Syllabus
Registration via LPIS
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” John Wanamaker
This quote captures a timeless challenge in marketing: How do we know which parts of our marketing budget are actually working?
This course tackles that question head-on. Whether you're planning a campaign, allocating budgets, or evaluating performance, understanding the effectiveness of marketing activities is essential. Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) is the most established and widely used technique to solve this problem.
What You’ll Learn
Over four intensive workshop-style sessions, you’ll explore how companies use data to:
- Measure the impact of pricing and promotion/advertising on sales.
- Make smarter decisions about where to invest their marketing budgets.
- Communicate insights to stakeholders in clear, actionable ways.
Why It Matters
MMM is not just a technical tool; it’s a strategic asset. It’s used by:
- Consulting firms to advise clients on media spend.
- Advertising agencies to optimize campaign performance.
- Marketing and finance teams in companies to justify budgets and drive growth.
Even though MMM has been around for decades, its relevance is growing. With the rise of data-driven decision-making, companies are increasingly turning to MMM to guide their strategies.
Who Should Take This Course?
This course is designed for students who are curious about:
- How marketing decisions are made in the real world.
- How data can be used to solve business problems.
- Careers in marketing, finance/controlling, consulting, analytics, or strategy.
- No advanced math or coding skills are required; just a basic understanding of statistics and a willingness to explore.
Main course content
- Refreshers on old topics:
- algebra and statistics, with a special focus on linear regression
- 4 Ps
- Basic Principles of Causality
- Price modeling
- Promotion modeling
- Model Validation and Diagnostics
- (Time permitting) Advanced Techniques:
- Adstock,
- Lag Effects,
- Diminishing Returns
- Stakeholder management and communication
The course is meant as a gentle introduction to the complex world of MMM. By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand the role of MMM in marketing and business strategy.
- Identify the types of data needed to build an MMM.
- Apply linear regression to model marketing effectiveness.
- Evaluate model performance using statistical metrics.
- Interpret and communicate marketing insights from MMM analyses.
- Develop a basic MMM from raw data through to final presentation.
- Students must attend at least 80% of the lectures.
- Absences must be communicated in advance.
Lectures and Workshop-like sessions. Students will be given content and will have the chance to practice with coding exercises.
Students must have attended any introductory course in statistics and be familiar with R.
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- Basic Statistics (mean, variance, correlation, regression fundamentals)
- Familiarity with Marketing Principles
- Basic familiarity with R
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