M4 clarifies where and how to allocate your marketing spend, helping marketing executives, brand managers and marketing researchers accomplish three critical functions:

• Continually track marketing and trade investments
• Forecast the financial outcome of any plan
• Optimize any plan to produce better results

M4 cuts through the complexity of evolving channel dynamics and consumer preferences to give you deep insights into the impact of pricing, in-store promotions, media mix, and even competitive activity on sales volume and profits. For example, the effect of new products, unexpected competitive actions or shifting consumer preferences can be quickly evaluated alongside potential response scenarios.

Highlights of M4 include:

• Side-by-side financial comparisons of multiple marketing plans for quick and easy selection of the best ones.  Each plan may be created at any level of product or market granularity and managed from the bottom up or top down.
• An automatic optimizer that develops and evaluates thousands of potential scenarios within appropriate business constraints, such as maximum marketing budget or allowable price change.
• Dashboards and reports that deliver a broad perspective on historic and projected performance relative to plan. By drilling into the details, users can easily focus in on areas that merit deeper investigation. Report types include:
  • Volume decompositions
  • “Due-to” reports
  • Price elasticity plots
  • Incremental cost/benefit analysis
  • ROI comparison reports

For more information, download the M4 solution overview today.