The consumer path-to-purchase includes complex engagements with multiple media as consumers research to learn more about the product and service options available to them; and the best business to meet their needs. These customer touchpoints are interconnected, working together to solve a problem for the customer.
Marketing attribution is an analytical process that helps advertisers understand how their marketing tactics and customer interactions contribute to sales or other marketing goals.
Marketing attribution enables advertisers to measure and optimize their marketing mix to lead to increased sales. Understanding your customer’s journey, and the media they engage with, is crucial. Marketing attribution can help.
Along your customer’s path-to-purchase they may engage with any number of media.
From display advertising in The Keene Sentinel or www.KeeneSentinel.com in the ‘awareness’ stage to search, blogs, and social media in the ‘consideration’ stage; through connected TV, e-mail marketing, e-commerce sites, newsletters, and more, before they ultimately complete their journey, purchase, and become a fan of a business.
Marketing attribution seeks to identify which media, campaigns, and other components of the marketing funnel are driving leads and sales. Armed with this data, your local business can optimize your tactics, drive more efficiency in your marketing investment, and grow your business.
A primary tactic in marketing automation involves assigning a value to each user action, or ‘touchpoint’, that contributed to advancing the sale or other desired outcome. Marketing attribution then attempts to understand which combination of events, and in what order, influence people to engage in that desired behavior.
But there are certainly challenges with marketing attribution including:
- It is important to recognize that the media mix includes various media specifically designed to accomplish needs within the mix. For example, some media are better at building awareness while some are best at conversions. But it crucial to recognize that each are vital to the overall effectiveness of the media mix and integrate your marketing accordingly.
- It may be tricky to ensure you are effectively tracking every step in the customer journey. For example, some offline media including radio, print, broadcast TV, and billboard advertising are more difficult to track vs. digital media. Including both online and offline attribution models ensures you are allocating your marketing budget as effectively as possible.
How To Build a Marketing Attribution Model
- Start by collecting data across all your various marketing channels and customer touchpoints.
- From there, analyze the data to understand how each interaction affected the sales process.
- Choose an attribution model that best fits your needs and your product/service sales cycle. Importantly, you’ll also want to select a model that best matches the buying behavior of your target customer and your marketing objectives.
- Then you’ll need to select an analytics platform that can track and assign value to each touchpoint. As well, seek a platform that can also track offline touchpoints including offline sales, foot traffic, and non-digital media engagement.
There are many types of marketing attribution models to consider, including:
- First-Touch Attribution Model: This model gives full credit to the very first interaction a customer has with your brand.
- Last-Touch Attribution Model: This model gives the credit to the very last touchpoint a lead interacted with before conversion, regardless of other media they may have previously engaged with.
- Linear Attribution Model. This model gives equal credit to all channels and touchpoints that the customer engages with on their path to purchase.
- Time-Decay Attribution Model: This model assigns most credit to the most recent customer touchpoints.
- The U-Shaped Attribution Model: This model give the most credit to those early and late customer interactions.
As well, you can create your own custom attribution model where you assign credit for sales to various touchpoints along the customer journey based on how your specific customers interact with your brand.
Marketing attribution can be a powerful tool in helping your local business optimize your marketing return-on-investment and ensuring your business is effectively interacting with customers all along their path-to-purchase.
If you’re interested in learning more about the value of marketing attribution, Sentinel Solutions can help. Give us a call at 603-352-5896 or send us an e-mail to advertising@SentinelDigitalSoutions.com if we can assist you.
