MAC Financial Management & Budgeting 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A SaaS company spends $200,000 on marketing and acquires 400 new customers. What is the cost per acquisition?
- $250
- $400
- $500 (Correct answer)
- $800
Correct answer: $500
CPA = Total Marketing Spend / New Customers = $200,000 / 400 = $500.
Question 2: Which of the following best describes 'marketing payback period'?
- Time for a campaign to go viral
- Months required for cumulative revenue to recover the initial marketing investment (Correct answer)
- Number of days between ad exposure and purchase
- The duration of a customer contract
Correct answer: Months required for cumulative revenue to recover the initial marketing investment
Marketing payback period measures how long it takes for customer revenue to recoup the cost of acquiring them.
Question 3: A brand allocates budget using competitive parity. The primary risk of this approach is:
- Overspending on high-ROI channels
- Ignoring the company's own objectives and efficiency (Correct answer)
- Requiring detailed forecasting models
- Producing overly conservative budgets
Correct answer: Ignoring the company's own objectives and efficiency
Competitive parity mimics competitors' spend levels without accounting for the company's unique goals or ROI potential.
Question 4: In a multi-touch attribution model, budget reallocation decisions should be based on:
- The touchpoint with the highest impression volume
- Each channel's marginal contribution to conversions (Correct answer)
- The most recent channel in the customer journey
- Total reach regardless of conversion impact
Correct answer: Each channel's marginal contribution to conversions
Multi-touch attribution measures each channel's incremental contribution, guiding investment toward highest-impact touchpoints.
Question 5: A marketing analytics manager uses scenario planning in budgeting. What is its primary purpose?
- To set a single deterministic revenue forecast
- To model multiple budget outcomes under different assumptions (Correct answer)
- To eliminate budget variance
- To automate media buying decisions
Correct answer: To model multiple budget outcomes under different assumptions
Scenario planning creates best-case, base-case, and worst-case budget models to prepare for uncertainty.
Question 6: If a campaign's incremental revenue is $90,000 and incremental cost is $30,000, what is the incremental ROI?
- 100%
- 200% (Correct answer)
- 300%
- 33%
Correct answer: 200%
Incremental ROI = (Incremental Revenue − Incremental Cost) / Incremental Cost = ($90,000 − $30,000) / $30,000 = 200%.
Question 7: Which budget allocation strategy is most appropriate when launching a brand-new product with no historical data?
- Percentage-of-sales budgeting
- Incremental budgeting
- Objective-and-task budgeting (Correct answer)
- Competitive parity budgeting
Correct answer: Objective-and-task budgeting
Objective-and-task budgeting defines goals first then estimates the spend required, making it ideal when historical data is absent.
MAC Financial Management & Budgeting 3
A SaaS company spends $200,000 on marketing and acquires 400 new customers.
What is the cost per acquisition?