How marketing attribution model worth in today’s marketing scenario

How marketing attribution model worth in today’s marketing scenario

If after clicking on a display ad, a consumer buys an item on your site, it is fairly straightforward to have credit selling it entirely to that one ad.

Marketer takes into account the various attribution benefits, and suggests that marketers look at more channels.

But what if the purchasing route has been a little more complicated? Maybe they clicked on the company's display, then a social ad a week later, before downloading the company app, visiting the website from an organic search listing and converting a coupon from that app into a store.

How do you intend to know what event, or touch point, was the key to sealing the deal?

Welcome to the world of marketing attribution.

What is attribution?

Attribution is the science of not only determining which steps were taken before conversion, but also identifying which marketing channel was most impacting on the customer — and when. Being able to track conversions accurately is paramount to effectively follow a campaign’s success.

Given the increasing fragmentation of platforms and the types of media that marketers have at their disposal, attribution has never been more important from a marketing measurement point of view. Unfortunately, the nature of attribution is one where the target positions are constantly being moved. Understanding which route a consumer took before selling can be as important as the sale itself. Attribution science has a significant role to play in helping organizations maximize their business outcomes, making it all the more amazing that it is still not prioritized by many companies. Attribution provides invaluable insight into your marketing strategies and allows for better decision-making and spending allocations. Without a solid

attribution of high-quality marketing, your ad budgets can be drained inexorably and your revenue lost in the ether.

How is attribution tracked?

Agencies need to ensure that proper measuring technologies are in place if a campaign's marketing attribution capabilities are to be effectively tracked. It is here that models of attribution come into play.

Marketing attribution models assign the credit in the consumer journey to the touch points.

Those models vary in the way they measure attribution, so experimenting with a variety of them and seeing what works best for tracking your marketing campaigns is a great idea.

First-click attribution This model focuses solely on the initial action the customer has taken on their journey and ignores and subsequent commitments they may have had before converting.

Last-click attribution

In contrast to the first-click attribution models, the last-click attribution hones in the customer's click on the last page or organization before conversion. This does not however account for any other commitments in the marketing efforts of the company that may have led to the conversion.

Equal attribution

This multi-touch point model accounts for the fact that in the contribution that they made to conversion, different aspects of the consumer's journey carry greater weight than others.

Conversion Responsibility can be assigned.

Time-decay attribution

This model lends credit more heavily to those touchpoints that occurred closer to the conversion time than those that have occurred further back in time.

U-shaped attribution

Behind this model the unique methodology assigns the most credit to the first and final commitments. The rest is equally assigned to any of the touchpoints that occurred in the middle at sometime. This is the model followed by Google Analytics: 40 percent of the credit is allocated to the first and last commitment, with the remaining 20 percent being distributed equally across the interactions.

Fractional attribution

This model assigns credit to a variety of sources for the conversion.

This marketing attribution model removes those touchpoints that have not actually contributed by determining duplicate attributions, and also allows you to assign greater weight to those steps taken that have played a more important role.

Algorithmic/data-driven attribution

Instead of requiring a predetermined set of credit assignment rules, this model uses machine learning to analyze each touchpoint and create a model of assignment based on the resulting data.

Why is attribution so crucial?

Given the impact that attribution can have on the success of a campaign, it is not surprising that State of Performance Marketing Report found that 70 per cent of professionals across Europe and USA are struggling to act on marketing insights to bring about improvements. This would strongly indicate that a huge proportion of businesses are not using attribution effectively, despite it being a hot opportunity that marketing teams consistently identify.

The report, moreover, identified two key points where marketers felt attribution had a massive impact on their businesses.

70 percent stated that the use of attribution models enabled them to work with budgets more efficiently, achieving greater allocation across channels overall.

64% claimed that the attribution provided indispensable insight into how their marketing channels complemented each other (or how they did not).

You'll never generate good ROI on your marketing spending without a solid attribution strategy.

What's that for?

Attribution enables both marketers and businesses to tackle the impact their campaigns are having.

A sound attribution strategy allows companies to see exactly how and where their marketing channels have helped to bring customers in.

Studying attribution provides a way to exercise some degree of control within the consumer journey, and then shape it to suit business needs and desired outcomes.

Implementing an effective marketing attribution strategy means paving the way for greater efficiency by channeling resources to those channels that deliver the most.

Studying attribution provides a way to exercise some degree of control within the consumer journey, and then shape it to suit business needs and desired outcomes.

Marketing Attribution broadly extends beyond digital advertising. It can also incorporate offline marketing efforts, traditional advertising and non-marketing variables, the latter being potentially as broad as how the weather, season and time of day affect the strength of a marketing plan or the acquisition of your customers.

Modeling attribution is an integral component of adaptive marketing, where you use every tool available to your organization to optimize and tailor a marketing approach based on the data you acquire — all in real time.

You are not restricted to one single marketing attribution dataset. You can use it to set a baseline for predicting future purchases, and then measure the direct impact of changing a variable. It is then possible to incorporate those changes that produce positive effects into the evolving model.

Marketing attribution model has a tangible role to play in optimizing marketing spending and gaining a deeper understanding of how organizations can best use those channels that they have at their disposal. What's more, it is becoming increasingly significant.