Website Analytics can give you interesting data points that will give you insights into making decisions.
If you are running an online store or a lead generation website, chances are that you are using a web stat package like Google Analytics. You know who your shoppers/customers are, where they are coming from, and what products they frequently shop, send them emails with offers and sales, and products they usually shop, etc. Also, you might have a reward program and track every time they add something to the cart but abandon it or fill out a form and not complete it.
Google Analytics
Sessions, pageviews, new users vs. current users, the device they used to visit your online store, geographical area or DMAs where they are coming from, age, gender, the bounce rate of the page, entry and exit pages, referrals and sources of traffic, most visited landing pages, etc. These KPIs are fantastic if you can interpret and understand them, and of course, they can give you insights on how to segment your audience and strategies better to increase your sales.
The best part of Google Analytics, as many of you already know, is “free,” well, nothing is “free” in life, but I am not going to get into details. But yes, you don’t have to write a check to Google when using Google Analytics, and you don’t hit 10 million monthly hits. If you have more than 10 million hits, Google will encourage you to use Google 360 and ask you to pay around $150K a year. Just in case a hit measures the activity from the web server side, a hit differs from a visit, unique visit, or page view. You can visit a website and generate 3 page views and 50 hits to the website server. A hit is a more technical KPI.
Something really important to know and understand is how one campaign is helping conversion to another campaign or organic conversions, and on the other hand, how a campaign is overlapping and causing problems for other campaigns and hurting conversions/sales. If you don’t have a strategy to handle this, you may be wasting money by not properly optimizing your campaigns.
Why Campaign Attribution?
You can generate traffic to your site and conversions through paid campaigns or direct/organic traffic. You probably have a Search Engine Marketing strategy and use different platforms to generate traffic, like search campaigns at Google or Bing, display campaigns at Google Display Network, native advertising through a DSP or Taboola, Outbrain, or maybe TV or Radio campaigns. But something that is always difficult to measure is how campaign A is contributing to generate conversions on campaign B. In other words, how to measure “campaign attribution.”
Marketing attribution is a collection of data points that help marketers determine which marketing campaigns contribute to generating sales or conversions. On the customer journey, as you know, a person can watch a TV ad and, days later, on a mobile device, visit your website or online store, spend some time there, add some products to the cart, leave the site, and search on another site for the same product or a different product, but this time using a tablet or desktop. Three days from now, click on a search ad, close the browser, two hours later, type the domain name and finally purchase the products. The customer journey is different each time and can be as easy as one, two, three, or more complex than the example I just mentioned.
A consumer can travel to multiple touchpoints. You want to know how the consumer behaves because this information will help you optimize your campaigns across your conversion funnel. If you don’t have proper attribution, you will probably end up pausing your display campaigns because they are not generating enough conversions and then realize that your organic conversion has been declining. You cannot make decisions “a priori.” Proper attribution to the leads and conversions you generate is important and necessary for success. This should be part of your digital marketing plan.
Marketing Attribution Models
There are many models, but these are the most commons
- Single-Touch Attribution. In this model, we assume that the consumer converts right after interacting with the first ad of a certain campaign.
- Last-Touch Attribution. This model assumes that the consumer converts in the last-touch point without considering prior interaction or engagement with ads in different campaigns.
- Multi-Touch Attribution. In this model, we consider all the touchpoints during the consumer journey that helps or assist the conversion. Under this model, you can have a linear model, a U-shaped model, a Time decay model, and a W-shaped model. In my opinion, this is the most comprehensive attribution model because it considers all the touchpoints.
Attribution Software
You can have excellent advanced analytics software and know how many people visit your site, where your customer is coming from, your conversion, and many other KPIs, but this is not enough. It would help if you also planned the attribution model you will use. It is impossible to get 100% attribution on every campaign and channel you are running, linear TV, affiliated marketing, programmatic, display, search, etc., but with proper software and model, you can get acceptable levels of accuracy, and this will help you optimize your campaigns and increase your conversion rates.
