A Short Guide to Marketing Attribution: Definitions, Attribution Models and 4 Tips to do it right

Nowadays, online marketing results aren’t as easy to decipher as they once were. Instead of a customer simply “Googling” a business and then buying or booking an appointment or picking up the phone, they often pass through several touchpoints before they make a buying decision. Leads and Customers are exposed to various advertising touchpoints across different channels, such as email, live TV shows, radio, social media, listings, paid search or physical stores.

These touchpoints work cohesively to guide customers towards making a final purchase or conversion. However, it’s not just the conversion that matters; it’s also crucial to understand the customer journey that led to it. Marketing attribution models provide advertisers with the means to measure and optimize the effectiveness of each unique touchpoint in the customer journey. Understanding how consumers navigate their journey is vital, and marketing attribution is the only way to start mapping and deeply understanding your customers.

Marketing attribution is the process of identifying and assigning credit to the marketing channels or touchpoints that led to a conversion or sale. It involves analyzing the customer’s journey through various touchpoints to understand which marketing efforts were most influential in driving the customer to make a purchase or take a specific action.

Attribution helps Marketers to answer these 4 questions:

• Which Marketing Channels led to the highest Conversion Rates?
• Which Campaigns led to the highest Conversion Rates and which ones are the Assisted?
• Are there any missed touchpoints that you can turn them into opportunities?
• How does a Lead finds and interacts with your business, and eventually becomes a client?

So that Marketers can take action on:

• Budget Allocations or Increasement
• Mapping User and Buyer Journeys
• Product/ Solution/ Sevice Improvement
• ROI Enhancement – reaching the right customer with the right message at the right time

Why is Marketing Attribution important? It’s simple – if you don’t know what contributes to your success, you simply can’t replicate your success.

Marketing attribution is an essential component of any data-driven marketing strategy. It allows businesses to track and analyze the effectiveness of their marketing efforts across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline. By understanding the impact of each marketing channel and touchpoint, businesses can optimize their marketing mix and focus their resources on what drives the most significant ROI. Without attribution, businesses may waste resources on ineffective marketing tactics or overlook successful ones.

As the marketing landscape becomes increasingly complex, with a multitude of channels and touchpoints, attribution becomes even more critical in providing a comprehensive view of the customer journey and driving data-informed decision-making.

First things first, there are two types of attribution models, single-touch and multi-touch. The key difference between them lies in the number of touchpoints that receive credit for a conversion.

Single-touch attribution, models give full credit for a conversion to a single touchpoint along the customer journey. For example, a first-touch attribution model would give full credit to the first touchpoint that initiated the customer journey, while a last-touch attribution model would give full credit to the last touchpoint that closed the deal. This model is useful for businesses that want to focus on optimizing a specific touchpoint or channel in their marketing efforts.

Multi-touch attribution models give credit to multiple touchpoints along the customer journey. This means that each touchpoint that contributed to the conversion receives some level of credit, whether it’s the first touchpoint that initiated the journey, the last touchpoint that closed the deal, or any touchpoints in between. This model is useful for understanding how each channel contributes to the customer journey and can help identify which channels are most effective at driving engagement at various stages.

The key benefit of a single-touch attribution model is that it provides a clear and simple picture of which touchpoint is driving the majority of the conversions. This can be particularly useful for businesses that want to focus on optimizing a specific touchpoint or channel in their marketing efforts. However, single-touch models may not give a complete understanding of the customer journey, as they don’t consider the impact of other touchpoints that may have contributed to the conversion.

On the other hand, multi-touch attribution models provide a more comprehensive understanding of the customer journey by assigning credit to multiple touchpoints. This can help businesses identify which channels are most effective at driving engagement at various stages, and can provide insights into how different channels work together to drive conversions. However, multi-touch attribution models can be more complex to set up and require a deeper understanding of customer behavior and touchpoints along the journey.

Attribution models are a framework that helps businesses determine how much credit to assign to each touchpoint along the customer journey. Understanding which marketing channels or tactics are driving the most conversions is crucial to optimizing your marketing strategy and allocating your resources effectively.

There are plenty of attribution models to consider for analyzing user’s touchpoints, but these 4 are a great way to start. You can always optimize and change your attribution model while you are learning more about your business needs and your customers’ interactions.

This model gives full credit to the first touchpoint that initiated the customer journey. It is useful for understanding which channels are effective at driving initial awareness and interest in a product or service.

When to use First-Touch Attribution: First-Touch is useful when the primary goal is to understand which touchpoints are driving initial interest and awareness. It can be especially effective for businesses that rely heavily on brand awareness and lead generation activities at the top of the funnel.

In contrast, while first-touch attribution gives full credit to the first touchpoint that initiated the customer journey, last-touch attribution gives full credit to the last touchpoint that closed the deal.This model gives full credit to the final touchpoint before the conversion. It is useful for understanding which channels are most effective at closing the deal and driving actual conversions.

When to use Last-Touch Attribution: Last-Touch is useful when the primary goal is to understand which touchpoints are driving the final conversion or sale. It can be especially effective for businesses that have a short and simple customer journey, such as e-commerce retailers.

This model distributes equal credit to each touchpoint along the customer journey. It is useful when the customer journey involves a relatively equal number of touchpoints across multiple channels. It can provide a fair and balanced view of the contribution of each touchpoint to the overall conversion, for understanding better how each channel contributes to the customer journey and identifying which channels are most effective at driving engagement at various stages.

When to use Linear Attribution: Linear attribution offers a more comprehensive understanding of the contributions of various marketing efforts towards conversions. However, it has a downside in that it assigns equal weight to all touchpoints along the customer journey. This means that a touchpoint that occurred a while back could carry the same weight as a more recent touchpoint that had a more significant impact on the conversion. If a business desires a more nuanced approach, other attribution models that give different weights to different touchpoints based on their position in the user journey can be used.

This model is useful when the customer journey involves multiple touchpoints over an extended period. It can help to give more credit to the touchpoints that occurred closer in time to the conversion, as they are likely to have had a more significant impact.

When to use Time-decay Attribution: Time-decay attribution is best suited for businesses with a longer and more complex customer journey that involves multiple touchpoints over an extended period. It can be particularly useful when there is a time lag between the initial touchpoint and the final conversion or sale. It gives more weight to touchpoints that occurred closer in time to the conversion, recognizing that these touchpoints likely had a more significant impact on the customer’s decision-making process.

This type of attribution model has a downside in that it may not assign a sufficient amount of credit to top-of-funnel marketing efforts. This is because such efforts occur farthest from the point of conversion, and thus, their impact on the overall customer journey may be overlooked or undervalued.

Attribution reporting visualizes Marketing Attribution based on the above models. It provides insights into the various touchpoints that led to a conversion or sale, and assigns credit to each touchpoint based on its contribution to the overall customer journey. Marketers use Attribution Reports to gain a better understanding of how their marketing efforts are performing, which channels and touchpoints are most effective, and how to optimize their marketing mix to drive better results. This information can be used to make data-driven decisions and improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of a business’s marketing strategy.

Before choosing an attribution model, make sure that you have deeply understand its impact. There is no right answer to what fits better your business. If you want to measure tofu metrics in order to increase your brand awareness, you probably should lean to the First-touch model. If you want to keep track on repetitive purchases, you should probably use a multi-touch model.

Deciding what conversions to track is a crucial step in marketing attribution reporting. It’s important to align the conversions being tracked to the funnel and strategic goals of the business. By doing so, you can ensure that the data collected accurately reflects the impact of your marketing efforts on the business’s overall success.

For example, if your business’s strategic goal is to increase revenue, tracking conversions such as purchases or subscriptions would be relevant. On the other hand, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, tracking conversions such as social media engagement or website traffic may be more relevant. Understanding which conversions to track and how they align with business goals is essential for accurate and actionable marketing attribution reporting.

Connecting marketing and sales channels and metrics is really important to get a better understanding of how marketing efforts contribute to sales revenue and business success. It helps businesses to see the impact of their marketing campaigns on the bottom line. By tracking metrics like lead generation, conversion rates, and sales revenue, businesses can identify opportunities for optimization and improve their overall strategy. Additionally, when marketing and sales teams work together, they can collaborate more effectively and achieve their goals faster.

Ensure you invest in the right marketing attribution tech stack to help you aggregate your data, make sense of the numbers, and offer strategic input to your Marketing Decisions. Before diving into marketing attribution reporting, it’s essential to ensure that you have the right data at your disposal. This may require utilizing various tools that your business uses to track customer behavior, both before and after they make a purchase. Before choosing a tool, think about your long-term business goals, which are your lead sources, and which KPIs you want to monitor with your attribution report.

Marketing attribution can help your business determine which marketing channels and messages influence customer decisions, providing insights to focus marketing strategies and tactics to drive ROI. By tracking and analyzing the results of marketing efforts with attribution in mind, businesses can make informed decisions to optimize their marketing efforts and maximize their returns.