How To Solve Multi-Touch Marketing Attribution – PART II: Become An Attribution Master

Chances you are reading this because you either feel comfortable where you stand with PART I: Know Where To Start, or you implemented the 4 key variables for establishing the proper foundation needed to begin PART II: Become An Attribution Master. Either way, you are ready to learn how to solve any challenge that comes with Multi-Touch Marketing Attribution.

What Type Of Challenge Are You Trying To Solve?

Like it or not, some marketers have a hard time understanding what data is most important to improving their current campaign and/or tactic. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can be hard to figure out how to improve your current marketing efforts.

Firstly, there are three main use cases when measuring Multi-Touch Marketing Attribution:

  1. Campaign Return on Investment – What was my revenue by campaign tactic? How many customers did I receive by campaign tactic?
  2. Channel Mix Metrics – Based on my spending metrics, what was my return on investment for each marketing tactic? What content resonated with each audience? What type of feedback am I getting from my audience? What marketing tactic was the most successful?
  3. Budget Allocation – What marketing tactic produced the most revenue? What is the comparative spending versus ROI per marketing tactic? Based on the budget we have, what is the best way to allocate our resources?

Maybe one or all of the above use cases apply to you. If all three use cases apply to you, simply choose one at a time, then apply each use case to an Attribution Model.

Below I have presented the most commonly known Attribution Models:

Single Source Attribution – This type of Attribution model applies the entire weight of one single event to a new opportunity/lead. It’s very unlikely that a potential lead only sees you once before taking action. So what most marketers do is either put the entire weight of an event on a lead’s first touch point or they put the entire weight of an event on the lead’s last touch point before buying/contacting a representative. CRM and Marketing Automation Systems like Salesforce, Infusionsoft, and HubSpot, will take the last touch point before the lead converted.

Fractional Attribution – Fractional Attribution is a multi-touch weighted model. Either each touch point has equal weight or each touch point has different weights depending on a variable of your choosing (ie. time decay). This type of model is a more realistic portrayal of how the potential customer goes step by step through a buyer’s journey; however, marketers have a hard time measuring what touch point is more important than others. That said there are multiple ways to approach and analyze a Fractional Attribution Model. If you are good with math and intimately understand how marketing automation systems work, you may be able to customize and build this out on your own, but it takes a lot of energy, time, and ongoing maintenance. Alternatively, marketers with nice budgets are able to utilize systems like Algorithmic (Probabilistic) Attribution to do this for them. Not only is it more accurate, but it’s also a machine that learns from past data to determine weights to drive future conversions.

An example of a multi-touch Fractional Model includes varied levels of “touch.” Having an email sent to a recipient’s inbox is one thing, but having the recipient opening the email is another and even more so when they actually click. If the email click was the customer’s first and most appropriate “touch,” this gives us actionable data to say, let’s focus more on emails like this. In addition, you can also review the last touch that took place before the customer actually bought/converted and focus on activities surrounding that touch as well.

How Can You Tie Your Attribution Model To Revenue?

No matter which way you slice your Attribution Model the revenue outcome will remain the same. The chart below will simply help clarify what you likely already know.

inc-blog-attributionrevenue

At the end of the day, it depends on what your business is looking to accomplish and through what means to determine challenges you will face and what type of Attribution Model you put in place to solve those challenges. Now that you’ve read How To Solve Multi-Touch Marketing Attribution Part I & II, you can get started in creating your own customized attribution model.

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