MAC Financial Management & Budgeting 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A marketing team's campaign generated $180,000 in revenue against a $45,000 spend. What is the ROAS?
- 2.0
- 3.0
- 4.0 (Correct answer)
- 5.0
Correct answer: 4.0
ROAS = Revenue / Ad Spend = $180,000 / $45,000 = 4.0.
Question 2: Which budgeting method allocates funds based on a fixed percentage of projected sales revenue?
- Zero-based budgeting
- Percentage-of-sales budgeting (Correct answer)
- Objective-and-task budgeting
- Competitive parity budgeting
Correct answer: Percentage-of-sales budgeting
Percentage-of-sales budgeting sets the marketing budget as a fixed share of forecasted or past sales revenue.
Question 3: A company has a Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of $500 and an acceptable CAC:CLV ratio of 1:3. What is the maximum acceptable CAC?
- $100
- $125
- $167 (Correct answer)
- $250
Correct answer: $167
A 1:3 CAC:CLV ratio means CAC ≤ CLV / 3 = $500 / 3 ≈ $167.
Question 4: In marketing budget variance analysis, a favorable variance occurs when:
- Actual spend exceeds the budget
- Actual spend equals the budget exactly
- Actual spend is below budget with equal or better results (Correct answer)
- Campaign objectives are not met
Correct answer: Actual spend is below budget with equal or better results
A favorable variance means spending less than budgeted while still achieving the planned outcomes.
Question 5: Which metric best measures the efficiency of marketing spend across multiple channels when comparing them?
- Gross margin
- Cost per acquisition (CPA) (Correct answer)
- Net promoter score
- Impressions per dollar
Correct answer: Cost per acquisition (CPA)
CPA standardizes the cost to acquire one customer, enabling apples-to-apples channel comparison.
Question 6: A zero-based budgeting (ZBB) approach differs from incremental budgeting primarily because ZBB:
- Adds a fixed percentage to last year's budget
- Requires every expense to be justified from scratch each cycle (Correct answer)
- Mirrors competitor spending levels
- Allocates based on historical channel performance only
Correct answer: Requires every expense to be justified from scratch each cycle
ZBB starts from zero and requires full justification of every budget line, eliminating legacy spend assumptions.
Question 7: When calculating net marketing contribution (NMC), which costs are subtracted from gross profit?
- Only paid media costs
- All marketing program expenses (Correct answer)
- Corporate overhead and taxes
- Cost of goods sold only
Correct answer: All marketing program expenses
NMC = Gross Profit − All Marketing Program Expenses, isolating marketing's financial contribution.
MAC Financial Management & Budgeting 2
A marketing team's campaign generated $180,000 in revenue against a $45,000 spend.
What is the ROAS?