All marketing channels work but marketers need to know which ones work the best. Consumers take many steps from the time they first become aware of a product or brand until they make a decision to buy. It is not a linear journey and they may repeat steps, skip steps or hop around. Visiting a website, clicking on a product and buying it immediately is quite rare.
What is marketing attribution?
Marketing attribution is a method of reporting that shows touchpoints in the customer journey that have the most impact. These may be anything from filling in a form, responding to an email and reading a blog post or making a purchase.
It helps businesses to assess the ROI of various marketing methods they use to connect with their customers. Without marketing attribution, there would be no way of understanding marketing performance.
LeanData offers the most accurate marketing attribution data to businesses powered by industry-leading matching. Marketing and sales teams can trust a common dataset and use it to improve ROI.
Attribution models
Attribution models vary across businesses and each one has pros and cons. First-touch attribution gives credit for conversion to the first touchpoint with the customer and last-touch attribution credits it to the last touch.
Various other models include a linear attribution model, a time-decay model, and a position-based attribution model. Last-touch attribution is a popular model as it reflects the moment at which a customer converts.
Why is attribution important?
With so many different types of customers, channels and choices, it can be difficult to know where to focus marketing efforts. The presence of so many channels can increase conversions but it does make it more difficult to establish which channels are doing well.
Attribution helps businesses to get into the minds of prospects and customers. They are then able to make the right marketing decisions that offer the most ROI. There is no point in wasting money on channels that do not bring in customers.
A conversion attribution report shows which touchpoints a customer experiences on the road to conversion. Marketers need to measure how effective the various touchpoints are and a comprehensive view that includes platforms, sources and mediums helps them to identify which paths are most successful.
Data-driven attribution offers flexibility to marketers to tailor their marketing to business goals. It helps them to:
- Spend their marketing budget in the best ways.
- Learn which channels provide the most effective way to market.
- Make data-driven decisions because they understand how the customer is thinking at the point of conversion.
- Find out where problems or obstacles exist so they can be overcome.
Questions marketing attribution reports can address:
- Some specific questions marketing attribution reports address are:
- What types of content generate the most conversions?
- Which pages do prospects visit most before buying products?
- Which channels work best when it comes to generating leads?
- How many touchpoints does a prospect visit before conversion?
- What is the most common path a customer takes to conversion?
Marketing attribution reports can help marketers to summarize conversion trends, see the value of activity of a contact over time and make data-driven decisions by learning which touchpoints are most effective.
With the help of marketing attribution reports, it is possible to be much smarter about spending and allocate a marketing budget in the most effective way. It becomes possible to prove revenue contributions and even make a case for an increased marketing budget.
Typically companies adopt multi-touch attribution models where outcomes can be applied to more than one touchpoint. The best outcome to match with marketing is the final goal, which is revenue.