Build my model
HOW NJORD WORKS

Method, not opinion.

The model isn’t proprietary. It’s marketing science applied to your numbers — the same effectiveness research Fortune 500 brands buy when they hire MMM consultants, scaled to operator inputs. Every line in your plan traces back to a named source you can read for yourself.

The Trident — method
THE METHOD · THE TRIDENT’S THREE PRONGS

Three forces, one strike.

01
Evidence
We start from named research, not opinion. The constellation of sources below is the same one enterprise marketing scientists work from — we just apply it at operator scale. If you disagree with a recommendation, you can read the underlying study and tell us why.
02
Model
Your spend runs against benchmarks for projected CPL, payback, channel mix, and the brand-vs-activation balance the evidence supports. The math is honest — ranges where ranges are honest, single points where they’re not, and a confidence read on every number.
03
Plan
What you get is a defensible budget — Good / Better / Best scenario tiers, projected lead volume and payback, a recommended channel mix, and a brand floor anchored to the eSOV your category requires. Exported to a branded PDF you can take to the board.
THE OUTPUT · WHAT THE PLAN ACTUALLY READS LIKE

Before the science behind it, the output.

Method gets you a plan. The plan is what you take to the board. Below is an illustrative one — insurance, $18k/mo — so you can see what the science layer is in service of before you read it.

ILLUSTRATIVE PLAN · INDEPENDENT P&C BROKER · $18K/MO BAND ±19%
PROJECTED CPL $68.40 ▾ 7.6% vs. WS T2 median
PAYBACK 5.8 mo net of brand layer
Search 45% Brand 22% Meta 18% Display 15%
THE SCIENCE LAYER · THE CONSTELLATION

Each source informs a different decision.

Together they form what we call the constellation — the fixed stars Njord steers by. Read them for yourself; the model just makes them computable.

BINET & FIELD
The Long and the Short of It
IPA Effectiveness Databank
The two effectiveness curves — short-term sales lift and long-term brand-building — and how their balance shifts with objective. The original argument for the 60/40 split.
Informs · Brand-vs-activation balance
PETER FIELD
Go Big or Go Home
IPA · Medialab · Ravensbourne, 2026
Brands that invest significantly above their share of market on share of voice grow disproportionately. Brands that go small stall or decline. The data behind the “go big” recommendation.
Informs · eSOV · brand floor
EHRENBERG-BASS
How Brands Grow
Byron Sharp · Jenni Romaniuk
Mental availability, distinctive brand assets, and penetration over loyalty. Why a brand layer earns its slot even when the objective is lead generation.
Informs · Mental availability · DBAs
NELSON-FIELD
Attention economics
Karen Nelson-Field
Active vs passive attention by channel. Why some impressions earn the viewer’s eye and others don’t — and what that does to the conversion math downstream.
Informs · Channel attention quality
SYSTEM1 × TIKTOK
Creative effectiveness
2025 · 358 lift studies · n=84,788
Top-quartile entertaining short-form video drives +50% conversion AND 2× brand awareness lift; dull or salesmanship-only creative drives −27% conversion. Creative is a multiplier on the model.
Informs · Creative quality multiplier
WORDSTREAM
CPL benchmarks 2026
Apr 2025 – Mar 2026 · n=13,474
Vertical-specific CPL medians. Insurance T2 $74, Home Services $91, Auto Repair $30. Your projection is checked against the median for context, never used as a target.
Informs · CPL anchor · vertical context
BINET & DAVIS
The Brand Reset
Kantar / Dentsu / Lumen, 2026 · n=40,000
Even a single brand exposure drives 2–15% short-term sales lift over 3 months. The reason the brand floor doesn’t collapse to zero even inside a harvest window.
Informs · In-market brand cap
CMUST · PROXIMIC
Audience & channel flows
CMUST 2025 viewing · Proximic 2026 flows
Cohort-level channel mix tilts. 45% of CTV growth is reallocated from linear — not net-new. Under-30 streaming-native; 55+ uses YouTube/CTV/OTT as the linear substitute.
Informs · Audience cohort modulator
IPA DATABANK
Budget vs ROI
1998–2024 · n>1,500 campaigns
Budget size accounts for 89% of profit variation; ROI accounts for just 11%. Top-quartile budget ≈ 284× bottom — that’s where the profit headroom lives. Yet 76% of firms do no financial modelling.
Informs · Net profit panel · thesis
A DEFENSIBLE NUMBER

Every line traces back.

The plan isn’t a proprietary score. It’s a model — written in math, anchored to named sources, sensitive to your inputs. Change the spend, change the goal, change the cycle — the model recomputes. Disagree with a number? Tell us why, and the model takes that input too. The point isn’t to be right on the first pass. The point is to be defensible.

The Trident

From hunch to model. In six minutes.

Build my model → No card. No call unless you ask. You get a PDF you own.
BRAND MYTHOS The story behind the method →