Let’s be real, no one likes wasting their money! Well, maybe those who have it to waste. But most of us will do anything to save a buck in our personal and business lives. Marketing attribution is a technique that does just that in the business world. Marketing attribution evaluates areas of brand marketing strategies during the consumers path to purchase to see what leads to a purchase and what doesn’t. This allows for the brand to allocate more resources to those strategies that lead to revenue and back off on those that don’t. Thus, saving the company more money and ultimately, bring more in. The benefits are pretty obvious in order to optimize resources and budgets. There are a few different models that a brand can follow:
1. First touch: this assumes that the consumer chose to purchase after seeing the initial ad they encountered. It could be the first time they visited your website or engaged with your brand on social media.
2. Last touch: as the name implies, this model uses the final touchpoint that leads to a sale.
3. Linear: this model considers all contributing channels in the buyer journey and considers all interactions equal.
4. Lead conversion touch: this helps pinpoint the exact moment that a person decides to make the purchase.
5. Multi-touch: can help the brand understand how all interactions work together. Can allow for tracking of the exact moment that lead to conversion of consumer.
6. Time decay: focuses on more recent interactions. It gives weight to each purchase touchpoint differently. It will help understanding in which channels are pushing customers toward a purchase.
7. Position based (U-shaped): it’s broken up like this, 40% at the first interaction, 40% at the final and 20% to the other touchpoints.
8. Custom: most complex. Gives ability to assign their own touchpoint weights. Very accurate but also hard to set up.
So, how do you know which model to use for your brand? Well, the answer is in your marketing goals. First, ask yourself, what type of sales cycles does your brand use and how long does it run? How much is digital and which channels are used? Now, it’s time to figure out what you want to know. What’s the goal of your current marketing campaign and what type of campaigns have you been using? Here is a short list of questions to consider when choosing an attribution model:
1. Can you get insights throughout the campaign to optimize or only at the end?
2. Are you trying to understand how your marketing effort can generate leads?
3. Are you assessing your marketing strategy?
Picking the right model isn’t an easy process so care should be taken to know what it is that you want to measure. Don’t rush this process so you can align to with your unique marketing strategies and goals.
