measure past investment performance. MMM applies advanced statistical techniques to aggregate time-series data to quantify the holistic impact of marketing and optimize business outcomes such as sales or lead generation. MMM solutions acquire and normalize marketing data, build advanced statistical models based on that data, measure marketing performance, and deliver recommendations to improve spending effectiveness and efficiency. Results are delivered to marketers, media planners, and marketing and financial analysts via software and presentations. Marketing mix modeling solutions quantify the holistic impact of marketing. They account for business factors (like inventory availability or physical footprint) and external factors (like consumer perception, competitive activities or macroeconomic conditions), and attribute that impact to different channels or campaigns.