Marketing attribution is the art and science of determining which of your many marketing actions results in a customer taking action, such as making a purchase, signing up for an event or downloading a white paper. If you don’t know where your sales are coming from, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know how to best allocate your marketing funds and resources.
Why Marketing Attribution Matters
Marketing attribution is essential for determining which of your marketing channels are working and which need optimizing. If you’re like most companies, you have many marketing channels as a part of your overall marketing strategy. Without an attribution tracking plan knowing where to focus your efforts and your resources is nearly impossible.
Marketing attribution takes the guesswork out of allocating your resources. Using attribution, you can set target goals, project sales and forecast your marketing spend more accurately and with better results. To do this, you need to start with the right marketing metrics.
Identify and Ignore Vanity Metrics
It’s easy to fall into the trap of measuring things that don’t really lead to sales or conversions. These so-called vanity metrics can make you feel better about your business, but they can’t really be relied on to make important decisions. Vanity metrics include things like page views or social media page “likes”. These numbers don’t translate directly into sales or new customers. After all, you may have a huge following on your social media pages and still be hurting for sales. It’s much more accurate to track things like conversions, click-throughs and referrals from your social media pages.
Analyzing Your Marketing Metrics
Many companies track where their customers are coming from, but they fall short when it comes to analyzing that data. The problem lies in that it may take more than one marketing “touch” for a customer to purchase your product. Say, he or she clicked through a Facebook ad, then received a targeted email marketing message from you. To which marketing action do you attribute the sale? There is no right answer to this, as long as you’re consistent. Many companies use what’s called “first touch” model because it is the easiest to keep track of. This means that they attribute the sale to the first marketing channel the (eventual) customer interacted with.
Attribution matters when it comes to tracking where your customers are coming from, but it can also be confusing. At the Pollock Marketing Group, we understand the importance knowing where your sales are coming from and we can help you make sure that your tracking is reliable. To learn more about preparing marketing strategy and incorporating marketing attribution feel free to contact us.