Now more than ever, it’s important to understand which campaigns are generating the most leads for your business and which ones aren’t. Putting more spend into the channels that consistently increase ROI is important to maintaining a healthy business in 2020, says Kevin Mann, co-founder and CPO of CallRail.
Marketers face mounting pressureOpens a new window to prove the ROI of their efforts as the measurability of customer touchpoints – both online and off – has increased. Interactions through everything from Google searches to website visits and social media engagements have created a winding, non-linear path to final conversion.
In 2020, marketers are using more tech platforms than everOpens a new window , making it challenging to measure which marketing efforts are most effective. That’s where marketing attribution comes in.
Marketing attribution allows you to track your marketing efforts along the customer journey and understand which campaign or tactic led to the most conversions. While most marketers understand the importance of attribution, there’s still room for improvement in understanding how to apply it practically — especially as advancing technology allows for even more optimization.
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Whether you’re new to configuring attribution for your marketing efforts or you’re a seasoned pro making minor tweaks, here’s how you can improve your strategy:
1. Understand Each Attribution Model
All attribution strategies are not the same, and one model can yield vastly different results than another. It’s important to understand each model to evaluate which is the best fit for your business.
First-touch attribution gives credit for a customer conversion to the first interaction a customer had with your business during the buyer journey. For example, a conversion might be attributed to a Google ad that prompted someone to visit your site, but then actually converted when retargeted with a Facebook ad later. In contrast, a last-click attribution model (used by Google Analytics) assigns all of the credit for the final conversion to the last action the individual took before converting.
While last-touch and first-touch attribution models are common, they’re not always adequate since they leave gaps that obscure the whole picture. For example, while a last click (like a link from a Facebook ad) might very well have been the most effective touchpoint, that’s not always the case. The customer could have clicked a Google ad earlier that swayed them to finally click the Facebook link, or have researched a company’s blog before making the jump.
An attribution model that accounts for the multiple touchpoints customers have is best, so you’re getting insights about the entire customer journey and the factors that ultimately led customers to convert. Using multi-touch attribution, you can assign fractional credit to the various interactions customers have to gain a more detailed view of what works and what doesn’t.
2. Clarify Platform Bias Across Your Attribution Efforts
Apart from gathering metrics from all conversion points and customer visits, you have to make sure the metrics you’re looking at actually make sense – and are as accurate as possible.
Most marketers use a number of third-party platforms – like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more – to engage with customers. While each platform provides its own metrics about conversions and leads that can help you and other marketers understand how ads are performing, these platforms are often a bit biased in their own favor. Facebook doesn’t want to give credit to Google for a lead, for example, so (like in that last-click attribution example) it will likely overemphasize its own role in increasing conversions.
It’s easy to get confused toggling between these dashboards. A one-stop platform that integrates all of these insights in one place can reduce the noise around these metrics and paint a more accurate, holistic picture of your marketing efforts.
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3. Broaden Your Attribution Scope
To gain a holistic picture, you need to adequately account for all of the conversion points your customers use. The most common mediums for conversion are form submissions, text messaging, chat, and, last but not least, phone calls.
Phone calls are often customers’ favorite method to get in touch with businesses, whether they’re researching products and services or making purchases. That means a strong attribution model is not complete without call tracking.
Call tracking is another tool that integrates attribution efforts across touchpoints, since your phone number is displayed wherever your customers browse your content. Call tracking tools are especially powerful if they support dynamic number insertion (DNI). DNI assigns individual phone numbers to website visitors from different online sources (such as website visitors from a Facebook ad or website visitors from an email newsletter), so you can see exactly which marketing efforts inspired your customer to pick up the phone. This lends more specificity to your attribution picture, allowing you to make better use of your budget.
There are more opportunities than ever to connect with customers, and understanding how to make the most of these opportunities is a powerful competitive advantage. As 2020 unfolds, spend time making sure your attribution strategy is as accurate and comprehensive as possible.