Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC combines decision analysis and analytics to help clients with marketing investment decisions. The founder has a background in marketing analytics and consulting and has more recently been studying decision analysis. The company leverages both statistical marketing mix modeling and decision analysis techniques to address clients' complex marketing investment questions and pain points. Decision analysis focuses more on human judgment and identifying key uncertainties, while analytics relies more heavily on large amounts of data, but the company sees value in integrating both approaches.

1. Combining Decision Analysis and Analytics
Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC
John Busbice, Founder
john@mida.us.com
(804) 467-0969

2. About my perspective
• Background in marketing analytics
• 5 years as statistician in marketing and sales analysis (mostly pharma)
• 5 years consulting, utilizing marketing and sales analytics
• Relatively new to DA
• Introduced to concepts while integrating DA consultancy
• Concurrent self-study of statistical decision theory
• Sought to leverage DA for in-market and launch marketing optimization
• Now combining statistics and DA
• Founded firm that combines marketing mix modeling and DA
Copyright 2013, Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC. All rights reserved.
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3. What I wanted to do when I grew up…
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4. Surfing’s Gidget days…
Where to Surf? Surfing!
Waves
Wind
Copyright 2013, Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC. All rights reserved.
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5. 100 ft wave!... (Garrett McNamara, January 2013 in Portugal)
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6. Big wave surfing: Analytics in action
Big Wave
Where to Surf?
Surfing!
Surfline.com
Stormsurf.com
Surf Waves
Forecasts
Wind
Copyright 2013, Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC. All rights reserved.
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7. Marketing’s “Gidget days”
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the
trouble is I don't know which half.
John Wanamaker, (attributed)
US department store merchant (1838 - 1922)
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8. Marketing today: MIDA uses a combination of statistics and judgment
Statistics Human Knowledge
Pattern Creative and
Strength recognition Logical reasoning
Weakness Limited by data Limited by
instinctual biases
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9. Managers are faced with many difficult questions when making
marketing investment decisions:
Objectives: Pain points:
• Are we spending too much or too • Complexity: Multiple channels,
little? interactions, non-linear impact,
• What is the risk of missing long-term effects, uncertain
revenue targets? returns
• Are we maximizing value? … cash • Conflict: No two analyses
flow? converge, different people
• Are we building the brand? responsible for different marketing
• What is the optimal mix across efforts
sales and marketing channels?
• Cost: Marketing mix modeling and
• What should we forecast given our Big Data lead analysts to digging
sales and marketing budget?
through imperfect information for
months on end.
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Copyright 2011, Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC. All rights reserved.

10. Decision Analysis vs. Analytics: Heart of the debate about the role of
people and information.
Decision Analysis Analytics
Information Data
Probability Frequency
Machine emphasis
Human emphasis KEY
People
Decision Decision Computers
Copyright 2013, Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC. All rights reserved.
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11. What can the Analytics worldview can learn from the Decision Analysis
worldview?
• Decision-making is a human process; people are key.
• Judgment is good and necessary; clarifying what’s in your head may
be enough.
• There’s more to decision quality than having the right model
populated with lots of data.
• Identify important uncertainties rather than statistical significance.
• Bigger is not always better.
• Discussion…
Copyright 2013, Marketing Investment Decision Analysis, LLC. All rights reserved.
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