While the concept of attribution may seem complicated, understanding it gives us the opportunity to market more effectively. Understanding a customer’s conversion path allows us to discover when they first came into contact with our site or store, which channels were involved in shaping their decision, and which traffic sources are best for closing deals. This, in turn, allows us to manage our budget more effectively and adjust our marketing strategy to maximize return on investment and improve the customer experience. So what is conversion attribution?
Conversion attribution is the assignment of the share of a sale or lead acquisition to the individual channels, campaigns or traffic sources that led to it. We can examine it in general terms - we examine traffic from various sources - or in detail - we check which ads or creations are the most effective.
It's worth knowing
Assisted conversions are a term used in marketing to describe any user interaction that did not directly lead to a conversion but contributed to achieving a goal.
Marketing Attribution Issues and Challenges
There is quite a bit of tar in this barrel of honey. In an ideal world, we would be able to perfectly capture what happens at each stage of the consumer journey. Unfortunately, in real life, things are not so rosy.
A big challenge is that users use different devices. Most of us have a smartphone, use a computer at work and at home, and browse the Internet in less conventional ways (e.g. on a TV). Without the right help, analytics tools can't link these visits to a single person, so we end up with as many users as devices.
Another problem is the interpenetration of the online and offline worlds. How do you measure whether a TV advert has resulted in increased sales? Or whether a large billboard on the motorway has affected website traffic? Combining offline conversions with online user activity can also be relatively difficult. Such situations require advanced analytical solutions, which are not always readily available.
It is also important to remember that interaction is not always a “click”. The main goal of awareness advertising (e.g. display advertising ) is to increase brand recognition, build its image or strengthen engagement in other campaigns. In such cases, a “click” is not a common occurrence, and Analytics is not able to assign the display of an advertising creative to a specific person.
Privacy protections must be taken into account when modeling attribution. Legal regulations require that users provide consent to tracking before running analytics or marketing codes. Some people will not provide such consent, which makes it impossible to monitor the path that led to conversion.
It is also important to note that marketing data comes from different platforms, which makes accurate analysis difficult, if not impossible. Connecting user touchpoints with a brand across channels can be an impossible task, resulting in underestimating or overestimating some traffic sources.
The cost of implementing a system that would collect data from all channels in one place is directly related to the previously mentioned point. For small companies, this is an insurmountable barrier, which means that attribution is not even mentioned there.
The Basics of Measuring Marketing Attribution
Imagine that you run a website for a service company in one of the largest cities in Poland. Your marketing strategy is based on acquiring customers from the Google search engine. You position your website for both offer and information phrases. An expert blog attracts many people who are willing to sign up for your newsletter to receive notifications about new content. Additionally, you support these activities by running a profile on social media and paid advertising campaigns.
Google Analytics reports that 100% of converting customers come from organic results. So should the rest of your activities — newsletters, social media posts, paid ads — be removed because they are ineffective? Attribution will answer that question for you.
Before this happens, however, you will need to choose the right attribution model for your business.
Comparison of selected attribution models
Attribution models are sets of rules or algorithms that operate on the basis of data that assign conversion credits to specific points of contact between a user and a page in a specific way. Several attribution models are popular in marketing, which you will find a description of below.
Last Click Attribution
In this model, the entire conversion share is assigned to facebook database the last channel in the conversion path. It is easy to interpret and will work in most cases. Unfortunately, it does not take into account the influence of other channels on the customer's decision. Therefore, by making a decision based on this model, we may inadvertently limit the budget for activities that brought interested but not yet ready to buy people to our sales funnel , which will consequently make the last stage in the path not as effective.
Let’s create a hypothetical conversion path for a typical customer for the above example. Their first contact with your website was an ad in Google Ads. It was interesting enough for them to visit the website to read about the offer. They weren’t interested in completing the transaction yet, so they left the website. Some time later, they searched for a solution to their problem in a search engine and came across your expert blog, and after reading it, they signed up for your newsletter. The next contact with the website took place after opening the newsletter. The customer followed the link and landed on your website again. However, this did not convince them to start working with you. To keep them interested in your brand, your ads appeared on social media from time to time. Finally, after making a decision, the customer found your website using a search engine and sent a form asking for a quote.
Here's what his conversion path looks like:
Google Ads -> SEO -> Newsletter -> Social Media -> SEO -> Conversion
In the last click model, all the glory will be attributed to SEO as the channel that acquired the customer.
Last Click Model
First Click Attribution
The first-click attribution model gives all the credit for acquiring a customer to the first channel. It is useful when looking for marketing channels that can attract people who are likely to convert at later stages. The downside of the model is that it does not take into account later touchpoints, including the channel that closes the sale.
Let's go back to our example. In first-click attribution, 100% of the conversion will be attributed to the Google Ads channel.
First Click Model
Linear attribution
This is the first multi-channel attribution model that takes into account different channels and points of contact between a customer and a company. It distributes the share of conversion equally across all channels. Making decisions based on it allows for optimizing advertising budgets throughout the entire purchase path. Unfortunately, what is an advantage for some can also be seen as a disadvantage, because even insignificant channels will be treated as those that actually contribute to customer acquisition.
In our example, each channel will receive 20% of the conversion share, with SEO receiving 40% since it appears twice in the conversion path.
