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Welcome back!

We hope everyone had an awesome weekend! Although spooky season is coming up, we’re finishing off this month’s theme with an article that should make position-based attribution models a little less spooky.

P.S. If you’re looking for a more efficient way to tackle your marketing grunt work and focus on strategy, check out LoopGenius’ solution above!

Let’s dive in! 🏃‍♂️🚀

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Tools + Productivity

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Not too hot, not too cold

Position-based attribution models are pretty much the ultimate combo of all the attribution models we’ve been discussing this month.

Rather than giving all credit to one interaction, spreading credit evenly throughout, or skewing credit towards later stages of the funnel, position-based attribution gives all interactions credits while giving the most emphasis to the first and last.

No crazy math here— just 40% to the first and last touchpoints, then the remaining 20% is distributed evenly across the middle.

This model happens to be my personal favorite— it recognizes how crucial it is to grab someone’s attention in the first place, but also the importance of being able to trigger that final purchase decision.

Interactions across the middle are still important— after all, messing up the middle stage can cause the attention you captured in the first place to fall through.

Still, nothing beats the first and last touch when it comes to brand awareness and actual sales.

Position-based attribution prioritizes the initial discovery and final push while still acknowledging the role of nurturing touchpoints in between.

That’s why I call it the Goldilocks model— not too extreme and not too diluted.

Got porridge?

To be fair, although this model sounds quite perfect, certain companies may benefit more than others.

For companies with lots of touchpoints, the even split for the entire middle stage of the customer journey may underestimate the impact of certain points in the middle.

This means B2B companies selling high-value products (translating to longer, more complex sales cycles with multiple important touchpoints) may risk undervaluing mid-funnel campaigns with this model.

This also applies more generally to companies with long buying cycles beyond 30 to 90 days.

If lots of stakeholders and departments are involved in the purchasing decision— from IT to finance to legal to executives— customer lifecycles are long and nurturing leads throughout the middle of the funnel is much more important.

On the other hand, B2B companies with more moderate sales cycles lasting a few weeks and brands who equally value brand awareness and conversions may find this attribution model to be the perfect match.

Let’s look at it another way though: sometimes the attribution model you use might change across your company's lifecycle depending on current goals.

For example, if you’re introducing a new product, using this model to understand which channels create the most initial buzz and which ones drive final purchase decisions could serve your goals for the time being.

The same goes for brands currently focused on lead generation campaigns— this model identifies the most effective channels for lead capture and final conversion.

Essentially, brands at the earlier growth stages would probably find position-based attribution most applicable.

Implementation in action

Consider a relatively new B2B software company focused on lead generation implementing position-based attribution.

They start by configuring field mappings between CRM, marketing automation, and website analytics platforms to ensure data syncs correctly. Then they would implement UTM parameters on all marketing campaigns to set up tracking.

Let’s zoom in— say a potential client embarks on the customer journey by clicking on a LinkedIn ad, then visits the company website, downloads a whitepaper, and attends a webinar throughout the middle of the funnel.

The last touchpoint was a demo request via an email campaign. 40 points would be given to the LinkedIn ad campaign, 40 for the final email, and 20 would be spread across the 3 touchpoints in the middle for 6.66 points each.

Once the company has this attribution data, it can increase investment in high-performing channels and reduce spending on underperforming touchpoints.

On top of that, fine-tuning messaging and creative elements for top-performing touchpoints can make those campaigns even more effective.

Looking Ahead

After a long month of discussing attribution models, we hope at least one of them resonates with your brand and its goals. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture— which is that having an intentional approach to how you allocate funds toward various marketing campaigns can give you much more bang for your buck.

If you’re interested in automating your marketing processes to grow faster, click here to learn more about how Loopgenius can help you.

Stay tuned for next week, where we’ll start the month with a new theme!

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 (this week!)

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