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Welcome back!

Summer is coming to a close, but our weekly marketing strategy is still going strong! This month, we’re jumping into a brand new theme that addresses a dilemma that 40% of marketers feel is one of their biggest problems: proving the ROI of campaigns.

Attribution models are a solution to identifying which channels are making an impact, and this month, we’ll do a deep dive into the different types.

Let’s dig in! 🏃‍♂️🚀

News

Tools + Productivity

Strategy

The final touch

Over the past few months, we’ve done deep dives into the different stages across the customer journey/marketing funnel.

So how do you know which channels, campaigns, and messages are actually delivering results?

That’s where attribution modeling comes in. It assigns credit to different touch points with appropriate weighting so marketers can understand which activities drive conversions.

More specifically, attribution modeling provides insights into issues like the weakest links in the customer journey, the strongest channels at different stages of the marketing funnel, ROI on specific campaigns, and top-performing campaign types or messaging.

No one attribution model is superior— rather, the best model is one that’s suitable for the length of your sales cycle, how complicated your customer journey is, and what specific insights you hope to uncover.

Today, we’re starting with last-touch attribution, which gives all credit to the final touchpoint a lead encounters before becoming a paying customer, no matter what came before.

It’s simple to implement and track because it only focuses on the success of the last touchpoint.

For example, let’s say Sarah is looking for a smartphone upgrade. She starts by searching on Google for reviews and comparisons of the latest models, reading some blog posts, and maybe even watching some YouTube reviews.

Later, she might notice and click on a display ad on her favorite tech website, leading her to a detailed product page, eventually adding the phone to her cart but holding off on purchasing.

A week later, she receives an email from the manufacturer offering a limited-time discount on the smartphone, prompting her to revisit the website and eventually decide to complete the purchase.

Last-touch attribution would credit the email with the discount for leading to a conversion, while other attribution models might credit the display ad or paid search results.

In another example, let’s say a potential customer finds your app through a Facebook ad but doesn’t end up downloading it till a week later after being retargeted with a Google Ad. The last-touch model gives all the credit to the Google ad and none to the Facebook ad.

3, 2, 1, Action!

We know what “last-touch attribution” means, but what does it actually look like in practice?

First, you gather up all the data on how customers interact with your marketing— everything from email opens and social media likes to website visits and ad clicks.

From there, you map out the customer journey and pinpoint every interaction from the first encounter to the last one, right before making a purchase.

With last-touch, you zoom in on the last thing a customer did before hitting the “buy” button— whether that’s clicking on an ad, visiting a product page, or opening a promotion email.

Since you’re assuming this interaction was the most important factor in pushing a customer to buy, you assign it with full credit then dive into the data on that touchpoint to see if it’s doing its job.

Basically, under this model you’re trying to optimize the last touchpoint, under the assumption that it’s the core driver of sales.

Perfectly Imperfect

Even though last-touch attribution may stretch the truth a bit by oversimplifying the factors leading to a conversion, its simplicity makes it easy to understand the key drivers of your marketing efforts. It’s also the standard attribution option in Google Analytics and most analytics tools.

On top of that, this model has a small window for error, so it’s harder to make errors when tracking the effectiveness of the touchpoints in question.

When determining which model is right for you, you must first consider what you’re trying to achieve through marketing efforts.

If one of your main goals is educating your audience, and you use a last-touch attribution model to figure out where your conversions are coming from, early-stage marketing efforts don’t tell you how much your educational content is influencing the buyer journey.

While the last-touch model only looks at the the product page customers land on before making a purchase, for many products a lot more goes into the purchasing decisions.

If your product has a longer buying cycle (think, enterprise software solutions, luxury goods, etc), a last-touch model can downplay the importance of earlier stages in the customer journey. The isolated instance that led to conversion doesn’t help you understand what drove leads to your product in the first place.

That’s why this model is good for shorter sales cycles (fast fashion, personal care products, etc) where narrowing in and optimizing one key touchpoint makes more sense.

E-commerce and online sales environments commonly use last-touch attribution because customer journeys may involve more quick decision-making processes with easy-to-track final interactions.

In cases of abandoned cart recovery, the final interaction that causes a customer to return and make the final purchase is the most important one, so a last-touch model applies well.

On the other hand, products with a complicated customer journey are not well understood using a last-touch model since the purchase isn’t mainly driven by the short window the model captures.

Plus, the last-touch attribution model is normally linked to the advertising channel that offers it, like Facebook or Adwords.

This means that if you’re running campaigns for the same landing page on both, it’s nearly impossible to get a full overview of touchpoints since both are claiming all conversions individually, meaning you may not be decreasing or increasing budgets in the right place.

Since it offers a simple approach to attributing conversions, the last-touch model is more accessible, requiring less intricate tracking and analysis. It’s a good starting point for bootstrapped businesses looking for an easy initial attribution solution.

As a business grows, however, this method oversimplifies the customer journey and increasingly underestimates the importance of earlier touchpoints which build brand awareness and trust. Misattributing all the credit to the last touchpoint can lead to misunderstanding tracking data and poor decision-making.

Looking Ahead

Now that we’ve gone over the full-funnel marketing strategy from awareness to conversion to advocacy, you’re ready to refine and strengthen your own brand’s marketing funnel.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition, where we’ll continue this month’s theme with first-touch attribution!

Attribution models

Week 1: Last-touch attribution
Week 2: First-touch attribution
Week 3: Linear attribution
Week 4: Time-decay attribution
Week 5: Position-based attribution

Stay tuned!

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