Scott MacStravic, Ph.D.
The idea of demonstrating the benefits of marketing in dollar terms--added revenue and contribution to margin compared to costs--includes a major challenge of attribution. On some occasions, a new marketing investment is made with nothing else changed, so that any added revenue and profit linked to the marketing effort can logically be attributed entirely to that effort. But more often, other efforts involved, and other functions, who will want to claim some of the credit.
Unlike medical science, where interventions are controlled to a single “treatment,” and placebo groups are monitored to be sure any change is attributable to the treatment, marketing rarely can prove its effects. One possibility, in common practice with marketing communications is to employ control “untreated” samples of the population and compare their actions to the sample that is “treated,” e.g. recipients of direct mail or e-mail communications.
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