Give Credit where Credit is Due - the Basics of Attribution
As a marketer you’ve tried to be diligent about optimizing the marketing investments of the organization you are working with. You’ve incorporated some level of attribution and a solid targeting strategy. But as I’ve recently done, have you questioned whether or not the attribution model your company is using to measure their online marketing investments really enable marketers to optimize the campaigns they work on.
An overwhelming majority of online marketers use a 'most recent' attribution model for determining which media placements are the most effective. This may oversimplify and provide an inaccurate picture of how customers are exposed to promotional marketing messages during the buying cycle and which combination of media placements are performing better than others.
For example:
-A consumer clicks through on a display ad for an electronics retailer (Retailer A ) - no purchase occurs
-Two weeks later, the consumer's laptop breaks down, the consumer searches for "cheap laptops" in a search engine. A paid search ad for the same retailer shows up and the consumer conducts some research - no purchase occurs
-After researching prices with other retailers, the consumer decides to purchase the laptop from Retailer A by subsequently locating Retailer A through an organic search result.
The traditional, "most recent" attribution model, will give full credit of the sales conversion to the paid search ad. However, this is not an accurate representation of the other media channels that played a role in the sales conversion. In the example above, the initial display ad receives no credit for the sales conversion suggesting it did not influence the conversion at all. Secondly, organic search traffic will not be identified as 'campaign traffic' by the various web analytics tools (unless programmatic changes are implemented) and would likely be missed in the campaign reporting. An added complication might be, that the conversion also gets credited to the organic search listing in the analytics tool's organic search report resulting in two channels that claim to have succeeded in driving the sale.
In addition to the pre-dominant “most recent” attribution model, some others are:
-Initial - the marketing placement that drives the first click gets the full credit of a conversion
-Even - all placements that drive traffic to the site before a conversion get equal credit
-Weighted – this is the most complex model which gives more credit to some placements than others depending on their influence. It is difficult in the case of a weighted model to determine accurate weightings.
As a marketer, familiarize yourself with how your media channels are getting credit for the conversion. That way, you can, at a minimum understand and take into account when conductingyour campaign analysis. Question whether the ‘attribution period’ is similar to the buy cycle of the organization’s product or service offering vs the default value set in the web analytics tool. If it makes sense, adjust the ‘attribution period’ to better reflect your organization’s buy cycles. And last but not least, work to standardize on the attribution model that best aligns with the organizations overall business objectives. I believe, by giving credit where credit is due, marketers will be able to help get the most out of the online marketing investments they make.
