Today’s customers don’t necessarily follow tidy, linear paths to purchase. They find your brand on Instagram, research on Google, compare prices on your website, drop their cart, comeback from email marketing and convert from a retargeting ad on Facebook. The resulting complex multi-touchpoint journey poses an enormous challenge for marketers: which channels should receive credit for a conversion? The ability to model across platforms is your answer to this conundrum, and it’s the secret to optimize your marketing spend.
The Problem of Attribution in Multi-Channel Marketing
Classic attribution models like “last-click” or “first-touch” tell the incomplete story of customer activity. The last click attribution model assigns all credit to the last touchpoint, disregarding the awareness and consideration stages that led to that conversion. At the same time, first-touch attribution overrates top-of-funnel efforts and undervalues the critical nurturing steps that truly sealed the deal.
Cross platform attribution aims to discover the actual worth of every marketing touchpoint across the whole customer journey. Custom channels Building an inclusive picture of channels allows marketers to improve budget efficiency, drive campaign lift and unlock what combinations of channels are most effective when used together.
Attribution Models That Actually Work
Data-Driven Attribution Models:
- Time decay attribution: Attributes more credit to touchpoints that are closer in time to conversion, and less, but still some, to those that precede it.
- Position based attribution: gives more importance to first and last interactions, while dividing the rest credit for middle touchpoints
- Machine learning attribution: Employs artificial intelligence to read trends and allocate credit according to what actually contributed to conversions
Implementation Strategies:
- Centralized tracking solutions: Deploy a standard UTM parameters and tracking codes to all channels
- Customer ID linking: Link unregistered activity with activity performed by a known customer when a known customer provides identification information.
- Cross-device tracking: Include users who move between mobile, desktop and tablet in their path
- Offline integration: Incorporate phone calls, in-store visits, and other offline conversions into your attribution model
Overcoming Technical Challenges
Cross device attribution for better conversion over time Technical issues Many of the technical challenges revolve around three main issues: privacy rules, cookies and tracking limitations across different platforms. Traditional tracking methods are losing their accuracy due to updates to iOS and to GDPR compliance, so marketers are turning to more advanced methods to get the data they need.
That’s why when businesses providing holistic digital services such as web design services to the SEO Philippines put brands to new heights by welding their data together, consolidating their contact points, and creating smarter attribution systems — everything changes.
Attribution solutions of today add together first-party, server-side, and statistical models to paint more accurate customer journey pictures. Not only are these methods more privacy-friendly, most of the times they even provide you with better insights than the old cookie-based tracking.
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Making Attribution Actionable
Attribution data is only useful if you can take action on it. The good video attribution models will help you quickly analyzing budget reallocation effects, campaign optimization strategies and channel performance signals. Search for data patterns to find the right channel pairings for your best customers and longest staying customers.
Frequent attribution analysis should help inform strategic decisions about channel mix, content strategy and customer experience optimization. Leverage attribution learnings to pinpoint holes in your customer journey and areas to optimize touchpoint efficacy.
Wrapping Up
Cross-platform attribution isn’t just about knowing what’s working so you can give credit where credit is due — it’s about knowing how your entire marketing ecosystem works in concert to propel business success. Perfect attribution is probably unattainable in the current “privacy first” world, but advanced modeling technologies will still be able to give you actionable insights and boost marketing ROI. Begin with basic cross-channel tracking, and then work your way toward increasingly sophisticated models of attribution that match the nuances of your own customer journey.
