“How did you hear about our [product/position/service/brand/company]?” Select one.
- TV
- Print
- Web
- Billboard
- Referral
- Other
Where this question does pose some valuable insight about a single interaction, it falls short in providing holistic details around an interconnected marketing landscape (and not to mention survey respondent bias).
The Inter-connectivity of Marketing
We live in an interconnected world of advertising, not that advertising ever truly lived in a disconnected way. Heavy advertising spend on social media can increase your organic traffic.. Likewise, TV campaigns drive
second-screen searches. Digital display advertising drives storefront foot traffic, in-store associates drive sales.
Attribution modeling is a job valued at 50% more per year than the average US salary.
What is Attribution Modeling?
Attribution Modelling tells the story of connectivity. It shows how connected different marketing functions are, when looking at goal achievement. It discounts the one-man-army concept (i.e. the first question in this article) when looking at conversions, instead taking an “it takes a village” perspective (or rather it could discount this, it may reaffirm a single tactic deserves all of the credit but that’s less likely). Basically, attribution modelling tells a marketer, business owner or an analyst which aspects of marketing and advertising contribute to an end goal. It looks at the overall picture, rather than just the final contributor to the conversion, referred to as “last-click” in digital advertising, last-touch, final touch, etc. It's the marketing and advertising function that leads directly to the sale/purchase/conversion and can most easily be seen. A clear benefit (or downside if you're the one responsible for now needing to make sense of all of this!) of digital advertising, is the automated connectivity of marketing and attribution, which is needed to eliminate the respondent bias and survey errors in the first example. Not that this does not present an entire set of other problems, but when done right helps provide amazing, holistic insight into your marketing approach.
Types of Attribution Models:
Image credit: Medium.com Last touch attribution is the classical attribution model, because it’s the easiest to connect. To use a sports analogy, it’s crediting the running back that gets the ball into the endzone or the baseball player’s stats for the amount of times he rounds the bases and touches home. But no one else is credited for assistance/support.
Time decay attribution credits the final activity with a higher weighted score and the supporting activities with a lesser score as they move away from the final activity. It is more of a hockey points system - 2 points for the goal and 1 for the assist (hockey does account 1 point to each, the first and second assist). This allows for a more complete picture of what is to be behind the final marketing function that brings in customer acquisition.
Linear attribution is the “all things are equal” approach. This is the team award approach (i.e. the entire team roster, so long as they played, wins the playoff title, not just a single player).
Position based attribution is a blend of most of the other approaches. More heavily weighted on the first and last touch attribution, with lesser weight provided on all of the functions between.
First touch attribution gives credit to the market function that first introduces a prospective customer to the company/brand. It would be similar to a baseball player’s “Run’s batted in”. This is a valuable attribution model when you want to look past retargeting and email, to get to the root of what valuable marketing initiatives are to be credited for bringing the awareness to the brand.
Which attribution model is best? See a previous article I wrote on the answer to good metrics, because it still applies here - “
it depends.”
