Rapid Media Mix Modeling Demystifies Customer Journey and Cuts Costs
The Challenge
A leader in gutter solutions, Leafguard was approaching its busy season. But in the leadup to what should be its most profitable time of year, it had a problem: customer acquisition costs were way too high, stemming from increasing competition and dwindling conversions due to economic trends.
Leafguard had historically planned its media mix using a last-click attribution model, which gives full credit for a conversion to the last touchpoint the customer engaged with before converting. While this method is easily tracked and readily identifies the final conversion driver, it also neglects to account for all the integral touchpoints along the full-funnel customer journey.
With this limited attribution method, Leafguard could not accurately measure the impact of its full suite of tactics (nor the impact of each tactic on conversions). Thus, when optimizing its media mix for the busy season, the brand was reactive when it should have been proactive.
Leafguard knew it was missing the bigger picture. The brand asked its full-funnel performance marketing firm, Tinuiti, for its expertise in measuring the impact of every marketing activity across all channels, with the goal of maximizing its advertising dollars’ impact.
Results
+30%
Prospect growth
-12%
Cost per acquisition
How We Did It
From building awareness to being considered against competitors, so much goes into driving a conversion before a customer’s final click. Tinuiti sought to measure all of Leafguard’s value-driving activities throughout the funnel to determine what was impacting sales and what wasn’t.
To fully understand the causal relationships between Leafguard’s marketing efforts and ultimate conversions, Tinuiti leveraged Rapid Media Mix Modeling (rMMM) – a tool proprietary to its Bliss Point by Tinuiti measurement product tech suite.
Tinuiti began by ingesting Leafguard’s historical data to gauge each channel’s effectiveness, assess spend, and optimize budget allocation based on how much each individual tactic was contributing to overall performance.
What rMMM unearthed was revolutionary. Channels that Leafguard had heavily invested in were not the most efficient or effective, while channels regarded as inefficient (and consequently paused or deprioritized) were substantially more impactful than initially believed.
Tinuiti found that social media (especially Facebook), direct mail, linear TV, and YouTube were much more efficient than last-click attribution had given them credit for. Conversely, its Search efforts and Affiliate marketing – historically its largest investments – proved especially reliant on upper-funnel channels producing demand to remain impactful.
Leafguard finally had what it needed: a clear view into the channels that built value and drove conversions. And because Tinuiti’s rMMM is real-time (unlike others, which only provide results once or twice a year), the teams could immediately adjust and optimize the ad flight.
Tinuiti provided holistic recommendations for budget reallocation, increasing investment in the most effective channels while cutting wasted spend. In the first two months of application, this improved visibility helped Leafguard reduce its customer acquisition cost by 12% and achieve a more efficient 30% increase in prospects.
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