What Is Attribution Modelling and Why It’s So Important
In this blog post, I share with you what attribution modelling is and why is quite important for your online sales and marketing. As a business, you have various digital platforms to drive and generate traffic. But if there is one thing you can’t afford, it is to NOT know where your sales are coming from.
In order for your sales to grow, you need to understand which online marketing channels are contributing the most to the performance of each channel. To have that level of understanding, you need to apply attribution modelling.
What is attribution modelling?
Let’s say you have 10,000 visits on your website every month. Imagine someone visited your website the first time after finding you in Google search. Then, through your Facebook retargeting Ads, they visited your website a 2nd time and made an enquiry or abandoned a shopping cart. Then, you sent them an email with a series of email, and they eventually made a purchase.
In this scenario, what channel and marketing effort are responsible for this sales conversion?
That is what attribution modelling attempts to solve. Attribution modelling allows you to attribute the right channels to the sales conversions you receive.
What’s the purpose of attribution modelling?
The ultimate purpose of attribution modelling is to allow you to focus on the right marketing channels. Attribution modelling tells you which channels were responsible for sales conversion. And so, having that level of understanding will prompt your marketing team to invest more in the right marketing channel mix.
Types of Attribution Modelling
In the previous example, Google search, a Facebook Ad and Email marketing all contributed to the sales conversion. The question becomes, to which of these 3 marketing efforts do you attribute the conversion? You might say that the first channel a prospect came from should be the chosen one. Or, you might say the last channel is the one you should pick. But you could also say, each of the three channels should be rewarded equally.
That’s what the different types of attribution marketing can help you with.
In saying that, there is no right or wrong when it comes to which attribution model type you choose. However, there can be best practices according to the sector and business model of your business.
Let’s take a look at the different types of attribution modelling.
First-Touch Attribution Modelling
A first touch attribution model is quite simple. It basically gives all the credit to the first channel your sales prospect encountered.
Last-Touch Attribution Modelling
Last-touch attribution modelling is the opposite of a first-touch attribution model. You attribute the sales conversion to the last channel a prospect interacted with.
Multi-Touch Attribution Modelling
Multi-touch attribution modelling is a sophisticated and effective type of modelling. Many businesses use it because it factors all the channel and touchpoints that a customer interacted with throughout their journey until they decided to make a purchase. Not only that, it also tells you which channels were most influential in the buyers’ decision making.
Linear Attribution Modelling
A linear attribution model is a type of multi-touch attribution that allocates equal credit to all channels and touchpoints involved in the prospect buying journey.
Time-Decay Attribution Modelling
Time-decay attribution modelling factors time into the equation. It still gives credit to all of the touchpoints that contributed to a sales conversion. However, it attributes more weight towards the channels and touchpoints that happened closer toward the end – before the purchase decision.
U-Shaped Attribution Modelling
A U-shaped model allocated more weight to the touchpoints happening at the beginning and the end of the prospect’s journey. It assumes that whatever happens in the middle is not as important.
W-Shaped Attribution Modelling
A W-shaped attribution model gives allocates more weight to the first touchpoint, last touchpoint, and mid-funnel touchpoints. It then gives equal credit to the rest of the touchpoints across the buying journey.
A Few Attribution Tools To Consider
Singular
Singular is one platform that gives you a complete view of ROI with next-gen attribution capability. It allows you to run marketing analytics, cost aggregation, mobile attribution, track and measure the path to conversion across channels. They also have other important features like fraud prevention.
Wicked Reports
Wicked Reports is an attribution platform that helps you optimise ad spend and increase marketing ROI by identifying winning channels and cutting out the losers. They map attribution models to your marketing campaign goals so you can measure the effectiveness of your top, middle, and bottom of the funnel marketing efforts.
Attribution
Attribution is a complete attribution and visibility tool with unmatched usability, and 100% data fidelity. It allows you to integrate and analyse every single marketing touch, channel and account across the buyer’s journey. One of the great features it offers is the ability to review user-level touchpoints for every conversion in a date range. This helps you find patterns and opportunities to optimise your sales funnel.
