The marketing world is complex to measure marketing attribution effectively, and being competitive is a constant challenge in the current digital environment. There are many channels and strategies to attract audiences that marketers struggle to see where they have to focus their efforts. Marketing attribution is one of the most valuable methods of understanding and measuring the success of your marketing channel’s ROI. While b2b marketing attribution is a familiar topic among marketers, few can confidently admit that they do not understand much about it.
Since b2b attribution is crucial in measuring your marketing efforts' results, you must thoroughly understand how it works. This post will help you learn what marketing attribution is, why it is vital to your ROI, and how to measure it effectively.
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What is Marketing Attribution
In a nutshell, attribution is the process of measuring the value of each step that the customer takes in the purchasing journey. It would allow you to determine which marketing initiatives are most valuable to your business. Understanding how attribution works are the only way to help optimize the sales funnel. Doing so would result in driving higher revenues from your marketing efforts.
Many factors contribute to why customers hesitate or agree to do business with you. Marketing attribution is an effective method to understand the different customer behaviors so that you can create campaigns that will encourage better engagement and higher conversion.
One thing to consider about attribution is that it has become a complicated process over the years. From a single and interspersed interaction, buyers now go through an always-on, immersive, and symbiotic experience from many customer touchpoints. There is varying influence among those touchpoints, so it is not easy to quantify their value. The only way to give appropriate credit to the most efficient marketing channels is by using the proper attribution models.
Why is Marketing Attribution Essential?
Attributing the profit and revenue growth says a lot about your marketing initiatives. Aside from providing a clear picture of how effective your marketing efforts are, attribution can also contribute to the following:
1. Smart Marketing Fund Allocation
Determining the market budget is crucial in any business, especially for those starting in the industry. When marketing funding is a concern, attribution helps you determine which campaigns it is best to focus on. This will help you conserve as many resources as possible and lessen your worries about going overboard with your budget or wasting funds on campaigns that never convert.
2. Increasing ROI
When you have the means to uncover which marketing strategies work best, you can use it as an advantage to increase your ROI. This is because you can start eliminating non-converting methods and concentrate on the channels that bring the most conversions.
3. Understand Your Customers Better
One of the surest ways to stay afloat in the industry is by giving the customers exactly what they need or want. You can get better insights into your target customers’ preferences with attribution. You can determine what type of content they want, which channels they prefer, and how they want to access your products and services. Knowing the specific answers to these questions will guide you in designing your marketing content to make them more effective. It promises a good ROI and enhances the customer experience with your brand.
Popular Attribution Models
The attribution model is one critical component in measuring your marketing campaigns' success. An attribution model works like a guide or framework that will give you an idea of which marketing touchpoint receives credit for every conversion.
There is no best way to attribute value to each marketing collateral. Instead, it would help if you chose an attribution model that best suits your business. Here are a few models that you can check out which might work for you:
1. Single-touch Attribution
As the simplest attribution model, many marketers find this easier to use because it lacks complexity but can help tell the performance of the sales pipeline. Two models belong to this category, the first-touch and last-touch attributions.
- First-touch - All credit will be given to the first interaction or touchpoint the customer went through before converting into a customer. For example, if the customer clicks on a social media ad, this interaction will have the credit. It will not matter how many touchpoints the customers had before making a purchase, like reading a newsletter.
Its advantage is that it can convert customers faster and help achieve a shorter buying cycle. The disadvantage, however, is that it disregards other marketing efforts that can be more effective than the first interaction.
- Last-touch - Contrary to the first-touch model, the last-touch model focuses on the last touchpoint before a customer finally purchases a product. It has the same advantages and disadvantages as the first-touch model. Marketers only get to take action on one touchpoint instead of crediting other touchpoints that helped convert leads into customers.
2. Multi-touch Attribution
Unlike with single-touch attribution model, multi-touch attribution recognizes multiple touchpoints that customers undertake in the purchasing journey. Popular models in this category include:
- Linear - All touchpoints are given equal credit to the conversion process. It simplifies the attribution process but can be misleading since the interactions’ costs and values differ but receive the same credit.
- Time-Decay - The credit given to touchpoints increases as it nears conversion, where the last touchpoint has the most credit attributed.
- U-Shaped - This model values the first and last touchpoints the most. This means it credits the type of content used to acquire leads and the touchpoint before becoming a customer.
- W-Shaped - This model works in the same concept as the U-shaped attribution model but also includes opportunity creation as another valuable touchpoint. The first and last touchpoints receive equal credit as the opportunity touchpoint.
- Custom/Algorithmic - Considered one of the best attribution models, this custom approach uses advanced algorithms to have the most accurate attribution along multiple touchpoints.
Most problems with attribution arise from the lack of knowledge about its appropriate implementation. It is a must to choose which attribution suits your business best and learn how to execute it properly. It will result in calculating the impact of your marketing techniques and influence the success of your campaigns.
How to Effectively Attribute
Marketing attribution is only effective when you efficiently analyze all data from your conversions. While a b2b attribution software usually combines automated quantitative attribution and broad qualitative analysis to produce helpful attribution analysis, there are also other things that you can do to measure your marketing attribution efforts effectively.
1. Invest in a reliable CRM and MAP
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) record and store customer and lead activity data. Some platforms can make attribution reports so you can track all interactions.
2. Utilize all possible tools
Choosing an attribution model and having a CRM and MAP in place are only the starting points of your attribution journey. The number of customer touchpoints across multiple channels is growing steadily. It is why tracking marketing success has become such a struggle for most marketers. You will need to harness the power of new technology to have a complete picture of your marketing attribution efforts.
You may need:
- Attribution software - Investing in attribution software is innovative because it is the easiest way to track digital and non-digital attribution channels. It is fully automated to track and collect data across multiple marketing and communication channels. You may integrate it with other software and tools like CRM, email tracking, and sales analytics to fully appreciate your performance metrics. It will provide you with a singular view of your marketing data so that you will find it easier to determine the next steps to take in your marketing.
- Google Analytics- A Google Analytics business account gives you access to a built-in attribution tracking model. This means you can pull data and create a report on conversion totals and other crucial digital marketing footprints. However, it uses a last-click attribution model, so only the last known conversion source collected in the last six months will be credited 100%. It has a multi-channel function, but the data collected is limited only to the previous 90 days.
- UTM codes- Attaching UTM codes to your URL is also one way to track your campaign’s success. This method requires five tags to be included for tracking, including:
- Campaign source. This code describes the channel where the interaction occurs. This can be on social media channels, email newsletters, or websites.
- Campaign medium. This code briefly describes the interaction that happened. In Instagram, for example, the code will look like &utm_medium=paidsocial
- Campaign name. You can use this code to link marketing actions to the campaigns you are currently running.
- Campaign term. This code is helpful if you use keyword targeting on your campaigns.
- Campaign content. This code is excellent for split-testing ads where you need to track which campaign converts the most leads.
3. Consider the customer’s journey when creating an attribution report
The buyers go through different stages and marketing channels across their journey. Consider which specific marketing channels are helping you drive traffic but are non-essential in converting leads to customers. This is crucial because some attribution models only value the touchpoints that create leads.
4. Know what attribution to use and when
The fault of some marketers is that they tend to hate some of the attribution models. In reality, however, there is no wrong approach to marketing attribution. What makes it effective will depend on the business model or sales funnel that you use for your business. Some models will give either more or less insight into your marketing ROI. The wisest approach is to test out the models until you see which one brings the most efficient insights. You can then use the information to create a custom attribution model that will be perfect for your business.
5. Keep it simple
Expecting your attribution reports to be perfect can make you lose sight of other good things. A quality attribution report will take time, plenty of attribution, and experience. The only way to gain a lot from it is by focusing on how you can generate precise and easy-to-understand data. Be consistent with your marketing efforts, and you will be able to collect data in a very insightful manner.
If your team has multiple marketing campaigns, investing in attribution and ensuring that you know how to make it work for your business will give you the most bang for your back spent in marketing.
Conclusion
The marketing ROI is crucial in justifying the marketing spend and budget for all future campaigns. It is best to allocate your investment to strategies that generate significant revenue. Knowing the appropriate implementation and execution of marketing attribution makes it easier to calculate the impact of your campaigns.
Always remember that data is everything when it comes to marketing attribution. The most critical component is to have an efficient manner of collecting and visualizing marketing data. You will never get the best results when you have insufficient data, even with the best attribution software and models.
It is essential to put a lot of importance on attribution models to measure the ROI of your marketing campaigns efficiently. Successfully documenting and analyzing the success of marketing efforts is one of the most effective ways to ensure the best experience during the customer journey. It is a strategy that a marketer can use to enhance the business in many ways. With marketing attribution, you can improve all aspects of marketing, including turnover, profit, sales volume, and customer retention.
As a marketer, your most important job is determining and understanding which strategies drive the most revenue to the business. The goal of marketing is to increase business sales and profitability. Marketing attribution ensures that you are not blindly investing in marketing campaigns that will give no value to your ROI.