Regardless of your industry, it should be the main aim of every business to continually strive to enhance their marketing campaigns, in the most effective way possible.
To achieve this, you’ll need to implement marketing attribution into your business. This will not only allow you to elevate your marketing strategies, but create a greater return on investment (ROI).
Read on, for your complete guide to marketing attribution.
Plus, learn how expert tools such as a call tracking system can further improve your attribution process, and aid your overall business’ development.
What is marketing attribution?
Marketing attribution is a process that involves an in-depth analysis of every touchpoint visited during a customer journey, and how these impact on interaction with your business.
The customer journey comprises an entire map of engagement between a customer and your business. This involves every touchpoint such as calls, ad clicking, and purchases. Customer journeys can vary in length and number of interactions, each providing unique data on your marketing strategies.
For the most effective campaigns, you need to ensure that the majority, if not all, of your customers are completing their journeys with a conversion.
The more sales that can be driven from your marketing, the more effective your strategies are.
Marketing attribution allows you to analyse your entire marketing performance. With this data, you can improve and create more engaging strategies that boost ROI.
Which attribution model do I need?
Marketing attribution can be a complex process. Therefore, choosing the right model for your business is pivotal to your process.
They can be categorised into three main types of model:
- First touch attribution
First touch attribution focuses your analysis on the first touchpoint in every customer journey – and nothing else. This is the first time a customer ever interacts with your business.
The aim of this model is to identify the main reasons why customers are interacting with your business initially. The idea is that once you perfect how you hook customers in, you’ll have more customer’s starting their journeys – and thus more potential sales.
- Last touch attribution
Last touch attribution has a similar style to first touch, but this model focuses only on the last touchpoint in a journey. This could be either a sale or simply the last place visited before the customer lost interest.
This is great for helping generate more conversions. If you find out where customers are leaving your business without a sale, you can modify these touchpoints, so they are more engaging and incentivising.
For instance, an effective tool such as call tracking will allow you to thoroughly analyse your phone calls. This includes the recognition of important keywords, and recording of conversations. You can review the quality of your calls, how engaged the customers were, and how often they convert to a sale after a call.
If your phone call conversions appear to be lacking, this tool will help you to discover where you need to refine your call quality, and improve your last touchpoint conversions.
- Multi-touch attribution
This third type of attribution model has categories of its own. However, the umbrella definition involves the analysis of multiple touchpoints, as opposed to just one.
The branches of this model type are:
Linear attribution – This model analyses every touchpoint with equal value. This will give you the most all-rounded view of your marketing performance, and show how customers are engaged at every point during their journeys.
U-shaped model – This model assigns more value on the first and last touchpoints, with minimal analysis of the in-between. The idea is that an introduction to your business and the final moment of a journey are most vital to sales.
W-shaped model – This model puts high value on the first, last, and middle touchpoints equally, and less value on the remaining sections. This places importance on the first and last touchpoints, whilst also acknowledging the importance of maintaining engagement in the middle of a customer’s journey.
Time decay attribution – This model ascends in value, with the first touchpoint having the lowest, and the last touchpoint with the highest. This model assumes that as customers become more involved with your business, the marketing strategies become more crucial to the likelihood of a conversion, with the final touchpoint being the ultimate decider of a sale or not.
Marketing attribution is an important process, and with this complete guide at your disposal, you’re more equipped to start enhancing your marketing campaigns.
