Period Costs on long-standing (evergreen) programs

[Alexis_Falco]

Hello community!

My company is beginning the process of using period costs in our programs - and while the logistics makes sense for batch & blast and date specific events (like webinars)  - I'm a bit at a loss on how to implement it for long-standing programs.  Not for the cost but for the month that I'm to assign it to - Do I need to add in a PC every single month?

• For instance, our website brochure programs - those download/programs are always on the site with no date attached. How should I define the period costs? 
• For on-demand programs that are evergreen - again, how should I establish that period costs?
• What about for nurture programs?

I've read through all of the Marketo documentation, which is a great "how to" but doesn't cover these specific scenarios.  

What are you guys doing out there for such items?  

Thank you, 

A

[SrilekhaVV]

in setup tab of a program you can add period cost as many times as you want

[Alexis_Falco]

Thank you very much for that info - I am aware that you can set up the costs multiple times but for evergreen content, I'm wondering if that is the best practice (and for the other use-case examples that I posted). 

We have download brochure programs, as an example, on our website and they will be there forever - so am I to go into the program and assign a PC every single month, forever? 

Regards, 

A

[shannonhsmith]

Hi Alexis, did you ever resolve your question above? Would be very interested, as we are running into this as well! Thanks!

[Alexis_Falco]

Sadly, no, I never received a best-practice on this one. If you find out anything, please let me know. 

[Katja_Keesom]

Hi Alexis,

The idea is indeed to add period costs for each single month. In the scenarios you describe I suppose the key question is what the typical life cycle of a brochure is, how often do you refresh it or after how long does the download frequency trail off? It is up to you to determine the lifecycle of the content and spread the production cost over that period of time.  For those months, Marketo will calculate your costs per interaction, new name and revenue won against the cost as ROI. After the months where you allocate cost, any new benefits realized are "free", as you have already covered your cost in the previous months.

See if you can make it work for you based on that line of thinking.

[JessicaMeyers]

Hey Alexis, 

I think this docs article actually does a great job of explaining period costs: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Understanding+Period+Costs

In short, it really depends on how you calculate costs for the program. If you think of the cost it is fixed as the cost you spent to get them produced, then if you put the cost in once all "successes" will be divided out across that cost.