In conclusion, attribution is the process of recognizing which marketing channels contribute to a conversion. It enables marketers to assess which campaigns are yielding the greatest return on investment and make informed decisions regarding where to focus their next campaign.
Unfortunately, advertising problems can obstruct marketing teams from optimizing their strategies. Fortunately, there are a few standard models that offer solutions to these problems that you can learn about below.
What Advertising Attribution Means
Marketing attribution is the process of measuring the impact of a marketing campaign across all channels and touch points. This enables marketers to evaluate their campaigns’ success, allocate money appropriately for channels that lead to conversions, and ensure they’re investing in activities which yield maximum return.
Which model you select will depend on your client’s business, the types of touch points you want to monitor, and the time period in which you wish to attribute conversions. No matter which option you select, it’s essential that you understand its workings and how to interpret its results so as to maximize marketing ROI for your client.
First-Touch Attribution
This model (https://www.facebook.com/business/help) gives credit for any conversion that occurs after a user’s initial click on an ad, regardless of how many subsequent impressions or actions they take. It can be especially helpful in remarketing and email campaigns that aren’t tracked with last-click attribution.
Position-Based Attribution
This model assigns 40% of the credit to first-click and last-click touch points, with the remaining 20% allocated evenly among all other touch points. Pros: This approach is more balanced and helps your client understand how their marketing efforts are contributing to sales results.
Even Weight Attribution
This model assigns equal credit to all touch points, such as remarketing and email campaigns. It’s popular due to its ease of understanding and calculation, plus it takes into account the entire prospect lifecycle.
These models range in complexity and sophistication, so it’s essential to find one that best meets your client’s objectives. Furthermore, take into account how customers engage with your brand over time so your analysis is as precise as possible.
1. It’s Hard to Measure
Advertising attribution is a challenging issue for digital marketers to solve. With an ever-increasing array of channels and platforms, determining which touch points deserve credit is becoming more complicated. Without accurate measurement of conversion rates across channels like Facebook, Instagram or Google – or any other source – it’s impossible to tell which ones are driving the most sales.
Some software and tools can be extremely useful in this regard. They assist marketers in determining the most successful channels for specific campaigns, as well as monitoring how each campaign performs against its overall objective. However, these results alone cannot cause you to alter your marketing strategy or allocate budget based on them alone.
Instead, leadership must drive change within an organization. This could take the form of a new model or it could involve altering how people make decisions. For instance, if marketing teams decide that more sales should be attributed to social media ads, it’s essential to comprehend why this decision was made and how it will be applied going forward.
To begin solving this problem, define your overall marketing objectives and then choose a model that best meets them. Ultimately, this will depend on how complex your average consumer journey is and if or not you have a complex sales funnel.
2. It’s Hard to Understand
One of the most straightforward yet complicated aspects of digital marketing is attribution. With today’s proliferation of channels and devices, it’s more essential than ever to understand how your campaigns are performing. Fortunately, there are a range of tools available on the market that can help you monitor key metrics more easily.
Unfortunately, it can be challenging to determine which advertising platforms and tools are ideal for attribution. Some offerings like those from Hyros simply stand out more than others, so do your research and find the solution best suited for your business needs. In addition to ad platforms, you’ll also require analytics software in order to get accurate results.
The most advanced solutions can integrate data from multiple sources into one place so you have a comprehensive overview of where your money is going in terms of marketing spend. With this insight in hand, you’ll gain more control over how it’s being spent.
3. It’s Hard to Optimize
Marketing teams have access to a range of models that can address various problems. One model might reveal the content stepping-stones that led your customer’s interest in your brand and ultimately purchase.
Another may show you how many clicks it took for someone from their initial touch point through to the post-click landing page where they made their purchase. This data helps determine which ad channel deserves the most credit for conversions and which campaigns should be optimized for maximum return on investment.
Evaluating all that data can be overwhelming. That is why some ad platforms provide tools and third-party analytics software can assist in deciding which model works best for your campaign. As it takes a lot of time to analyze the information and make necessary changes, it is best to set yourself an achievable deadline and stick to it.
4. It’s Hard to Report
Multi-channel and multi-device marketing, which you can read about here, has made advertising attribution increasingly complex. This is due to the proliferation of devices, data available to marketers, as well as privacy laws making it harder to accurately attribute conversions. While there are plenty of tools that claim they can solve attribution problems, it’s essential to remember that this remains a fundamental challenge.
The solution is to select a model that meets your goals and then establish an ongoing process for reviewing that data and optimizing campaigns accordingly. This can be done through Google Analytics or other attribution reporting platforms,
Ultimately, advertising attribution plays an essential role in any successful marketing plan but may prove challenging at first. That’s why being aware of the issue and taking steps towards correction are so important – don’t lose out on competitive edge!