Marketing effectiveness encompasses everything from price to distribution

There is a lot of room for improvement in the conversation about marketing effectiveness.

Too often, when pressed by finance colleagues, marketers default to a narrow definition of effectiveness – advertising results.

We might sprinkle in media ROI or promotional ROI and, if we’re feeling ambitious, add pre-testing or short-term attribution. But that’s often where the conversation ends.

And that’s a problem. Marketing effectiveness isn’t a single lever to pull, it’s a symphony. Every element of the marketing plan – pricing, segmentation, distribution, communication – plays a role.

Yet, we’re stuck on repeat, asking the same tired question: “Did the YouTube investment campaign deliver?” or such like.

The factors affecting effectiveness

There are three often-overlooked levers that significantly impact marketing effectiveness.

First, segmentation effectiveness. Is your segmentation actionable, or is it just beautifully crafted? Many brands create personas rich in nuance and narrative – fantastic for a novelist but not for media planning and especially not execution (ie buying). If your segmentation doesn’t align with purchasing behaviours, it confuses your media-buying team and wastes resources.

The real effectiveness question is: how can you prove that your segmentation drives desired business outcomes?

Second, pricing effectiveness. Even with solid segmentation, pricing can sometimes derail effectiveness. Are you confident your pricing strategy is optimal? For example, does the sales lift generated by a promotion show up accurately in your total campaign assessment?

Often, the link between pricing decisions and campaign performance must be addressed, uncovering gaps in the overall evaluation.

Third and finally, distribution effectiveness. Your ad delivers, and your pricing hits the sweet spot. But what happens when customers can’t find your product? Distribution failures can undermine an otherwise brilliant marketing plan. Marketing effectiveness doesn’t end with consumer desire; it includes ensuring the product is available where and when needed.

The truth is, few have cracked the code. There is no standard framework for holistic marketing effectiveness.

But often, when we speak about marketing effectiveness, we say nothing about these three elements. Strategy, pricing and distribution play a huge role in allowing your ad campaign to shine. Or not. Marketers should not ignore them in the conversation about effectiveness.

The core issue is that most effectiveness measurement processes treat marketing levers in isolation or, for lack of data or coverage, ignore elements of high impact.

We measure individual impacts: creative pre-tests to validate ads, ROI metrics to assess media choices. Marketing mix modelling (MMM) estimates contributions across high-level categories like media, promotions and in-store activations to dedicate the total marketing budget to the main cost centres. But what happens when one lever undermines another?

Consider these examples. You launch a premium product with flawless segmentation, award-worthy advertising and a strong media push. Simultaneously, you increase the price of your core product, alienating current customers who now balk at the new premium offering. The levers clash, and the plan collapses.

Or, you heavily invest in media, but your packaging redesign needs to be revised. Segmentation suggests ‘health-conscious parents’ but the on-shelf look screams ‘indulgent snack’. Even the best advertising can’t overcome poor packaging alignment. The interdependencies between levers are often ignored, leaving us with an incomplete picture of marketing effectiveness.

Lego’s head of effectiveness on making market mix modelling a ‘strategic’ tool

Better tools and frameworks

The truth is, few have cracked the code. There is no standard framework for holistic marketing effectiveness.

Tools like MMM and attribution models provide valuable insights. Still, they focus on individual outcomes rather than the interplay between levers – segmentation, pricing, packaging, distribution – and their collective impact on business results. The gaps in this fragmented approach prevent us from fully understanding the bigger picture.

If marketing wants to shed the label of ‘advertising team’, we must take ownership of the entire marketing plan.

That means moving beyond media and creativity to understand how pricing, packaging, segmentation and distribution contribute to success – or failure.

Pricing isn’t just a finance issue. Packaging isn’t just a design challenge. Distribution isn’t just a sales responsibility. They’re all marketing problems. And they’re all part of marketing effectiveness.

To address this, we need better tools, more explicit standards and a unified framework that evaluates how these levers work together – or how they can work against each other.

What if marketing effectiveness encompassed everything? What if we didn’t stop at measuring media and creative but analysed the entire plan – segmentation, targeting, pricing, packaging, distribution, even the organisational structures behind them?

It’s time to move beyond managing symptoms and start solving the underlying problems. Marketing effectiveness isn’t about asking if the Facebook campaign delivered; it’s about ensuring every element of the plan delivers – and works in harmony.

Until we embrace this holistic view, we’re not advancing the discipline. We’re just playing the same 2D tune.

The marketing teams that push to measure marketing more holistically, in a 3D mode, will have a better chance of being seen as cross-functional business leaders in their organisation and outcome-focused investors of the company’s money.